|
PowerMac 8500/180 Facts at a Glance
- Processor: 604e, 180 MHz
- Bus Speed: 45 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: 2GB SCSI
- Internal SCSI: Fast SCSI 10MB per sec
- CD Drive: 8X
- Network: On-board AAUI and 10baseT
- Slots: 3 PCI
- Drive Bays: 2 (5.25")
- Supported MacOS: 7.5.3 - 9.x
- Composite and S-video
- Introduced: 8-5-96
- Discontinued: 2/97
- Initial Retail Price: $3,999
Notes:
- *128MB DIMMs can be used, but have not been tested
- Has composite and S-video ports
|
December 26, 2000
The Power Macintosh 8500/180 represented a speed bump for
an already existing Macintosh model. Part of the second generation
PowerMac family it was released in the summer 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 8500/180 sports a 604e PowerPC processor and along with
the 9500/200 (released at the same time) were the first machines
from Apple based on this faster version of the 604 PowerPC.
In addition the 604e chip had twice the amount of integrated
L1 cache than the 604 - 64K as opposed to 32K.
The 8500/180 was about 30%
faster than the previous 8500/150 which it replaced.
However the overall speed of the 8500/180's processing power
was hobbled somewhat by the small size of its L2 cache which
weighed in at 256K. The L2 cache on the 8500/180 is upgradable
and adding a 1024K chip will increase processor performance
by about 23%.
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 1024 MB of RAM. The 8500
shipped with 2MB of video RAM , the ability to add 2 more,
for more colors at higher resolutions.
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
|
For
Great Prices On Upgrades Check The Quality Vendors Below
