Sonnet Technologies announced its new 450MHz G4 upgrade cards for PCI Power Macs. The company also announced price drops of up to 20% on its older G3 and G4 cards. According to Sonnet:
The new speed of 450 MHz upgrade with 1MB 2:1 ratio backside cache is the fastest available G4 upgrade card for PCI Power Macs. It earns an impressive MacBench 4.0 processor score of 1611 and is compatible with all of the following Macintosh models:
Power Mac 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8515, 8600, 9500, 9515, 9600 - Workgroup Server 7350, 8550, 9650 - Power Computing PowerTower Pro and PowerWave - UMAX J700/S900 - DayStar Genesis 360, 400, 528, 600, 720, 800, 900, 932 - Mactell XB-Pro.
The upgrade ships with superior Altivec Enabling software, giving all applications access to the Altivec processing engine in the G4 processor. The unique Sonnet Enabler extends Altivec support to even MacsBug, which is an important distinction for software developers and sophisticated users. The Enabler fully supports the Apple Velocity Engine libraries included in Mac OS 9 and programs such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5 as well as many other Altivec-enabled software applications. Scientific and audio/video authoring applications will benefit significantly from the upgrade.
Sonnet Technologies has also dropped prices by up to 20% on G3 and G4 processor upgrades. Sonnet's new lower prices are as follows:
Crescendo G3/PCI 500/1M $599.95 (was $699.95)
Crescendo G4/PCI 350/1M $499.95 (was $599.95)
Crescendo G4/PCI 400/1M $649.95 (was $799.95)
Crescendo G4/PCI 450/1M $799.95 (new product, April 3)
Encore G3 500/1M $599.95 (was $699.95)
Encore G4 400/1M $649.95 (was $799.95)
Sonnet's full line for Crescendo G3 and G4 PCI cards are compatible with the following Macintosh models:
- Power Mac 7300, 7500, 7600, 8500, 8515, 8600, 9500, 9515, 9600
- Workgroup Server 7350, 8550, 9650
- Power Computing PowerCenter*, PowerCenter Pro*, PowerCurve*, PowerTower*, PowerTower Pro, PowerWave
- UMAX J700/S900
- DayStar Genesis 360, 400, 528, 600, 720, 800, 900, 932
- Mactell XB-Pro
(* Compatible with Crescendo G3/PCI cards only.)
Sonnet's full line of Encore G3 and G4 cards are compatible with the following Macintosh models:
- G3 All-in-one
- G3 Blue & White
- G3 Desktop
- G3 Mini Tower
- G3 Server
- G4 Graphite
Every Sonnet G3 and G4 upgrade includes the Metronome Profiler Utility software, giving users useful system performance information such as processor type, speed, temperature, bus speed, and cache size.
