With the start of PowerPC Challenge 2026, I decided to install an OWC Excelsior pcie card with a fresh Orico 128gb msata I picked up months back into my dual core 2ghz A1117 Powermac G5/Sorbet. I am already quite happy with how it performs now but was curious what the increase would look like.
The xbenchmark scores certainly illustrate the speed increase of 4lane pcie (32gb theoretical max) vs Sata3 (6gb theorietical max).
The percentage lift from 6gbps to 32gbps is 433% lol however the lift in xbench score is only 40.52%. of course I wont even pretend to understand how that theoretical maximum translates to realworld performance and how xbench interprets that barf and asigns a value to it. So yeah, it's faster. Good enough for who its for anyways. Fun times
Interestingly, on the app front. Everything is working pretty much as it did in 2025. Aside from gmail being slow AF (buttheads killed html webmail in 2025) in its box and invidious not working (no big deal really) everything has been pretty easy.
Youtoobie is handled by Wicknix's
Ten five tube - still works great.
Browsing is handled by TheWireless's
Aquafox (although Safari 11 works remarkably well for being 8 years old now too & you can always compile fresh TFF/AF with
the Unofficial TFF Dev toolkit.
Gmail works with Wicknix's
In the box.
AI ChatGPT interaction works with GreyStash/Manticore's
Legacy AI.
and that's most of what I DD on this machine. There's other stuff I touch from time to time but not too much on this box.
