Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core 8GB kit $232 / 4GB kit $116 / 2GB kit $72. New Macbook 2GB DDR3-$65. HARD DRIVES available -- Free shipping / LIfetime warranty.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, MacBook Pros and more. Optical Drives for Apple iBooks, Powerbooks, MacBooks, MacBook Pros in Stock. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

OWC: Premium Memory for Mac without the Premium Price. DDR2 4GB from $47.99, DDR3 4GB for Unibody $79.99, Mac Pro 4GB $97.99. Expert Support, Free Installation Videos & Guides. www.MacSales.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Low End Mac Benchmarks

Power Mac G3/350

Dan Knight - 2008.03.18 - Tip Jar

I've had this Blue & White G3 in my office on and off for a few months. I spent several weeks working on it and a "Mystic" Power Mac G4/450 trying to get them both working reliably. Long story short, the problems turned out to be some bad RAM.

The Blue & White was the first Mac with a FireWire port and the first Power Mac with the "drawbridge" case design that Apple used through the last G4 Power Macs. It has an ATI Rage 128 video card on a 66 MHz PCI bus (twice the speed of regular PCI) and also has three 64-bit PCI slots (regular PCI is 32-bit). After removing troublesome RAM, I ended up with 384 MB.

This machine was an invaluable tool in learning about getting the best YouTube performance from G3 Macs, as it let me run three different versions of OS X and change the resolution and bit-depth of the monitor. (After all the testing, we recommended Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther", setting resolution to 800 x 600 or even 640 x 480, and going to thousands of colors instead of millions. Reader weighed in with even more suggestions the next day.)

This computer has two hard drives, an 80 GB 7200 rpm Deskstar, which is one of my favorite drives, and a 60 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9. Each drive is partitioned and has Mac OS X 10.2.8, 10.3.9, and 10.4.11 installed. I have an Apple mouse and keyboard attached and used a 17" Samsung 700DF monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution and millions of colors unless otherwise noted. Only the Deskstar drive was benchmarked.

Speedometer 4.02

The system was tested on 18 March 2008 using Mac OS 9.2.2 with its default set of extensions and control panels. Computer attached to a 17" color monitor and tested in 8-bit video mode at 640 x 480 resolution. Virtual memory is off except in the third test. Results are relative to a Quadra 605, which rates 1.0. Numbers rounded off to one or two decimal places.

The first set of numbers compares performance at different cache settings. (Because Power Macs don't support 1-, 2-, or 4-bit video, Speedometer 4 was unable to test the graphics.)

cache   CPU  graphics  disk    math
128KB   22.5   n/a     4.58   977.6
  8MB   23.1   n/a     4.91   976.2
8M/VM   22.5   n/a     4.64   975.6

The best overall results are achieved with the default 8 MB disk cache and virtual memory disabled.

MacBench 5

Virtual memory is turned off. Results are relative to a Power Mac G3/300, which rates 1000. The system was tested with both minimum and maximum cache sizes.

cache    CPU   math   disk   gr.
128KB   1140   1159   1753   n/a
  8MB   1139   1160   2536   n/a

There's virtually no difference between the math and CPU scores, but you can easily see how much a larger cache boosts the disk test. Our advice: leave it set to the default setting in the Memory control panel.

Let 1000 Windows Bloom

The system was tested on 18 March 2008. Running Jaguar (OS X 10.2.8), it displayed 1000 windows in 95.4 seconds. The same test took only 64.5 seconds under Panther (10.3.9), and just 48.6 sec. in Tiger (10.4.11). Apple has definitely been improving graphics performance as Mac OS X has moved forward.

Power Fractal

This program creates a fractal pattern, which can really bog down a CPU. It does not run under Jaguar. Under Panther, it took 49.6 seconds and scored 287.6 Mflops. Under Tiger, the test took 50.0 seconds and scored 285.3 Mflops.

Xbench

Xbench has been out for some time, and version 1.1.3 runs on all three versions of OS X installed on the Blue & White. It tests a lot of things. Here are the test results using Xbench 1.1.3 for OS X 10.2.8 (100 = 1 GHz G4) and 1.3 for 10.3 and 10.4 (100 = 2.0 GHz G5):

           10.2.8  10.3.9  10.4.11
Overall     33.4    10.8    11.9  
CPU         21.8     9.9     9.6  
Threads     25.8    15.0    14.8  
Memory      22.4     6.5     6.5  
Quartz      39.6    15.9    16.1  
OpenGL      49.7    26.4    28.1  
User Int.   47.2     5.0     7.0  
Drive       72.6    47.5    45.7

We can see where Apple has been tweaking Mac OS X over the years. The overall score is about 10% higher under 10.4 than 10.3, but some scores are better (esepcially User Interface) while others are lower (CPU and threads), showing where Apple is putting the focus as it moves ahead.

Geekbench

Geekbench only runs in Tiger and Leopard (which doesn't run on G3 Macs). Scores under OS X 10.4.11 are 240 for the Integer test, 230 for floating point, 120 for Memory, 82 for Streams, and 196 overall.

Conclusion

While Mac OS X keeps getting better, G3 hardware is being left further and further behind - and completely abandoned with OS X 10.5. Still, this old workhorse performs admirably, and I haven't even tried to overclock it yet.

Go to the Blue & White Power Mac G3 profile.

Links for the Day

Recent Content

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.