Time to cold boot into Mac OS X 10.2. Shorter bars are better.

While this is not a true "performance test", it's something that you will experience every day unless you leave your system on 24/7. Time from pressing the power key, till the computer is ready to accept commands.

There are three reason that the PowerLogix PowerForce G3/400-1M is the fastest in the score: it has-

Bus speed hinders the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G3/450-1M, and a 3:1 cache ratio hinders the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G3/500-512. The cheapest card in the bunch wins this race. :>)

Time to rip a 7:27 192kbps MP3 file using iTunes3. Shorter bars are better.

This is definitely more along the lines of performance benefits we were expecting to see. The Sonnet G3/450-1M was 14 seconds faster than the PowerLogix G3/400-1M card, and 7 seconds faster than the "supposedly" faster G3/500-512k Sonnet card. Both backside cache and cache ratio prove to be a severe disadvantage to the SonnetC Crescendo/PCI G3/500 in this test.

Time to manipulate a 100MB test image using Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Shorter bars are better.

Please do note that these scores are only separated by a matter of 7 (SEVEN) seconds. Photoshop does a fine job of working as efficiently as possible and while these tests took approximately 5 minutest to complete, the limiting factor here was the architecture of the machine, not the processor upgrades installed. Bus speed also plays a large factor in this test, which is why the PowerLogix G3/400-1M was able to beat the faster Sonnet G3/450-1M card - a 5MHz difference in bus speed was more than enough for the supposedly "slower" PowerLogix card to close the gap and overtake it's faster rival :>)

Although not reflected in this test, if you were to upgrade to a G4 processor instead of a G3 as shown here, you would definitely see a HUGE gain in performance. For more tests using Mac OS 9 and G3 processors vs. G4 processors, see this test I performed earlier this year.

Test was performed as follows -

• Automatic script set up to open a 1600x1200 72 dpi image and perform the following functions-
• Increase resolution to 600 dpi.
• Convert from RGB to CMYK.
• Rotate canvas 180 Degrees.
• Apply a Gaussian Blur filter at 3.0 pixels.

This yields an approximately 100 MB test file.

In conclusion, we feel that in a bang for the buck shootout the PowerLogix PowerForce G3/400-1M wins hands down. It offers a lot considering the price is 20% lower than either of the Sonnet cards. Coming in 2nd place is the Sonnet Crescendo/PCI G3/450-1M. I'd have to say, 1MB of backside cache and a 2:1 cache ratio beats 50MHz any day. Any way you run the numbers, raw performance cost money and in the case of these three processors, it's not a lot of money to bring your system up to a whole new level of performance!