Can a Beige Desktop with a G4 ZIF upgrade run
with the "big dogs"?
1/5/2000
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

So you have a Revision 1 Beige G3/266. Should you sell it or upgrade it? And if you spend hundreds updating it, will it go as fast as the Graphite G4's? Let's see...

CPU (& FPU) crunching...

Reaction: Looks like the old "bus speed" bugaboo keeps the Beige at a disadvantage. Note that a G3/400 Blue and White takes 12.8 seconds average for the 4 Photoshop filters.

 

Reaction: This is all CPU and FPU going for all it's worth. Beige does okay on this.

 

Hard Disk speed comparison

Reaction: All three machines were using the same Seagate Barracuda 20Gig 7200 rpm Ultra-ATA/66 drive. The Beige's IDE interface and bus speed keep it from utilizing the full capability of the drive. It still ran twice as fast as the original IDE drive.

  

2D scrolling

Reaction: The beige didn't do so bad. All three machines used either the AGP or PCI version of the 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 board.

 

3D Game Frame Rates

Reaction: If your main performance need is 3D gaming, the Beige with the G4 and Voodoo3 board is plenty fast. But for ultimate frame rates, the "real" G4 minitowers are significantly faster.

 

Reaction: Not too shabby.

 

Reaction: The minimum frame rate of the Beige barely stayed above the "Jerky Threshold" but that's nothing to sneeze at. (Any frame rate lower than 16 fps appears jerky to the naked eye.)

 

Conclusion: Can a "hopped up" Beige DT Rev 1 run with the "Big Dogs"? Short answer, "close, but no cigar."

The long answer, "it depends." Let's add up the tab. The PowerLogix G4/350 ZIF (adjusts to 400) runs $555 at Small Dog. The Voodoo3 3000 PCI runs about $116 from Buy.Com. The Seagate Barracuda 20Gig goes for $179 from Outpost. So for about $850 you can have a G4/Beige that can almost run with the big dogs... as long as you leave your stopwatch in the drawer.

Then again, you can sell your G3/266 Desktop for $900 (MacAppraiser--sounds a bit high) and add the $850 to that money to get a G4/350 or 400 Sawtooth.

NOTE: Beta 5 drivers were used on the Voodoo3 boards since the Beta 10 version produced lower frame rates with Quake II. However, I found out after creating this page that by putting the Mesa Graphics "ref_gl.lib" back in the Quake II folder, the frame rates jumped to over 60 fps on the Sawtooth and Yikes. You can expect a similar improvement on the Beige G4.

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

	Beige DT	Yikes!	Sawtooth
CPU	G4/400	G4/400	G4/400
Bus Speed	66MHz	100MHz	100MHz
Cache	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)
RAM	192 MB	256 MB (8ns)	256 MB (8ns)
Graphics	33MHz PCI slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	66MHz PCI slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	133MHz AGP 2X slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 20 Gig 7200rpm ATA/66 drive connected to the Rev 1 IDE interface	Seagate Barracuda 20 Gig 7200rpm ATA/66 drive connected to a ATA/33 interface	Seagate Barracuda 20 Gig 7200rpm ATA/66 drive connected to a ATA/66 interface

 

• Bryce 3D 4.0 rendering was used to test a combination of CPU and FPU speed.
• Photoshop 5.5 was given 117MB of app size on each machine. The test file was 17MB. AltiVecCore was enabled on all three test machines. And average time was computed for 4 functions:
  • Rotate (30 degrees)
  • Gaussian Blur (30 pixels)
  • LightingEffects (Flashlight - default settings)
  • Motion Blur (30 degrees, 30 pixels)
• For the DUPLICATE THREE 27MB DOCS test, I copied onto each drive. Then I timed how long it took to duplicate three copies of a 27MB Adobe Photoshop document on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.
• For the DUPLICATE 91Mb FOLDER test, I took the 91MB Unreal Tournament DEMO game folder containing 202 documents and I timed how long it took to duplicate it on the same drive. Finally I calculated megabytes per second by with the formula: folder size * 2 / seconds.
• The 2D scrolling test was done with Photoshop 5.5. A 17MB photo file was zoomed in at 400% after various filters had been applied. Then, holding down the scroll arrow, I timed how long it took to scroll from top to bottom.
• Quake II test was run by pressing "~" after startup and typing "timedemo 1" (return) and "~" again. When the first person dies, I press "~" again to get the frame rate. Beta 5 drivers were used on the Voodoo3 boards since the Beta 10 version posted lower frame rates. I found out after creating this page that by including the Mesa GL Library back in the Quake II folder, the frame rates jumped to over 60 fps on the Sawtooth and Yikes. You can expect a similar improvement in the Beige G4.
• Unreal 3D test used the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.2.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. (Get the latest latest Mac version of UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.)