Not surprisingly, the cards showed the greatest variation in MacBench Processor scores, a measure of pure CPU speed. Here, the 400MHz card slightly outpaced the 300MHz G3 reference system and ran more than 30 percent faster than the 300MHz cards with 512K caches. However, all of the cards received similar Graphics scores. None of the cards appeared to cause any unusual software conflicts or system crashes, but there's no guarantee that the cards will work perfectly with every Mac configuration. And it's unclear if these or any G3 upgrades will support Mac OS X. Other Considerations Because upgrade vendors have to struggle to differentiate their products, Newer offers a handy antistatic wrist strap for card installation and a two-year warranty.
Sonnet offers a better manual and a three-year warranty.
Sonnet also dropped its prices in August, giving its cards a definite price advantage. Macworld's Buying Advice Add one of these cards, and you'll be convinced that your old consumer Mac has been taking steroids. The performance boost is especially dramatic with rendering or other CPU-intensive operations. Sonnet's 400MHz card generally offers the best performance, but it makes sense only if your Mac has a 50MHz system bus. The Newer cards offer comparable performance, but their prices are much higher than the Sonnet cards'.