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AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
2,282
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It would be interesting to compile a collection of real world PowerPC benchmark results with different configurations of solid state drives from factory sealed 2.5" PATA SSDs, mSATA and the various adapter caddies and CF solutions.

There is a lot of information floating around, but nothing that solidly states the advantages or real world differences between the configurations for our old Macs.

Over time, we could compile an extensive list to highlight;

1. Which PATA/IDE SSD or CompactFlash config performs best in each G4, G3, 60x and m68k Mac when working within the limitations of the hardware.
2. Which would be the best value for money based on the machine's restrictions.
3. Which option best provides reliability / longevity.

----------

Here are Xbench results of two of my PowerBook G4s with SSDs;

PBG415-OWCSSD.png
Machine: PowerBook G4 15" 1.5Ghz
SSD: OWC Mercury Legacy Pro 60GB SSD
IDE/PATA Adapter: None
Purchased: 2016
Price: AU$190 inc shipping to Australia (approx US$150)

PBG412-KingSpecmSATA.png
Machine: PowerBook G4 12" 1.5Ghz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 64GB mini-PCIe
IDE/PATA Adapter: Lindy mSATA<->IDE 2.5" PATA interface
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$99 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$78)

As you can see, they both fare pretty evenly. In real world performance, I would say that the cheaper mSATA/Lindy config does feel faster, but this may be just the slight difference in age. Another consideration is the OWC Legacy boasts a series of endurance and failsafe features, which could account for the overhead. (Either that or it is just marketing hype to justify the higher cost).

My initial impression of the OWC Legacy drive was pretty poor because in the beginning I didn't feel it was much of an improvement over my 7200rpm spinning HDD. Since doing further research, I realised that this was due to the way I installed the OS. I simply used Disk Utility to transfer the previous drive's contents straight across. Since erasing the SSD and starting again with a clean install it has made a world of difference, especially in Leopard.

I think the main reason I felt so underwhelmed with performance was that the OWC Legacy was my first non-SATA SSD and I didn't have any first hand experience of how much of an impact the PATA bus restriction could have. My expectations were pretty high after getting comfortable with 1.5Gbps SATA SSD speeds on the G5.

----------
Benchmarking Software

Xbench 1.3:
(Universal Binary for Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later)

QuickBench 4.0:
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/quickbench

AJA System Test 6.0.1:
Wayback Machine

----------

Post your benchmark results and your SSD/CF configurations!
 
Last edited:

mmphosis

macrumors regular
Jan 3, 2017
219
298
I began looking into this back in 2012. I am loathe to pay very much to upgrade old (and sometimes failing) equipment as I have a $35 raspberry pi with 32Gb of SDD. 16Gb SDD/PATA in an old iBook would be good enough for me. Disassembling / reassembling iBooks is a pain.

Machine:
iBook G3 12" 500Mhz
SSD: KingSpec PATA(IDE) 2.5" 16G 16GB SSD
IDE/PATA Adapter: None
Purchased: 2014
Price: CA$35 to CA$40 inc shipping to Canada http://www.xe.com/

The KingSpec "camera" / laptop SDD came preformatted FAT format. I tried to format it with the iBook and it didn't work. It initially saw the preformatted FAT drive, but after attempting to format as HFS it did not see the drive no matter what I did. The SDD sat in a drawer until about a year ago when I tried it in a Mac Mini G4 while I had the Mac Mini apart, and it worked! I was able to format it and install Mac OS X and it booted up. Sorry, no benchmark. It sits on a shelf until I might one day again attempt to disassemble an iBook and try it again.

I also bought one of those mSATA adaptors for cheap (~CA$3) from China. I waited for my price < US$10 for 24Gb mSATA on ebay, and hastily bought the wrong kind of mSATA!
 
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bobesch

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2015
2,124
2,196
Kiel, Germany
It would be interesting to compile a collection of real world PowerPC benchmark results with different configurations of solid state drives from factory sealed 2.5" PATA SSDs, mSATA and the various adapter caddies and CF solutions.

There is a lot of information floating around, but nothing that solidly states the advantages or real world differences between the configurations for our old Macs.

Over time, we could compile an extensive list to highlight;

1. Which PATA/IDE SSD or CompactFlash config performs best in each G4, G3, 60x and m68k Mac when working within the limitations of the hardware.
2. Which would be the best value for money based on the machine's restrictions.
3. Which option best provides reliability / longevity.

----------

Here are Xbench results of two of my PowerBook G4s with SSDs;

View attachment 714412
Machine: PowerBook G4 15" 1.5Ghz
SSD: OWC Mercury Legacy Pro 60GB SSD
IDE/PATA Adapter: None
Purchased: 2016
Price: AU$190 inc shipping to Australia (approx US$150)

View attachment 714413
Machine: PowerBook G4 12" 1.5Ghz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 64GB mini-PCIe
IDE/PATA Adapter: Lindy mSATA<->IDE 2.5" PATA interface
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$99 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$78)

As you can see, they both fare pretty evenly. In real world performance, I would say that the cheaper mSATA/Lindy config does feel faster, but this may be just the slight difference in age. Another consideration is the OWC Legacy boasts a series of endurance and failsafe features, which could account for the overhead. (Either that or it is just marketing hype to justify the higher cost).

My initial impression of the OWC Legacy drive was pretty poor because in the beginning I didn't feel it was much of an improvement over my 7200rpm spinning HDD. Since doing further research, I realised that this was due to the way I installed the OS. I simply used Disk Utility to transfer the previous drive's contents straight across. Since erasing the SSD and starting again with a clean install it has made a world of difference, especially in Leopard.

I think the main reason I felt so underwhelmed with performance was that the OWC Legacy was my first non-SATA SSD and I didn't have any first hand experience of how much of an impact the PATA bus restriction could have. My expectations were pretty high after getting comfortable with 1.5Gbps SATA SSD speeds on the G5.

----------

Post your benchmark results and your SSD/CF configurations!

As far as I understood, the IDE-connection is the bottleneck, so different SSDs or mSATA/IDE-conververter-combinations would show similar results?

Maybe CF/Converter-solutions might be slower than any SSD or mSATA-ID?
 

AphoticD

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Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
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As far as I understood, the IDE-connection is the bottleneck, so different SSDs or mSATA/IDE-conververter-combinations would show similar results?

Maybe CF/Converter-solutions might be slower than any SSD or mSATA-ID?

As seen in my benchmarks, there is not a total saturation of the Ultra ATA/100 (ATA-6) bus, which should be the case if that were the only bottleneck. In many cases, the results would be similar, but there could be a "magic combination" which absolutely tears through at full-capacity where others move along much slower.

If others submit their benchmarks we will have more data on this. This could be useful to refer to when installing an SSD, confirming that the configuration is operating as expected.

It would be good to see if for example, a CF-card configuration operates as effectively on a PowerBook G3 as an mSATA SSD given the bus and processor speed limitations. This would be good for someone who has a bunch of old 4GB and 8GB CF camera cards wanting to put them to use in a slower Mac, but still seeing (possible) gains over the old HDD speeds.
[doublepost=1503904815][/doublepost]
Machine: iBook G3 12" 500Mhz
SSD: KingSpec PATA(IDE) 2.5" 16G 16GB SSD
IDE/PATA Adapter: None
Purchased: 2014
Price: CA$35 to CA$40 inc shipping to Canada http://www.xe.com/

I also bought one of those mSATA adaptors for cheap (~CA$3) from China. I waited for my price < US$10 for 24Gb mSATA on ebay, and hastily bought the wrong kind of mSATA!

Thanks for sharing. I'd be interested in knowing if the dirt cheap adapters work in the older Macs. And also if the cheaper adapters have any drawbacks over the pricier caddies in terms of speed, reliability, bootability, etc.
 

MagicBoy

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2006
3,947
1,025
Manchester, UK
Machine: PowerBook G4 15" 1.67Ghz DLSD
SSD: Sandisk X.110 M.2 SATA
IDE/PATA Adapter: "Sell Good M.2 NGFF SATA SSD to 2.5 IDE Converter Adapter with Case High Quality"
Purchased: 2017
Price: Already had the SSD, adapter was £6.
 

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bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,315
6,369
Kentucky
Wish I'd benchmarked the one I just did for a co-worker. It was a 250gb Evo in a late 2004 17" PB. I've used the same adapter many times, and reliably get 92mb/s sequential from it.

I don't do CFs as drives-CFs go in my cameras, not as computer drives :) .
 

AphoticD

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Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
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Wish I'd benchmarked the one I just did for a co-worker. It was a 250gb Evo in a late 2004 17" PB. I've used the same adapter many times, and reliably get 92mb/s sequential from it.

I don't do CFs as drives-CFs go in my cameras, not as computer drives :) .

Which adapter?

I'd put a CF in a Mac with a low bus speed, only if it outperformed the old HDD. Given I already have a few CF cards sitting in my old Olympus E-410 camera bag, it would be better than not using them at all :)

Plus, if the Mac is going to be a Pismo or similar then it only takes a minute to replace the drive in the event it fails.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,315
6,369
Kentucky
I can't give you a specific reference, but there's an adapter I've used extensively that comes with a white plastic enclosure to give the same profile as a typical SATA SSD or the like. They run about $5 on Ebay if you buy them from China, or about double that if you buy from a US-based seller.

In any case, good CF cards are still fairly expensive. I bought a Nikon D800 not too long ago, and had to upgrade my media to go with it. In the digital world, it's fairly old having been introduced in 2012, but Nikon still sells a camera(the D810) with the same sensor and few other changes. It's a dual slot camera(CF+SD) but I prefer CF since they are faster(Nikon doesn't use the ultra speed SD standard) and I prefer the physically larger and more robust CF cards. In any case, I wanted big and fast cards since the camera can spin out a lot of data(RAW files are in the 70-80mb range) and the 64gb Sandisk cards(whatever the high end fastest cards they make are) I bought were I think around $70 each. I should mention that I bought from B&H Photo-I know they're probably cheaper on Ebay, but Sandisk cards are probably some of the most counterfeited products in the world and I wanted to buy from a reputable seller.
 
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AphoticD

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Feb 17, 2017
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Machine: Power Mac G5 (11,2) Dual-Core 2.3Ghz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 256GB mini-PCIe - $141.30 (free to ship)
IDE/PATA Adapter: (N/A) - mSATA to 2.5" SATA case - AU$4.98 (free to ship)
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$146.28 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$116)

I have three different test results for this G5. As I was running benchmarks I found my results had wildly fluctuated from a previous benchmark I had captured. I realized that on this Mac, the Energy Saver's Processor Performance setting makes a big difference to the SSD I/O (This was not the case with my G4 PowerBooks).

G5DC23-256GBKingSpec-Reduced.png
(Reduced Processor Performance: 228.32 Total Score)

G5DC23-256GBKingSpec-Automatic.png
(Automatic Processor Performance: 265.54 Total Score)

G5DC23-256GBKingSpec-Fastest.png
(Highest Processor Performance: 282.60 Total Score)


I have been looking into buying the Firmtek/Seritek 2SE2-E PCIe SATA II (3G) or 2ME4-E expansion cards as these appears to be the only bootable SATA 2 upgrade cards for the PCIe G5. The e6G claims to be compatible, but I cannot see any mention of boot support for the G5.

Unfortunately, being external-only, I would have to redirect an eSATA-SATA cable back in through the rear ports.

I have read about people tricking Open Firmware into booting from other non-Mac-centric branded SATA PCIe cards (i.e. not Firmtek/Seritek or Sonnet). Has anyone had experience with this?
 
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ziggy29

macrumors 6502
Oct 29, 2014
495
323
Oregon North Coast
With a 1 GHz TiBook running Tiger -- a 250 GB Samsung EVO 850 mSATA drive with mSATA to IDE adapter. Under Leopard the overall score was about 126, compared to 136 with Tiger.


Picture 1.png
 
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AphoticD

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Feb 17, 2017
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With a 1 GHz TiBook running Tiger -- a 250 GB Samsung EVO 850 mSATA drive with mSATA to IDE adapter. Under Leopard the overall score was about 126, compared to 136 with Tiger.

Great! Thanks for posting. I hope to also put an SSD in my 867 TiBook once the parts arrive (I’m hoping this week).

I didn’t realize The “Leopard Overhead” even impacted disk I/O performance. I’ll rerun the G5 tests under Tiger.
 

PPC_Guy

macrumors newbie
Sep 20, 2016
10
1
Results 38.84
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.11 (8S165)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,8
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type TS64GPSD320
Disk Test 38.84
Sequential 82.76
Uncached Write 60.51 37.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 91.50 51.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 67.90 19.87 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 162.70 81.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 25.37
Uncached Write 7.54 0.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 46.67 14.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 929.59 6.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 409.28 75.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I have also another SSD (mSATA Kingston SMS200S3/120G) with mSATA to ATA-100 Adapter but my PowerBook G4 does not recognize it... :( Any ideas?
 
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AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
2,282
3,459
Results 38.84
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.11 (8S165)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,8
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type TS64GPSD320
Disk Test 38.84
Sequential 82.76
Uncached Write 60.51 37.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 91.50 51.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 67.90 19.87 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 162.70 81.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 25.37
Uncached Write 7.54 0.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 46.67 14.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 929.59 6.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 409.28 75.94 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I have also another SSD (mSATA Kingston SMS200S3/120G) with mSATA to ATA-100 Adapter but my PowerBook G4 does not recognize it... :( Any ideas?

These scores are unusually low, especially write speeds. Can you confirm how old this SSD is? Has it taken a lot of use, and has it become noticeably slower over time?

The only mSATA adapters I am familiar with are the expensive red Lindy ones I've been using. I have ordered a cheaper sub $10 adapter, so once this arrives, I can confirm if it works or not.
[doublepost=1506476829][/doublepost]Following up on my G5 benchmarks, I ran the tests again under Tiger and can confirm a consistent speed boost on the SSD I/O when compared to Leopard. It's only very slight, but it's something. ~4% speed increase

G5DC23-256GBKingSpec-FastestTIGER.png
(Highest Processor Performance set: 293.70 Total Disk Score)

154MB/sec write speed is not bad for a PowerPC Mac!
 

swamprock

macrumors 65816
Aug 2, 2015
1,204
1,759
Michigan
It would be interesting to compile a collection of real world PowerPC benchmark results with different configurations of solid state drives from factory sealed 2.5" PATA SSDs, mSATA and the various adapter caddies and CF solutions.

There is a lot of information floating around, but nothing that solidly states the advantages or real world differences between the configurations for our old Macs.

Over time, we could compile an extensive list to highlight;

1. Which PATA/IDE SSD or CompactFlash config performs best in each G4, G3, 60x and m68k Mac when working within the limitations of the hardware.
2. Which would be the best value for money based on the machine's restrictions.
3. Which option best provides reliability / longevity.

----------

Here are Xbench results of two of my PowerBook G4s with SSDs;

View attachment 714412
Machine: PowerBook G4 15" 1.5Ghz
SSD: OWC Mercury Legacy Pro 60GB SSD
IDE/PATA Adapter: None
Purchased: 2016
Price: AU$190 inc shipping to Australia (approx US$150)

View attachment 714413
Machine: PowerBook G4 12" 1.5Ghz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 64GB mini-PCIe
IDE/PATA Adapter: Lindy mSATA<->IDE 2.5" PATA interface
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$99 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$78)

As you can see, they both fare pretty evenly. In real world performance, I would say that the cheaper mSATA/Lindy config does feel faster, but this may be just the slight difference in age. Another consideration is the OWC Legacy boasts a series of endurance and failsafe features, which could account for the overhead. (Either that or it is just marketing hype to justify the higher cost).

My initial impression of the OWC Legacy drive was pretty poor because in the beginning I didn't feel it was much of an improvement over my 7200rpm spinning HDD. Since doing further research, I realised that this was due to the way I installed the OS. I simply used Disk Utility to transfer the previous drive's contents straight across. Since erasing the SSD and starting again with a clean install it has made a world of difference, especially in Leopard.

I think the main reason I felt so underwhelmed with performance was that the OWC Legacy was my first non-SATA SSD and I didn't have any first hand experience of how much of an impact the PATA bus restriction could have. My expectations were pretty high after getting comfortable with 1.5Gbps SATA SSD speeds on the G5.

----------

Post your benchmark results and your SSD/CF configurations!

I should do this. I've got the same exact 12" PB with the same 60gb OWC drive, running Leopard. I've owned both for two years. It'd be interesting to see how it performs compared to your 15" PB.

Here you go...

xbench.png
 
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AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
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I should do this. I've got the same exact 12" PB with the same 60gb OWC drive, running Leopard. I've owned both for two years. It'd be interesting to see how it performs compared to your 15" PB.

Here you go...

xbench.png

Interesting, your results are consistently lower across each test when compared with my PB 15” score with the same SSD (but I was running 10.4.11). Just to confirm if this difference is due to the Leopard Overhead or usage, are you able to test again under Tiger?

Also, just to confirm, try adjusting the Processor Performance in Energy Saver to Highest and run again.
 

swamprock

macrumors 65816
Aug 2, 2015
1,204
1,759
Michigan
I may have caught it in the middle of garbage collection or other operation when I ran it last night. I ran it three times today, and this is what I came up with (performance is already set to better):

xbench2.png


This was the middle of the three runs. All of the results were around +/-0.53 average.
I don't have any room to install Tiger on this drive, as I use this machine daily as my portable.
 
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ziggy29

macrumors 6502
Oct 29, 2014
495
323
Oregon North Coast
Following up on my G5 benchmarks, I ran the tests again under Tiger and can confirm a consistent speed boost on the SSD I/O when compared to Leopard. It's only very slight, but it's something. ~4% speed increase

For me, there is a consistent 7-8% difference running Tiger compared to Leopard. I've run each a few more times. I'm sure things like specific CPU and data bus speed enter into it as well.

I may try this on my G4/550 Pismo which has a hand-me-down "SSD" (also mSATA to IDE) in it. I suspect on that model the data bus limitations will be even more noticeable.
[doublepost=1506545629][/doublepost]OK, here are the results on my Pismo (posting with it now). I was surprised that the performance is very close to the TiBook -- only about 10% less.

Picture 1.png

[doublepost=1506546802][/doublepost]
I have also another SSD (mSATA Kingston SMS200S3/120G) with mSATA to ATA-100 Adapter but my PowerBook G4 does not recognize it... :( Any ideas?

Hmm, not sure. Have you tested it elsewhere? Will it work in another machine or with another adapter? I have the 60 GB version of this same drive in my Pismo and it works fine (as the results above show), dual booting 9.2.2 and 10.4.11.
 
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AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
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I may have caught it in the middle of garbage collection or other operation when I ran it last night. I ran it three times today, and this is what I came up with (performance is already set to better):

xbench2.png


This was the middle of the three runs. All of the results were around +/-0.53 average.
I don't have any room to install Tiger on this drive, as I use this machine daily as my portable.

Much better. I’d imagine Tiger would tip that score over 200. Good confirmation that the OWC drive is operating as expected.
 

xdanieldzd

macrumors newbie
Apr 13, 2017
28
29
Germany
Machine: PowerBook G4 15" 1.67Ghz
SSD: SK Hynix HFS064G3AMNB-2200A, mSATA 64GB (used)
IDE/PATA Adapter: Lindy mSATA to 2.5" IDE (new)
Purchased: 2017
Price: SSD 34€ on eBay.de, adapter 30€ on Amazon.de

Xbench results, before (HDD)...
Screenshot Xbench 80GB HDD.png


...and after (SSD).
Screenshot Xbench 64GB SSD.png


This combination replaced an 80GB Seagate Momentus 4200.2 hard disk. The SSD appears to have been manufactured in week 49 of 2014, if I'm interpreting the date code correctly, and has seen ca. 1000 hours of use - less than a tenth of what my PC's Samsung SSD has seen, which I bought and installed roughly when the PowerBook's SSD was manufactured.

My installation procedure for this SSD was... somewhat convoluted: Since I did not have the Lindy adapter yet, I used a cheap mSATA to USB adapter to hook the SSD up to my Power Mac G4, via a USB 2.0 PCI card, which I used to install a fresh copy of Leopard on there. This ended up working fine and was even bootable, through the USB adapter, on the Power Mac. Setting up the OS (i.e. language, user information, etc.) was done on the PowerBook itself once the Lindy adapter arrived.

I also did some simple boot time measurements before and after SSD installation - starting the stopwatch when pressing the power button, stopping once the system has "settled" after showing the desktop, etc. That gave me times of roughly two and a half minutes with the old HDD, maybe a bit more, vs just over one minute for the SSD.
 

AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
2,282
3,459
I also did some simple boot time measurements before and after SSD installation - starting the stopwatch when pressing the power button, stopping once the system has "settled" after showing the desktop, etc. That gave me times of roughly two and a half minutes with the old HDD, maybe a bit more, vs just over one minute for the SSD.

Good speeds, considering it has a few years on it. Boot time is spot on for Leopard. I get about 55 seconds on my PB 15" and 12", but it can fluctuate depending on how many services are launching at startup - file sharing, remote desktop, web sharing, etc.
 
Last edited:

benwild_33

macrumors regular
Oct 15, 2016
165
107
Got my 256GB Samsung PM851 installed in my 17" PB non high res, really happy with the performance difference. Aside from browsing the web, it doesn't feel too far off a modern mac. XBench results below, seems similar to most here.
UzOXr7j.png
 

LightBulbFun

macrumors 68030
Nov 17, 2013
2,808
3,125
London UK
Figured I may as well throw in a result i got :)

I spent most of the day playing with my G3 BW again. I had a PCI ATA Card I bought arrive today, an ACARD AEC 6280M and I have been playing with in the BW, I ended up pimping the G3 BW out by quite a bit now I think LOL

upload_2017-11-9_23-47-36.png


of course one of the things I did was attach my Sandisk Ultra 16GB compact flash card to the ATA card, load leopard onto it and benchmark it :)

upload_2017-11-9_23-52-55.png


I was pleasantly surprised at how high the Read speeds where the card is only rated for "up to 50MB/s" IIRC
 

AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
2,282
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Great results with the CF card on the ATA card @LightBulbFun, that is one souped up B&W! If you spotted my CF-PCMCIA results on the Pismo Power thread, I saw less than 2MB/sec max speed out of my CF cards while flooding full CPU usage.

Here are some more SSD results from my Macs;

Machine: PowerBook G3 Pismo 400Mhz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 32GB mini-PCIe (AUD$33)
IDE/PATA Adapter: Chinese eBay special with JM20330 chipset (AUD$9)
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$42 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$32)
Pismo mSATA SSD.png


And the same SSD config again in my TiBook;

Machine: PowerBook G4 Titanium 867Mhz
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 32GB mini-PCIe (AUD$33)
IDE/PATA Adapter: Chinese eBay special with JM20330 chipset (AUD$9)
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$42 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$32)

TiBook mSATA SSD.png


Out of interest, I put the 32GB mSATA SSD in my more expensive Lindy brand adapter and found the results were practically the same. This indicates that for these Macs, the cheap adapters are likely sufficient and it comes down the SSD card itself.

Discussing this with other forum members confirms that the 64GB+ cards are not only larger but also much faster than 32GB and smaller cards, particularly in the KingSpec range. In my tests, the 64GB and 256GB Kingspec cards performed the same (in my G5) and all the 32GB cards performed within the range above.
 
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AphoticD

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 17, 2017
2,282
3,459
Got my 256GB Samsung PM851 installed in my 17" PB non high res, really happy with the performance difference. Aside from browsing the web, it doesn't feel too far off a modern mac. XBench results below, seems similar to most here.

Awesome score! Your post inspired me to put some time into my PB17", which had a slow and painful hard drive death a few months back.

Here are the results after a clean install of Leopard + Tiger. Xbench is running under Tiger for the score.

Machine: PowerBook G4 17" 1.67Ghz (Standard Resolution)
SSD: mSATA Kingspec 64GB mini-PCIe (AUD$55)
IDE/PATA Adapter: Addonics ADMS25IDE 2.5" IDE mSATA Flash Drive (AU$57.30)
Purchased: 2017
Price: AU$112.30 total inc shipping to Australia (approx US$86)

Picture 2.png


This PowerBook is now a silent screamer! I am impressed that the ATA/100 bus pushed through write speeds at nearly 102MB/sec. This is beyond what is theoretically possible!

The Addonics adapter is the same as the Lindy (and Lycom I believe) and feels light, but solid in the large PowerBook 17" chassis. It's a great addition to an already wonderful Mac.
 

1042686

Cancelled
Sep 3, 2016
1,575
2,323
Here are geekbench results (sorry didn’t do “before” xbench results - oops)

Powerbook 17” 1.67ghz
2gb pc2700 ddr Sdram
(Before) hitachi travelstar 4200rpm 20gb hdd
(After) Innolite 64gb msata msata+MIC jmicron msata/pata adapter
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The score took quite a tumble 806 to 254.
 
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