Processor Performance
Graphics Performance
Game Performance
Drive Performance
Application Performance
Multitasking Performance

Below you will find performance results for some of the currently shipping machines and some from the last generation. This will, hopefully, give you an feel for the relative performances. 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:

• iBook G4/800/800/256K
• iBook G4/1GHz/1GHz/256K
• PowerBook G4/1.33GHz/1.33GHz/512K
• Power Mac Dual G5/2.0 GHz/2.0 GHz/512K
  
  Have questions? Comments? Give us your feedback on these performance numbers

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 and the CineBench 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.

Note: We have mislabeled the G4/1GHz iBook at the iBook G3/1 GHz (October, 03). This will be fixed the next time this page is updated

CineBench 2003 consists of a series of tests. This one tests basic single CPU processing performance. . You can download the CineBench program to run on your own machine and compare scores. We used the version of CineBench that is not optimized for the G5 for this test, and the one below. (Stock Machine Score: 95 points)

This is the same test as above, however it will take advantage of dual processors if they are present. (Stock Machine Score: 172 points)

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. This program has not been optimized to run on the G5, (Stock Machine Score: 26.56 seconds)

Graphics Performance

This part of the CineBench program relies on the graphics card for graphics rendering. Download the program and run your own tests (Stock Machine Score: 174 points)

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 Score: 20.01 seconds)

Game Performance

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. (Stock Machine Score: 44 fps)

4x4 EVO2 is a demanding racing game. It appears that this game is much more graphics card dependent than processor dependent. (Stock Machine Score: 20 fps)

The copy folder test not only stresses drive performance but also takes advantage of faster processing capability & caching schemes. . (Stock Machine Score: 179.81 seconds)

In the single file test the the processor & caching capability of the machine is less of a factor. (Stock Machine Score: 94.61 seconds)

We used a 21 MB files to open Photoshop 7 by dropping it on the Photoshop icon. A trial version of Photoshop 7 can be downloaded if you want to run your own tests. (Stock Machine Score: 15.77 seconds)

Application Performance

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 We did not use the G5 plug-in for our Photoshop tests ... we couldn't get it to work. BareFeats was able to get the plug-in up and running and reported that it did little to improve score results for them. (Stock Machine Score: 38 seconds)

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 Score: 71.66 seconds)

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. Four songs totaling 16.5 minutes in length were converted. Note: converting files off the hard drive on the Dual G5/1 GHz (rather than from the CD), took only half as long. (Stock Machine Score: 76.92 seconds)

This test takes place in a large AppleWorks document. The results for the G5 Towers are a testament to their far and away faster System bus. (Bus speed is half the processor speed on the G5s and only 12% of the processor speed on the G4/1.42 GHz). The G4/133 MHz PowerBook beat out the dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac, we believe, because it has twice the amount of speedy L2, on-chip cache. Both machines have the same speed System Bus. (Stock Machine Score: 107.25 seconds)

We imported a 175 MB DV file into iMovie 3. Drive performance and processing power are important here. This action also takes advantage of dual processors. Why did the Dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac show much better performance? We think it is down to several factors. Better relative drive performance, 2 MB of high-speed L3 cache, both of which the 1.42 GHz has (Stock Machine Score: 19.58 seconds)

Multitasking Performance

The MP3 Encode, Photoshop Normal and Word Macro tests are all run at the same time. (Stock Machine Score: 147.77 seconds)

QuickTime DV Encode and iMovie Effect are performed at the same time. (Stock Machine Score: 164.70 seconds)