The G4/450 Sawtooth is starting to look overpriced compared to
the G4/400 Yikes and the recent Blue & Whites. (Shades of the IIfx!)

Maybe RAGE 128 is maxed out. So here's Voodoo3 numbers:

Take a look at these CPU numbers...

Now the disk drive...

 

Conclusion: The "king" has no clothes. If you spent $900 more for a Sawtooth, you may have been overcharged. It doesn't matter what graphics board or what graphics interface or what hard drive or what hard drive interface, the Sawtooth is toothless unless you are using AltiVec or "Velocity Engine" aware applications (Photoshop 5.5)

 Counterpoint: Wait a minute. If you configure both the Yikes and the Sawtooth the same (128M of RAM, 20 Gig drive) there is only $550 difference. And you are getting 50MHz more speed, dual USB channels, extra FireWire port, AirPort antennas and stuff like that there. If you assign a value to those things, the difference in value shrinks to something like $122. Wouldn't you really rather have something with more speed potential than a "reworked" Blue and White motherboard?

 Counter Counterpoint: Oh yeah? You go right ahead and be Apple's beta tester for yet another Rev 1 motherboard. Then a few months from now, I'll sell my Yikes and get a Rev 2 Sawtooth for $1995. Editor's Addendum: This article was written in October of 1999. As of December '99, you can get a 400MHz G4 Sawtooth for as little as $1895 with the Rev 2 board and faster RAGE Pro graphics.

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

Chart Name	Computer	Graphics Cards
Sawtooth G4/450	Graphite "Sawtooth" G4/450	RAGE 128 AGP or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (133MHz slot)
B&W G4/450	Blue & White G3/350 Rev 1* with jumpers set to 450MHz and G4 ZIF from Yikes	Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66MHz slot)
B&W G3/450	Blue & White G3/450 Rev 1* with jumpers set to 450MHz	ATI Orion RAGE 128 or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (66MHz slot)
Yikes G4/400	Graphite "Yikes!" G4/400	RAGE 128 PCI or 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 (66MHz slot)
B&W G4/400	Blue & White G3/400 Rev 1* with G4 ZIF from Yikes	Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66Mhz slot)
B&W G3/400	Blue & White G3/400 Rev 1*	Orion RAGE 128 PCI (66MHz slot)

*Since the Blue & White was a Rev 1, I replaced the graphics board with an Orion RAGE 128, which is essentially the same the board shipped in the Rev 2 Blue & Whites and the Yikes (sans DVD decorder plug). The G3 ZIF used in the upgrade was actually the ZIF from the G4/Yikes, since at press time no third party vendors were able to provide a G4 ZIF upgrade for testing.

• Unreal 3D test 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. After one trip around it displays an average, along with minimum and maximum. My charts post the average. (Get the latest latest UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.)
• Although I am repelled by most benchmarking programs, MacBench 5.0 is one of the few that closely simulates "real world" usage. I've lost a little confidence in it lately, due to inconsistent and illogical results. You need the CD-ROM to run the Graphics tests. It only costs $5 to order.
• The ATTO disk benchmark was run using Express-Pro Tools 2.2 benchmark test with 8MB maximum file size and system disk cache disabled. I put an 18 gigabyte Western Digital Expert 7200rpm ATA/66 drive in the G4/400 Yikes. It's the closest I could get to matching the Sawtooth's 20 gig standard drive (a WDC Expert 20 gig 7200rpm ATA/66). As you can see, the Yikes! with the ATA/33 interface was just as fast as the Sawtooth with its ATA/66 interface.

   

  BIG MAHALO TO...

  ...ATI Technology for the use of the Orion RAGE 128

  ...PowerLogix for the use of the ROM Patch that enabled the Blue & Whites to run the G4.