For Adobe
Photoshop
tests under OS X (and Windows XP), I've
created two new action files: "SP.atn" and
"MP.atn" which can be run with version 6.0 as
well. "MP.atn" features filters that tend to
favor dual processor computers. It includes
functions like Rotate, Gaussian Blur, Motion
Blur, Lighting Effects, Lens Flare, Pointilize,
Radial Blur, and Spherize. On the other hand,
"SP.atn" uses "non-MP aware" actions like
Watercolor, Accented Edges, Unsharp Mask,
Convert Mode, Color Halftone, Polar Coordinates,
Imagfe Size, Crosshatch, Clouds, Torn Edges, and
NTSC Colors.
Both action files create a test document that is 5.71 x 3.75 inches x 700 pixels per inch or 30MB's in size. To nullify the effect of the scratch disk, I had each function UNDO itself before going on to the next. I realize that isn't real world but it's the only way to take the scratch disk speed out of the equation.
(A
DEMO
version
of Photoshop is available from Adobe if you want
to test your own machine.
A
Windows version of Photoshop 6 DEMO is
available. )
Corel has
posted a Trial
version of Bryce
5.
If you have downloaded it and want to render my
test files (Rock_Island and Beach_Chair),
email
me and I'll attach them in an email. Although
Corel claims it has been carbonized for OS X,
but the rendering code does NOT take advantage
of the G4 or multiple processors. However, it
does do network rendering.
A
Windows
version of Bryce
5
is available.
Maxon
Cinema4D XL
is a 3D modeling application. (See
"DOWNLOADS" on their site for a DEMO copy.) For
my "render logo" test, I upon the "scene0.c4d"
document in the Cinebench 2000 benchmark folder
and set the screen to 1024 x 768 x millions. I
invoke RENDER VIEW. (Caution: leave the
"scene0.c4d" file in the Cinebench 2000 folder
or you will get render errors and erroneous
numbers.) Cinema 4D keeps track of the rendering
time to the nearest whole second. This is a cool
test because when you run it on a dual processor
G4, you see a visual how each cpu does part of
the rendering. And if one finishes its part
early, it helps the other CPU.
A
Windows version of Cinema4D is available.
)
Maxon
Cinebench
2003 was released in Feb of 2003. It's more like a real world application than a benchmark. It tests the speed at which you can render a 3D model as well as how fast you can "fly" or "walk" through or around the model. If you have multiple processors, it renders diffferent parts of the model simultaneously and visually, which makes for a great show.
There's now a G5 optimized version. A
Windows version is CineBench 2003 is available.
AltiVec
Fractal
Carbon
is a quick and dirty CPU crunch tester. It's
aware of the G4's Velocity Engine as well as
Multiple CPU's. It can even do network
rendering. Instead of the default test with
Maximum Count set to the default 4096, I
recommend a 65536 setting. I "Refresh" it two or
three times (Command+R) and take the fastest
MegaFlop rating (and lowest time in
seconds).
Apple's
iMovie.
Take the 6 Video Clips in the Tutorial and drop
them into a New Project file. Then, without
adding effects or transitions, EXPORT a
QuickTime movie file in Medium Quality, 320 x
240, 15 fps. This is timed with a
stopwatch.
But the test I recently devised is to take Clip 01 and 06 from the iMovie Tutorial and apply the Soft Focus effect.
iTunes--
Three Beach Boys songs ("Shutdown," "Little
Deuce Coupe," "409") are converted from AIFF to
MP3 "Best Quality" (192kbps). The total play
time of the three songs is 332 seconds. The
songs are imported from the internal hard drive
instead of the CD drive. (Otherwise, you end up
measuring CD drive read speed instead of CPU
crunch speed.)
The
FileMaker
Pro test is courtesy of Paul Fabris. You can download the test files from his FMBENCH website. The test we use is 12 typical FM actions that can operate on a sample database containing from 1000 to 10,000 records. It measures the total time in whole seconds. A
Windows version of FileMaker is available.
AppleWorks
is used (and sometimes Microsoft
Word)
to run a 2D scrolling speed. I use a stopwatch
to see how long it takes to Scroll
through a 250 page document. The results are
either listed in TOTAL SECONDS or PAGES PER
SECOND. A
Windows version is available for Microsoft Word
(Duh).
I also use the
same 250 page document (made up of many copies
of "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy
dogs.") to run a Find/Replace ("dogs" to
"cats") and Spell Check (find one
misspelled word at the end of the document). I
use a stopwatch to time it. Sometimes I combine
the results on one graph. (With MS Word, turn
off "check as you type" option or you'll end up
in an infiite loop).
QUAKE 3 ARENA Version
1.3.2 (available from VersionTracker)
in one
or more of the following modes:
1. "Fastest" 32 bit depth and textures,
640x480
2. "Normal" 32 bit depth and textures,
800x600
3. "High Quality" 32 bit depth and textures,
800x600, or 1024x768 or 1280x1024
4. "Maximum" 32 bit depth and textures, 800x600, or 1024x768 or 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 or 1920x1200
(Maximum is the same as "High Quality" setting
but with Geometric Detail and Texture Detail
pushed to maximum)
Default config
file is used. The only tweaks in console mode
("~") is to set r_smp 1 (for MP machines) or
r_smp 0 (for single cpu machines).
All other settings remain at default.
TEST METHOD: When the main screen appears, I
press "~" and enter "timedemo 1" (return) and
"~" once more. Then I click on DEMOS and run the
DEMO. Once it finishes and returns to the main
screen, I press "~" once more to get the average
frames per second readout.
(A
Windows
version of Quake3
is available also.
)
Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2003) DEMO was released on May 9th, 2003. For more info on UT2003, visit MacSoft.
To download a copy of the Mac DEMO, visit
MacGameFiles.
You'll also
want the app that automatically runs the
benchmark samples: BenchUT2003.
First launch the DEMO (or commercial version) to
set video quality to maximum and screen rez to
1024x768. Then quit and run
BenchUT2003.
If you have
the full version of Unreal Tournament 2003, an
upgrade
was released in October 2003 that dramatically
improves the speed of actual game
play.
Unreal Tournament 2004 Full Version or DEMO by MacSoft. We use a modified version of BenchUT2003 (renamed to BenchUT2004). It only works with the Bridge-Of-Fate botmatch.
Halo for Mac has its own Time Demo test which takes you through several different recorded game sequences. We've changed the settings depending on what we're testing. See our Halo article and Radeon 9800 article for examples of settings.
DUPLICATE
ONE LARGE DOCUMENT
Duplicate in Finder one very large document.
Compute megabytes per second with the formula
size*2/time or just note the total time in
seconds. I sometimes use the pak0.pak3 file from
Quake3 since it is large (457MB).
PLAY BACK
UNCOMPRESSED QUICKTIME MOVIE
Using QuickTime Player 6.0 and a stopwatch, time
how long it takes to play a 154 frame (5 second)
720x576 uncompressed QuickTime movie (play all
frames). Calculate frames per second (total
frames/time) or megabytes per second
(size/time). The only hard drives that can play
this in real time are the
two fastest Ultra ATA drives in a dual Hardware
RAID.
PHOTOSHOP
ROTATE (LOW MEMORY)
Using Photoshop 7.0, I set application size to
minimum or about 37MB. I launch Photoshop and
set the scratch drive to the test drive in
preferences. I quit Photoshop. Then I relaunch
it and I open a 45MB test file. Using a
stopwatch, I time how long it takes to rotate
the photo 30 degrees clockwise. The low memory
allocation forces Photoshop to write to the
scratch disk. Graph is posted in total
seconds.
SUSTAINED READ
AND WRITE
I use Intech's
QuickBench
for OS 9 and Intech's
QuickBench X
for OS X. Version 2.0 tests at up to 100MB block
size, thereby defeating the buffer size
advantage.
RANDOM READ
AND WRITE
In some older tests, I used the 1024K block size
random read/write results from QuickBench. In
most recent tests, I used an average of 128K,
256K, 512K, and 1024K block size random
read/write measured by Intech's
QuickBench native OS
X
utility.
