In Wednesday's (11/5) edition, I made a couple of editorial comments to the effect that PowerLogix's new PowerForce G3 C

In Wednesday's (11/5) edition, I made a couple of editorial comments to the effect that PowerLogix's new PowerForce G3 CPU cards, while terrific, at ~$2,000-2,500 they are overpriced relative to the new Apple PowerMac G3's (Gossamers). Robert Jagitsch, President of PowerLogix, responded:

"It is clear that you don't know how much faster the PowerForce G3 processor cards are than the new Macs.

Let's compare apples to Apples:

1. The PowerForce has twice as much backside cache than the Apple G3 machines.

2. The PowerForce has cache speed that is twice as fast as the Apple G3 machines.

3. The PowerForce has adjustable bus speed; we have tested it to over 70 MHz in previous generation motherboards, so users can get accelerated bus with their existing machine; many machines come close to, or beat, the 66 MHz bus of the Gossamer.

4. The PowerForce is the only product on the market with backside cache running at the same speed as the processor; there is only one maker of such SRAM (IBM), and the price is relatively high. (It wasn't too high for Power Computing...these are the same exact chips that they were going to use in their PowerTower Pro G3....we bought the chips from them.)

5. PowerForce G3 cards have acceleration built-in for additional speed. The fastest clock speed on the market from anyone, not including backside cache speed, is 266 MHz; we have end users running 50 MHz faster right now (yes, over 315 MHz.....yes, the cache runs that fast too.)

6. Benchmarks show the PowerForce G3 to be over 35% faster than the fastest Apple G3 machine.

7. We will have cards in the $900 range very soon; they will offer 512K of cache and the same clock speeds as the Apple G3s, and of course will offer acceleration, too, so buyers will STILL be able to get more performance from our products than from Apple's, and spend less than half what they would on a new machine.

Do your readers a service; they want accurate information. Power users want the fastest system they can get; these are not the cards for everyone, but they ARE the cards for the upper echelon of Mac users that depend on their Macs to make a living."

[Ed. Note: Fair enough. Mr. Jagitsch is, of course, generally correct--the PowerForce G3 cards are the ultimate speed demons available. Their MacBench scores are truely awesome. Those needing this speed are well-advised to consider them. Furthermore, PowerLogix makes great stuff--I have a PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro 225 in my 8500 and it is outstanding. My comment was meant to be confined to the choice of buying a ~$2,000 PowerForce card for a PowerBase versus a brand new state-of-the-art ~$2,000 Gossamer G3 PowerMac from Apple. In my opinion, it is unlikely that most PowerBase owners need the speed of PowerLogix's PowerForce G3 card or they wouldn't be PowerBase owners. However, Mr. Jagitsch is also correct in that I do not know how fast the PowerForce cards really are in PowerBases. Therefore, I have offered to test either PowerForce card in my personal PowerBase 180 and to report the results on Macs Only! I sure hope he takes me up on the offer.]