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 The Source for Mac Performance News and Reviews |
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 First Look: XLR8's G4 400MHz CPU Upgrade How does it compare to the G3? Published: 9/02/99 (Updated 9/4/99 for SoundJam 1.1 tests) |
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Introduction: In some ways testing a G4 CPU with the current MacOS and applications is like running a V8 engine on 4 cylinders; you're not using 1/2 the horsepower of the processor. Test results in current apps with no Altivec support were disappointing based on the 'supercomputer' comments I'd heard on the G4. The only software I had that used the G4's main claim to fame (the Altivec instruction set that Apple calls the 'Velocity Engine') was XLR8's PowerFrax fractal generator and Soundjam MP v1.1 which did show substantial performance increases with the G4. Even I was puzzled by some of the results in non-Altivec applications and I retested repeatedly to ensure they weren't a fluke. Perhaps disabling 'Speculative Processing' hurts G4 performance more than it does for the G3. Enabling 'Speculative Processing' on the G4 caused boot errors in my tests, at least with this beta control panel/extension on this 9500 motherboard Mac. G4 systems from Apple will have it enabled I'm sure and will help performance in most apps I'm sure. Photoshop was one application where I've seen better performance with it disabled however (based on previous tests in CPU Upgrade reviews). Things look much brigher for the G4 in the future however, with OS 9 said to have some core Altivec support and with Quicktime (and QD3D/OpenGL I hope) also set to use the 'Velocity Engine'. Adobe's recent press release indicates their G4 core/lighting plug-ins can boost Photoshop 5.5 performance in some functions by 10 to 15 times. That claim is impressive and I was very disappointed to not be able to obtain the plug-ins for this article. I'm hopeful performance in Apple's G4 systems (Sawtooth) will show better results than these tests with an older Mac since that system has an improved bus that takes advantage of the new 'maxbus' feature of the G4 CPU. I have a G4/AGP 500MHz system on order and will update this page with results when it arrives. As you'll see in the tables below, Altivec enabled applications (PowerFrax and Soundjam) showed good gains from the G4, but most existing applications (without Altivec support) perform almost identically on a G4 as a G3 CPU of the same speed. Games were one exception where I consistently saw approximately 10% better framerates with the G4 CPU. The biggest surprise for me was the memory bandwidth benchmark; where the G4 produced substantially higher rates in the memory bench test than the G3 even on this older Mac's 50MHz system bus and old PCI/memory controller. I had assumed the G3 had already saturated the older Mac's memory bus. As I mentioned before, I was confused at some of the test results but repeating the tests confirmed they were consistent. Memory bandwidth tests showed the G4 as a clear winner even for data larger than the backside cache, yet MacBench CPU and Bytemark Integer tests both showed the G4 a hair slower than the G3. Rendering applications like Bryce2 and Infini-D showed literally identical performance with either processor. I can only guess the beta control software, disabled Speculative Processing, or some errata (bug/error) in this particular early G4 chip may be responsible. This particular G4 chip was made in in May of 1999 (date code 9919, stepping 2.2). Current G4s with later steppings (revisions) may perform differently. I hear that Apple's shipping G4s have v2.6 of the G4 and that 500MHz models may have v2.7.
For these tests I used a 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 graphics card. There were two reasons for using the Voodoo3 - a) the Orion's drivers caused hangs with every OpenGL game tested with the G4 CPU and b) it is the only card with enough fill-rate performance to not be a bottleneck for a fast CPU. As noted in my video card reviews, most other Mac video cards just run out of breath at 1024x768 in 3D games. The Voodoo3 doesn't.
 During all tests the only thing that was changed was the CPU card and control panel/extension. XLR8 provided an early 1.4.1b0 version for use with the G4 upgrade. Speculative processing was left at the default disabled setting (per XLR8's recommendation). Enabling it may have helped some tests such as MacBench. With this early beta G4 control software, enabling Speculative Processing caused problems which prevented me from testing with that feature on. Unless noted otherwise, both the G4 and G3 tests had Speculative processing disabled. Most of you will be disappointed (as I was) in the fact that most of the applications I tested showed no real gain with the G4 over a G3 of the same CPU speed. Even MacBench's CPU score was literally identical (oddly the G4 scored 2% less than the G3 in repeated tests). Macbench's FPU score did favor the G4 by 11% however. |
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| Benchmark Tests | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PowerFrax:
ByteMark DR/3:
Memory Bandwidth Tests: In the tables below, scores above the red line are for data sizes that fit in the backside cache - below the red line indicates main memory bus performance.   Memory Bench shows the G4 as a clear winner, with the highest rates I've seen from any older Mac. For rates from the 100MHz memory bus B&W G3/400 see this image from my Interleaved RAM article. |
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Applications Performance
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SoundJam MP 1.1 G4 Tests: I downloaded the Altivec enabled SoundJam v1.1 demo and ran tests converting a CD audio file (Scorpions "Winds of Change" song) with the G4 and G3. Both cards were set to the same CPU/Cache/Bus speed (400/200/50) so the difference in times were a direct result of the Altivec instructions. The Genesis has an Apple 24X CDROM drive and the song was 5 min. 13 seconds in duration. [Update: Due to reader requests, I've added results of MP3 encoding with a Dell Pentium III 500 (Win98) using RealPlayer's free Jukebox application.] The results are shown below:
[Update: A B&W G3/400 owner with 32X CDROM drive reported a rate of 3.1X. He also noted only 1 second difference between encoding times from CD or the Hard Drive.] A better/faster CDROM drive may have improved times, but personally I was impressed with the gain provided on this early (May 1999) stepping G4 CPU. As I mentioned previously, sources tell me early G4 CPUs have errata (term for bugs in the chip design) that probably doesn't exist in the current G4s which may offer even better performance.
This page lists test results in common Mac benchmarks and applications like Photoshop 5, Bryce 2, Infini-D 4.01, After Effects 3.1, Premiere 4.2 and popular 3D games like Quake2, Q3test 1.08 and Unreal v224b7.
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| Infini-D 4.01 Tests | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I used the same Infini-D 4.0 tutorial file rendering test as I've done in past reviews using the 'Chapter 7 completed' scene. Rendering quality was set to Ray Trace, medium anti-aliasing, shadows on, patch detail low. Infini-D was allocated 40MB of RAM for the tests. The Genesis tests used OS 8.1 , the B&W G3 used OS 8.6. Speculative Processing was disabled for the Genesis tests which hurts Infini-D scores based on past experience (appx. 1 minute increase in this test).
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| Bryce 2 Tests | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I also ran tests in Bryce 2, using the samples scenes in the KAI folder called "Magical Knight I" and "Alexandria II". Bryce 2 was left at the default memory allocation of 16980k, antialiasing was on, screen resolution was set to 1024x768, thousands colors. Genesis tests used OS 8.1, the B&W G3 used OS 8.6. Bryce2, like most rendering apps, is primarily CPU speed dependent and does not usually show any advantage to faster bus speeds.
Again I was surprised that this CPU/FPU bound program didn't benefit from the G4. |
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| After Effects 3.1 Tests | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The following is a chart showing the time to render a special effects movie (10MB file size) in AE with the G4/400 and G3/400 with a B&W G3/400 for comparison. Resolution was set to 1024x768, thousands colors as was common on all but the Photoshop 5 tests.
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| Photoshop Tests: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I also ran a complete PS5Bench (21 filter test) series. System settings were per PSBench requirements - 1024x768, millions colors, Interpolation set to bicubic (better) and Photoshop should be allocated enough RAM (I used 80MB) to avoid any swap file activity from the 10MB test image filter actions (according to Adobe disk activity still happens however). Virtual Memory was off as with all my tests. I never touched Photoshop's history settings (default of 20 with 'automatically create first snapshot' enabled). I was unable to obtain the G4 Altivec plug-ins for Photoshop 5.5 but will update this page with those tests if they are received before I have to return the G4. All results below were with Photoshop 5.02, which favored the G4 by a small margin. Numbers in the chart are seconds to complete the filter action, so lower scores are better.
Note: My stock Apple B&W G3/400 (OS 8.5.1) scored 148.6. A Pentium III 500Mhz (500/250/100) Windows 98 system with 256MB SDRAM took 165.7 seconds to complete this test. Adobe's Pentium III Photoshop SSE update was applied prior to the test. See my Photoshop5 Performance page for more results including Pentium III/Dual Pentium II
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| Game Performance Tests: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Games did show approx.. a 10% boost as I had suspected. I used a 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI card since most other Mac video cards are the bottleneck with a fast G3 CPU. Remember that regardless of your CPU speed if your video card can only produce 30 frames per second a faster CPU card won't help. The Voodoo3 has the highest fill rate of any Mac card I'm aware of and framerates depend on the fill rate of the card (and a CPU that can keep the card 'fed' with data). Tests were done in Quake2, Q3test 1.08 and Unreal v224b7. Since the video card is a major factor in the speed (and quality) of 3D games, I used a Voodoo3 which unlike most other Mac video cards, can't seem to be saturated even with the fastest CPU. Quake2 Performance: The following table illustrates Quake2 performance with the upgrade. Included in the scores for reference is the same Voodoo3 card installed in the 66MHz PCI slot of a Blue and White G3/400.
Q3Test 1.08: I used Q3Test v1.08 (latest currently available) for all tests. Graphics settings in the game were :
As shown in the table below, the G4 delivered appx. 10% faster framerates than the G3 in the same Genesis system.
Unreal 224B7: The table below summarizes results from the 3rd cycle timedemo of the 'Castle flyby' scene. (All tests used the same detail settings - see my FPS Database entry page to download Unreal.ini files for RAVE and 3dfx cards.)
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Observations:
For B&W G3 owners with updated ROMs, XLR8 is working on a fix for the ROM check to allow these systems to use G4 upgrades.
Summary: Until more software is available that takes advantage of Altivec extensions in the G4 CPU, don't expect performance to exceed that of a G3 of the same speed. Games are one area where there was a small (10%) consistent boost without Altivec. These test results here are hardly an indicator of the G4's potential with software that uses its new instructions. With OS 9 said to have core Altivec support (hopefully both Quicktime and Quickdraw3D/OpenGL), a G4 CPU should show significant gains for multimedia functions (video, audio) in the future. And with Apple's aggressive pricing on the G4 systems, look for 3rd party software support to increase, as having 'Optimized for Altivec' will surely be a way for companies to increase the performance and attraction of their products. If you're looking to buy a new system, then a G4 is the logical choice. For owners of G3 CPUs, I'd suggest waiting until a) more software uses Altivec and b) prices for G4 upgrades drop. Since the G4 supports up to 2MB of backsidec cache (twice the G3 limit), this feature should be of benefit to older Macs as well. Although there are no announced G4 systems or upgrades with more than one processor, unlike the G3 the G4 was designed with multiprocessor support. Imagine OS X with two or four G4s... PowerPC 7400/G4 Specs: Based on Motorola info as of this date. Note that a 500MHz is due in October and my sources indicate it may have a 10x or 12X bus/CPU ratio.
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Copyright © Mike, 1999. No part of this sites content or images are to be reproduced or distributed in any form without written permission. Users of the web site must read and are bound by the terms and conditions of use. |
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