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PURPLE POWER
The Sonnet G3 225/240MHz L2 upgrade
For Power
Mac 5400/5500/6400/6500 Performa 5400-series, 6360, 6400-series |
| Mar 18th - we now have a 400MHz flavor. There is an order form here |
| Feb 24th - we have posted a page about the 300/1MBs. There is an order form here |
| Feb 16th - read these fabulous customer comments. And to help you to decide which upgrade you need, go to this handy chart. |
Feb 8th 1999 Vimage themselves finally figured out in December that their 240MHz for the 5400/6400 worked equally well in the TAM and the 6500 at 225MHz and gave it their blessing. But from the very first sales, customers yearned for even more speed. Even though the 225MHz in the TAM and slower 6500s will almost double the speed, many customers want more: 300MHz with a 1MB backside cache: The Big One. |
| Sonnet announced three new L2 cache-slot G3 upgrades and demonstrated them at MacWorld in January. They have a 225/240MHz with 512k of backside cache, a 300/512K and a whopping 300/1MB. And these upgrades will work in the TAM and 6500 as well as PMac 5400, 5500, 6360, 6400 and (althought we've no idea how they did this), it says in the manual that they work in the PCC PowerBase computers. It seems logical that the same card will work in the UMAX C-500 but we need to verify this machine. |
Impatient as we always are to get our hands on a new product, we've prayed
for Fedex to bring a longed-for Sonnet 300/150/1MB - the card so eagerly
awaited by many of our customers and for which we were cruelly taunted weeks
ago. Last Friday we believed, (incorrectly, it now seems) that we
would have one for Saturday delivery. So bright and early on Saturday morning
when we got the call from FedEx to see if we were here, we were more than
ready to put the upgrade through its paces. At this point I would like to
mention that we had removed the Vimage 225 a few days earlier, and our G3-zippy
TAM had turned into a slow, old turtle:( But what the heck ...we put it through its paces anyway. Read on... |
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Insertion took maybe 10 seconds (but remember, he's done this before) and I put the cover back on the machine. Despite what we originally thought you will need the TAM fat back, we found our original back and tried it today and it will not fit. (updated 2/9/99). The TAM, 5500 and 6500 have a 50MHz bus. All the other machines that this upgrade works with have a 40MHz bus. So in the TAM and 6500 the upgrade works at 225MHz (4.5 times bus speed) and in the 5400/6360/6400/PowerBase the same CPU will run at 240MHz (6 times bus speed). The upgrade comes with a 3.5" floppy with complete instructions. Installation of the software took maybe another two minutes and I was all set. It took me longer to open the FedEx box and to figure out what I had been shipped, than the actual installation. (Er, he forgot to mention that the fact that at first the machine kept crashing. I could hear cursing from down the hall). If you've upgraded from a Vimage card do remember to disable the Vimage software first. With the Vimage software disabled, startup was perfectly normal with the now-familar burp as the computer switched from the 603e processor over to the 225MHz G3. I ran MacBench 4.0 for a speed comparison with the Vimage 225/240MHz. The numbers were virtually identical, as I had expected. |
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Sonnet sends the Metronome utility with their upgrades which autoloads into the Apple menu items to check speed and temperature of the CPU. I fired it up as well as Power Logix's SpeedMeter so I could compare the heat produced by the Sonnet 225/240 in comparison to the Vimage 225/240. And Sonnet's claim of cooler running was indeed true. The hottest I could run the Sonnet card settled at 63 degrees C while the Vimage ran at 80 degrees. For the 225/240MHz and 300/512kMHz though, those temperatures are perfectly normal from both the Sonnet and the Vimage card. I will be very interested in seeing just how cool the 300/1MB runs. (update 2/11/99 the 300/1MB runs at a cool 40-degrees, !! ). Sonnet is starting to ship the 225-240/512k cache-slot upgrade (update 2/15/99 - 225-240s are now in stock) and the 300s will follow. The list price at $399 certainly makes it an attractive unit and will allow far more 5400, 5500, 6360, 6400, 6500 and TAM owners an incredibly-priced speed increase. We think the 225MHz is not enough of a speed boost for people with 275 and 300MHz 6500s, especially in the light of the promise of 300MHz CPUs with either 512k or 1MB of backside cache, within a few days, at $499 and $599 respectively. And no doubt Vimage will lower the price of their similar 225/240MHz cache-slot upgrade to match. So you can now buy a G3 with performance similar to that of an iMac for under $400! That's a hell of a deal, and is more than adequate for anyone with the low speed machines; 180-250MHz. Remember, speed is all relative. If you are a high-end user, or already have a 275MHz or 300MHz machine, you should consider one of the 300MHz versions. You can lengthen the lifespan of your machine by two years with any of these upgrades. If you don't think the machine is worth the investment, consider it as an investment in time-saved for you. The least expensive part of the computer is the hardware, the most expensive part is your time, so it's worth investing 50¢ a day in, for G3 speed. |
Barb pointed out that some of you may want to read a few performance
numbers, so she played with a few filters on a10MB Photoshop file with 50MB
of memory allocated to Photoshop. And scrolling thru a 50-page Quark document took 23secs without the Sonnet, and 10 secs with the Sonnet installed. Speed increases not to be sneezed at for under $400! |
order form here. |
MacCPU Y2K/Millennium Countdown Clock for Macintosh
3073
