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FireWire
"Flames Out" On PowerBooks May
3rd, 2001 "Houston, we
have a problem." You pay two or
three grand for a G4 Titanium Powerbook and you
expect FireWire port speeds that are at least as
fast as an iMac. But for some reason known only
to Apple, it just ain't so. I wish I could offer
you an explanation but unless Apple's
"Performance Marketing" department responds to
my email, I can't explain my
findings. My current
theory: Apple is using a FireWire controller in
the PowerBooks that is sub-standard in
performance. This deficiency didn't rear its
ugly head until the new faster crop of FireWire
drives appeared. TEST
NOTES TEST FIREWIRE
DRIVE/ENCLOSURE TEST
SYSTEMS SUSTAINED READ
AND WRITE RELATED
TESTS Final
Cut Pro 2.0 versus 1.2.5. WHERE TO
BUY Other
World Computing
sells Elite "Oxford 911" version of their
Mercury FireWire enclosure without a drive for
$139. You can also buy it with a
40G
IBM 60GXP
for $310. Granite
Digital
sells their "Oxford 911" enclosures
for $159. They also have drives and
PCI
controllers.
In fact, if you build your own FireWire
enclosures, they will sell you the bare
FireWire/IDE
bridge board.
FLASH!
FWDepot
is now selling an enclosure with the 911 chip
set which is very similar to the one sold by
OWC. It goes for $140. According to
EZ Quest's site, they have a FireWire drive that
transfers at 30+ sustained rates but it does not
use Oxford 911. I hope to test this
soon. The primary
test drive was an IBM 75GXP 30G ATA/100 7200rpm
drive courtesy of Trans
International
who sells them for $149. The IBM 60GXP
40G ATA/100 7200rpm drive is available from
Other
World Computing
who sells them for $200 without the FireWire
case, $310 with. Don't have
FireWire in your G3 PowerBook? FWDepot
has a good CardBus card with two ports for $86.
Don't have FireWire on your Desktop? Get a PCI
controller. The fastest PCI FireWire/USB combo
card I've tested was the USB/FireWire PCI card
from FWDepot.
If you don't need USB and just want to add more
FireWire channels, then you might hold out for
the soon to be released Granite
Digital 3 Channel PCI
controller.
See the
STORAGE section of my HOT
DEALS
page for other sources for these
products. BARE FEATS HOME SPEED
TEST RESULTS
from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY) LINKS
to SPEED tests on other web sites HOT
SPEED DEALS DOWNLOADS
that add more SPEED SPEED
UPGRADE
guide ©
2001 Rob
Art Morgan. (This
site served up by MacDock.com)
by rob
ART morgan,
Bare Feats Mad ScientistAs
I was testing the new, fast "Oxford 911"
FireWire enclosures on various models of
Macintosh, I made a disturbing discovery. The
sustained data transfer speed on the PowerBook
and iBook is much lower than any desktop model
of Macintosh including iMacs and older Power
Macs.
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
Other
World Computing
Elite "Oxford 911" version of their Mercury
FireWire enclosure with an IBM 75GXP 30G ATA/100
7200rpm drive courtesy of Trans
International
All the test systems listed above were running
Mac OS 9.1 and FireWire 2.8.1.
The sustained read/write benchmark was run using
ExpressPro-Tools
2.5
(SCSI and Fibre Channel version 2.5 for Mac).
When you launch it, it displays all the mounted
drives (IDE, SCSI, FireWire). Select the drive
you want to test (one click). Then go to the
Utilities menu and select Benchmark Volume. A
test window will appear. Set Max Transfer Size
to 8MB. Then press start. On my graphs I display
sustained rate, not peak rate. Peak rate is
skewed by the drive cache and doesn't reflect
real world performance.
Gotta Question? Comment?
Email rob-art@barefeats.com