FireWire "Flames Out" On PowerBooks

May 3rd, 2001
by
rob ART morgan, Bare Feats Mad Scientist

As I was testing the new, fast "Oxford 911" FireWire enclosures on various models of Macintosh, I made a disturbing discovery. The sustained data transfer speed on the PowerBook and iBook is much lower than any desktop model of Macintosh including iMacs and older Power Macs.

 

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

"Houston, we have a problem."

You pay two or three grand for a G4 Titanium Powerbook and you expect FireWire port speeds that are at least as fast as an iMac. But for some reason known only to Apple, it just ain't so. I wish I could offer you an explanation but unless Apple's "Performance Marketing" department responds to my email, I can't explain my findings.

My current theory: Apple is using a FireWire controller in the PowerBooks that is sub-standard in performance. This deficiency didn't rear its ugly head until the new faster crop of FireWire drives appeared.

 

TEST NOTES

TEST FIREWIRE DRIVE/ENCLOSURE
Other World Computing Elite "Oxford 911" version of their Mercury FireWire enclosure with an IBM 75GXP 30G ATA/100 7200rpm drive courtesy of Trans International

TEST SYSTEMS
All the test systems listed above were running Mac OS 9.1 and FireWire 2.8.1.

SUSTAINED READ AND WRITE
The sustained read/write benchmark was run using
ExpressPro-Tools 2.5 (SCSI and Fibre Channel version 2.5 for Mac). When you launch it, it displays all the mounted drives (IDE, SCSI, FireWire). Select the drive you want to test (one click). Then go to the Utilities menu and select Benchmark Volume. A test window will appear. Set Max Transfer Size to 8MB. Then press start. On my graphs I display sustained rate, not peak rate. Peak rate is skewed by the drive cache and doesn't reflect real world performance.

 

RELATED TESTS

Fast FireWire 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch drives on Titanium PowerBook and Wallstreet, both with built-in FireWire and cardbus FireWire.

Final Cut Pro 2.0 versus 1.2.5.

 

WHERE TO BUY

Other World Computing sells Elite "Oxford 911" version of their Mercury FireWire enclosure without a drive for $139. You can also buy it with a 40G IBM 60GXP for $310.

Granite Digital sells their "Oxford 911" enclosures for $159. They also have drives and PCI controllers. In fact, if you build your own FireWire enclosures, they will sell you the bare FireWire/IDE bridge board.

FLASH! FWDepot is now selling an enclosure with the 911 chip set which is very similar to the one sold by OWC. It goes for $140.

According to EZ Quest's site, they have a FireWire drive that transfers at 30+ sustained rates but it does not use Oxford 911. I hope to test this soon.

The primary test drive was an IBM 75GXP 30G ATA/100 7200rpm drive courtesy of Trans International who sells them for $149.

The IBM 60GXP 40G ATA/100 7200rpm drive is available from Other World Computing who sells them for $200 without the FireWire case, $310 with.

Don't have FireWire in your G3 PowerBook? FWDepot has a good CardBus card with two ports for $86. Don't have FireWire on your Desktop? Get a PCI controller. The fastest PCI FireWire/USB combo card I've tested was the USB/FireWire PCI card from FWDepot. If you don't need USB and just want to add more FireWire channels, then you might hold out for the soon to be released Granite Digital 3 Channel PCI controller.

See the STORAGE section of my HOT DEALS page for other sources for these products.

BARE FEATS HOME

SPEED TEST RESULTS from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY)

LINKS to SPEED tests on other web sites

HOT SPEED DEALS

DOWNLOADS that add more SPEED

SPEED UPGRADE guide

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

© 2001 Rob Art Morgan.
Gotta Question? Comment?
Email
rob-art@barefeats.com

(This site served up by MacDock.com)