Who makes faster upgrade boards?
XLR8 or Sonnet?
11/17/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

Each company has engineered products designed to extend the life of your older Power Macintosh. Speedwise, who did the best job? Note a winner is declared after each test but the G4/400 "Yikes" Minitower is not eligible even when it's the fastest. This is a fight between XLR8 and Sonnet.

CPU & FPU crunching...

Winner: G3/500 Crescendo by Sonnet Technology

 

Winner: G4/400 Crescendo from Sonnet Technology

 

Winner: G4/400 Crescendo from Sonnet Technology

 

3D Games...
(all systems had a Voodoo3 3000 PCI board)

Winner: G3/500 MACh Carrier from XLR8

 

Winner: G3/500 Crescendo from Sonnet Technology

 

Conclusion: The Sonnet boards seemed to have the edge over the XLR8 boards in most tests. But keep in mind that you need a stopwatch to tell the difference in real life.

The G4/400 Yikes results were included not only for reference, but to illustrate why some users choose to sell their old machine and buy the newest. The upgraded 7500 is revved to redline. The Yikes was at half throttle.

The G3/400 XLR8 MACh results were included to show why having the lastest, greatest, most expensive upgrade may not be necessary. With G3/400 upgrades priced as low as $300, it's hard to justify paying $700 to $1000 for the high end upgrades.

Test Configurations & Procedures

	Yikes!	Power Mac 7500 G4	Power Mac 7500 G3
CPU	G4/400	XLR8 MACh CarrierZIF with G4/350 (set to 400) or Sonnet G4/400 Crescendo	XLR8 MACh CarrierZIF with G3/500 or Sonnet G3/500 Crescendo
Bus Speed	100Mhz	50Mhz	50Mhz
Cache	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (250MHz)
RAM	256 MB (8ns)	160 MB (60ns)	160 MB (60ns)
Graphics	66MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 running at 166MHz	33MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 running at 166MHz	33MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 running at 166MHz

 

• Bryce 3D 4.0 rendering was used to test a combination of CPU and FPU speed.
• Photoshop 5.5 was given 100MB of app size on each machine. The test file was 17MB. AtiVecCore was enabled. The functions tested included:
  • Gaussian Blur (30 pixels)
  • LightingEffects (Flashlight - default settings)
• Quake II test was run by pressing "~" after startup and typing "timedemo 1" (return) and "~" again. When the first person dies, I press "~" again to get the frame rate.
• Unreal 3D test used the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.2.x of Unreal, you press "~" and enter "timedemo 1." Then press "~" to open up the full screen again. It begins the fly sequence at the castle entrance. (Get the latest latest Mac version of UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.)

BIG MAHALO TO....

...3Dfx for the use of the Voodoo3 3000 PCI card

...Metacreations for the use of Bryce 3D

...Sonnet Technology for the use of the G4/400 and G3/500 Crescendo boards.

...XLR8/Interex for the use of the G4/350 MACh Carrier and G3/500 MACh Carrier boards.