The SpeedZone: A Month Ago
It Was The Top Of The Line Power Mac, Now, Is It Humbled By
The Current Low End Dual 867 MHz Power Mac? - A Performance
Report
Friday,
September 6, 2002
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Below we have a performance comparison between
the new Power Mac dual G4/867 and the high-end Power Mac of
the last generation, the dual processor G4/1000. How well
does the new low-end machine stand up against the high-end
of the last generation? Not too bad. In some instances beating
the pants off the GHz machine.
Things to keep in mind when perusing the results
below:
The new machine was running the latest version
of OS X, version 10.2 ... Jaguar. The G4/1000 was running
10.1.2.
OS 10.2 is suppose to be somewhat faster in
the graphics department and in booting Classic. We found that
booting Classic on the new machine was significantly faster
but part of this in no doubt due to the better performing
drive in the 867 MHz machine.
On screen graphics in Classic environment also
proved to be faster in the new machine ... about 17%. However
in our test of on-screen graphics in OS X the scores were
pretty much the same. But this brings us to the second point
to remember about the results below.
Pound for pound ... err, I mean clock speed
to clock speed the 1 GHz machine should be 15% faster in basic
processing tasks... all things being equal.
Of course they are not equal. The GHz machine
has 2 MB of L3 cache per processor, and the 867 MHz machine
has only one. The 867 MHz machine uses DDR RAM and the GHz
machine does not ... though there is some discussion on whether
DDR RAM makes a performance difference or not. The GHz machine
also has twice the video memory of the 867, though both use
the same graphics card.
Still in most of our purely processor intensive
tasks below, the Power Mac dual GHz machine did come in 13%
to 23% faster than the 867 Mhz.
However in drive performance, and CD burning
the GHz machine was convincingly trounced by the young upstart.
This is our fist look at the Dual 867 MHz machine
and we plan numerous further comparisons. We also plan to
take an in-depth look at the performance at the Jaguar incarnation
of OS X as soon as we can get to it.
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 64MB of DDR SDRAM in 4x AGP
slot
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX with 32MB of DDR SDRAM
Drive
80GB (7200 rpm) Ultra ATA
60GB Ultra ATA/100; 7200 rpm
CD Drive
2x 6x 8x 4x 24x
8x 16x10x 32x
Operating System
10.1.2
10.2
Price
$2,999
$1,699
"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 G4/1000, which is set to 100%. For all scores,
higher numbers are better.
Desktop Tests
Jaguar is supposed to boot faster into Classic mode, but
the faster drive on the new 867 MHz machine is a factor
here as well
A significant boost to drive performance on
the new machine
Combo drive trumps SuperDrive in basic CD
burning (16x vs 6x)
Pretty evenly matched here in this 2D graphics
test . Let
1K Windows Bloom is a simple carbon application that opens
and closes 1,000 windows.
Large document is scrolled from one end to the
other using Classic OS 9.2.2 when booted in OS 10. Test shows
the performance of on-screen graphics. Quite possible the
better performance of the 867 MHz machine is due to the purported
faster graphics of 10.2.
Large Document & Database Type Tests
A Macro
(series of complex actions) was run in Microsoft's Word program,
which is part of Office
X
A Macro (series of complex actions) was run
in Microsoft's Excel program, which is part of Office
X
Stresses the processing & memory systems
of the machine. This test takes place in a large AppleWorks
document. This is a raw processing power 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
power of each machine
Encoding/Decoding Tests
A Sorenson
encode compresses a QuickTime movie for streaming on the Web
Multitasking
A Sorenson encode and fractal render are performed
at the same time
Gaming
Aside from the graphics card, Giants
is also tuned to take advantage of the processor as well.
Indeed, when run on a dual processor machine, you will see
Giants fly
ahead of the same game running on a single processor machine.
Frame rates here are 38 fps for the 867 MHz machine and 48
fps for the GHz machine.
To see the performance of these machines compared
to many others click
here
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