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The PowerForce G3/300 from PowerLogix: May the Force be with you...

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General Impressions: The PowerLogix was the last in a series of G3 upgrade cards we tested. While the contrast between cards was minimal, the contrast going back to our unaccelerated 9500 was extreme. All of our more demanding applications became unbearably slow and everyday finder functions lost their zip as well. Our 9500 is certainly no slouch with its 604e/200MHz chip. If you are upgrading from a slower machine the improvement should be even more striking than the ones we note below. For the MacBench 5.0 scores higher numbers and longer bars are better. For the "real world" tests shorter bars are better.

Installation: This card comes with two adjustable dials that control the bus speed and ratio. For those of you who like to push the performance/stability envelope, the card's manual comes with a guide for testing different settings. If you are feeling bold, go ahead and try different settings; PowerLogix states on their web site that overclocking will not void your

Supported Models

Apple: 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600
Power Computing: PowerBase, PowerWave, PowerCurve, PowerCenter, PowerCenter Pro, PowerTower, PowerTower Pro
UMAX SuperMac S900 and J700.

warranty. Although the manual estimates you can gain an additional 30% performance by tweaking the settings, we opted to stick with the default settings for our tests. The software installer places a control panel for adjusting and activating the backside cache as well as software for verifying your new settings.

Stability: We had the card in our 9500 for roughly one week and used a wide variety of games and applications during that time. We experienced only one minor glitch. After installing the card we got a flashing question mark on restart. We zapped our PRAM and didn't experience any further problems. To be fair, we did skip pushing the reset button on our logic board as recommended in the installation instructions. If we had followed the directions we probably wouldn't have had any problems at all.


MacBench 5.0 Results

Processor

 

FPU

 

Disk

 

Graphics
(Scaled to fit)




"Real World" Tests
(Shorter bars are better)

 

 

Photoshop 4.01 Test Results
(Shorter bars are better)

 

 

 

 


PowerForce G3/300 Card Stats

- Type Cooling System Variable/Fixed Clock Rate Tech Support Warranty
PowerLogix
PowerForce G3/300/1MB/150
PCI Heat Sink Variable Toll Free Phone
(888) 769-9020
E-mail
3 Years


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