Move Aside, Mac

Power Computing's 180-MHz Mac clone reveals the power of RISC.

Tom Thompson

As the first Mac OS licensee, Power Computing must stay nimble to grab market share. So far, so good. As Apple ships its 150-MHz Power Mac 9500, Power Computing counters with its 180-MHz Mac-compatible PowerTower.

A standard PowerTower 180 includes a 180-MHz PowerPC 604 RISC processor, 512 KB of L2 cache memory, 32 MB of RAM, a 2-GB SCSI hard drive, a built-in video subsystem with 2 MB of video memory, and two Ethernet connectors (10Base-T and Apple's attachment unit interface [AUI]) -- enough to satisfy the most demanding power user. The price isn't bad either: $4195 as reviewed.The PowerTower's mini-tower chassis provides three 5-1/4-inch storage bays (a standard quad-speed CD-ROM drive occupie s one bay) and three PCI expansion slots.

The PowerTower 180 employs Apple Power Mac 7200 ASICs, which provide only a 64-bit data path, while the Power Mac 9500 ASICs have a 128-bit data path with memory interleaving. Power Computing chose the 7200 ASICs because they can operate at 60 MHz (a good 3X match for a 180-MHz CPU), while the 9500 ASICs top out at 50 MHz.

The PowerTower 180 arrived with Apple's System 7.5.3 and a generous selection of software, including Claris-Works 4.0, Now Utilities 6.0, Intuit's Quicken SE, and other applications. (We disabled the bundled Connectix Speed Doubler software accelerator to properly assess system throughput.) Several weeks of heavy use with a wide assortment of Mac software proved the system's Mac compatibility.

Running Mac software at 180 MHz is intoxicating. Multitasking Claris's MacWrite Pro and Netscape's 2.0 browser while downloading files with Aladdin's SITcomm telecommunications program proved quick and s mooth. We had no network problems using TCP/IP applications through either a corporate DHCP server connection or by a dial-up connection using FreePPP 2.5.

Editing complicated 3-D graphics in Adobe Dimensions 2.0 was effortless, and operations in Adobe Photoshop 3.0.4 simply flew. Where a Power Mac 9500/132 might slow to a crawl managing file-filled folders, the PowerTower ran the Mac File Manager's emulated 680x0 code effortlessly.

Even though the PowerPC 604 trails a 200-MHz Pentium Pro by 20 MHz, it posted far better integer performance and similar floating-point performance. Its combined file- and image-manipulation capabilities make the PowerTower a multimedia author's dream machine.

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Where to Find

PowerTower 180.........................$4195

(180-MHz PowerPC 604 CPU, 32 MB of RAM, 2-GB hard drive, 4x CD-ROM drive)
Power Computing Corp.
Round Rock, TX
Phone:    (512) 388-6868
Fax:      (512) 388-679
9
E-Mail:   
info@powercc.com

Internet: 
http://www.powercc.com

Circle 1076 on Inquiry Card.

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Ratings

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BYTEMark 2.0

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A Towering Dream

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Fast file and image manipulation make the PowerTower 180 a multimedia author's dream machine.

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Tom Thompson is a BYTE senior technical editor at large and author of The PowerPC Programming Kit (Hayden Books, 1996). You can reach him at tom_thompson@bix.com .