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Power Macintosh 8500/150 Processor Upgrade And Discussion Page - Performance Of Latest G3 & G4 Processor Upgrades

PowerMac 8500/150 Facts at a Glance

  • Processor: 604, 150 MHz
  • Bus Speed: 50 MHz
  • L2 Cache: 256K (Max 1 MB)
  • Installed RAM: 16MB or 32MB (Max 1 GB*)
  • RAM Slots: 8, 168-pin DIMM
  • Min RAM Speed: 70 ns
  • Installed VRAM: 2MB (Max 4 MB)
  • Drive: 1.2 or 2.0 GB SCSI
  • Internal SCSI: Fast SCSI 10MB per sec
  • CD Drive:4X or 8X
  • On-board AAUI and 10baseT
  • Slots: 3 PCI
  • Drive Bays: 2 (5.25")
  • Supported MacOS: 7.5.3 - 9.x
  • Introduced: 4-22-96
  • Discontinued: 9/96
  • Initial Retail Price: $4,700

    Notes:

  • *128MB DIMMs can be used, but have not been tested
  • Has composite and S-video ports

12/5/2000 - Current page for this machine

The Power Macintosh 8500/150 represented a speed bump for an already existing Macintosh model. Part of the second generation PowerMac family it was released in the spring of 96 when there was a great deal of competition from the then existing Macintosh clone makers, such as Power Computing.

The 8500 was considered a good, if expensive, performer and was a mid-level machine aimed at in-house publishing, media authoring and technical market segments. It distinguished itself from other machines in its class by having near broadcast quality video circuitry built-in. The machine is capable of 24-bit video input/output and has both composite and s-video connectors.

The 8500/150 sports a 604 PowerPC processor which was the fastest PowerPC processor at that time. The 604 processor would last only a relatively short time, to become replaced in successor machines by the 604e. The 8500's processor resides on a separate daughter card making it easily upgradable to a faster processor.

The machine has 3 PCI slots, an extra drive bay (internal Fast SCSI - 10MBps) and 8 memory slots for a total possible capacity of 512MB of RAM.

The 8500 shipped with 2MB of video RAM , the ability to add 2. It also had a 256K L2 cache.

For Great Prices On Upgrades Check The Quality Vendors Below
Processor Upgrades
Small Dog MacConnection

Graphics Cards
Small Dog MacConnection

Hard Drives & Optical Drives
Small Dog

RAM & Other Memory
Crucial.com MacConnection

SCSI, Firewire USB Cards
Small Dog

MacConnection


Used Macs, Service, Parts
ebay  

 

 

Below you will find the MacBench 4.0 results for the current processor upgrades available for this machine. Results marked in blue indicate that benchmark results were done by us. All other processor card results were provided by the upgrade manufacturer. The bar graphs below express results as a percentage of improvement over the base machine, which receives a score of 100%. Further down the page you will find a table with the actual MacBench score.

** Note that MacBench does not take advantage of the Velocity Engine (AltiVec instructions) of the G4. For AltiVec accelerated applications you can see a 1.5 to 4 times performance improvement over the G3, depending on the application and the functions you are trying to perform.

For G4 Application specific scores - Click Here

 

 



"But I thought that the G4 was so much faster than the G3?" In some cases it is! For G4 Application specific scores - Click Here

MacBench Absolute Scores

Processor Upgrade Card

MacBench 4.0 Processor Score

Power Macintosh 8500/150 247
Sonnet Crescendo G3/375/187/512K 1100
PowerLogix G3/350/175/1MB 1107
NewerTechnology MAXpower G4/350/175/1MB 1118
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/333/222/1MB 1150
Sonnet Crescendo G3/400/200/512K 1173
PowerLogix G4/400/200/1MB 1239
XLR8 MACh Speed G4/400/200/1MB 1259
PowerLogix G3/400/200/1MB 1265
NewerTechnology MAXpower G4/400/200/1MB 1278
Sonnet Crescendo G4/400/200/1MB 1290
Sonnet Crescendo G3/400/200/1MB 1294
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/400/200/1MB 1294
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/400/200/1MB 1327
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/450/225/1MB 1370
PowerLogix G4/450/225/1MB 1394
XLR8 MACh Speed G4/450/225/1MB 1417
NewerTechnology MAXpower G4/450/225/1MB 1436
Sonnet Crescendo G4/450/200/1MB 1451
PowerLogix G3/500/200/1MB 1462
PowerLogix G4/500/250/1MB 1549
XLR8 MACh Speed G4/500/250/1MB 1574
Sonnet Crescendo G3/500/250/1MB 1617
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/500/250/1MB 1618
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/500/250/1MB 1642

 



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