I recently acquired a copy of Norton SystemWorks v1.0. This provided
the opportunity to test the household's Macs for speed, and very
interesting it was!
SystemWorks provides a "Systems Ratings" utility to test the host
Mac, together with reference system results from a number of standard
configurations by way of comparison. This utility provides test figures
for five parameters:
- Overall system speed
- CPU
- Video
- Disk
- FPU
Norton's standard testing environment is as follows: Disk Cache at
128K, AppleTalk off, File Sharing off, Virtual Memory off, and Video
output at 256 levels.
Rather than set each of the household's Macs to Norton's "standard"
configurations, I tested them in the configuration in which they are
normally run and compared the results to one sample Norton
configuration for a "sanity check."
The household Macs are as follows:
|
9500
|
7500
|
7200
|
| Processor |
PowerLogix G3, 350 MHz |
132 MHz 604 |
75 MHz 601 |
| Level 2 cache |
Disabled |
512K |
none |
| Internal VRAM |
None |
4 MB |
1 MB |
| Hard drive |
9.1 GB Seagate Barracuda 19171W |
2.1 Seagate Barracuda ST2550W |
1 GB Quantum Fireball 1080S |
| RAM |
80 MB |
88 MB |
80 MB |
| Virtual memory |
Enabled (81 MB) |
Enabled (89 MB) |
Enabled (81 MB) |
| File sharing |
Enabled |
Off |
Off |
| AppleTalk |
Enabled |
Off |
Off |
| Display colours |
16 million |
16 million |
16 million |
| Video card(s) |
ATI 2 MB
ixMicro 8 MB UltimateRez |
ixMicro 8 MB UltimateRez |
ixMicro 8 MB UltimateRez |
The 9500 had just been
upgraded from its original 120 MHz configuration to the shattering
power of the G3/350 - well, it's all relative! The original hard drive
was upgraded some time ago, and a second video card had been installed.
It powers one Sony 15-inch monitor which is attached to the original
ATI card and a 22-inch Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 200 monitor is driven by
the ixMicro board. Printing is via a LaserWriter 16/600, and it thus
requires a network connection, which is currently made by PhoneNet
cabling.
The 7500 is running in
a 132 MHz configuration with upgraded processor, a new hard drive, and
an ixMicro video board. It has a 17-inch Sony monitor connected to the
ixMicro board, but the existing 4 MB of VRAM was left in place. As
it prints to a Personal LaserWriter LS, file sharing and AppleTalk are
both off.
Currently these machines are not networked together, but an ethernet
switch has just arrived, so that's the next project!
The 7200 was acquired
as a non-working 7500 and retains the original hard drive. Given that
the problem was a failed motherboard and I wanted a cheap unit for
Internet browsing only, it seemed reasonable to assume that as a 7200
could be upgraded to a 7500, the reverse process could also work. It
has. The 7200 mother board came from Shreve Systems for $29 new.
Unfortunately, installing Level 2 cache in this unit makes it wildly
unstable for reasons which I have never been able to determine, so it
runs without one. And, yes, I've tried the CUDA switch and all other
known remedies. It supports an old Apple 14-inch Colour Display from
the ixMicro board. There's no printing for this one.
Apart from the 7200 motherboard, all the other upgrades have been
sourced from Other World
Computing, which I find to be a very satisfactory supplier. (I have
no connection with this company except as a customer.)
On to the results. I tested each machine as shown above, but with
two tests for each (with and without the additional video card) so as
to establish the real value of the ixMicro cards. The values are all
compared to a Power Mac
6100/60, which scores 100 in every test under Norton's standard
configuration.
|
System |
CPU |
Video |
Disk |
FPU |
| 9500, G3/350
|
| ixMicro 8 MB |
579 |
825 |
237 |
358 |
819 |
| ATI 2 MB |
366 |
825 |
89.5 |
364 |
818 |
| 7500, 604/132 |
| ixMicro 8 MB |
249 |
280 |
150 |
282 |
320 |
| 4 MB internal VRAM |
191 |
280 |
65.8 |
287 |
320 |
| 7600/120 |
| Reference System |
202 |
214 |
169 |
154 |
286 |
| 7200/75 |
| ixMicro 8 MB |
110 |
117 |
78.6 |
129 |
129 |
| 1 MB internal VRAM |
97.9 |
117 |
48.8 |
132 |
130 |
Compared to Norton's reference scores for the 7600, the 7500 runs a little
faster - as would be expected. The 9500 really flies, and the 7200
crawls appropriately, so we seem to have valid testing results. The
display scores will obviously be lower than expected compared to
Norton's scores because of the larger number of colours being
displayed. Also, the 9500 will be hampered by having AppleTalk and File
Sharing enabled, compared to the 7500 and 7200, but that's how they are
used in my "Real World."
Let's take the 9500 first. The CPU runs nearly three times faster
than the 7500/132 - look at the difference in CPU and FPU scores - and
it feels like it. The hard drive is around 25% faster, too. But the
real interest is the difference in video card performance. The ixMicro
card runs at 265% the speed of the original ATI card, and this results
in an overall system speed increase of over 50%! Not a bad performance
boost for less than $40.
The 7500 shows an improvement of around 225% when comparing the
ixMicro card to the internal video, translating to a gain of 30% in
overall system performance. What this machine needs now is a processor
upgrade.
And the 7200? Well, it just crawls. The stock hard drive is glacial,
the built-in video worse at 1 MB (although it would be faster with
2 MB installed). Interestingly, the video speed boost from the
ixMicro card is only about 60% in this case, translating to a mere 12%
improvement in overall system performance. Shame that it won't support
Level 2 cache, as that would certainly speed up matters, but it's
running much faster than it did with a dead motherboard.
Compared to my expectations before testing, the differences in CPU
are not surprising, while the differences in hard disk performance are
greater than I had expected. Of course, your mileage may vary.
I had installed the ixMicro cards in the belief that they would
provide an overall speed increase at low cost, but the performance
increase in the 9500 and 7500 is way beyond my expectations! On a "bang
for the buck" basis, the video card upgrade is clearly a more
cost-effective way to improve performance than a CPU upgrade.
Now that was a surprise.
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