Cider Press Reviews - For Those Not Satisfied With Twice The Performance, Perhaps The Middle Sibling From Sonnet, PowerLogix Or GigaDesign Is The Answer ...
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[When we last left this story we were happily speeding along in our refurbished G4/400 PowerMac Tower with a newly installed G4/800 MHz engine. We were perfectly content, rounding QuickTime encodes at break neck speed. Zooming past those with lesser beasts, as they struggled with iMovie Aged Effects. We were living in the fast lane. We were a Photoshop power house ... and then it happened. Mr Jones (yes Mr Jones the proverbial), passed us. He not only passed us, but left us choking on a obscure Gaussian Blur cloud he left in his wake. It was time to take action! Head back to the repair department, and get us fitted out with something that would put Jones in his place ... 800 MHz clearly wouldn't hack it. There is nothing like eating someone else's Gaussian Blur dust, to get the competitive juices flowing .... and it is here, gentle reader, that we reenter the story]
We are not going to go over again here the points we made in our overall review of the Sonnet, PowerLogix and GigaDesign processor upgrade cards for G4 Macs . Instead think of this as an addendum to the main review, which covered the 800 MHz cards for this category of machines. In this addendum then, we will be taking a look at the 1 GHz versions of the upgrades. In a subsequent addendum we will take on the top of the line cards, which run at about 1.2 GHz.
Each of the companies mentioned above, makes a GHz version for G4 Tower Macs. Like the 800 MHz upgrades we reviewed earlier, the GHz upgrades did very well in both our performance and stress testing.
Performance
In performance the GigaDesign, PowerLogix & Sonnet cards pretty much tracked each other. Again, not surprising since each card has the same stats; a G4/1 GHz processor with 256K of high-speed on-chip L2 cache, and an additional 2 MB of L3 cache to lend a helping hand. Of more interesting note, in fundamental processing potential, as shown by our AltiVec Fractal test, all three processor upgrades gave us the same score that we obtained from our reference machine ... the current PowerMac G4/1GHz Tower. (January, 2003 model ... has 1 MB of L3 cache, rather than the 2 MB of the upgrade cards reviewed here). However when we move away from fundament processing power, into application testing, you will see these upgrades fall behind our reference machine in some test (Game performance, MP3 encode from CD), while keeping up in others (Photoshop and Microsoft Office).
In head to head competition with our stock, test machine, (a Power Mac G4/400 Tower with 1 MB of Backside L2 cache running at half the processor speed), it was a no-brainer .... the upgrades made mincemeat of the stock machine's scores. In application testing which was very procesessor intensive, the GHz upgrade cards turned in anywhere from 2 to 2.7 times the performance of the Stock machine. In screen redraws, search & replace tests and other large document tests, the upgrades' performance was again fairly impressive.
The only dull performance marks, in the otherwise bright picture, came in our drive tests. Here we actually saw a slight falling off in performance, over our slower stock machine. Our MP3 encode from CD showed a similar phenomenon. We are guessing that the extra caching capacity of the upgrades is what is tripping them up in these tests. Perhaps the time it takes to fill the larger caches up is what is slowing the process down. This would seem to make sense, since we observed a definate pause between encoding MP3 tracks. This pause did not occur when the machine was in stock configuration. But we are making a semi-educated guess, and do not know that this is indeed what is happening ... only that this type of test is a slight problem for the upgrades, across the board.
Finally how do the 1 GHz cards stack up to the their counterparts running at 800 MHz? Well, in fundamental processing power, for $150 to $200 more (depending on which card you are looking at), you will see about a 25% speed improvement ... at best, over the 800 MHz cards. That is a 50% to 67% price increase for a 25% speed bump ...
Stability
As mentioned above we had no problems with any of the cards during our testing. And what about our testing? Well as you'll see from the test results below we throw a lot of heavy duty applications at the upgrades, to see how they will perform. On top of that, we also do some straight out stress testing. This includes restarting the machine for over 100 consecutive times and then saturating the processor with data to chew on for a 12 hour period. We have been able to use these methods to expose problems with processor upgrades in the past, and feel that they are good methods for establishing the initial stability of a processor upgrade. Long term compatibility can can only be determined over prolonged useage, but it is nice to know that the upgrade manufacturer's stand behind their products with multi-year warranties.
Conclusion: These three upgrades are stable good performers, but like the middle sibling of the family, they are a little lost. Those that need every scrap of power they can get their hands on, but aren't ready to spring for a whole new machine, would do well to look at the 1.2 GHz upgrades that these manufacturer's offer. For those that want to give their machines a significant boost, at a modest price, the 800 MHz cards in this class are really more cost effective.
Note: We plan to add a further addendum to the review when we take a look at the performance of the 1.2/25 GHz of this family of upgrades. Check our Processor Upgrade Hub for links.
Hits: Good at processor
intensive tasks, speedy processor caches. Works in Cube. Very good stability. Three year warranty
Misses: 800 MHz or 1.2 GHz card may offer better value to core markets
Requirements: Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics), Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet), Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio), Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2001), Macintosh Server G4 (450 & 500 MHz), Cube. OS 9.2.1 through Mac OS X. Installation in Cube requires additional hardware
Hits: Good at processor
intensive tasks, speedy processor caches. Very good stability. 3 year warranty
Misses: Their 800 MHz or 1.25 GHz card may provide better value to core markets. The only caution is that they have a much shorter track record than the others. Does not work in the Cube.
Requirements: Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics), Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet), Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio), Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2001), Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002), Macintosh Server G4 (450 & 500 MHz). OS 9.2.1, 9.2.2 or OSX, and PowerMac Firmware version 4.2.8 for all non Quicksilver models
Rating:
(5 possible)
Product: PowerForce Series 233 G4/1GHz/1GHz/256K/2 MB
Hits: Good at processor intensive tasks, speedy processor caches. Very good stability. Best price/performance ratio of the three cards reviewed on this page, still you may find the 800 MHz card or 1.2 GHz even a better value. Works in Cube
Misses: Two year warranty not as robust as the other two manufacturers.
Requirements: Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics), Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet), Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio), Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2001), Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002), Macintosh Server G4 (450 & 500 MHz), Cube. OS 9.2.1, 9.2.2, or Mac OS X. Installation in Cube requires additional hardware
Rating: (5 possible)
"Real World" Tests
The tests below are from our suite of
real world application tests. These tests feature a
diverse selection of applications commonly used by the
Mac community. The test suite was designed to render
an accurate and well rounded picture of the upgrade's
performance. All of the tests below, were timed with
a stopwatch. The times were then converted to percentages,
relative to out test machine, the Power Mac G4/400, which is
set to 100%. For all scores, higher numbers are better.
Also included, for comparison purposes, is a stock Power Mac single processor G4/1 GHz, which is the currently shipping low-end Tower (January, 03).
The cache setup for all the machine and upgrade options below
are as follows:
Power Mac G4/400 : 1MB of L2 backside cache @ 200 MHz
(half processor speed), (used price: $600)
Sonnet Encore/ST G4/1GHz: 256K of on chip L2 cache @ full processor
speed and 2MB L3 cache (price: $500)
GigaDesign G-celerator G4/1GHz:
256K of on chip L2 cache @ full processor
speed and 2MB L3 cache (price: $469)
PowerLogix PowerForce Series 233 G4/1GHz: 256K of on chip L2 cache @ full processor
speed and 2MB L3 cache (price: $449)
Power Mac G4/1.0 GHz: 256K of on chip L2 cache @ full processor
speed and 1MB L3 cache (price: $1,499)
Power Mac G4/933 MHz: 256K of on chip L2 cache @ full processor speed and 2MB L3 cache (used price: $1,400)
Desktop Tests
Mac OS X's new File Search function relies on both processor and drive performance.
Our guess is that the lager L3 cache of the upgrades is causing some fall off in performance ... but we are not sure this is the cause
In the single file test, the the processor & caching capability of the machine is less of a factor.
The test above creates and destroys 1,000 windows. See the Let1kWindowsBloom site for more info.
Processing power and drive performance are factors
The time Photoshop takes to open is gauged
Large Document & Database Type Tests
A Macro (series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Word program. Word is part of Office X.
A Macro (series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program. Excel is part of Office X
This test takes place in a large AppleWorks document. The lack of a L3 cache in the G4/400 Tower, hurts the performance of our test machine, in its stock configuration
Number Crunching & Rendering Tests
The Fractal program has been highly tuned to take advantage of the G4 and is precisely the type of work that the G4 was made for. It will also gobble up whatever processing capability is present. This is a good test for assessing the fundamental processing potential of each machine.
BareFeats Photoshop Test Suite - mimics a production type workflow in Photoshop.
Certain of the functions of Photoshop can take special performance advantage of the G4 processor.
The test above consists of Photoshop functions that do not take any particular advantage of the G4.
Encoding/Decoding Tests
CD-ROM drive speed and CPU processing power are the factors influencing the scores above. Our assumption is that the CD drive speed is the bottleneck in the upgraded machine. We also think, here again, that the large L3 cache on the upgrades, is helping to suppress scores slightly.
This is straight processing work
Multitasking
MP3 Encode, AppleWorks search & replace and folder copy are all carried out at the same time. Scores are flattened out because of the poor MP3 encode performance of upgraded machine
QuickTime Encode and Fractal render are both carried out at the same time. This is heavy-duty processing work
The MP3 Encode, Photoshop Normal and Word Macro tests are all run at the same time
Gaming
Giants is tuned to take advantage of the processor. It also helps to have a better graphics card. The sonnet Encore ST/G4/ 1 GHz upgraded machine turned in 17 frames per second
4x4 EVO2 is a demanding racing game. The sonnet Encore ST/G4/ 1 GHz upgraded machine turned in 10.8 frames per second
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(5 possible) 
