Four way 400MHz Shootout:
Beige Desktop (G3/G4) and PM 7500 (G3/G4)
go head to head with G4 Sawtooth and G4 Yikes
2/18/2000
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

Bare Feats compares the performance of the G4 Sawtooth and G4 Yikes to a Beige Desktop (Rev 1) and Power Mac 7500 (both "old" machines sporting G3 and G4 ZIF upgrades). All test systems were running at 400MHz. All test systems had a 3Dfx Voodoo 3000 graphics accelerator. All test systems were using an ATA/66 controller and Seagate Barracuda 20 gig Ultra ATA/66 drive.

CPU (& FPU) crunching...

Reaction: Photoshop "likes" bandwidth and memory bus speed. The Graphite G4's are most impressive.

 

Reaction: The 7500 surprised me. Not bad.

 

3D Game Frame Rates

Reaction: If your main performance need is 3D gaming, the "older" Power Macs with G3/G4 upgrades and Voodoo3 3000 boards are plenty fast. But for ultimate frame rates, the "real" G4 minitowers are significantly faster. Note the Sawtooth's Voodoo3 AGP 3D graphics accelerator didn't make it faster than the Yikes' PCI 3D graphics accelerator.

  

Reaction: Again, any model of Graphite G4 runs comfortably beyond the "jerky" threshold. (Any frame rate lower than 16 fps appears jerky to the naked eye.)

 

Hard Disk speed comparison

Remember, all four machines used an ATA/66 controller and Seagate Barracuda ATA/66 drive in all four machines.

Reaction: I'm impressed with the Beige Desktop's performance. Encouraging if you are upgrading. The PM 7500 lags behind the others. Way behind.

  

Conclusion: "Hot rodding" your older Power Mac can be fun and extend the life of your original investment, especially if you have maxed out the memory and added other optional equipment that won't transfer easily to the newest generation of Graphite Power Macs.

Just be careful not to spend too much on your old machine. You can save big if you don't run G4 "velocity engine" aware applications like Photoshop 5.5. The G3 ZIF upgrades are less than half the cost of the G4 ZIF upgrades ($199 versus $599). Yet, at some point it makes financial sense to sell/donate the old and buy the new.

 

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

	PM 7500	Beige DT	Yikes!	Sawtooth
CPU	XLR8 G3/400 ZIF in CarrierZIF and G4/400 Powerlogix PowerForce	G3/400 OWC Mercury ZIF and G4/400 Powerlogix PowerForce ZIF	G4/400	G4/400
Bus Speed	50MHz	66MHz	100MHz	100MHz
Cache	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)
RAM	160 MB	128 MB	256 MB (8ns)	256 MB (8ns)
Graphics	33MHz PCI slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	33MHz PCI slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	66MHz PCI slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	133MHz AGP 2X slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A) drive connected to a ATA/66 interface	Seagate Barracuda 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A) drive connected to a ATA/66 interface	Seagate Barracuda 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A) drive connected to a ATA/66 interface	Seagate Barracuda 20 gig 7200 RPM ATA/66 (ST320430A) drive connected to a ATA/66 interface

 

• Photoshop 5.5 was given 100MB of app size on each machine. The test file was 17MB. AltiVecCore was enabled on all three test machines. And average time was computed for 4 functions:
  • Rotate (30 degrees)
  • Gaussian Blur (30 pixels)
  • LightingEffects (Flashlight - default settings)
  • Motion Blur (30 degrees, 30 pixels)
• Bryce 3D 4.0 rendering was used to test a combination of CPU and FPU speed.
• Quake II test was run by pressing "~" after startup and typing "timedemo 1" (return) and "~" again. When the first person dies, I press "~" again to get the frame rate. Beta 11 version of the 3Dfx drivers were used.
• Unreal 3D test used the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.2.x of Unreal, you press "~" and enter "timedemo 1." Then press "~" to open up the full screen again. It begins the fly sequence at the castle entrance. (Get the latest latest Mac version of UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.)
• For the DUPLICATE THREE 27MB DOCS test, I copied onto each drive. Then I timed how long it took to duplicate three copies of a 27MB Adobe Photoshop document on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.
• For the DUPLICATE 91Mb FOLDER test, I took the 91MB Unreal Tournament DEMO game folder containing 202 documents and I timed how long it took to duplicate it on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.