"Hi again!
I have now performed the "battle" between the Promax Turbomax and ACard
PCI-IDE adapters. Hope it will give the readers some useful info.
Facts:
Computer: Power Macintosh 9500/150 upgraded with 400 MHz/1 Mb. Sonnet
G3-card, 128 Mb RAM.
Harddrive: Quantum Fireball Plus KX 7200 rpm. Ultra ATA/66
(see www.quantum.com/products/hdd/fireball_pluskx/fireball_pluskx_overview.htm ).
System: Mac OS 9.
Other: Using system default settings(virtual memory turned on). Applications
memory settings not changed either.
How tests were done:
Started with Promax Turbomax, installed in PCI-slot D2.
Booting from Mac OS 9 CD, I formatted the harddrive with Apple Drive Setup
1.8.1., Choosing Mac OS 9 easy install.
After boot from the harddrive, only FWB Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0.2 and Adobe
Photoshop 5.5 was installed.
Reboot.
Then I ran HDT Benchmark test. See results (Graphs) below.
Copied two testfiles from CD to the harddrive; a 350 Mb ShrinkWrap image-file and a 24 Mb Photoshop-file (Photoshop format).
Reboot.
Duplicated the 350 Mb file.
Reboot.
Opened Photoshop 5.5 and the 24 Mb file by opening the file directly.
Identical procedure followed with the ACard UATA/66, replacing the Turbomax
in the same PCI-slot.
Results:
Turbomax:
Duplicating the 350 Mb file: 46 seconds.
Opening Photoshop and the 24 Mb file: 23 seconds.
See pictures [below] for HDT benchmarks.
ACard:
Duplicating the 350 Mb file: 44 seconds.
Opening Photoshop and the 24 Mb file: 20 seconds.
See pictures [below] for HDT benchmarks.
[ I created a table of the above results and also summarized the
main HDT performance. The best scores are shown in blue.-Mike]
| Test |
TurboMax ATA/33 |
Acard ATA/66 |
| Dupl. 350MB File |
46 Sec. |
44 Sec. |
Open PS 5.5
& 24MB file |
23 Sec. |
20 Sec. |
HDT3 Read KB/Sec
(Low/High) |
16684
(14346/20099) |
16899
(14614/20103) |
HDT3 Write MB/Sec
(Low/High) |
14605
(14176/14703) |
15887
(15859/15918) |
HDT3 IOs/Sec
(Read/Write) |
5243/1954 |
5149/2118 |
Hard Disk Toolkit 3.0 Benchmark Results:
ACard ATA/66 HDT Results
TurboMax ATA/33 HDT Results
HDT Results w/9500's Onboard SCSI & OEM Hard Drive
Summary:
If you already have a Turbomax card, stick to it. But if you don't have one
buy the ACard. Especially since it's 30 percent cheaper than Turbomax. At
least in Sweden.
Ulf Melin"
reviewed the Turbomax ATA/33 controller last spring. (NOTE: According to dealer and reader reports, the Turbomax ATA/66 and Sonnet Tempo are the same card (hardware) as the Acard ATA/66 card. The Sonnet Tempo version is one of the lowest priced however at $99.xx (list).
