Power Macintosh 9600/200 Processor Upgrade Page

The Power Macintosh 9600/200 came out when Apple was facing some stiff competition from clone manufacturers. Comparable systems like the SuperMac S900/200 and PowerTower Pro 200 ran $400 to $1,000 less than

the 9600. The clones' uncertain future prompted many to fork out the extra bucks and invest in this workhorse. With the 9600's flip down side, Apple finally showed that they could make a machine that was easy to access. While more expandable than past offerings, Apple fell short of the advances made by others. The Umax S900 offered 4 free drive bays and Power Computing's Power Tower Pro a whopping 7. Compare this to 2 in the more expensive 9600 and you can see why Apple decided to give the clones the axe! On the plus side, when it was released the 9600 was the fastest shipping 604e/200MHz machine available. It edged out its competitors by 5-13% The processor resides on a daughter card for easy replacement. Unfortunately Apple chose to solder the 512K level 2 cache to the motherboard, eliminating this as a potential upgrade. The good news of course is that there are plenty of G3 upgrade options for this machine....

Below you will find the MacBench 4.0 results for most of the processor upgrades available for this machine. These results are what the individual manufactures publish for their cards. In other words the speed trials were run by the manufacturer. For an independent evaluation of these cards check the Processor Upgrade Page to see if we have results available. 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 scores.

MacBench Absolute Scores

Processor Upgrade Card	MacBench 4.0 Processor Score
Power Macintosh 9600/200	409
Sonnet Crescendo G3/233/177/512K	720
PowerLogix PowerForce G3/220/110/512K	742
Vimage Vpower G3/233/117/512K	757
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/233/117/512K	777
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/250/125/512K	800
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/266/133/512K	875
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/266/133/512K	881
Sonnet Crescendo G3/266/133/1MB	920
Vimage Vpower G3/266/133	939
Mactell PowerJolt G3/250/250/1MB	973
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/300/150/512K	975
Mactell PowerJolt G3/266/266/1MB	1018
Vimage Vpower G3/300/150/1MB	1045
Sonnet Crescendo G3/300/150/1MB	1045
PowerLogix PowerForce G3/300/150/1MB	1047
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/300/150/1MB	1060
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/300/200/1MB	1091
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/333/167/1MB	1154
Sonnet Crescendo G3/333/167/1MB	1155
Mactell PowerJolt G3/300/300/1MB	1161
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/333/166/1MB	1179
Sonnet Crescendo G3/366183/1MB	1252
PowerLogix PowerForce G3/300/300/1MB	1276
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/366/183/1MB	1286
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/366/183/1MB	1286
XLR8 MACh Speed G3/400/200/1MB	1399
Sonnet Crescendo G3/400/200/1MB	1400
NewerTechnology MAXpower G3/400/200/1MB	1417

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