UMAX offers its first clone, and existing systems get faster
Sean J. Safreed and Jim Shatz-Akin
Power Mac 9500/150 Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice) Power Mac 8500/150 Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice) Power Mac 7600/120 Rating: Acceptable (3 of 5 mice) PowerTower 180 Rating: Outstanding/Very Good (4.5 of 5 mice) PowerTower 166 Rating: Outstanding/Very Good (4.5 of 5 mice) PowerCenter 150 Rating: Very Good/Acceptable (3.5 of 5 mice) PowerCenter 132 Rating: Very Good/Acceptable (3.5 of 5 mice) PowerCenter 120 Rating: Very Good/Acceptable (3.5 of 5 mice) SuperMac S900L Rating: Very Good (4 of 5 mice)
It's racing season in the world of the Mac OS, as speedy new systems from three vendors line up at the retail starting gate. The field includes familiar (but nonetheless new) rigs from Apple and Power Computing and an all-new system from the latest entrant in the Mac-compatible field, UMAX Computer. The new systems are all based on PowerPC 604 chips, and collectively they set speed expectations for Mac OS systems another notch or two higher.
We tested UMAX's SuperMac S900L along with shipping versions of the "speed-bumped" machines from Apple and Power Computing we told you about in our last issue ("Power Takes the Lead," July '96, page 75). Consult the charts and "The Bottom Line" to see the standings at the checkered flag. But first, here's an introduction to the latest arrival on the Mac OS-system scene.
UMAX SuperMac S900L
Video editors and prepress pros should take a serious look at UMAX's first Mac OS system, the SuperMac S900L, which is built around a 150-MHz PowerPC 604 processor. The S900L offers an appealing alternative to the Power Mac 9500/150 for those who want or need a six-PCI-slot tower design.
Outside, the S900L's case sports stylish waves down the sides and stands about the same height as Apple's Power Mac 9500. The CD-ROM tray and floppy slot are hidden behind a door. We like the way it unifies the look of the box, but we found opening and closing the door to insert and eject media a little tedious. Below the front-panel speaker, UMAX has added microphone and headphone ports, among the several thoughtful touches that distinguish the S900L.
Around the back, the S900L looks similar to the 9500, with AAUI and 10BASE-T Ethernet connectors, two serial ports, a SCSI connector, and a minijack connector for external speakers. Two ADB ports (compared to one on the 9500) will be appreciated by graphic artists who want to connect tablets and ADB copy-protection devices.
Opening up the S900L is child's play compared to the process with Apple's 9500. A single screw holds the side panel in place. Twist and pull, and you're inside. Very elegant. Once the computer is open, the six PCI slots and eight DIMM slots are easily accessible, as are the drive bays -- one slim 3.5-inch and two half-height 5.25-inch spaces.
The S900L's logic-board design is derivative of the 9500 but has several important enhancements, chief among them an expansion slot for a second processor card. UMAX plans to offer the SuperMac P150 upgrade card ($995), which adds a second 150-MHz PowerPC 604 to the system. (Processor cards from other Mac OS-system manufacturers don't work in the slot.) We were unable to test the additional processor card, but it should offer increased speed for applications written to take advantage of multiprocessing, such as Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. UMAX has promised to provide faster 604-based processor cards as soon as they become available.
The six PCI slots also offer some capabilities not found in the 9500 or any other Mac OS system. Slot A features a special connector that essentially acts as two PCI slots when fitted with the SuperMac E100 upgrade card, a combination Ultra SCSI and 100BASE-T card UMAX created, using designs from FWB and Asante. At $495, the card is significantly less expensive than getting separate Ultra SCSI and 100BASE-T cards. The E100 card was not available for testing at the time of our review.
The S900L box's PCI architecture differs in another important way from the 9500's: In the S900L, the six PCI slots are governed by a PCI controller; in contrast, the 9500 uses two controllers that each control a bank of three slots. According to UMAX, its approach results in better throughput between PCI cards, because a single controller means less overhead.
All S900L systems ship with an IMS TwinTurbo video card containing 4 MB of VRAM. The card supports resolutions up to 1,152 x 870 pixels at 24 bits. We've experienced some minor display bugs with this card in the past, but the version of the driver that ships with the S900L fixed these problems. Overall, the card performs as well as or better than the ATI card that ships in Apple's Power Mac 9500, and it's well suited for image and digital-video editing.
The S900L ships with 16 MB of interleaved RAM soldered on the motherboard. The 8 DIMM slots accommodate up to 1 GB of RAM, in the form of 128-MB DIMMs. Also, the slots aren't obstructed by the power supply or the drive bays, as they are in the 9500, making it easy to add larger Series 3 DIMMs or DIMM trees -- devices for combining two 72-pin SIMMs into a single DIMM.
UMAX bundles four utilities to make maintaining the system easier. The bundle includes Casady & Greene's Conflict Catcher 3, for resolving extension conflicts; Asante NetDoubler, for speeding Open Transport-based file transfers on Ethernet or Fast Ethernet; and FWB's Hard Disk ToolKit and CD-ROM ToolKit, for configuring your disk and CD-ROM drives. These utilities worked as intended, but they don't really match the productivity bundles offered by rival Power Computing.
The S900L held its own in our speed tests, performing on a par with the 150-MHz PowerCenter and Power Macs on the Processor and Floating Point tests. Its speedy internal 2-GB IBM IDE drive earned it a first-place finish on our Disk Mix tests, and its 4 MB of video RAM and IMS graphics card won it high marks among all the new systems on our Graphics Mix tests.
The Bottom Line
Mac OS licensees are really giving Apple a run for its money -- and for your hard-earned cash as well. Power Computing's PowerTower 180 is the fastest Mac OS system available today, followed closely by the PowerTower 166. The PowerTowers we tested are more expensive than the base-model Power Mac 9500/150, but you get lots of extras for the sub-$700 difference in price: Both PowerTowers come outfitted with 32 MB of RAM (compared to 16 MB in the 9500) and an optional IMS TwinTurbo-128 graphics accelerator. Factor in the scads of productivity software Power bundles with every box, and the result is significant value.
The UMAX SuperMac S900L is priced about $400 lower than the 9500/150 and offers comparable or better speed plus several compelling extras, including dual-processor support; refined PCI architecture; 2 MB of additional VRAM; and an elegant option for incorporating Ultra SCSI and Fast Ethernet with a single, competitively priced upgrade card. Although it may not match the PowerTowers in raw processing speed, it has a distinct edge in flexibility.
Descending from the towers to the realm of basic business systems, the Apple Power Mac 8500/150 still stacks up favorably, and its audio/video-capture and -playback options mark it as the out-of-the-box business multimedia machine. For the $1,400 you'd save by buying the Power Computing PowerCenter 150, however, you could add on a decent business-class video-editing package -- and you'd still also get Power's productivity-software bundle.
The lower-speed PowerCenters and the Power Mac 7600/120 all offer appealing systems for the money. Whether the 7600 is worth the $500 premium over the PowerCenter 120 depends on whether you need the 7600's video-in capabilities for low-end movie editing or videoconferencing. If not, your money would be better spent on a faster Power Computing machine.
Apple Power Mac 9500/150 (16MB/2GB/512K), $4,365; Power Mac 8500/150 (16MB/2GB/512K), $4,425; Power Mac 7600/120 (16MB/1.2GB/512K), $2,709 (estimated street). Company: Apple Computer, Cupertino, CA; 800-776-2333 or 408-996-1010; http://www.apple.com/. Reader Service: Circle #401.
Power Computing PowerTower 180 (32MB/2GB/512K), $5,050; PowerTower 166 (32MB/2GB/512K), $4,650; PowerCenter 150 (16MB/1GB/512K), $2,995; PowerCenter 132 (16MB/1GB/512K), $2,495; PowerCenter 120 (16MB/1GB/512K), $2,234 (direct). Company: Power Computing, Round Rock, TX; 800-405-7693 or 512-246-7807; http://www.powerco.com/. Reader Service: Circle #402.
UMAX SuperMac S900L(16MB/2GB/512K), $3,995 (estimated street). Company: UMAX Computer, Fremont, CA; 800-232-8629 or 510-226-6886; http://www.supermac.com/. Reader Service: Circle #403.
Speed Trials / new systems face off
MacBench 3.0 Scores
Processor Floating Disk Publishing Graphics Publishing
Point Mix Disk Mix Mix Graphics Mix
To determine how the UMAX SuperMac S900L stacks up against newly "speed-bumped" machines from Apple and Power Computing, we ran MacBench 3.0, Ziff-Davis' benchmarking software, which is a good indicator of speed for a variety of tasks. The products are grouped by company within each category. All MacBench 3.0 scores are relative to those of a Power Mac 6100/60 with an internal 250-MB Quantum hard drive, which is assigned a score of 10.0 in each test.
