Initial Review: Sonnet Crescendo 120/132 MHz 604 Card

Initial Review: Sonnet Crescendo 120/132 MHz 604 Card by Dana Baggett

Sonnet Technologies, Inc. just began shipping its new 120 or 132 MHz 604 accelerator card for the Performa 611x (60 MHz 601 CPU) and Power Mac 6100 (60 or 66 MHz 601 CPU) called the Crescendo. The 120/604 goes in the 60/601 computers and the 132/604 goes in the 66/601 computers. Several weeks ago I ordered the 120 MHz version to go in my Performa 6115 along with a 1 MB L2 cache card. They were shipped to me overnight via Federal Express on December 23rd.

Sonnet's new CPU card comes with a cooling fan and a diskette containing a Metronome utility to confirm that one is running at 60 MHz (30 MHz bus), not 66/33 which is the Power Mac 6100/66 and takes a different version of the same card. The diskette also contains a Crescendo extension (22 K) dated December 22nd so this equipment is as new as possible.

I installed the card December 27th along with the 1 MB Sonnet L2 cache card. The Crescendo ships with a well-illustrated two-page set of Installation Instructions. The physical installation was no problem (after I managed to uninstall the 256K L2 cache card I only put in place a couple of months ago without damaging it - no easy task). The cooling fan plugs into the power supply for the CD-ROM drive and drops on top of the black heatsink on the motherboard. The Crescendo plugs into the PDS slot on the motherboard. It has a silver heatsink mounted at right angles to the card which, when installed, is parallel to the mother board. It is supported by the card and a nylon post.

The installation of the Crescendo extension proved to be a bit more problematic. The Read Me says there are no known conflicts. But when I installed it, it repeated crashed the machine during loading. I put a space before the title Crescendo and, voila, it loads with no problem right after Disinfectant and before any other extension. I did not explore the cause of the conflict any further for the time being. After testing (read "playing") with it for awhile, everything seems to be working fine.

MacBench 4.0 reports a processor speed score of 235 with the Crescendo 604 card and the 1MB Sonnet L2 cache card installed. The original 601 chip with a 256K L2 cache card scored 124. (The MacBench 4.0 reference point is a Power Mac 6100/60 with no L2 cache card = 100.) My Performa 6115 does seem faster although not incredibly so. For example, I went to a news page that has many links and used to take about two minutes (!) to load with my old setup of a 601 chip and the L2 256 cache card. (It was like watching paint dry and one wondered if Communicator had crashed in the meantime - and indeed, sometimes it had, especially prior version of Communicator.) This page now loads in about half the time, which seems logical given the MacBench 4.0 test results.

The only other problem that I've experienced so far is a freeze that occurs at shutdown. I believe it is caused by the finder rather than some other extension conflict. However, if before shutting down I use the Crescendo extension to switch from the 604 card in the PDS slot back to the original 601 CPU, then shutdown proceeds normally. I've notified Sonnet of this glitch.

The Crescendo accelerator card cost $399. The 1 MB L2 cache card cost $149. FedEx shipping for both was $6. Sonnet provides a "One year limited warranty on all products." Overall, for now I'd say it looks like a keeper. I'll provide an update after using the card for a week or so and when I hear from Sonnet about the shutdown problem.