Review: MAXpowr G3 PDS

Model 210 for the 7100/8100 Series

Company: Newer Technology

Price: $625

Pros: Excellent speed and rock solid stability, runs with the big dogs! Ingenious configuration for saving the stock video card. Excellent documentation.

Cons: Assembly and installation a bit more complicated. CPU and cache not adjustable.

Rating: Excellent, 4+ out of 5

On Friday, April 10th, I installed a NewerTECH MAXpowr G3 PDS 512K CPU upgrade card in my Apple Power Macintosh 7100/80. NewerTECH loaned me the card for this review and plans to ship this card for the 7100 and 8100 series NuBus Power Macintoshes in the first week in May. The MAXpowr G3 PDS for the 6100 series will ship in mid-May according to NewerTECH. I have been waiting for this day ever since I first got my hands on a G3 card, saw how incredibly fast they are and read that NewerTECH was working on one for my "old" and by then relatively slow PowerMac 7100/80. The 7100 and the 6100 and 8100 were the first generation PowerMacs. They have NuBus slots on the motherboard instead of PCI slots like their decendants, soldered down PowerPC 601 CPU's instead of CPU daughtercards that fit into slots for easy upgrading and a Processor Direct Slot (PDS) which was usually filled with a video card. My 7100/80 has an 80 MHz PowerPC 601 CPU and Apple's High Performance Video Card with 2 MB VRAM stuck into the PDS. The MAXpowr G3 PDS derives its name from its use of the PDS slot.

[4/11/98 -- I added some additional application bechmarks, including the launch and use of Virtual PC]

Specifications and Documentation

The MAXpowr G3 PDS CPU upgrade card (MP) contains a PowerPC 750 (or G3 or Arthur) central processor and so-called backside L2 cache on the card rather than on the motherboard. It comes in two versions, one for the 6100 series PowerMacs and the other for the 7100 and 8100 series. It also comes in two models, a 210 and a 240. The 210 comes with 512K backside L2 cache running at a 2:1 ratio of CPU speed to cache speed and the 240 comes with 1 MB of backside L2 cache running at a 3:2 ratio. The actual CPU and cache speed of the MP depend upon the existing CPU speed and system bus speed of the NuBus PowerMacs as shown in the following table from NewerTECH's documentation:

Table 1 -- MAXpowr G3 PDS CPU and System Bus Speeds

Existing PowerMacs CPU/Bus Speeds (MHz)	G3 PDS 512K CPU/Bus Speeds (MHz)	G3 PDS 1 MB CPU/Bus Speeds (MHz)
60/30	210.0/105	240/160
66/33	214.5/107	247/165
80/40	220.0/110	240/160
100/33.3	214.5/107	250/166
110/36.6	220.0/110	238/158

NewerTECH sent me the MAXpowr G3 PDS 512K model. Since my 7100 has an 80 MHz PowerPC 601 CPU and a system bus speed of 40 MHz, the MP runs at 220 MHz for the CPU, 110 MHz for the cache and 40 MHz for the system bus that is conventionally abbreviated as 220/110/40. NewerTECH sent me a pre-production card but it is well laid out and constructed so it probably does not differ from the production cards available in a couple of weeks.

The documentation was not final. It consisted of a 23-page photocopy of a manual and a two-sided, one-page instruction sheet on the Video card caddy assembly. While an obvious preprint, the manual and instruction sheet are complete with illustrative photos and detailed, understandable instructions that are easy to follow.

The test platform is as follows:

• Power Macintosh 7100/80 circa January 1996
• 80 MHz 601 PowerPC
• 256K L2 motherboard cache
• 56 MB RAM
• 2 MB VRAM
• 700 MB Quantum Hard Drive
• Mac OS 8.1
• LibMotoSH math library extension enabled
• 1 MB Virtual Memory on
• 1024K Disk Cache enabled
• 15" Panasonic PanaSynch multiscan monitor

Installation and Set Up -- Here is an 85K Photo

Installation is not difficult but it is more than just pressing a card into the PDS slot.

The first thing is to read the instructions carefully.

The second thing is to take off the cover of the 7100. It has one large screw in the back to unscrew then the cover is slid forward an inch or so, lifted from the back and removed. I left the stock 256K L2 cache in the slot on the motherboard. The stock CPU is not removed as it is soldered to the motherboard.

The third thing is to remove the video card from the PDS slot. It is removed by disconnecting the monitor cable and pulling the card up with a VERY slight rocking motion if necessary.

From here the instructions depend on which video card one has, Apple's High Performance video card with four VRAM slots or Apple's AV card. I have the High Performance (HP) card which I will describe.

Next one needs to remove the two stand-off screws by the video port on the HP card with a flat-bladed screw driver. Then one has to remove two phillips-head screws holding the rear mounting bracket to the HP card and remove the bracket.

Three stand-off bolts are attached to the video card caddy that comes with the MAXpowr G3 PDS. Then one screws the video card upside down to the card caddy (with NuBus connector) using three screws into three stand-off bolts that were attached to the caddy. The video cable on the caddy is plugged into the video port on the card.

The assembled caddy with video card is plugged into the middle of three NuBus slots on the 7100's motherboard.

The MP is pushed firmly into the PDS slot where the video card was originally. A PDS slot attached to the top of the MP by a large copper large sheet is then plugged onto the the PDS connector of the upside down video card by pressing it down firmly.

While this may sound complicated its really not. It took me 18 minutes including reading the instructions to get to this point but I am fairly experienced in doing these kind of things.

The installation fills one of three NuBus slots but it appears to block the first NuBus slot and possibly even the third because of the VRAM cards on the HP card. I didn't have another NuBus card to be certain. If one needs one or two NuBus slots for other cards, one might think about getting a NuBus Video card like the MacPicasso 340 that was previously reviewed on Macs Only! instead of using the caddy and the original video card. A lot of innovation has occurred in graphics accelerators since the NuBus PowerMacs came out.

The software was a snap. Just copy the MAXpowr x100 extension to the extensions folder in the system folder and reboot. If everything is installed correctly, the MAXpowr x100 extension should show the CPU speed, cache speed and ratio on the extension icon during startup. If there is a red "X" over the extension, then something is not installed properly. Shut down and make sure all of the hardware and connectors are fully seated. If one disables the MAXpowr x100 extension and boots then the original CPU and L2 cache are used. One can switch back and forth between the MAXpowr CPU and the stock CPU just by enabling or disabling the extension.

Performance

I knew I had a G3 under the hood when the startup took took significantly less time, about 20 seconds or so less from splash screen to the complete desktop. I ran MacBench 4.0 and ByteMark(Motorola) and launched and ran several applications and a game to illustrate the speed difference.

MacBench 4.0: This is the usual Mac standard for testing the speed of a CPU or disk drive or graphics card. I ran the CPU tests, integer and floating point. Here are the results:

Table 2 -- MacBench 4.0 Scores*

CPU/Cache/Bus Speeds (MHz)	Integer Score	Floating Point Score
MAXpowr 210/110/40	707	708
Stock 7100 80/40/40	159	253
PowerForce 250 289/289/52.5	1122	937

*Mac OS 8.1, LibmotoSh on, Virtual Memory 1 MB on. The PowerForce G3 is in a 9600 PCI PowerMacs.

In CPU power, the 7100 is over four times faster in normal (integer) operations and nearly three times faster in numerical calculations (floating point) than the stock 7100 with an 80 MHz 601 CPU and 256K of L2 cache. The MAXpowr G3 PDS in a 7100 achieves about two-thirds of the CPU speed of a 9600 PowerMac with a PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250 running at 289 MHz with 1 MB of backside cache and nearly 80 percent of the FPU performance--this is quite a feat for the 7100 and nearly as good as a new Apple PowerMacs G3 233.

ByteMark (Motorola): Using the Motorola version of ByteMark, the test that showed the PowerMacs G3 to be up to twice as fast as the Pentium II, the following results were obtained:

Table 3 -- ByteMark Scores

CPU/Cache/Bus Speeds (MHz)	Integer Score	Floating Point Score
MAXpowr 210/110/40	6.216	4.719
Stock 7100 80/40/40	1.499	1.489

The ByteMark tests rate the MAXpowr G3 PDS in a 7100 at roughly four times the speed of the stock 7100/80.

Applications: This is always hard to convey. Launching and using applications are clearly much faster with the MAXpowr G3 PDS card. I am sure people are especially interested in if Virtual PC and current games work. Here are a few telling benchmarks:

Test	7100/80	7100/MP G3 PDS
Launch Virtual PC 1.0	154 seconds	58 seconds
Launch Word 6.01	29 seconds	18 seconds
Launch PowerPoint 4.0	6 seconds	3 seconds
Launch Acrobat.pdf	19 seconds	12 seconds
Quake 1.0.8.3 Demo2	10.7 fps	27.9 fps
Quake 1.0.9 Demo2	10.5 fps	28.2 fps

The tests for Virtual PC, Word and PowerPoint launches were the first launch after startup (subsequent launches are much faster) from the launch click to the tip window appearance. The Acrobat.pdf is the manual that comes with Adobe Acrobat 3.0 and the launch time which includes launching Adobe Acrobat and opening the file is from clicking on the file until the words "Next Page" are resolved on the cover page.

Virtual PC (Windows 95 version) launches as quickly on the 7100 with the MAXpowr G3 PDS as on my 9600/G3 (PowerForce 250) and my 8500/225 (PowerBoost Pro 225), actually it launches a few seconds faster than on the 8500. I noted in my review of Virtual PC DOS that it is barely usable on the 7100/80, being below minimum spec, and no game or application with any action or calculation requirement worked. Well, the MAXpowr G3 PDS changes that. The DOS version of Madden Football, that didn't run at all on the stock 7100/80 under Virtual PC, runs as well as on any Mac computer that I've tried.

Quake was the regular version with QuickDraw 3D software acceleration running full screen on a 15" monitor at 320x240 with doubled pixels. Quake is virtually unplayable on the stock 7100/80 but is excellent using the MAXpowr G3 PDS card.

Today's applications requiring a speedy CPU are well-handled by the MAXpowr G3 PDS.

Conclusions

The MAXpowr G3 PDS is a godsend to those of us hanging onto early NuBus PowerMacs. For $625 one can have the near equivalent of a new Apple PowerMacs G3. The installation with its ingenious video card caddy assembly and use of a NuBus slot as well as the PDS slot is a bit more complicated than just inserting a card into a motherboard slot but not much more. The MAXpowr G3 PDS CPU runs at 220 MHz and the 512K of backside cache at 110 MHz. This speed is fixed with no means that I could readily discern for further tweaking, a disadvantage. However, I've used it all day and much of the night for applications, web surfing and games--it is rock solid. Not one crash or other hiccup has occurred. If you want to work at current normal speeds or play the current games at reasonable speeds, then this card is for you. Have you been envying the PCI PowerMac folks with their replaceable and faster and faster PowerPC 604 and 604e cards? Well, get one of these MAXpowr G3 PDS cards and blow by the 604/604e crowd with your vintage PowerMac! Time changes things. Who was smarter now?

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Copyright © 1998 by Bill Fox.
All rights reserved--no commercial use permitted without attribution.

Of course . . . . . . and I am proud to be an Evangelista! . . .