Settings, procedures
and machines we use while conducting our ZoneBench Processor
benchmark tests.
| System Settings |
|
We use the following settings for all
of our test runs to assure consistent results:
- Memory - Virtual memory is turned off
and the disk cache is set to 2048K (2 MB)
- Networking - AppleTalk and file sharing
are both turned off.
- Extension Set - We use the "OS 9.1
All" set plus any needed by the upgrade card
or product being tested.
- Monitor Settings - We set the color depth
to "millions" with the resolution to 1024x768
unless noted otherwise. Our tests indicate that
color depth has a far greater impact on performance
than resolution.
- Font Smoothing - Is on for all tests.
|
| "Real World" Application |
Test Description and Settings Used |
|
AppleWorks
6.0.4
Kindly provided by Apple Computer, Inc.
|
Search & Replace Test - Starting
at the top of the document we issued a "replace all"
command replacing all occurrences of the word "the"
with the word" macbench." 12,900 items in all. |
|
Analog
4.1.1
|
Analog is a popular shareware program for analyzing
a web server's log file. Log files provide web masters
with valuable information about traffic on their site,
which pages are popular, where visitors are coming from
etc. The log file we use is an older one from our own
site containing over 2 million lines and roughly 18
MB in size.
Log Analysis - We use Analog's default settings,
clocking the time to analyze the file and generate a
report.
|
|
Photoshop
6.0
|
We run two distinct test suites for our Photoshop benchmarks.
Tests are run on either a 10 or 20 MB file depending
on the amount of RAM available to allocate to Photoshop.
Unless noted otherwise, we allocate 200 MB of RAM to
Photoshop to assure that the image is at 100% efficiency
and the hard drive is not being accessed during the
test run. We clocked the time to complete all filter
operations for each suite, quitting and restarting Photoshop
between the two tests.
AltiVec Filter Suite - Is comprised of the following
filter opperations: Lighting Effects, Spherize, Twirl,
and Gaussian Blur
Standard Filter Suite - Is comprised of the
following operations: Colored Pencil, Bas Relief, Film
Grain, Craquelure, and Convert Mode from RGB to CMYK.
|
|
CineBench
2000
|
We used the Cinema CineBench 2000 program for our rendering
test. Like Photoshop, Cinema 4D XL is both multiprocessor
and AltiVec aware. The level of AltiVec acceleration
depends on the type of scene being rendered with acceleration
ranging anywhere from 0 - 50%.
Render Test - The raytracing performance test
is done by using one scene that uses heavy antialiasing,
shadows, transparencies and refractions to stress the
FPU (Floating Point Unit). Each scene will be pre-rendered
first in a very small resolution to eliminate any hard
disk dependencies. (So all textures are loaded into
the computerís physical memory.)
|
| Base Machine |
Configuration |
Power
Mac G3/350 |
OS - 9.1 unless otherwise noted. Only OS extensions
are running during our tests.
RAM - 320 MB installed with virtual memory turned
off for all tests.
Disk cache - Set to 2MB (2048K).
Hard Drive - 4GB. we defragment the drive before
testing each upgrade card as each test run generates
a number of files that are later removed from the drive.
AppleTalk/File Sharing - Are both turned off
during all tests naturally.
|
PowerBook
G3/266/133/1MB |
OS - 9.1 unless otherwise noted.
Only OS extensions are running during our tests.
RAM - 320 MB installed with virtual memory turned
off for all tests.
Disk cache - Set to 2MB (2048K).
Hard Drive - 4GB or 20GB as noted on page. we
defragment the drive before testing each upgrade card
as each test run generates a number of files that are
later removed from the drive.
AppleTalk/File Sharing - Are both turned off
during all tests naturally.
|
|
Power
Mac G3/266/133/512K
|
OS - 9.1 unless otherwise noted. Only OS extensions
are running during our tests.
RAM - 320 MB installed with virtual memory turned
off for all tests.
Disk cache - Set to 2MB (2048K).
Hard Drive - 4GB, we defragment the drive before
testing each upgrade card as each test run generates a
number of files that are later removed from the drive.
AppleTalk/File Sharing - Are both turned off during
all tests. |
