Add-Ons Turn VWs Into Porsches
Idrive a moderately priced four-cylinder car. I don’t know how fast it can go, but it’s speedy enough for me. By contrast, a friend of mine spent thousands more for his car. He doesn’t get to work any sooner, but he likes the responsiveness, power and ability to pass almost any car on the road.
When it comes to computers, I must admit, I’m like my friend.
I want to be able to drive them around corners on two wheels.
Using almost any computer is faster than doing things manually, yet the trend during the past few years has been toward even faster machines. And as quickly as computer makers introduce swifter models, companies develop add-on boards to speed up existing models.
These so-called accelerator boards speed up the processing power by replacing the machine’s central processing unit chip with one that can process information faster.
One could legitimately question why anyone would need to speed up an already impressive machine like an IBM PC or Apple Macintosh, but there are a number of reasons. For some people, the extra speed will truly increase productivity. If you are working with very large spreadsheets or find yourself sorting large databases, faster processing can make an enormous difference.
For other users, the accelerator reduces the frustration of having to wait an extra second or two for the machine to process information. It shows up in little ways, like the time it takes to scroll from one page to another in a word processing program, the ripple effect you see when you recalculate a spreadsheet or the delay when moving a graphic within a desktop publishing program. For any single operation, the difference is usually a matter of seconds, but I’ve found that a delay of only a few seconds can cause me to lose my concentration. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a runner breaking stride.
Several options for upgrading a Macintosh are available. The least expensive is the TurboMax board from MacMemory of San Jose. It is available for the 512K Mac, Mac Plus and SE. It uses a faster version of the Motorola 68000 central processing unit that is in the original Macs and the Mac SE. The product roughly cuts in half the time it takes to do certain tasks. The Mac SE version, the cheapest, carries a suggested retail price of $599. (The most expensive Mac accelerators retail for as much as $2,000.)
Most people who want a really fast Mac buy a Mac II. It comes with the Motorola 68020 CPU and a 68881 “co-processor” that speeds up mathematical calculations. Apple claims that the II is about four times faster than the SE or Plus. It’s also thousands of dollars more expensive. But if you own an SE or Plus, don’t despair. You can buy an accelerator board that has the same CPU as the Mac II.
I tested two such models, the Prodigy SE distributed by SuperMac Technology of Mountain View and the Accelerator from Radius of Sunnyvale. My tests and various others show that the two boards make the SE perform as well, or in some cases better, than the Mac II. Because the SE is transportable, I actually prefer the souped-up SE to the Mac II.
Both boards dramatically outperformed unmodified versions of the SE and the Plus. I’m not going to bore you with benchmarks. You don’t need a speedometer to know that you’re passing the rest of the traffic. The boards even cut the time it takes to load or end programs by speeding the loading of information into the machine’s memory.
The major difference between the products is that SuperMac puts its own memory chips on the board, while Radius allows you to use standard Apple (or compatible) memory chips on the Mac’s main circuit board. SuperMac claims that its memory chips are faster than Apple’s and result in better performance. What’s more, SuperMac makes it possible to load up to four megabytes of memory on the board while the Radius board limits you to the four megabytes that can fit in a regular Mac. Radius’ use of standard memory could be an advantage, however, because users are not dependent on that company’s products for future improvements.
An important feature of both the SuperMac and Radius boards is that they can be bypassed. That’s necessary for a few software programs, usually games, that can’t work with the faster CPU.
IBM PC and compatible users have even more accelerators to choose from. Several companies, including Microsoft, offer an Intel 80286 board that transforms a standard PC into an IBM PC/AT class machine. If that’s not fast enough, you’ll soon be able to buy a board with an Intel 80386 chip, the newest and fastest IBM-compatible CPU. Intel and Quadram have announced boards in the $1,000 to $1,300 price range.
The speed of a machine’s CPU is only one factor in overall performance. If you’re measuring productivity, you need to consider the overall time it takes to get a job done. A faster CPU does nothing to speed up your printer and can compensate only partly for a sluggish screen display, inefficient software and the most common speed robber of them all--a slow typist.
You may not need a faster machine any more than you need a high-performance automobile. But if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy the difference. For the Mario Andrettis of computing, such accelerators are a virtual necessity. For the average user, they are an expensive luxury.
Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the authors cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Lawrence J. Magid, 3235 Kifer Road, Suite 100, Santa Clara, Calif. 95051, or contact the L. Magid account on the MCI electronic mail system.
