SONNET 1 GHZ UPGRADE RESULTS !!!

[kris whitten]

I finally got the Sonnet 1 ghz card thanks to Steve Labus of Sonnet for hooking us up. He had to pull some strings, but they are interested in the results too, so this is where it all begins.

DISCLAIMER: MY MACHINE ISN'T OPTIMIZED.
I HAVE ALL KINDS OF STUFF ON MY MACHINE, AND DECIDED TO TEST IT THIS WAY BECAUSE A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE MORE THAN PTLE ON THIER RIG. I CAN ONLY ASSUME RESULTS WILL BE BETTER AS SOON AS I REDO MY MACHINE. I ALSO WANTED TO SEE IF JUST SWITCHING THE CARD WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ELSE WOULD GIVE ME RESULTS... You know, real world worst case scenerio style

I have a G4 400 agp. os 9.1, ptle 5.1.1, dae set to 2, 128 buffer, 200mb of ram to ptle and dae, 1gb of ram, korg OASYS, promax controller card, 4 20 gb hard drives, 001, and I was able to get 12 tracks with the DaveC test.

I then upgraded to 9.2.1 b/c I was installing the Sonnet card, and a Radeon 8500.

I ran the dave C test again, and only got 9 tracks (wonder if it was the OS upgrade, I noticed it swelled my system folder from 50 mb to 85 mb)

Steve drove over and put the card in, something I felt I could do but they wanted it that way.

The install took 2 minutes, and required a small philips screwdriver.

We plugged it in, and it fired right up.

I tested my system on startup from the time you see the happy mac, to full boot and it used to take almost 90 seconds.

This card decreased that to about 35 seconds !!!

(it even sounds faster)

We fired up PTLE 5.1.1

much faster boot, app. half of the time as normal.
We started the DaveC test.

I got 19 tracks 5 plugs per track !!!

This was more than double my previous attempt of 9 earlier in the day)

I then fired up my korg card, and started recording, mostly midi driven synths, drums, etc.

Plugged in a bass and had my friend jam. All of the typical stuff.

Audiosuite processed some stuff, MUCH faster.

Took an older 74 minute dj set I had on my drive, and Bounced to disk Tweakhead setting.

Previous attempts took 8 minutes to convert after bounce.

This time 3 minutes 15 seconds !!!

At this point I was amazed enough to stop playing and go to sleep.

I HAVE NOT done much else yet. I wanted to ask you guys to give me some ideas for testing.

i.e. how many renverbs on a track, or any other CPU intensive plugs you can think of.

Overall, at this point, I have to say it has really sped up my machine. I feel it has doubled the power.

Let me also say that they have agreed to let me beat on it for a month, and then I have to give it back. THey have not given me anything, other than a loaner, and I believe in exposing the truth.

So far so good. No crashes, freezes, or other wierd stuff.

We have a month to put it through the mill so send me your requests !!!