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We're a bit less low-end at Low End Mac today, although we've
migrated to an older Mac.
I've been using a dual 1 GHz "Mirrored Drive Doors"
Power Mac G4 (from 2002) as my main production machine for several
years. I bought it secondhand and slowly upgraded it from 768 MB of RAM
to 2 GB, with larger hard drives, with a couple USB 2.0 cards, and
with a 16x SuperDrive. The secondary SuperDrive (a 4x unit), CPUs, and
Radeon 9000 graphics card remain the same.
For some time, I've been working from an external FireWire hard
drive, on the theory that FireWire 400 may be a bit faster than the
internal ATA bus and that it's easier to move everything to another
computer in the even the MDD acts up if it's on an external drive.
Today I got to test that theory. Several times this morning I got
the OS X gray screen of death. It's kind of warm, so it might be heat
related. Or it could be a stick of RAM acting up. Or it might be
something else completely.
Easier to switch computers than spend hours troubleshooting. Besides
which, this would give me the chance to test some theories.
I have the good fortune to have three G4 Power Macs at Low End Mac
headquarters. In addition to the 1 GHz dual MDD, I have a "Mystic" dual G4 upclocked
to 500 MHz from 2000 (bought secondhand) and a "Digital Audio" (from 2001,
donated) upgraded with a dual G4 from Giga Designs
(also secondhand). Officially rated at 1.8 GHz, which
overclocks the 1.42 GHz CPU by 26%, I've never been able to get it
to run faster than 1.6 GHz. Still, that's 60% faster than my main
Mac.
This morning I decided to run these three Power Mac G4 models
through their paces, using conventional benchmarks and timing a few
things I do regularly with a stopwatch. Each Mac was run from the same
external FireWire hard drive, and the Radeon 9000 video card was moved
from one machine to another. I also installed a 4-port Sonnet USB 2.0
card and connected everything (printers, hubs, etc.) as before.
Timed Tests
There were some differences other than CPU speed. Bus speed was
slower as we moved to older Macs, and the MDD has more RAM than the
other two. Here are the specifics and timed results (rounded off to the
nearest second):
Model Mystic MDD Dig Aud
CPU speed 500 MHz 1 GHz 1.6 GHz
L2 cache 1 MB 256 KB 512 KB
L2 speed 250 MHz 1 GHz 1.6 GHz
L3 cache none 2 MB none
L2 speed n/a 500 MHz* n/a
Installed RAM 1.25 GB 2.0 GB 1.25 GB
Bus speed 100 MHz 167 MHz 133 MHz
Startup to login 69 sec. 48 sec. 43 sec.
Login to Finder 42 sec. 31 sec. 46 sec.
Launch Classic 33 sec. 26 sec. 23 sec.
Open website 22 sec. 12 sec. 7 sec.
Total time 167 sec. 117 sec. 120 sec.
The Giga Designs upgrade has the biggest and fastest Level 2 (L2)
cache, which should give it a real edge in raw processing power.
However, the Mirrored Drive Doors (MDD) has a high speed Level 3 (L3)
cache, which I'm making an educated guess runs at 500 MHz and provided
data to the CPU at three times the speed of motherboard memory. In
addition, the MDD memory bus runs at 167 MHz - 25% faster than the 133
MHz bus in the Digital Audio (conversely, the DA has a 20% slower bus).
This will give the MDD a big advantage when it comes to getting data
from memory.
Startup and login aren't things I do often, usually a few times a
week. Launching Classic is something I usually do once per startup,
although if Classic is acting oddly, I will relaunch it. Opening the
master site file (124 KB) in Claris Home Page 3.0 is something I do
several times a day, averaging once for every new article we publish or
update on Low End Mac.
Benchmark Programs
I also ran all three machines through our usual benchmark suite:
Let 1000 Windows Bloom
Let 1000 Windows Bloom draws 1000 windows to your screen as quickly
as possible. Machines were tested using Mac OS X 10.4.11 "Tiger"
and 10.5.7 "Leopard". Times are rounded to the nearest 1/10 of a
second.
The upgraded Digital Audio wins overall, although the Mirror Drive
Door wins three benchmarks: Memory due to a faster system bus (167 MHz
vs. 133 MHz), and User Interface and Drive could be due to the faster
memory bus and L3 cache. Overall, the DA wins by almost 12%.
In a surprising upset, the 1 GHz Mirrored Drive Doors edges past the
1.6 GHz Digital Audio, but by barely 4%. The DA smokes the CPU,
Threads, and OpenGL tests, while the MDD wins Memory hands down, does
significantly better on User Interface, and edges out the Drive
comparison by 11%.
Geekbench
Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that runs on PowerPC Macs,
Intel Macs, and Windows PCs, making it possible to compare these old
Power Macs to today's Intel-based Macs. Geekbench only tests the
processor and memory systems, so drive performance isn't a factor and
graphics should have minimal impact.
The 1.6 GHz Digital Audio wins by 35% overall,
winning the Integer and Floating Point tests by 43%, losing the Memory
test by less than 2%, and getting smoked on the Streams test.
Under Leopard, the upgraded DA wins by 39% overall - taking Integer
by 46%, Floating Point by 50% while losing Memory by 6% and Streams by
a huge margin.
Overview
Every benchmark gives us a different piece of the picture. For sheer
processing power, the 1.6 GHz dual G4 wins hands down, but thanks to a
faster system bus and a Level 3 cache, the Mirrored Drive Doors holds its
own against a 60% faster CPU with a larger L2 cache.
In the best of all possible worlds, the Giga Designs upgrade would
be able to achieve its claimed 1.8 GHz, boosting power by 12.5% - and
the upgrade would be compatible with the 167 MHz system bus found in
the faster Mirrored Drive Doors models (which would mean either 1.75 GHz
or 1.83 GHz) and take advantage of the faster memory bus and L3 cache,
in which case that machine would really scream.
Buying Advice
In terms of value, the best bet is probably a used 1.25 GHz Mirror
Drive Door Power Mac with dual G4s, currently available for as little
as $400 from used Mac dealers - and probably less on eBay and even less
on Craigslist. Get the version that doesn't have FireWire 800 and does
boot into Mac OS 9, and you'll have a 167 MHz system bus, a 4 GB
L3 cache, Ultra ATA100 for internal hard drives, two optical drive
bays, room for 2 GB of RAM, and no need to hassle with third-party
CPU upgrades. It's the most powerful Mac that can boot the Classic Mac
OS, and with its even bigger L3 cache, it could give my 1.6 GHz
upgraded Digital Audio a real run for the money.
If you have access to a free or low cost accelerator, however, avoid
the handful of G4 Power Macs that use a 167 MHz system bus. The
ultimate Power Mac G4 to use with a CPU upgrade would be the Quicksilver and Quicksilver 2002 lines, which
have a 133 MHz system bus, support up to 1.5 GB of RAM, work with "big" hard drives (over 128 GB),
has two optical drive bays, and can take accelerators as fast as 2.0
GHz - if you can find them nowadays. Bang for the buck, the 733 MHz and
800 MHz single processor models are the ones to buy, as faster
Quicksilvers have L3 caches that generally have to be removed when used
with a CPU upgrade. These start at about $200.
For upgrading, I'm a huge fan of dual-processor systems if you're
running any version of Mac OS X. Drawback is, a new dual-core
upgrade will set you back $300 and up these days and may not offer any
more performance than the Dual 1.25 GHz MDD at $100 less. However, if
you have a low cost CPU upgrade option, these entry-level Quicksilvers
can be your value choice.
It's all a matter of your needs, your plans, your wants, and your
budget. There's a lot of life in these old G4 Power Macs, as they can
boot into OS 9, support Classic Mode through OS X 10.4, and
can run OS X 10.5 if
you want to or need to.
I've been happily using G4 Macs since 2000 and remain very
productive. I don't want to rip video on these machines, but for
everything else I do, they are more than adequate. What more do you
need?
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: PowerBook 500 Series, introduced 1994.05.16. 'Blackbird' includes a 25 to 33 MHz 68040 along with smart batteries and grayscale or color displays.
