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Application Tests Results

Photoshop 4.01 tests

Since one of the images was 57.2 MB in size when loaded, Photoshop was allocated 90 MB of RAM. See the test notes for more information regarding the test setup. "Apple HD/120mhz" = Apple 8500/120, stock 2gig drive, with 1 meg L2 cache. "Apple HD/G3" = Apple 8500, with PowerForce 250 card running at 45/292/292 (the same CPU card was used for the Cheetah tests). A 512k disk cache was used for all tests.

Launch PhotoShop:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 12.53
  • Apple HD/G3: 8.34
  • Cheetah: 4.14
Load 24.6 MB File:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 19.60
  • Apple HD/G3: 14.78
  • Cheetah: 11.22
Rotate 57.2 MB image 3o:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 2:35.13
  • Apple HD/G3: 1:21.13
  • Cheetah: 56.22
Save as 63.6 MB Tiff image:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 1:04.47
  • Apple HD/G3: 38.96
  • Cheetah: 23.13
Load 63.6 MB Uncomp. Tiff image:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 32.75
  • Apple HD/G3: 25.85
  • Cheetah: 15.63
CYMK Convert 57 MB image:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 1:06.85
  • Apple HD/G3: 45.50
  • Cheetah: 35.53
Duplicate 27 MB file in the finder:

  • Apple HD/120mhz: 16.03
    (Narrow 5400 RPM, Seagate/Apple 2.0Gig Drive - Apple controller)

  • Apple HD/G3: 15.15

  • X-Force 250: 6.41
    (Fast/Wide IBM 9200 RPM 9.1 Gig Drive - ATTO Controller)

  • Cheetah: 4.97
    (Ultra/Wide 4 Gig Drive - ATTO Controller)

    In the finder duplicate file test, the Cheetah Combo was 306% faster than the stock Apple HD/Controller (with same G3 CPU card), and 28.9% faster than the 285mhz Xforce 250 system using the same controller, but with a IBM Fast/Wide (not Ultra) disk. There is no doubt that the Cheetah is the fastest drive you can buy.

A Note To PhotoShop Testers: Be aware when running tests like this that Photoshop stores the Preferences file (which contains the Scratch disk settings) on the startup disk, no matter what disk Photoshop is run from.

You must verify the Preferences settings when testing each disk (scratch disk and plugins disk), and change as necessary. You must restart (exit and restart Photoshop) for the preferences changes to take effect. Otherwise you'll get similar readings on both drives because they were using the same scratch disk(s). I highly suggest making the faster drive the startup disk before running tests from it.

You cannot compare these results to the Xforce 250 Photoshop test results, which used a 50MB Photoshop allocation (due to the machine having only 80MB of RAM). The Photoshop RAM allocation is 80% higher for these tests - which dramatically lowered some times even with the stock Apple drive.

All tests run on PowerMac 8500, with 128megs ram, OS 7.6.1, Speed Doubler 2 and LibMoto were active. Speed Doubler's "faster disk" setting was disabled. CPU card used was a PowerForce 250, running at 45mhz bus, 292mhz cpu speed with a 1:1 cache (292mhz). The tests were run three times (restarted each time) and the average time is shown.
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