'Deuce Coupe' with XLR8's NEW G4 and G3 upgrades takes on Apple's G4/400 Yikes!
Posted 11/1/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

The upgrade boards are popping up fast and furiously. If your head is swimming with all the choices, join the club! I think this page will add some clarity to the choices before you.

CPU crunching...

 

2D test...

 

3D Games...
(all systems had a Voodoo3 board)

 

Conclusion: The bottlenecks* of the 7500 keep it from matching the speed of a Graphite G4/400 Yikes with the exception of the Bryce 3D rendering. But the MACh boards are still impressive.

Should you buy a CPU upgrade? If you have a large investment in memory and peripherals that only work on your present machine, it's certainly the easiest way to enjoy more speed. Add that to the fact that many large companies are more apt to approve upgrades than new machines, upgrading has never looked so good.

 

 

Other Comments:

The XLR8 MACh G4/350's switches were set to run at 400MHz. The MACh G3/500 beat the MACh G4 on 4 out of 6 tests. If you're not running Photoshop or some other AltiVec aware application, even the G3/400 is plenty fast and a lot cheaper than the G4. I've seen some sources advertising the G3/400 ZIF for as little as $275.

I decided to run the 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 board in both the Yikes and the 7500 because it's the fastest 3D board I've tested. If 2D is your thing, the Formac ProFormance3 is faster. You need both 2D and 3D? Then I would get the Voodoo board. If you never play games and only work in 2D, the RAGE 128 will be sufficient.

*"Bottlenecks" refers the slower system bus, PCI slot, and memory speed of the 7500. The Yikes has much better vital statistics all around. Just look at the chart below.

Test Configurations & Procedures

	Yikes!	"Deuce Coupe" Power Mac 7500
CPU	G4/400	XLR8 MACh CarrierZIF with G4/350 (set to 400), G4/500, and G4/400.
Bus Speed	100Mhz	50Mhz
Cache	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1
RAM	256 MB (8ns)	160 MB (60ns)
Graphics	66MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 running at 166MHz	33MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 running at 166MHz

• Bryce 3D 4.0 is my new "real world" test for a combination of CPU and FPU speed. The fact that the G3's won this test shows the G3 is no whimp. I used the sample file called "BeachChairR.br3" for this render test. Bryce is not AltiVec "aware" like Photoshop, my other CPU/FPU tester.
• Photoshop 5.5 was given 100MB of app size. The test file was 17MB. The functions tested included:
  • Gaussian Blur (30 pixels)
  • LightingEffects (Flashlight)
• For Voodoo3 boards to run Quake II in OpenGL mode, it requires a special version of the "ref_gl.lib" from Mesa3DGraphics in the Quake II folder. It also requires an extension file called "Mesa3DGraphicsLibQuake2" to be placed in the System folder. The 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.
• Unreal 3D tests not only the CPU but the 3D graphics acceleration. I used the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.x.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 UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.) The 1024 x 768 resolution was set by editing the "unreal.ini" document.
• The Photoshop 5.5 scrolling test was done by zooming in at 400%, moving the scroll button to the top, and holding the scroll arrow down while it scrolls to the bottom. Time was recorded in the nearest tenth of a second with a digital stop watch.

BIG MAHALO TO....

...3Dfx for the use of the Voodoo3 3000 PCI card

...XLR8/Interex for the use of the CarrierZIF G4/350, G4/500, and G4/400

...Metacreations for the use of Bryce 3D