. | Mac Daniel #2Speeding up a Power Mac 7100- 22 October 1998
How can I speed up my 7100/80?SM sent this letter: I have a Power Mac 7100/80,
w/48 MB of RAM and an 800 MB hard drive, which I use for web
surfing and occasional word processing only. The one thing I
could use is some improvement in speed, so I'm tempted to
get a Mac with a faster chip speed, but my temptation is
held in check by the state of my bank account. Any suggestions? Mac Daniel writes: Your 7100
runs a PowerPC 601 at 80 MHz, which was pretty fast back in
1995. If you're happy with everything else, it doesn't make
much sense to switch computers when inexpensive accelerators
are available. There are variable speed accelerators for the 7100 that
let you boost the speed of your current CPU. However,
they'll only add about 10% more speed, so they probably
aren't worth the time or effort. (On a 7100/66, they could
be.) I don't have any hands on experience with 7100 upgrades,
but see that Sonnet
is selling a Crescendo 604e accelerator for $199 these
days.* The 604e is about 50% more powerful than the 601 at
the same clock speed -- but this runs at 200-220 MHz! You
wouldn't be seeing "some" improvement in speed, but a huge
one, probably on the order of 4-5 times what you have
now. For the price, I'd say it's definitely worth looking
into. * I've since learned that although Sonnet is still
advertising the 604e card, supplies seem to have
vanished. Upgrading a 7100 until I go G3EB sent this letter: I wanted to get your feedback
on a Power Mac 7100/66. I know I want to run Mac OS X
Server, so I'll need new hardware soon. But until then what
can I do with my 7100/66 (250 MB HD, 24 MB RAM, CD, Ext.
Jaz)? It certainly does seem that it has been getting slower
but I'm not sure if it is me or the OS upgrades I have been
feeding it. I was wondering if there are any comparisons of
the speed of a 7100 with the various operating systems.
Currently I am running 8.1. I use the computer for e-mail (Eudora), connecting to
Unix machines (Better Telnet), and page layout
(FrameMaker) Thank you for your input. Mac Daniel writes: If performance is an issue, see
my response to SM (above). Dropping a relatively inexpensive
604e card into your 7100 will make a world of
difference. But you haven't really identified a bottleneck. If you've
gone through several system updates, something as easy as
running diagnostics (Norton Utilities, TechTool Pro) and
optimizing the hard drive will improve performance. This is
especially true if your drive is fairly fragmented and
you're using Virtual Memory. Your 250 MB hard drive is getting old and probably nearly
full. Clearing out old files will help a little, but you
should be able to drop a 1GB or larger drive in for under
$125. Not only will this give you more room for your files,
but newer drives are faster than older ones, so you'd see an
improvement there as well. I haven't experimented with this, but I've heard that
setting Virtual Memory to twice physical RAM (in your case,
96 MB) offers the best performance. You probably can't even
try that on a 250 MB drive, but if you do buy a larger
drive, give it a try. Compare this with performance at 1 MB
over physical RAM (virtual set to 49MB) and with virtual
off. Another way to tweak drive performance is by using a
large enough disk cache (2-4 MB works nicely). In addition,
Speed Doubler offers a more intelligent caching scheme than
Apple does, so you can see further improvements in disk
performance with Speed Doubler (about $55). If your CD player is sluggish, look into the CyberDrive
24x and 32x drives, two models I know are bootable with the
Macintosh. Prices start at about $100 for the 24x internal
drive. BTW, I'm a fellow FrameMaker user. I learned it on a
IIci, later used it on a Centris and a Quadra, but couldn't
believe how much faster it became on the Power Mac. It's a
very powerful program which really impresses me. Recent Mac Daniel & Friends columns- Backing up your Mac, Charlie
Ruggiero, 2/4/2000
- Connecting Macs, Chris Lawson,
2/1/2000
- Raising the dead, Manuel Mejia Jr.,
Mac Daniel, 1/18/2000
- Storage Devices for Older Macs,
Manuel Mejia Jr., 12/31/1999
- SCSI or IDE hard drive?, Charlie
Ruggiero, 12/28/1999
- Why System 6 for Mac IIs?, Manuel
Mejia, 12/13/1999
- Should I Wait for OS X?, Dan
Knight, 11/29/1999
- Why System 6 for Compact Macs?,
Manuel Mejia, 11/26/1999
- Should I buy a USB card?, Charlie
Ruggiero, 11/23/1999
- Online with a PowerBook Duo, Julie
Fugett, Mac Daniel, 11/17/1999
- more on the Mac Daniel index
Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check
the index to see if we've already addressed
your problem recently -- and look in the
archive if it's not in the recent columns. If not, visit our
staff page for the names of several people
who may be able to help you. Dan Knight, webmaster, Low
End Mac
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