Upgrade Voodoo:
A 10X G3/500 "Deuce Coupe" takes on
the G4/400 "BMW M3."
Posted 10/25/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

I modify my old Power Mac 7500 "Deuce Coupe" weekly. In fact, I don't even put the "hood" on. I have it wide open with a large fan blowing down on it the often hot running accelerators. Someday soon it will have a G4. Oh yes! Meanwhile, let's see what it can do with a PowerLogix 10X G3/500 daughterboard and a 3Dfx Voodoo3 graphics card. The G4/400 "BMW" has a fighting chance. I gave it a Voodoo3 board as well:

MacBench 5.0 is old news. How about some "real world" rendering tests that tax the CPU and FPU? Surprise! The G3 wins round one!

 

Back to the future. The G4 is supposed win this one. It's got a Velocity Engine, after all.

 

Grrr. G4 again. Who can play Quake that fast anyway?

 

Just wait until I get my hands on a G4 upgrade!

 

Now the Yikes is starting to annoy me.

 

Conclusion: Okay, so the G4 "BMW M3" wins all but one race against my G3 "Deuce Coupe." But considering the bus speed, PCI slot speed, and memory bus speed of the G4/400 Yikes, you have to admit that it's amazing what you can do with upgrades these days. Stay tuned. A G4 will fit in that Deuce Coupe!

Comments:

I decided to run the 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 board in both the Yikes and the 7500 because it's the fastest 3D board I've tested. If 2D is your thing, the Formac ProFormance3 is faster. You need both 2D and 3D? Then I would get the Voodoo board.

The G3/400 in the chart above is an XLR8/Interex CarrierZIF. As you can see, it's not that much slower than the other two but it wins the "bang for the buck" award. A CarrierZIF with a G3/400 goes for as little as $430. That compares to $725 for the G3/500.

I called the 7500 "bus challenged" due to the fact that the Yikes has much better vital statistics all around. Just look at the chart below.

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

	Yikes	Deuce Coupe
CPU	G4/400	PowerLogix 10X G3/500 daughterboard
Bus Speed	100Mhz	50Mhz
Cache	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 5:2 (200MHZ)
RAM	256 MB (8ns)	160 MB (60ns)
Graphics	66MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 running at 166MHz	33MHz slot with 3Dfx Voodoo3 2000 running at 166MHz

• Bryce 3D 4.0 is my new "real world" test for a combination of CPU and FPU speed. The fact that the G3's won this test shows the G3 is no whimp. I used the sample file called "BeachChairR.br3" for this render test. Bryce is not AltiVec "aware" like Photoshop, my other CPU/FPU tester.
• Photoshop 5.5 was given 100MB of app size. The test file was 17MB. The four functions included:
  • Rotate (30 degrees)
  • Gaussian Blur (30 pixels)
  • LightingEffects (Flashlight)
  • Motion Blur (30 pixels, 30 degrees)
• For Voodoo3 boards to run Quake II in OpenGL mode, it requires a special version of the "ref_gl.lib" from Mesa3DGraphics in the Quake II folder. It also requires an extension file called "Mesa3DGraphicsLibQuake2" to be placed in the System folder. The 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.
• Unreal 3D tests not only the CPU but the 3D graphics acceleration. I used the Castle Flyby that comes up at startup. To get the average and minimum frames per second with version 2.x.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 UNREAL Beta from Westlake's Site.) The 1024 x 768 resolution was set by editing the "unreal.ini" document.
• The Photoshop 5.5 scrolling test was done by zooming in at 400%, moving the scroll button to the top, and holding the scroll arrow down while it scrolls to the bottom. Time was recorded in the nearest tenth of a second with a digital stop watch.

BIG MAHALO TO....

...PowerLogix for the use of the 10X G3/500 upgrade

...3Dfx for the use of the Voodoo3 2000 PCI card

...XLR8/Interex for the use of the CarrierZIF G3/400

...Metacreations for the use of Bryce 3D