Several days ago we posted our review
of the Sonnet Harmoni upgrade cards. This review included
extensive performance results of the upgrade cards when installed
in a iMac
G3/233 running OS 10.2. Below we post results from the
same cards, installed in the same machine, but this time running
OS 9.2.2. Many of the people with the original iMacs, we are
sure, are still running some version of OS 9 ... or earlier.
The results below should give you an idea of what kind of
performance boost you should see if you choose to purchase
and install a Harmoni upgrade.
We also threw in results from other Macintosh
computers in the same megahertz range as the upgrades. This
will give you an idea of how a Harmoni upgraded machine will
compare with other machines that are clocked similarly.
Under OS 9 the Harmoni upgrades turned in from
just a shade under double, to two and a quarter times the
performance of a stock G3/233 MHz iMac, when working on processor
intensive tasks.
"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 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.
Finder Tests
The test above copies a folder containing
thousands of files. This type of copying requires more processing
overhead than a single, large file duplication. However
a faster processor won't make much of a difference if the
bottleneck is on the drive performance level.
Processor performance is less of a factor
here and the drive performance is more important. Interestingly
the two sets of results above, hard drive performance when
carrying out copy functions, were somewhat different when
the machine was running OS X and the same tests were carried
out.
AppleWorks 6 Tests
The graphics sub-system and processor influence
the scores above. The drive is not a factor
The machines with a small L2 cache are hurt
in this test. 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 Harmoni G3/600 achieved 20.4 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.
Photoshop 6 & Other Data Crunching
Tests
The test suite above takes special advantage
of the G4 processor
This is pure, raw data crunching. Program
does not take advantage of the G4
This is a combination of both processor and
graphics card performance
Encoding/Decoding Tests
Another Multimedia program that really takes
full advantage of the G4
Another App tuned to the G4's capabilities.
However CD drive speed is also a factor in some cases
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