PowerBook & iBook Performance

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Below you will find performance results for most of the currently shipping portable machines, and a few 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. All the machines below were tested when running OS X and the scores are relative to the Dual G4/1GHz Tower released in the Winter of 2002.

The new 900 MHz iBook does not break any performance barrier, but it is a solid performer. For a portable it does well in drive performance, and in CD-R burning it stomps the competition by coming out 19% faster.

Although the iBook has a good sized, speedy, L2 cache, it does not, unlike most of the latest PowerBooks, have a L3 cache (neither does the 12 Inch 867 MHz PowerBook). You will see this have an effect on some of the scores below ... such as the Large Document tests.

The iBook is the only Apple computer that continues to use the G3 processor. As more and more applications move forward to take advantage of the G4 processor's special speed advantage, the G3 is beginning to look a little pale. Many of Apple's in-house applications, such as iMovie, iTunes, Final Cut Pro etc, increasingly perform much better on a G4 than on a G3. So if you are planning to make heavy use of these,or other multimedia applications, you might want to steer clear of the iBooks and take a look at what Apple is offering in the way of G4 powered PowerBooks.

The iBook is Apple's low-cost opportunity for a portable. The 14 inch model comes in at $300 less than the low-end 12 inch PowerBook. However at 5.9 pounds the iBook weighs 1.3 pounds more than the PowerBook.

The screen is a big 14 inch, and the body of the iBook is fairly large, encompassing 28% more area than the 12 inch version of the same machine.

"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 (with the exception of the game tests) were timed with a stopwatch. The times were then converted to percentages relative to the Dual G4/1GHz Power Mac, which is set to 100%. For all scores higher numbers are better. For our testing philosophy click here

Desktop Tests

Keep in mind that computers were tested with the operating system they shipped with and then related to the Dual GHz PowerMac. As the OS has evolved, the amount and type of code that loads during the boot process has changed

Booting Classic under OS 10.2 and later, is much faster than under previous versions of OS X. Booting Classic on the 900 MHz iBook took about 24 seconds

Mac OS X's new File Search function relies on both processor and drive performance. (Only 40% of the processing power of the 900 MHz iBook was used ... leaving 60% looking for something to do)

Fairly commendable performance for the 900 MHz iBook. This test copies a folder with thousands of items. This test is highly dependent on hard drive prowess and to a lesser extent on the processing and caching schemes of the computer

In the single file test the the processor & caching capability of the machine are less of a factor. It is clear that more needs to be done before the gap between portable drive performance and desktop performance is narrowed. In this test only 12% of the processor was being used by the 900 MHz iBook

Highly dependent on the burn speed of the drive. Processor usage on the 900 MHz iBook ...only 15%. The maximum burn speed of the 900 MHz iBook is 24X. The PowerBook G4/1 GHz burns at a max 8X.

The test above creates and destroys 1,000 windows. See the Let1kWindowsBloom site for more info.

Processing power and drive performance are factors

The time Photoshop takes to open is gauged

Large Document & Database Type Tests

A Macro (series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Word program. Word is part of Office X. Only 50% of the Power Mac's processing potential was being used by this action. To run the same test on the iBook 900 MHz took 100% of its processing capability

A Macro (series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program. Excel is part of Office X. Only 50% of the Power Mac's processing potential was being used by this action. To run the same test on the iBook 900 MHz took 100% of its processing capability

This test takes place in a large AppleWorks document. The fact that the iBook 900 MHz has a large, 512K of on-chip cache, running at full processor speed, helped it in this test.

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

Certain rendering actions in iMovie take good advantage of dual processors

Only 55% of the Tower's processing capability was utilized. 100% of the iBooks capacity was tapped

Only 60% of the Tower's processing capability was utilized. 100% of the iBooks capacity was tapped

BareFeats Photoshop Test Suite - mimics a production type workflow in Photoshop. This test responds partially to the G4 processor

Certain of the functions of Photoshop can take special performance advantage of the G4 processor. The Dual processor machine is using 85% of its processors

The test above consists of Photoshop functions that do not take any particular advantage of the G4. The reason that the dual processor machine doesn't show more of a performance gap, is that 50% of the processing capacity was not being utilized. So having an extra processor was not much of an advantage ... unless you wanted to do something else at the same time.

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 performance is the bottleneck. The Power Mac's processors were only 65% saturated

As you can see by the consistency of the numbers, this is straight processing work. Dual processors are not a factor, as Stuffit only makes use of one

Multitasking

MP3 Encode, AppleWorks search & replace and folder copy are all carried out at the same time.

QuickTime Encode and Fractal render are both carried out at the same time. This is heavy-duty processing work

The MP3 Encode, Photoshop Normal and Word Macro tests are all run at the same time

Another heavy duty processing test that takes full advantage of the G4 .. hence the low score of the G3 iBook

Gaming

Giants is tuned to take advantage of the processor, and dual processors, if they are present. The 900 MHz iBook turned in 15.8 fps and the Dual G4 Tower 45 fps

4x4 EVO2 is a demanding racing game. The 900 MHz iBook turned in 9.8 fps and the Dual G4 Tower 18 fps

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