A reader sent the results of iMovie2 Export tests with the new iMac G4/800 vs other G4 and G3 Macs.

" Hi Mike!
At a job this weekend I did some tests to compare the speed difference of the following machines:

• G4/867, GeForce2MX, 320MB RAM
• iMac G4/800, 256MB RAM
• TiBook 550, 256MB RAM
• iBook 600, 256MB RAM
• G4/350, 192MB RAM (my own machine for personal reference)

Well, I really do understand why apple wants to move to the G4 so badly. Video rocks on them - period.

My test was done in iMovie 2 for MacOSX 10.1. First I timed the opening of the application iMovie (much slower on laptops than desktop FYI). Secondly I did a 2.04 sec/frame crossfade between two clips. Last but not least I exported the project as a QuickTime movie (default "CD-ROM medium" setting). The results can be found on the image below. All numbers are in seconds.

I was very surprised to find that my G4/350 kicks the new iBook 600«s but by quite a margin. Around 50% faster! The TiBook is slower per Mhz than my machine as well. Even so, the iMac G4/800 isn«t at all as fast as a real PowerMac G4 with 133 buss and L3-cache. As you can see the iMac was 30-60% slower than the PowerMac G4.

It will be interesting to try some other apps and games on the new iMac. Personally I reckon it looks great even though I do prefer a huge CRT over a semi-small TFT.

Keep up that great site of yours!
Erik L. "

Ian Page sent results of his Quake3 tests:

" Well its not the complete article but I found some time for quick Quake 3 fps benchmarking on the iMac with the built-in demo script.

iMac 800MHz with 512 MB RAM (1 - SDRAM DIMM)
Quake 3 1.30 on Mac OS X 10.1.3 (Clean install) with all options at max in 32bit colour. No special .cfg tweaks

1024x768 - 38.3 fps
800 x 600 - 50.8 fps
640 x 480 - 53.1

Quake 3 1.30 on Mac OS 9.2.2 (Clean install) with NVIDIA 2.5 drivers with all options at max in 32bit colour. Again no special .cfg tweaks

1024 x 768 with VM - 41.3
1024 x 768 with VM off - 38.6
-Ian"

Another reader had previously posted in the forums a comparison of the iMac G4/800 vs Cube G4/500 (Radeon AGP) Quake3 tests:

" I compared the Framerates between the following systems:

500 MHZ G4 Cube w/Radeon and 448MB of Ram
800 MHZ G4 iMac w/GeForce2MX and 256 MB of RAM.

All tests were in OS X 10.1.2.
Since I copied my user directory over to the iMac from the Cube, everything was identical.
Resolution was 1024x768 with high details and textures. (1024x768 is the max resolution of the iMac G4's built-in Display-Mike)

Quake III Arena
Built in demo. Average of 4 runs.

TIME FPS
CUBE: 29.2 42.9
iMAC: 27.1 46.6

UT OS X Preview 2 Wicked400

TIME MIN MAX AVG
(SEC) FPS FPS FPS
CUBE 110.6 12.7 34.6 21.8
iMAC 109.7 12.6 32.9 22.0

X-Plane 6.10 Beta-6
I deleted the preferences so it would use the X-Plane defaults.
I launched X-plane and only turned on the FPS Display. I did not touch the default plane sitting on the default runway. After a couple minutes of observation:

CUBE - 16-17 FPS
iMac - 19-20 FPS
LC "