This page exists to provide a larger results base of results with Newer Technologies, PowerLogix and XLR8 Processor cards and aftermarket cache . We feel this allows you to see how other systems and configurations have faired with these products. The responses are not edited for content, therefore some are longer than others - we thought you'd appreciate the complete story.

The most recent entries for each card type are listed at the top of each section.

Update: For a searchable database of thousands of owner reports on G3 and G4 CPU upgrades (searchable by Mac model and/or CPU upgrade brand, check out the Rate Your CPU Upgrade Database.

Jim Minnihan reports:

Mike,
I have some good news! Friday August 22nd I received a Powerlogix Powerboost Pro 233 upgrade. After installing it into my PowerMac 9500/120 and setting it to the recommended starting Bus Ratio of 5:1, Bus Speed of 46.67 mhz which nets a CPU Speed of 233 mhz, I went through your published routine (thank you very much!) of changing the Bus Speed then testing the configuration with RAMometer and MacBench. Doing this, I was able to reliably get up to a Bus Speed of 50.67 mhz and CPU Speed of 253.33 mhz for a 5:1 Bus Ratio. Unfortunately, at the 5:1 Bus Ratio, I could not get any faster Bus Speed than this without either a crash or loss of video (black screen). Then I thought "What the hey!" and changed the Bus Ratio to 4:1. After further testing, I am now running at a very stable 60 mhz Bus Speed and 240 mhz CPU speed. Although the 240 mhz CPU speed is less than the 253.33 mhz speed of the 5:1 ratio, the performance is better due to the smaller Bus Ratio and the faster Bus Speed (as expected). I did not test any further since I am very happy with this speed and stability and did not want to force the issue. I still find it interesting that I could only get to 50.67 mhz Bus Speed at the 5:1 Bus Ratio but achieve 60 mhz at the 4:1 Bus Ratio! (The CPU mhz limit was reached at the 5:1 ratio - Mike)

Anyway thanks for your site and your help. Feel free to add my success story to your site.

Base system: Apple 9500/120. Looks like the stock 9500 cache can do 60mhz bus with the right card! (Note that this is the same system that had problems running the Newer MaxPowr 200 upgrade at any speed, as told in the Newer 200mhz card section below)

P. Pedersen reports:

Here are a few brief notes and a data point for interested parties.

I have a stock 8500/120. Added a PowerLogix PowerBoost Pro and PowerLogix 1MB cache, running at an apparently safe 250/50. Seems very fast now. I could get spoiled!

It's now well over twice as fast as it was before. Main tests with MacBench report increases of 120% in processor speed, 133% in floating point, 99% in graphics, 25% in disk.

Base system: Apple 8500/120.

Gerry reports:

Mike,
I am up and running with the PowerBoost Pro 233 and RC1MB02. I am running at 260mhz with 52 mhz Bus speed. I still have a couple of 8mb 70ns DIMMs in the system that may be hindering faster speeds. All in all I am very pleased.

Gerry

Base system: 8500/120 48mb ram (6 8mb DIMMs, 2 are 70ns DIMMS preinstalled by Apple)

Josh reports:

Mike:
Another one for your user notes page:
After just installing it this morning, I've been running the Powerlogix 200 Pro card in my 8500/120 (with 512k cache purchased from Techworks) for about 5 hours now with no crashes at all.
After installing the card in about 15 minutes it took another 20 minutes to configure. My system is now blazing fast at 236 Mhz and a 59 Mhz bus speed. All this without even using the Powerlogix 1 Mb cache!

Base system: 8500/120 w/Techworks 512k cache

John Gager reports:

Just wanted to let you know that I recently installed a Newer MaxPowr-225 card in what was my PowerCenter-132. Going from a 604 at 132mHz and 45 mHz bus speed to a 604e at 225mHz and 56.25mhz bus speed was a real shocker :) Damn this thing is fast. Everything seems to be working fine and the 512K cache that was already installed in my PowerCenter is doing just fine. I've also got 3 PCI cards (a FWB Hammer Ultra SCSI controller, Reply PC card, and a TwinTurbo-128) and no noticable problems with those also. I'll post some MacBench 4.0 results as soon as I can get ahold of the MacBench CDROM.

Base system PowerComputing Powercenter 132.

Jeff Lucia reports:

I have a PowerCenter upgraded to the Newer 225, w/1MB Cache (more on that), Moto Lib, 7.6.1, 80MB RAM. System running @ 225Mhz @ 56.25Mhz bus speed.
I was able to get the machine to run @ 240Mhz 60Mhz bus for about 2 minutes...before it crapped out. I have tried two different cache's in the machine...one by Newer, and one by Mac Guru's (this one is faster...8ns vs 11ns). Anyway, the processor score was 656 @ 240 and the floating point was 774. Not a HUGE improvement...but one nonetheless. I think my problem might lie in the RAM since my 64MB DIMM is 2k refresh 70ns. I'll try again when I get 60ns and 1k. Anyway, I thought you might want these numbers.

Again, keep up the good work!

Base system PowerComputing PowerCenter

Steve Solomon reports:

I've got a Newer MaxPowr 225 running in my 7600/132. I tried the 240 MHz/60 MHz bus option right off the bat. It ran well for about two hours but must have started to overheat. I had multiple crashes. It's running happily now at 225/56.25 with my stock Apple 256K L2 cache. Everything seems to run incredibly fast compared to the 132/44 I started with! The bus speed makes a huge difference in the feel of the system. a 225/45 is a LOT slower. It's for this reason alone I HIGHLY recommend the Newer cards. The adjustable bus speed is great. I'd like to upgrade to a 1 MB cache but I'm waiting to hear of others with a success story first. I've heard that the 1MB L2's are still somewhat iffy at this bus speed.

Base system Apple 7600/132.

Jim Minnihan reports:

Mike, thanks for your site. It is very well done and is of great service to the Mac community.

Please add my story to your User Feedback area. I believe that my story proves that us 9500 owners are unlucky due to the fact that the L2 cache is soldered onto the motherboard. I currently own a Power Macintosh 9500/120. My experience with Newer Tech's MaxPowr 200 have been problematic at best. After multiple attempts at installing and configuring two of these cards, I had to send the card back to the retailer. My system would not perform reliably using this accelerator, due to periodic lock ups at all bus & clock speed combinations. I also switched out the RAM per Newer, since they recommend that you do not use RAM DIMMs with PNY controller chips, and I had two PNY 16MB 60 ns DIMMs and two Siemens 32MB 60 ns DIMMs. I yanked out the PNY DIMMs, but the 9500 was still unreliable. At this time, I believe that the L2 cache that is soldered to the motherboard must be the probl! em. To Newer's credit, this card will probably work in someone else's 9500 that may have a more tolerant L2 cache. (Note: He's now running a PowerLogix Pro at 60mhz bus! - just needed the right card I guess) Anyway, I am now back to my 149 mhz clock chipped (via Trinity Works Power Trip) Power Mac 9500/120 which is now back to running very reliably, even under new Mac OS 8.0. My next step may be to get a Powerboost Pro 225. Are there any other 9500 owners out there having these kinds of problems? Any 9500 success stories? I would especially like any feedback of a successful implementation of a 9500 using the Powerboost Pro.
Thanks,
Jim Minnihan

Base system Apple 9500. I'm seeing more cache problems being reported with Newer cards lately, which make no sense - have they changed something? First my two MP cards, now repeated cache issues seen with various Newer cards.UPDATE: 8/25/97 - This same user is now running at 60mhz bus/240mhz cpu with the PowerLogix Pro card! (and using the same memory). His success story with the PowerLogix card is listed above.

Wayne Jaeschke reports:

Based on what I read in your pages, I purchased a Newer 200mhz cpu upgrade and installed in a PowerMac 8500/120. I am happy to say that, as Joe Lorek reports, I also am achieving the 60mhz bus speed with the Apple 256k cache dimm, and a clock speed of 210mhz (measured using clockometer and Daystar's nPower control panel). It runs 100% stable under system 7.5.5 and even faster under 7.6.1. I don't know whether I'm more pleased with Newer (for building such a solid card); Apple (for sending me a machine that works so well); or you for writing such a good report. Thanks!

Base System PM8500/120. Another 40mhz bus stock system running at 60mhz!.

Joe Lorek reports:

I've upgraded my PowerMac 8500/120 with the MaxPowr 200. I am now running at 211 mhz with a bus speed of 60 mhz. I'm still using my original Apple 256k DIMM cache. I tried the MacGurus 1 meg DIMM cache, but couldn't get my Mac to boot, sometimes freezing at the smiley mac. My RAM is all interleaved (130 megs) and 60 ns. I'm using 7.6.1, and according to Mac Bench, SpeedDoubler does help performance somewhat. I use RamDoubler for file mapping only. With the 256k DIMM the system is exceptionally stable at 211/60 (speed measured by clockometer and verified with TechTool Pro.) I'll keep you posted.

WOW! Its a rare 8500 owner that can run a 60mhz bus!

Paul Draper reports:

FYI, I've been running a MaxPowr 180 604e @ 52Mhz on this 7500 with a stock Apple 256k L2 cache for quite some time now. It all works beautifully. The 7500 is from the original first release shipment.

Base system: Apple 7500.

Michael Mollica reports:

Last week I received a catalog from Express Direct. As I was thumbing through it, I came across the XLR8 advertisment. I was intrigued. I had purchased my 7600/132 in early December and was somewhat miffed when Apple came out almost immediately with the 7300 (because it runs a 604e/180). I had the urge to call and order the XLR8 right then. Instead, I decided to research processor upgrades as best I could via the Internet (I don't know a thing about computers). I was fortunate to find your page. It assisted me greatly in deciding what to do.

I ordered the MAXpowr 180. I found it easy to install. I felt the installation guide was okay. Probably if I had your computer savvy, it would not have mattered. I though the manual was rather cheaply made --- I mean, when you buy an item costing $700, you'd expect a decent manual (I received Version 1.1). Actually, my only complaint is really the quality of the pictures. The size and quality of the paper were fine. I had difficulty trying to find the motherboard reset button (in fact, I never did). The pictures were so poor in quality, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. If there isn't a reset button for the 7600, I would expect the manual to indicate this. Does the 7600 have one?). It might be best if each computer model had its own section --- after all, there were sections for the 9500 and 8500. It would be simple to have a section for the 7500 and 7600 with the appropriate pictures. I also was unsure by the instructions to "Set the DIP switch...to the correct bus speed setting for your specific Power Mac model." I didn't know what that was. The DIP Switch Settings page doesn't list settings by Power Mac models, just settings. (I ended up setting it at 45MHz even though Apple's spec sheet indicated the 7600 supports a 50MHz bus). Now I realize these comments probably sounds petty and small; however, the purpose of a feedback page is for feedback. I believe I purchased the best product available and I am extremely remely happy with my purchase. Your page is very informative and helpful. It is bookmarked and will be visited again and again.

(The following was received after I emailed info from the latest Newer v1.2 manual on switch settings, and info about locations of the CPU reset switch)
I first tried the 180 MHz -- 51.4 setting. I seemed to work for a while. I did experience a few freezes in Netscape and Photoshop, so I changed it to 180 MHz --45. It's appears to working fine and it's new found speed is noticable.

Thanks again for your help and I appreciate the quick response to my feedback.

Base system was a 7600/132 system, which Apple data lists the maximum motherboard bus speed is 50mhz. However many systems can exceed this value with the Newer Card.

Kurt Wiley reports:

Hi...I am all the way down in Sydney Australia, and am using XLR8's MachSpeed 225 CPU in my power mac 8500/150. Here are my experiences...
The card got off to a rocky start as it took two replacements from XLR8 to get one that actually worked (one card somehow got past their QC with important screws missing!). Email responses were spotty (and lately nonexistant) but when I had called them from Australia, they were courteous and helpful, and even called me back once with some information to help troubleshoot one of the bad cards. I hope the poor email response is not a sign that the good support you mentioned is deteriorating.

For The third installation, I install an XLR8 512K cache first, which, incidently, was the first 512 K cache to successfully work in my machine at stock 50 mhz memory bus speed. (earlier parts from Kingston and a generic vendor failed miserably, creating numerous hangs and freezes).

The MachSpeed card worked fine at its default settings of 225/45 mhz. I was able to bump it up to 231/46.2 mhz, but found at 235/47 mHz I began to get a freeze with some applications every now and then, so I backed off to the 231 setting. The XLR8 card does run warmer than the Apple card did, but not excessively so.

When trying the card at a 4:1 ratio at 225/56.5 mhz, the machine refused to boot its video system. Most likely this is the Apple's memory bus flaking out, as it was not really designed to operate above 50 mhz.

I have not experimented further with the card at this point due to the difficulty of setting the jumpers. Also, most of my applications are CPU rather than memory intensive, and the tests I have run with NORTON and SPEEDOMETER show the memory performance far better with the last XLR8 setup speed than at the original 150/50 mhz speed. Also, as mentioned, the memory bus in the machine seems just a bit flaky around this speed (my machien was one of the first shipped to Australia).

Performance of my applications has gone up 30-60 percent depending on the operation. The whole machine feels much peppier, though some applications still remain slow (this is not XLR8's fault as these apps and their vendors are screaming for MultiProcessing, which is not generally available in Austrlalia and seems hideously overpriced for what you actually get).

So that is my story... Feel free to contact me if you wish any more info and to pass my comments on to XLR8.

Base System: Apple PM8500/150 (stock bus speed is 50mhz).

Aaron Chang reports:

Just got my new Xlr8 MachSpeed 200 in the mail today (been waiting TWO months for it now)... set dip switches to used 50MHz bus with 4:1 processor to bus clock ratio. Popped the sucker in. Punched the Power on key.... Voila!!! Worked like a charm! Now, here comes the interesting stuff!
1. Processor and Floating Point scores easily surpass PowerTowerPro 225! (I don't understand why either)
2. All my normal extensions are on... This includes crazy stuff like Aladdin's Desktop Tools, Stuffit Deluxe stuff, Speech... AppleTalk is ACTIVE.
3. This is running without hitch (so far) with NewerTech's 1MB L2 cache module which they discontinued a while back.
Of course, I've got MathLibMoto and Speed Doubler installed.
Interleaved memory, but of some various brands. The only true 'matched' pairs are the two 8MB DIMMs from Apple, and two 64MB 70ns DIMMS I got from Otherworld Computing. The two 32MB DIMMs were purchased separately.

Base system not reported.

(6/2/97)
A. Shimamoto reports:

I recently purchased a Newer MaxPowr 200 MHz 604e Upgrade card after reading about it at MacCPU's web page. Unfortunately, it did not physically fit in my PowerCenter 120 - I have the low profile model and the card is about 1 inch too tall to close the case. I notified MacCpu of their error on their website so they would not mislead anyone else.

After reading your review of the XLR8 180 MHz card, I purchased an XLR8 604e 200 MHz card directly from XLR8. The people at XLR8 were very helpful and informative, and seemed to be quite honest about their card. Regarding the possible cache problems, they told me that older L2 cache with speeds of 12 to 15 nanoseconds (whatever that means?) may not be recognized by their card, but more recent 6 to 9 nanosecond caches would work okay. I was a little worried since they did not consider my PowerCenter "recent" and I could not find any information on the speed of my L2 cache.

I have been running it for about 2 weeks now and it seems to run flawlessly (so far - knock on wood). It was very easy to install - it took me a total of 15 minutes, of which 10 minutes were used to backup my hard drive. All I needed was a chopstick to reset the mother board and to set the bus speed and CPU/Bus multiplier. Although you recommended starting with the factory setting, I was lazy and installed it at a bus speed of 50 MHz and a multiplier of 4:1 - I have not opened up the computer since.

I have run Tech Tool Pro and Newer Tech's Gauge series and everything seems fine, including the 512K L2 cache and my IMS TT accelerator. I ran MacBench 4.0 on my system and it scored 441 on the CPU test and 526 on the Floating Point test. This is about 2 times higher than this system ever scored before!

For the record, my system consists of a PowerCenter 120 (originally a 120 MHZ 604) purchased in June 1996 (old I guess by computer standards) with a 512K L2 cache, 48M of RAM, a 6X CD, an IMS Twin Turbo M2 PCI Graphics Accelerator, 1 GB HD, and 2M of VRAM (worthless since I need to purchase another matching Meg to upgrade the IMS TT to 4 Megs). Peripherals include an Apple 15 inch Multiscan dislplay, Iomega Zip Drive, and an HP 560C printer. I am running System 7.6.1 with SpeedDoubler 2.02. I also installed the Libmoto extension about 2 months ago while cruising Motorola's website, although I am not sure if it really does anything. But it was recommended by Motorola so I took their word for it.

About the only problem I have is with Netscape 3.01 which will not lauch a second time unless I restart the machine. However, I had this same problem with 3.0 and FreePPP prior to the upgrade so it may just be the Netscape/FreePPP combination. Microsoft Office apps seem to run fine and Excel is incredibly fast compared to what I was used to. All of my daughter's games seem to work just fine so far. Hopefully this will continue.

Anyway I just wanted to thank you for your fine review on both the XLR8 and Newer cards. I really didn't know what to do about upgrading my daughter card until I found your website. Just thought I would give you this information regarding my experience with the XLR8 card. Thanks again and keep up the good work.

Base System PowerCenter 120 (40mhz bus speed originally). Now 200mhz XLR8 at 50mhz bus.

Ryan Sims reports:

Michael,
Just wanted to drop you a line that I was able to run the XLR8 180 card at a bus speed of 50mhz and CPU of 200mhz with no problems so far. Amazingly enough, I am running it with a stock Apple 256k cache. This is with MacOS 8 golden master.

Talk about variation in motherboards and cache timing!

Ryan Sims
Information Designer
Renaissance Interactive, Inc.
http://www.ricommunity.com/ri/

Base System 8500/120 with 80mb ram and stock 256k cache.

Raymond Austad reports:

Well the card ran like a champ. With the 7500/100 being 100 with Macbench 4.0, I got 242 with the processor test, with 7.5.5, LibMot, no others. Thats with 16MB ram and 1MB Cache. FPU was up there but I'll put up a page this weekend to give the results out. I give the the URL later.

The 1MB cache from Sonnet ran great with Xlr8 and the 7500!! Now I just need to get more ram!!! It had about a 15% improvement in processor performance. See exact results later!

This was only 3hrs worth of testing so far. This weekend will show more results.

QUESTION: The Disk and Disk Publishing test were actually lower compared to Macbench standard, about 15% lower than 7500/100 Macbench standard. Any info on this?? I have the original 1Gig HD by IBM. What the problem???

Base System 7500/100. The disk scores can be boosted by increasing the disk cache size in the memory control panel to 512k.

I just thought I'd let you and your readers know that the Ultracache 1MB from PowerLogix works great in my 7600 with a MaxPowr 225 at a bus speed of 56.25 MHz. My Macbench processor score went from 456 (Apple 256k) to 598 (1 MB cache), a 31% increase. Awesome.

Some info for you..

4-5 weeks ago I (finally) got my 8600/200. Immediately ordered a 1MB L2 cache module from Chip Merchant. Installed the piece and thought it rocked compared to the stock 256k piece. Started a bit of correspondance with Eric at MRP. Given that the card had a Samsung "bridge" chip, Eric thought it was an OEMed IDT piece. Started having a few problems. Problems got worse (the machine is NOT yet in "full production" mode as the monitor only arrived a week ago). Speed Disk failed, Retrospect failed and when I tried installing OS 8, the installed failed. Took out the 1MB L2 cache and put back the 256k part and all worked (although noticably slower). Back it went to Chip Merchant. Got a call from them yesterday.. they say that upon further testing by them, they are NOT recommending this IDT part (they confirmed that it WAS the IDT part) for ANY cpu that runs at 200MHz or greater.. no issue of bus speed. They are refunding my money and are looking for another vendor for a piece that can reliably run with 200MHz plus cpu chips.

Clarence reports:

Nice page very informative. I have a 7500/150 (an Apple 150mhz cpu upgrade), I also have a Sonnet tech, L2 1meg cache. Things are very stable even with Netcsape Communicator pr3. The entire system is much more responsive. I'll be happy to send you my MacBench scores if you'd like.

Good news that the Sonnet 1 meg cache runs at 50mhz.