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 Retired: Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Have
questions? Comments? Give us your feedback on these performance
numbers
Below you will find performance results for most of the currently
shipping machines. This
will, hopefully, give you an feel for the relative performances
of these machines. We will be adding new
machines on an on-going basis ... so check back once in a
while.
- New machines added to the list below include
the following:
- PowerBook G4/1GHz with 17 inch screen
- eMac G4/1GHz with SuperDrive
- eMac G4/1GHz with Combo Drive
- eMac G4/800 with CD-ROM Drive
- iBook G3/900
It should be noted that, although all the machines
below were running a version of OS X, not all were running
10.2, or Jaguar. However the scores below are relative ones,
so we are fairly confident that most of the performance relationships
should hold up despite the change in OS system version. There
may be some variations that we have not completely considered
... so travel with care. See our testing
philosophy for more info
"Real World" Tests
The tests below are from our suite of real world application
tests. These tests feature a diverse selection of applications
commonly used by the Mac community. The test suite was designed
to render an accurate and well rounded picture of a machine's
performance. All of the tests below, except for the game tests,
were timed with a stopwatch. The times were then converted
to percentages, relative to the Power Mac Dual G4/1GHz, which
is set to 100%. For all scores, higher numbers are better. The machines highlighted in bold are newly added results. Each Machine family has the same color.
Desktop Tests
Time from the spinning wheel to the appearance of the Desktop is recorded (Stock machine actual score: 45 sec)
[We think the score for the eMac G4/1 GHz with the SuperDrive may be a artificially high score] (Stock machine actual score: 19.87 sec)
The copy folder test not only stresses drive
performance but also takes advantage of faster processing
capability & caching schemes. In this test we are searching the files names of thousands of items, contained in two folders. The top of the line Power Mac has twice the amount of L3 cache as its nearest competitor ... 2 MB. This may partially account for its dramatically higher score. It would appear, from our other drive test, that the drive itself is of a higher performance caliber as well. The extra speed of the processors also comes into play. (Stock machine actual score: 181.70 sec)
In the single file test the the processor
& caching capability of the machine is less of a factor. The 1.42 GHz Tower is once again the performance king (Stock machine actual score: 73.95 sec)
We imported a 175 MB DV file into iMovie 3. Drive performance and processing power are important here (Stock machine actual score: 23.81 sec)
A single 45 MB file is burned onto a CD-R at the fastest burn setting. All three of the top machines have the SuperDrive, which has a maximum burn rate of 16X (the current Combo drive has a burn rate of 32X). Burning a CD takes only a small part of the processing power of a machine (5% for the top machine here) (Stock machine actual score: 112.09 sec)
Let 1K Windows Bloom is a simple carbon application that opens and closes 1,000 windows. This gauges how fast screen redraws are taking place. You can download the small program to run on your machine and compare your scores, to the ones here. (Stock machine actual score: 33.77 sec)
Large Document & Database
Type Tests
A Macro (series of complex actions) was run
in Microsoft's Word on a 500 page document. Word is part of
Office
X (Stock machine actual score: 72 sec)
This test takes place in a large AppleWorks
document. (Stock machine actual score: 104.93 sec)
In this test we are searching the files names of thousands of items, contained in two folders. OS X's new File Search function relies on
both processor and drive performance (Stock machine actual score: 32.49 sec)
Number Crunching & Rendering Tests
The Fractal
program has been highly tuned to take advantage of the G4
and is precisely the type of work that the G4 was made for.
It will also gobble up whatever processing capability is present.
This is a good test for assessing the fundamental processing
potential of each machine. Really highlights the processing
advantage of a dual processor machines, and the G4 processor,
when applications are tuned to take advantage of these features. You can download the Fractal program and run it on your own machine to compare scores. You will need to set the fractal to maximum count of 65536, to be consistent with our testing (Stock machine actual score: 26.53 sec)
BareFeats Photoshop Test Suite - mimics a production type workflow in Photoshop. If you would like to run this test on your machine, and you don't have a copy of Photoshop, download it from Adobe. Then download the action file and drop it on the Photoshop icon (Stock machine actual score: 40 sec)
In this test, an Aged Effect is run on the 175 MB DV file with the Effect left at its default setting This is a processor intensive task (Stock machine actual score: 201.53 sec)
Encoding/Decoding Tests
CD-ROM drive speed and CPU processing power
are the factors influencing the scores above. Our assumption
is that the CD drive speed is the bottleneck in the top of
the line Power Macs above. Only 60% of the top three machine's processing potential was being utilized during this test. Four songs totaling 16.5 minutes in length were converted. (Stock machine actual score: 76.20 sec)
This is straight processor intensive work and does not take any advantage of the G4 processor... faster clock speed means faster performance. This test was performed on a 23 MB StuffIt file that contained thousands of individual files (Stock machine actual score: 53.07 sec)
Multitasking
MP3 Encode, AppleWorks search & replace and folder copy are all carried out at the same time. If you need to have your computer carry out multiple activities at the same time, a dual processor machine will definitely get you there faster (Stock machine actual score: 52 sec)
The MP3 Encode, Photoshop Normal and Word Macro tests are all run at the same time. Don't know why the Single Power Mac G4/1 GHz did so well in this test. On the face of it, it should not be on par with the dual processor machines (Stock machine actual score: 160.74 sec)
Gaming
Giants
is tuned to take advantage of the processor(s). Indeed, when
run on a dual processor machine, you will see Giants fly ahead
of the same game running on a single processor machine. It
also helps to have a better graphics card. The Top machine turned in 57.5 fps. (Stock machine actual score: 45 fps)
4x4 EVO2 is a demanding racing game. The top machine turned in 27 fps (Stock machine actual score: 18 fps)
Resutls for previous machines
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