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Is
The Titanium G4/500 (and G4/400) PowerBook Really
Faster Than A Pismo or Upgraded
Wallstreet? Post
Date: January 19th, 2001 The Mac world is
all buzzing about the new G4 PowerBook. It seems a
great buy for what you get. But is it so much
faster than the "older" PowerBooks that we should
sell our old laptop to some poor unsuspecting devil
or should we hang on and wait for revision
2? Performance
Analysis Monkey
Business Strictly
Business Velocity
Engine To Go Titanium
G4/400 versus the Pismo G3/500 But you say,
"What about the G4/500 TiBook? Would you choose
that over the G3 Pismo?" That's a different story.
It's got the speed, man. The power, not just
sex. Titanium
versus SONY VIAO laptop Cost
Analysis If you use the
BTO options on Apple's Online Store to configure
the 500 with minimal memory and the smallest drive
to match the entry level 400, you can get the 500
for $2999, making it ony $400 more than the 400MHz
model. So now the cost
percentage difference drops to 15%. The 500 was
overall 22% faster than the 400 in my testing. That
makes the 500 seem like the best buy. Actually, if cost
is the factor, you should buy a desktop. G4
PowerBooks are not about pinching pennies. If you
want portability with power, you're gonna have to
pay for it. Getting a G4/400 Titanium is like
getting a Mustang with a six cylinder engine just
to save a few hundred. Don't wimp out. Order the
G4/500 model or don't order one at all. Related
PowerBook Tests & News Go2Mac.com has
some 800x600 and 1024x768 Quake3Arena
frame rates for the G4/400 Titanium
PowerBook. MacWorld Labs
compares
the G4/500 Titanium with the G3/500
Pismo. Mike Breeden
tests the G3/500
Pismo PowerBook. Mike Breeden
tests the G3/500
Blue Chip
PowerBook CPU Upgrade. 1/29/2001 --
Toshiba introduced the new Satellite 2805 Series
Notebooks that uses the nVIDIA GeForce2 Go graphics
chip. Apple, are you listening? 2/5/2001 --
Today, ATI Technologies announced their
Radeon
Mobility
is ready for use in notebooks around the world.
Apple are you listening? 2/7/2001 -- Sony
announced their new FX Laptop line with CD-RW/DVD
drive. Apple, are you listening? Where To
Buy Visit the
Apple
Online Store
to pricing on the new G4 PowerBooks. (Try playing
with Build-To-Order options.) If you live in
Hawaii, shop at Mac
Made Easy
or CompUSA If you shop
online, Small
Dog Electronics
offers new and refurbished PowerBooks. Other
World Computing
and Small
Dog Electronics
have heavily discounted upgrades from Newer
Technology (rest in peace). MacGurus
and Other
World Computing
(OWC) are selling the Blue Chip G4/500 upgrade for
Wallstreet and Lombard. (OWC is selling it for
$619. Add a 20GB TravelStar drive for only $210
more.) Trans
Intl has
newest, fastest IBM
TravelStar 32GH (32GB 5411
rpm) 2.5
inch drive for $525. If that's too rich for your
blood, try the 20GB
TravelStar 4200rpm
for $250. It's almost
as fast
for a lot less. Test Specs
& Procedures TEST
HARDWARE The
PowerLogix
Blue Chip G3/500 with 1MB L2 cache and the
Newer
Technology MAXpowr
PB-G3/466 with 1MB L2 cache were installed in the
PowerBook Wallstreet G3/233 along with an optional
20GB
TravelStar 4200rpm
courtesy of Trans
Intl.
Both CPU upgrades are priced at $699 before
discount. TEST
SOFTWARE Adobe
Photoshop
5.5 was
given 103MB of application size. The test file was
a 10 MB Photoshop photo. This is a new test I call
"Foto 20." It includes 20 actions plus several
"undo's." It does all the actions nonstop. I use a
stopwatch to time it from when I click "BEGIN" to
when it says "DONE." A DEMO
version
of Photoshop 6.0 is available from Adobe if you
want to test your own machine. My test action file
is available on request. Casady
& Greene's SoundJam MP Plus
2.5.2 was
used to convert a 2.5 minute music selection into
MP3 using default settings. With a stop watch, I
timed it to the nearest tenth of a second. (A
DEMO
version
is available from their website.) Maxon
Cinema 4D 6.1
is an award winning 3D modeling application. I used
the "scene0.c4d" document from their Cinebench 2000
benchmark application. I invoked RENDER (Shift +
R). It keeps track of the rendering time to the
nearest whole second. (A DEMO
version
of Cinema 4D is available on their website as well
as a copy of Cinebench 2000.) I used the newest
2.01
version of Apple's
iMovie. I
ran the "render titles" function as a test since
it's so CPU intensive. I typed in a two line title
("My Great Movie by rob ART mog") using default
settings. Then drag/dropped it in the "story line."
I used a stopwatch to time how long it took to
render the 188 frames. (You can download a copy of
iMovie 2.01 from Apple's
web site for $49.) The
FileMaker
test is courtesy of Paul Fabris, IS Manager of
Market Connections Inc., Toronto, Canada
(www.markcon.com).
It's a 12 action test file that can operate on a
sample database containing from 1000 to 10,000
records. I chose the 2000 record option. It posts
the total time in whole seconds. (More about this
test later as I hope to dedicate a page just to
FileMaker comparison of various
machines.) SPEED
TEST RESULTS
from Bare Feats (by CATEGORY) Some pages
are translated into FRENCH
by MacGeneration. LINKS
to SPEED tests on other web sites HOT
SPEED DEALS DOWNLOADS
that add more SPEED SPEED
UPGRADE
guide Rob
Art Morgan
Updated February 12th, 2001 with the G4/400
Titanium and Sony VAIO laptop results.
by rob
ART morgan,
chief test pilot
The original posting is available in FRENCH
at MacGeneration.
When it comes to 3D gaming, the new Titanium G4/500
PowerBook is the fastest PowerBook yet. In fact it
is just as fast as a dual G4/500 minitower (OS 9)
with a RAGE 128 Pro graphics card. But if you are a
hard core gamer, that's still not good enough. In
that case, you have two choices:
1. Get a desktop with a GeForce2 MX or Radeon or
Voodoo5.
2. Wait 6 months and hope that Apple puts the
GeForce2 Go or Radeon Mobility chip in Revision Two
of the G4 PowerBook.
Currently, no business software on the Mac takes
advantage of the G4. So if you are running MS
Office or FileMaker or QuickBooks, your "old"
G3/500 Pismo and upgraded Wallstreet/Lombard will
run them just as fast as the G4/500 Titanium
PowerBook or even a dual G4/500 Power Mac Graphite.
(The FileMaker graph above illustrates this reality
"non-distortion.")
Adding the G4/500 to the PowerBook DOES give a
significant boost to Photoshop or Cinema 4D or
SoundJam or iMovie or Final Cut or any software
that has AltiVec code. I believe there are millions
of Mac users who have held back buying a PowerBook
or replacing their old one for just that reason.
Therefore I predict Apple will sell "billions" of
G4 PowerBooks.
I received many emails asking which is a better
deal, the new G4/400 or the closeout G3/500
PowerBook. As of 2/12/01, I've appended the numbers
for the G4/400 "TiBook." If you take all the tests
into account, it's pretty much a tie. If I had to
choose between the two, I'd go with the Pismo
because I like the removable DVD-ROM which I can
replace easily with a CD-RW or second battery. And
I liked the keyboard better, a lot better. The
"blackbird" Pismo looks less junky after being
scratched.
As you can see in the graphs above, I was able to
run some tests on the Sony VAIO laptop XG39
sporting an 850MHz Pentium III which sells for
$3695 at your local CompUSA. It's faster than the
G4/500 TiBook for some things but slower for
others. It weighs 7+ pounds and has a 14" screen. I
report. You decide.
Test machines included an Apple
G3/233 Wallstreet PowerBook, G3/500 Pismo
PowerBook, a G400 Titanium PowerBook, a G4/500
Titanium PowerBook, and a dual G4/500 Power Mac
minitower. Some
bar charts include the Sony VAIO model XG39 with
850MHz Pentium 3.
Id Software's Quake
III Arena (Build
117) was run in the following Graphics Setups:
a) FASTEST at 640 x 480 x 16 bit and
b) NORMAL at 800 x 600 x 32 bit.
TEST: When the main screen appears, I press "~" and
enter "timedemo 1" (return) and "~" once more. Then
I click on DEMOS and run DEMO001. Once it finishes
and returns to the main screen, I press "~" once
more to get the frames per second
readout.
Publisher &
Chief Test Pilot
rob-art@barefeats.com
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Email rob-art@barefeats.com