lone vendors further eroding its market share by introducing new, powerful Macs based on the upcoming G3 series (e.g., the PowerPC 750).
Another chip, Exponential's 533-MHz X704 CPU, is also no longer an option: After fallin
g short of its target clock speeds and delivery schedule, Exponential killed the X704 and is suing Apple for breach of contract, interference, and other actions. At press time, the only Mac-clone vendor that had licensed Apple's Mac OS System 8 was Umax Computer.
For now, Apple's top high-end system is based on the 604e; G3-based systems from the company will probably ship this fall. But the 9600/350 offers plenty of performance for power users. In addition to its 350-MHz CPU, the system has a 1-MB secondary (L2) cache and a new cache controller that enables the CPU to talk to the L2 cache at 100 MHz. Due to the cache design, known as an in-line cache, the PowerPC doesn't have to wait as long for data as it would if the CPU accessed the L2 at the same speed as the 50-MHz system bus (CPU to main memory). The 604e's increase in megahertz is due to the new 0.25-micron process.
The 9600/350 delivered
the highest
integer performance of any desktop system BYTE has tested using our
CPU/FPU BYTEmark tests. You can see how it rates against other systems (see
"RISC Races Ahead in BYTEmark Scores"
). The BYTEmarks measure raw CPU performance and do not test other system components, such as hard drive and video adapter. In our suite of cross-platform Photoshop tests, the Power Mac beats a 300-MHz Pentium II decisively in the arbitrary rotate test, but the other scores are closer.
The PowerPC 750 (code-named Arthur), the first processor slated to come from the new G3 PowerPC family, will initially run slower (275 MHz) than the fastest 604e. But thanks to a separate L2 cache bus and a small die size, the G3 series promises better performance at a lower price: A system from Power Computing with a 275-MHz G3 scored 9.4 and 6.1 in the BYTEmark integer and FPU tests, respectively. That system won't ship now, although Apple might sell it in the future.
But although Apple's decided that competition from clones wasn't such a good idea, it still must compete against Wi
ntel, and, compared to some Pentium II PCs, the 9600/350 is pricey: with 64 MB of RAM, a 4-GB hard drive, a 24X CD-ROM, a Zip drive, and a video card with 8 MB, it's about $5400. AST's similarly configured Bravo MS 6300 is $2950.
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Apple's Power Macintosh 9600/350 uses the 350-MHz 604e CPU.
Power Mac Prevails (with an Asterisk)
