Accelerate Your Mac! - PowerBook G3 vs Gateway Solo PII 9100XL PS5Bench Tests

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PowerBook G3 and Solo Image

PowerBook G3/250 vs Gateway Solo PII/266 9100XL
PhotoShop 5 Test Results

This is part three of the review which lists the results of the PS5Bench tests. Part one listed initial impressions from use and a comparison of features. Part two lists results of many common application timed tests including limited Photoshop tests. This page has a more complete series of Photoshop 5 filter and function tests (21 in all) using the PSBench action file for Photoshop 5.

System Configurations:

The Gateway Solo had 128MB of SDRAM and Windows 98.
The Maintenance Scheduler was running in the background
on the Solo, along with several system tray icons for
display settings, IE, etc. No other applications were running.
The Solo 8GB disk was approximately 50% full and not optimized.

The PowerBook G3/250 had 160MB of SDRAM, OS 8.1,
disk cache was set to 1MB, Virtual memory and AppleTalk were off.
The PB 4GB disk was also appx. 50% full and not optimized.
Photoshop 5 was allocated 50MB of RAM on the Powerbook.
Graphics mode on both machines were 1024x768, millions colors.

AC adapters were used for all tests, and energy settings were set
for maximum performance (never sleep, no processor cycling, etc.).

The PS5Bench scores below are the times in seconds that each machine took to perform each of the 21 filter operations on a 10MB image in Photoshop 5. Photoshop was allocated 50MB of RAM on the Mac. Photoshop 5 was left at the default settings under Windows 98. Window's standard virtual memory was enabled (default setting).

PS5Bench Test	Gateway Solo 9100XL PII 266 Mobile 66MHz Bus 128 MB SDRAM 512KB L2 Win98	PowerBook G3/250MHz 83MHz Bus 192 MB SDRAM 50MB alloc 1MB L2 MacOS 8.1	Comments
Rotate 90	0.96	2.06	PB first run was high (repeatable) avg of 3.9,1.2,1.1
Rotate 9	5.4	6.2
Rotate .9	5.0	4.6
Gaussian Blur 1	2.3	1.9
Gaussian Blur 3.7	4.46	5.2
Gaussian Blur 85	9.33	7.9
Unsharp 50/1/0	2.6	2.6
Unsharp 50/3/7/0	4.8	5.9
Unsharp 50/10/5	5.5	5.9
Despeckle	6.4	3.6
RGB-CMYK	11.26	8.0
Reduce Size 60%	2.1	1.93
Lens Flare	9.1	6.96
Color Halftone	17.33	8.46
NTSC Colors	10.53	6.03
Accented Edges	28.93	17.0
Pointillize	31.83	26.33
Water Color	55.0	35.6
Polar Coordinates	22.86	9.73
Radial Blur	84.6	56.43
Lighting Effects	18.2	15.13
PS5Bench Index	338.49	237.46	(Total Time)

Note: According to the PS5Bench Results page a Intel PII 333 with 75MHz bus scored 272.8.
For record scores - see my 9600/400 and Apple G3/333/222/83 PS5Bench results page.
Both those systems set new record scores of 192.0 and 178.86 respectively.

Summary:

Overall the Powerbook G3/250 was much faster at the PSBench tests as shown in the total score, taking about 2/3 the time the Solo required. The first run of the Rotate 9 degrees filter operation on the Powerbook took much longer as noted in the comments (3.8s vs 1.1 for the 2nd run). I re-ran the test and got a similarly high score for the first run.

Results like these and those shown in the other applications tests are proof that ByteMark scores cannot be used as a gauge of actual applications performance. The operating system and applications code efficiency play a large role in actual performance in use, so take ByteMark scores with a grain of salt, as they appear to be 'Benchmarketing' at its finest. That's the reason I did not show ByteMarks here, as applications tests are far more useful and illustrative of the actual machines performance.

One point to remember is that RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) chips like the PowerPC sometimes require more instructions to do the same work as a CISC (Complete Instruction Set Computer) can do in one instruction. This may explain why the applications test scores often do not reflect the huge advantage shown in the Bytemark tests.

If you missed part one of this review you'll want to read it to get a better feel for the design features and ease of use comparisons of the two machines, including a page with photos comparing them from various angles. Part two of the review contains a wide array of common applications tests between the two machines as well.

For more information on PSBench or to see a wide array of other system scores using PSBench 4 and 5 (for Photoshop 4 and 5) see: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/4363/. I've got results of Mach 5 (9600/400) and Apple G3/300 tests to post in a separate page very soon.

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