General Impressions: The First thing that struck us when
we unpacked this card was how small it was. We have tested
several PCI upgrade
cards in the past and compared to these the ZIF (Zero
Insertion Force) card looks pretty insignificant. Don't let
looks fool you though, this card packs a punch! It is unfortunate
that the only machine we had available to test the ZIF card
on was a G3/300. The results below are less striking than
they would be on the slower G3 machines I suspect that this
card is intended for. To give you an idea of the improvement
you might expect on an older G3 we have included MacBench
scores for the G3/233.
Installation: The ZIF card comes with an excellent manual
that walks you through installation and fine tuning the performance
of the card. Also included: a reusable grounding strap and
"heat sink removal tool" a.k.a. screwdriver. Hang
on to the grounding strap for RAM installations, PCI card
installations etc. At first I thought it was a little
Supported Models
Apple: All G3 Desktop, Minitower and All-in-One systems
strange including a screwdriver but I could see somebody
(myself included) using one that had a slight magnetic charge
and wrecking the card. Removing the heat sink was the only
part of the installation that made me slightly nervous but
the manual had this step clearly explained and well illustrated.
Replacing the old card with the XLR8 one was a snap after
this, Zero Insertion is an apt name for these cards as they
just drop into place. There are 4 jumper switches on the card
that control the bus speed and ratio. A chapter of the manual
explains the possible settings (up to 533MHz, at least in
theory) and how to find a good speed/stability compromise.
The backside cache is activated by a control panel instead
of an extension. XLR8 also includes software for verifying
your CPU and cache settings.
One last note: The G3/300 machine we used is supposedly the
MacBench base machine and, as such, should have had scores
around 1,000 for all the tests. The "Disk" and "Graphics"
are far off this mark. The hard drive in our G3/300 was different
than the base machine's but I am still puzzled by the graphics
score. If you can explain the difference in the graphics scores
swing by our Discussion
Forum and let us know.
Copyright 1996-2007 by Cider Press Publishing LLC all rights reserved.
MacSpeedZone is not authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple
Computer. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPod, iBook, iMac, eMac, and
PowerBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Additional
company
and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby
acknowledged.
For Great Prices On Upgrades 
