Hands-On Review: Vpower G3 300/512 CPU Card

Vimage Corporation Price: $598 list

December 30, 1998

Pros: True "plug and play" simple, ran perfectly stable, ran on the cool side of G3 card normal temperature range, excellent value for 300 MHz G3 CPU, well-made and well-packaged

Cons: No means to optimize performance, variable MacBench 4.0 processor score, certified compatible with only Apple and UMAX systems

Rating: Excellent, 4 out of 5 Exclamation Points: ! ! ! !

Brought to you by Macs Only! Copyright 1998 by Bill Fox

Vimage burst onto the scene for Mac G3 CPU card upgrades (Vpower PF and PM series) with an innovative G3 processor card for Apple 4400 and 6400 (and now 5500/6500) Performas/PowerMacs and Mac clones built on the Tanzania motherboard like Motorola StarMaxes. Those G3 CPU cards manufactured by the Japanese company Interware fit into the L2 cache slot rather than a CPU daughtercard slot or a processor direct slot (PDS) like other G3 cards.

Vimage also markets conventional G3 CPU upgrade daughter cards, the Vpower G3 Series, that are made by Interware. The newest offering, the Vpower G3 300/512, is a fast economy version that has a 300 MHz G3 CPU with 512 K of backside cache running at 150 MHz (a 2:1 CPU/cache speed) and a bus speed of 46.5 MHz. The conventional shorthand used to designate the characteristics of G3 cards is 300/150/46.5/512 for the Vpower G3 300/512.

Compatibility: As noted in the manual and Vimage's web sites, all PowerMacs from 7300 through 9600, including the Mach 5's. UMAX S900 and S910 series. I suspect that corresponding PowerComputing computers are also compatible but they have not been certified as such by Vimage.

Vimage loaned Macs Only! a Vpower G3 300/512 evaluation unit for this review.

What you get

The Vpower G3 300/512 came held firmly in a rigid clear plastic holder in a plain white box. Also included were a diskette and a manual but no registration card, probably since I received an evaluation unit.

The card itself, shown at right, is neat and well made. One unusual characterisitc is the small cooling fan attached to the CPU instead of a modest finned aluminum heat sink that is used on all other G3 CPU upgrade cards. The internal temperature of the CPU varied from 35 deg C to 47 deg C when I checked over the two weeks that it was used, well within the range of other G3 CPUs that I have observed. The Vpower G3 300/512 is lighter with the fan than other cards with the heat sink.

The CPU in the Vpower G3 300/512 is an IBM 300 MHz model. The card's settings, i.e. bus speed (46.5 MHz) and CPU to bus speed ratio (6.5:1) are fixed as is the CPU to backside cache speed ratio (2:1), are fixed. There are no dip switches or dials or jumpers that can be used to change any of the settings to optimize its performance to a particular computer system.

The diskette has an installer. Double clicking on it places the Vpower G3 EX extension in the system folder and a utility application, VpowerInfo, in a Vpower Folder on the hard drive. The version number of the extension was v1.2 and that of the utility was v1.1. VpowerInfo, shown at left, displays the CPU type and clock speed, the system bus clock speed and the cache size and clock speed. It does not show the CPU internal temperature as PowerLogix's or XLR8's utility does. The utility also does not allow changes to the ratio of the CPU to backside cache speed.

The manual is a 23-page 7" by 9" black and white booklet. It is very complete, including safety and handling tips. The manual covers the simple software installation and the relatively simple card installation, including photographs, for the full range of Apple desktop and tower case designs. Vimage provides a 2-year limited warranty and both telephone and web customer support.

Installation and Use

Installation of the software and the card was a snap. With my existing CPU card still in, I inserted the diskette, double-clicked the installer, disabled the extensions/control panels for my exisitng CPU and shutdown. Then I opened the case of my 9600 and gently but firmly pulled the exisitng CPU out of its slot on the motherboard with little to no rocking motion as rocking can damage the slot. Then I pressed the Vpower 300/512 firmly and straight into the slot using both hands. I made sure that the CPU card was seated all the way down into the slot or the computer will not boot, a common problem, then closed the case and started up. According to VpowerInfo, as can be seen above, the CPU ran slightly faster than 300 MHz.

The test computer was configured the way I normally use it as follows:

- Apple Power Macintosh 9600 (non-Mach 5 version)

• Original CPU: Apple PowerPC 604e/200 MHz with 512k onboard cache
• Other Test CPU: PowerLogix PowerForce G3 250 MHz with 1 MB backside cache tweaked to 300 MHz with the cache at 200 MHz and system bus at 50 MHz
• 128 MB RAM
• Graphics: ATi Xclaim VR Pro (8 MB SGRAM) & MacMagic 3Dfx (8 MB SGRAM & No Tweaker)
• Mac OS 8.5.1, Virtual Memory on at 1 MB, LibMoto extension on

I ran MacBench 4.0 for the speed tests instead of MacBench 5.0 because 5.0 crashes too frequently on several of my computers and won't even boot on my PowerBase 180. I also ran the famous BYTEMark (DR3) speed tests. The game Unreal was used to test the CPU and MacMagic 3Dfx graphics card interaction since Unreal's frame rate is more sensitive to CPU speed than most 3D games. The Walker Atrium spin minimum frames per second tests the handling of QuickTime 3D. Finally, I recorded the time in seconds to launch GoLive's CyberStudio 3.1.1 and parse a 106 MB HTML file (Macs Only!'s CompUSA WATCH). Here are the results:

. . [Macs Only!]