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Dual
G4 running OS X and "Cocoa-ized" Quake III Arena
breaks the 100 FPS barrier! Post
Date: January 12th, 2001 I'm sitting in the audience
listening to Steve Jobs announce the newly revised
G4 Power Macs with the nVidia GeForce2 MX card as
standard equipment. As everyone around me cheers
and applauds, I'm thinking, "I feel a new speed
test coming on!!!" As Steve sang the praises of OS
X, I'm thinking, "Oh God, please make the game
developers dream that they were sent to Hell
because they didn't Velocity-ize and Cocoa-ize
their applications." So as I'm sitting in the
briefing room getting an update from the folks at
ATI, one of them mentions, "We have a dual G4/500
with a Radeon right outside the door running OS X.
It's got the OS
X version of Quake III
Arena with MP awareness.
And right next to it is a Pentium 3 933MHz with a
GeForce2 MX card. Wanna test them while you're
here?" I nearly wet my trousers!!! Not only did I get to test those
two machines but I was able to run the same tests
on the 733MHz model and the dual G4/533 in the
Apple booth, both with GeForce2 MX
cards! And that's not all. I tested the
PCI version of the Radeon
side by side with the Voodoo5 on a G4/450 for all
you with Graphite Yikes, Blue'n'Whites, and Beige
Boxes. Before you view the charts
below, I hope you empty your bladder
first. *** FLASH!
This is old news. Jump to a more recent test where
the Dual
800 G4 running OS X.1 gets Quake3 Arena
1.30
beta running at 184 frames per second!
*** Performance
Analysis Wow! OS X rules! Finally the Mac
is going to be able to crank out some decent frame
rates! And I understand that there are more
optimizations coming for the Radeon OS X drivers as
well as OS X itself that will make Quake III run
even faster. (Get your own copy of the OS X version
of Quake III by downloading it from the
Omni
Group's site. OS X beta
contains the beta version of the Radeon
drivers.) In the 1024 x 768 "High Quality"
test, the OS X version of Quake III and the Radeon
didn't fair as well against the new G4 Power Macs.
ATI feels confident that the released version of
their drivers will give a much different
result. So which GRAPHICS CARD do you
order with your new BTO G4 PowerMac?
For
test results comparing the Radeon and GeForce2 MX
in the same G4/466, go to THIS
PAGE. I'm disappointed that that not
all versions of the newest G4 Power Mac are
available in dual processor configuration. I
understand Apple's reasons but I'm still
disappointed. If I needed to buy one today, I'd
choose the dual 533MHz model over the single 733MHz
model. Why? Because of applications like Photoshop,
Cinema 4D, and Quake III Arena (OS X version) that
fully use both processors. And I expect there to be
more MP aware applications when the effort to
convert 1200+ applications to OS X reaches critical
mass this summer. I noticed in Apple's
tech document 58759 that
the 666 and 733MHz models have 256K on-chip L2
cache running at full processor speed as well as
the 1MB L3 cache running at 3:1 ratio. Which ever model you buy, it
will probably be extinct in 6 months. Count on
it. Where To
Buy Visit the
Apple
Online Store. Small
Dog Electronics
offers new and refurbished G4 Power Macs.
SPEED
TEST RESULTS
from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY) LINKS
to SPEED tests on other web sites HOT
SPEED DEALS DOWNLOADS
that add more SPEED SPEED
UPGRADE
guide Rob
Art Morgan ©
2001 Rob
Art Morgan.
Corrections on January 14th and 15th.
by rob
ART morgan,
chief test pilot
Publisher &
Chief Test Pilot
rob-art@barefeats.com
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