Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Get the Right Memory / Ram for your Mac. Top Quality, Competitive Prices, Lifetime Warranty. Expert Support and Video Installation Guidies too! 4.0GB Matched Sets from $87.99, Options up to 32GB. Click here

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

'Mystic' Power Mac G4/450 Dual

Dan Knight - 2008.01.25 - Tip Jar

Popularity: LEMLEMLEMLEM

It's been quite a while since we've published any new benchmark tests on Low End Mac. I've been working for the past 4-5 weeks to revive a couple of old Power Macs that never ran quite right - a Blue & White G3 and a "Mystic" Power Mac G4/450 with dual processors. Long story short, the problems turned out to be bad RAM.

The Mystic was Apple's second generation of AGP Power Mac, and its claims to fame include gigabit ethernet and dual processors. It's a lot like the "Sawtooth" G4 - same Rage 128 Pro AGP 2x video card, same four memory sockets, same drive support, same case. But with Motorola unable to provide CPUs beyond 500 MHz, adding a second CPU was the only way Apple could offer more power.

This computer has 768 MB of RAM (three 256 MB PC133-333 modules) and 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 for all tests.

Let 1000 Windows Bloom

The system was tested on 25 January 2008. Running Jaguar (OS X 10.2.8), the Mystic displayed 1000 windows in 56.4 seconds. The same test took only 41.1 seconds under Panther (10.3.9), and just 32.2 sec. in Tiger (10.4.11). Apple has definitely been improving graphics performance as Mac OS X has moved forward.

At this point we're not able to boot into Mac OS 9.2.2, but we'll continue to work toward that goal and update this page when we can test under the Classic Mac OS.

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 7.0 seconds and scored 3,662 Mflops. Under Tiger, that dropped to 7.9 seconds and 3,232 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 Mystic, and 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     69.6    22.8    25.7  
CPU         54.4    29.5    28.9  
Threads     68.4    34.9    39.4  
Memory      73.8    20.7    23.2  
Quartz      72.7    27.2    25.1  
OpenGL      62.3    34.0    38.6  
User Int.   68.9     9.1    12.0  
Drive      103.4    51.2    49.4

Again we can see how OS X has become more efficient over the years. The overall score is about 15% higher under Tiger than Jaguar (comparing Xbench 1.1.3 scores, which are no longer included here), and improvements are especially evident in the User Interface and Threads benchmarks.

Geekbench

Geekbench only runs in Tiger and Leopard (which I don't yet have). Scores under OS X 10.4.11 are 529 for the Integer test, 529 for floating point, 266 for Memory, 165 for Streams, and 439 overall.

Conclusion

The best news is that OS X keeps getting better, even on old hardware like the January 2001 Mystic. This machine will be our primary testbed for hard drives, memory configurations, CPU upgrades, and AGP video cards, so we'll be comparing a lot of things to the numbers reported here.

Go to the Mystic Power Mac G4 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.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

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
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

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.