Interesting :-) Which client version are you using on the A1? I was going to ask about the benchmarks, but IIRC the LinuxPPC version is comparitively ancient. Then again, rc5 speed is probably no faster in the newer clients - ogr is where the main speedups are.
I was going to update the LinuxPPC client myself, but I'm having trouble getting LinuxAPUS to work with my serial card, so I can't access the cvs :-(