Experience local shipping options and optimized product inventory for your region.
Powerlogix 1GHz G3 vs. Sonnet 800MHz G4 When Sonnet debuted their 800MHz G4 upgrade a few years ago, users of 2nd generation Powermacs (7300-9600) assumed that would be the last and fastest upgrade ever produced for our aging machines. Powerlogix surprised us all this year when they introduced a G3 1GHz upgrade in an attempt to squeeze out every drop of performance from our trusty machines. But how would it compare to the Sonnet G4 800 card that had Altivec? (Note that you can see how well the Sonnet 800 card compares to other cards at Jamie's previous review here.) These results will hopefully answer any questions you have about the performance of the Powerlogix card versus the Sonnet card. First a few general observations. With either card, the Finder was much snappier then with any 450mhz upgrade. Neither card could play a DVD from my DVD drive very smoothly, but the Powerlogix card was definitely better. Full quality DIVX movies played with no hiccups with the Powerlogix card, but the Sonnet card choked in some places. The Powerlogix software does not report the correct processor speed to the OS. Apple System Profiler indicates that the card is running at 500mhz. This normally isn't much of a big deal, except that iChat wants to see a 600mhz G3 or faster for you to be able to use your iSight, so I still had to have the iGlasses hack installed to be able to use my iSight. Hopefully Powerlogix will fix this with a software update soon. The Sonnet software correctly reports the speed as 800mhz. Probably the biggest concern I have about any processor upgrade is stability. Our old Macs just weren't manufactured to handle these kinds of speeds. I was worried that the Powerlogix 1Ghz card would be a stability nightmare. In fact, the opposite was true. Over the two months I have had the card installed, I have not had a single system crash. Not even one. That's enough to get me to buy the card right there. For the 3 days I had the Sonnet G4 800mhz card installed, I had 3 full system lock-ups. However, any G4 processor upgrade I've every tried has problems on my system, so its not just the Sonnet G4 800. In particular, G4 upgrades have problems with USB/Firewire combo cards. So, now on to the benchmarks!
All tests were run 3 times each, and an average score was recorded. Note: You might be wondering why there are no xBench results as part of my review. This is because the results I was getting from xBench were not consistent enough to be conclusive. Sometimes the Powerlogix would be faster, and sometimes the Sonnet would be faster. So I threw those results out. One of my biggest gripes with OS X is how long it takes to start up. So the first test is the time it takes from the startup chime until the menubar and desktop appear (using auto-login). As you can see, the Powerlogix card did not do too well against the Sonnet card. I really can't explain why, as it doesn't make sense for their to be much Altivec-specific code being executed during startup. Perhaps the answer is that Sonnet's software loads its L2 & L3 cache almost immediately upon startup, and Powerlogix's software doesn't load until later, but that is speculation. Next up is the iTunes CD import comparison. I ripped a 3 minute and 31 second song. The Sonnet card just barely beat out the Powerlogix card, but not by a significant amount. Next I ran the old Let1KWindowsBloom test. This little app just opens and closes 1000 finder windows as fast as it possibly can. It's a decent test of memory allocation capabilities if anything. The Powerlogix card edges out the Sonnet card, but not by a significant amount. Next I tested the vector processing unit capabilities of the cards using a program called Altivec Fractal. It measures the time it takes to calculate some very complex (128-bit) mathematical equations. There really is no competition here as the Sonnet card has the Altivec coprocessor, while the Powerlogix card has to run some sort of emulation. Next is a series of benchmarks showcasing the 3D rendering capabilities of these two processors. CineBench 2003 from Maxon is the most consistent benchmarking tool that I know if. It tests OpenGL hardware and software lighting, object shading, and and full scene rendering. The Powerlogix card really starts to shine here, with a solid win in every category. Finally, what's the point of getting a processor upgrade if it doesn't make Quake III run faster? Playing Quake III with the Powerlogix card was smooth as silk. I never noticed a slowdown. Of course, this is with the new Radeon 9200 Mac Edition video card. But having the faster Powerlogix processor did give a nice 10% increase in frame rate. So, do you use Altivec-enabled applications all day long? Probably not, because if you did you would already own a new G5. For those of us that love to stick with our old faithful macs, at $229 this card is a bargain compared to the $345 Sonnet. The stability factor alone is worth the price of this upgrade to me. Kudos to Powerlogix engineering for this rock-solid upgrade. -Ben Ralston is the author of OS 9 Helper, and a contributor to the XPostFacto project
|