Following our review of Sonnet's Crescendo G3/500 upgrade for second-generation PCI-based PowerMacs, a handful of readers wrote in to dispute that the Crescendo turned any PCI PowerMac into the "fastest available Mac." That statement was not made without a few disclaimers, however, including that the "fastest" claim was in terms of raw CPU power, not overall system performance. Also, G4 optimized applications will of course destroy the same application running on a G3. Keeping that in mind, Sonnet's Encore G3/500 ZIF upgrade for Power Mac G3s offers results similar to that of the Crescendo G3/500 and, due to the advances in hard drive and graphics technology found in Power Mac G3s, can make those systems the best performing for many applications.
Installation of the Encore G3 is simple. Open up your Power Mac G3, remove the heat sink on the current processor, replace the older G3 with the Encore, place the heatsink back on, and you're good to go. There's no need to deal with jumper settings as the Encore contains hardware that allows it to run at top speed despite what speed the motherboards set to. No software is needed, either.
Interestingly, the Encore G3 performed slightly less well than the Crescendo G3 did in MacBench tests. However, in real world performance the two cards functioned identically with no discernible difference in speed. The Encore G3 also performed flawlessly under both Mac OS 8.6 and Mac OS 9 and, considering its ZIF architecture, should be able to work without a hitch with future operating systems, including Mac OS X.
At $899, adding the Encore G3/500 to your Power Mac is not an inexpensive task. For $200 less the Encore G3/466 proves to be a better value, but if you demand top speed, Sonnet's Encore G3/500 is the only way to get it.
