Below you will find performance results for
most of the currently shipping Power Mac machines, and a some
from previous generations. This will hopefully give you an
impression of relative performances. We will be adding new
machines on an on-going basis ... so check back once in a
while. We are gradually moving to a testing program based
on OS X, however the results below were done under either
OS 9.1 or OS 9.2.1 or 9.2.2. If you would like to see test
results for most of the machines below, when running OS X
click
here. If you would like to review the raw data upon which
these graphs are based check out this
page.
The results below show the G4/733 Power Mac
being beaten often by lower clocked machines. We believe that
this is due to the fact that this is the 733 model without
a L3 cache.
Individual 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 (with the exception of the Quake III & CineBench
2000 tests) were timed with a stopwatch. The times were then
converted to percentages relative to the Blue & White
G3/350 MHz Power Mac, which is set to 100%. For all scores
higher numbers are better
The test above copies a folder containing
thousands of files. This type of copying requires more processing
overhead than a single, large file duplication
Processor performance is less of a factor
here and the drive performance is more important.
AppleWorks 6 Tests
The graphics sub-system and processor influence
the scores above. The drive is not a factor. This is a test
where we feel that the 733 is being hurt by the lack of
a L3 cache. The Power Mac G4/800 also does not have a L3
cache. It also has a different graphics card than most of
the Power Macs listed here.
The machines without a L3 backside cache are
really hurt in this test (all the machines with low relative
scores). This will be true in any processor intensive tasks
in large documents or databases. If you work in mainly smaller
documents you will note see this kind of performance difference
Quake III Tests
These scores are relative.
At 'fastest' setting the processor plays
a bigger role (the Dual G4/1000 Power Mac achieved 130 fps)
Most, if not all, the processing is being done by the graphics
card in this test. The speed difference more or less disappears
in machines that have the same graphics card. The Dual G4/1000
Power Mac achieved 115 fps. The Power Mac G4/800 has a Radeon
7500 instead of the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX.
.
Photoshop 6 & Other Data Crunching
Tests
OK, this is why graphics professionals need
a G4 machine and a dual processor one ... preferably !
No advantage to dual processors if the software
is not written to take advantage of it
This is pure, raw data crunching. Program
does not take special advantage of the G4 or dual processors
This program loves dual processors
This is a combination of both processor
and graphics card performance
Encoding/Decoding Tests
Again another multimedia program that really
takes full advantage of the G4 - probably the best example
we have come across
Another App tuned to the G4's capabilities.
However CD drive speed is also a factor. The 733's CD drive
speed is 32X its contemporaries 24X
Again in this test we can only assume that
the 733 is hurt by the lack of a L3 cache
Main factor here is the burn rate of the
CD drive. For These results the Power Mac G4/1000 is set
to 100%
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