Apple claims that the 6500 series (as well as the 6400 series) Macs are not upgradable. However, many people, myself included, did buy these machines and haven't stopped hoping that they could be upgraded. With a top of the line 56K modem, fast CD-ROM, large hard drive, and built in sub-woofer, these are very good computers. I knew it would always be on the trailing edge of technology processor wise. I knew that the 603e Motorola chip had run it course, and was a dead end CPU. But for the price…
Along comes a claim from MacCPU for a 6500 G3 upgrade. Wanting a G3 in the worse way, I was willing to give just about anything a shot, although I was skeptical at first. The 6500's were not meant to be upgraded, right? Besides, do these types of "L2 cache G3 upgrades" really work? Moreover, just how stable would the machine be? Thanks to MacCPU, I've had the last month to really find out the answers to those questions
.
 
Seven Minutes to G3
Installation is pretty cut and dry. The first step is
to install software, in this case a system extension
titled Vpower PF G3, that allows the Mac to
use the G3 card rather than the 603e.
Time spent: 1 minute.
Step 2; Turn off the Mac. Disconnect the power
supply. Pulling out my motherboard was a simple
matter of unscrewing two screws, and sliding out
the board.
Time spent: 2 minutes.
Step 3; Locating and removing the L2 cache card.
This is well marked on the motherboard, and to
remove the card, you simply pull it up and out.
The G3 card ships with an anti-static wristband
so you don’t fry the innards of your Mac. Once out, you insert the G3 card in the now empty slot.
Time spent: 2 minutes.
Step 4: Reinstall the motherboard, replace the screws, plug the Mac back in, and boot up.
Time spent: 2 minutes.
Total installation time: 7 minutes
Amazed at how fast and simple the installation was, I was still somewhat skeptical when I hit my power key to boot up the Mac. The Vpower PF G3 extension, which makes the Mac use the G3 card, had me concerned. I had just upgraded the 6500 a few weeks before to Mac OS 8.5, and I really didn't want any extension conflict problems. I was spoiled by how stable my Mac had become since the 8.5 upgrade, and G3 speeds would do me no good if my Mac started to crash every ten minutes. I shouldn’t have worried. There have yet to be any problems with the extension, and everything is running very smooth.
Upon restart, the Vpower PF G3 extension is the first to load. What it essentially does upon startup is restart your Mac. Once you see its icon on the screen, the Mac blinks once and restarts. Simple as that. No extension conflicts and no real slow down in starting up the Mac. In fact, once it has "blinked" and starts using the G3 card, startup is at least twice as fast than when it was running on the 603e CPU.
The numbers
I'm not a big fan on numbers. I can look at a MacBench reading all day long and it does nothing for me. However, I did want to test the new G3 card on MacBench 5.0 and compare it with the 603e. The G3 is rated at 225MHz, while the 603e is rated at 250MHz. To the laymen, this may suggest that the 603e chip is faster. This is as far from the truth as you could be. The G3 is twice as fast at the same MHz rating as a 603e chip. Here is the score from MacBench 5.0 in the Processor test:
 
Real World
As I said, I'm not much of a fan of test scores such as these, but it is nonetheless impressive to see the G3/225MHz score more than twice as high as the stock 250MHz/603e. But to really gauge just how much faster the 6500 performed with the G3 upgrade, I decided to run some tests of my own.
(I repeated each opening twice to also gauge the Cache speed)
Base 6500 / 603e 250MHz
Launch time:
First launch: 13 seconds
Second launch: 6 seconds
Upgraded 6500 / G3 225MHz
Launch time:
First launch: 9 seconds
Second launch: 4 seconds
Next, I opened a 7.7MB Photoshop 4.0 TIFF file.
(I again repeated each opening twice to gauge the Cache speed)
Base 6500 / 603e 250MHz
Launch time:
First launch: 27 seconds
Second launch: 17 seconds
Upgraded 6500 / G3 225MHz
Launch time:
First launch: 15 seconds
Second launch: 9 seconds
As you can see, things were really much faster with the G3 upgrade. Not only do the numbers above bear that out, but to really see it in action is a whole different story. The whole system is much faster, from opening windows to scrolling a long text document. Copying files went much faster, switching between applications, doing a search of my hard drive. Everything! In fact, when I went back to the 603e processor after a week of using the G3 upgrade, I thought something may be wrong with my system. It really did seem that much slower.
Folks, this upgrade works, and works well. I was skeptical at first. I didn't like removing my Cache card, thinking it may slow my machine down some. However, the G3 upgrade card has its own built-in 256K L2 chip, so you should not even give it a second thought.
Final Thoughts
This is simply an amazing piece of hardware. I now have a G3 Mac, without having to convert over to USB as I would have done with the iMac, and my fairly new computer is no longer at the end of its life cycle. I did not really think my 6500 was all that slow before I upgraded it. It was, after all, a 250MHz system. I simply had no idea of the overall speed increase this card would provide.
It's an easy upgrade that works as promised! I cannot give this product a high enough recommendation. And at less than half the cost of a new Apple G3! Wow! If you are thinking of upgrading to a G3, and you own a Power Mac 6500, I would strongly urge you to give this option some serious thought. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
On last thing...
I would like to thank Barb and Bob at MacCPU for all their assistance in helping me procure this card for review. They are first class people all the way, they really do care about what they sell, and more importantly, they care for their customers. I spent quite some time on the phone with both of them, and I would highly recommend you give them a call. (Be sure to tell them My Mac Magazine sent 'ya!) They're the tops!
Specifications
G3 225/112/512k Cache Card
•Tim Robertson• <publisher@mymac.com>
Websites mentioned:
<http://www.maccpu.com>
 
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