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Originally
posted July 31st, 2001
Updated
August 4th with G4/733 (no L3) numbers
Updated August 17th and 31st and Sept 17th with
Dual G4/800 numbers
by rob
ART morgan,
Bare Feats Mad Scientist
with a little help from his friends
I know. You want
to know how all the NEW G4's compare to the OLD
G4's. I'm not yet on Apple's "A List" for early
review machines. So you'll have to wait until they
are available in sufficient quantities for me to
get my sticky hands on them.
This page is to
help those of you trying to make tough buying
decisions. I've received email from various loyal
readers who have ordered and received one or more
of the new QuickSilver machines. They volunteered
to run some tests so I can post the results for the
rest of you. I call them "remote Bare Feats
scientists."
The test results
are limited to applications they either already own
or that are available as demos. When I get to test
the new QuickSilvers myself, I'll included results
from more expensive applications such as Final Cut
Pro 2.0, LightWave 6.5, etc.
PERFORMANCE
ANALYSIS
The G4/800MP is
impressive, if you are using software that's MP
aware. However, if I average all the test results,
including some I haven't posted yet, it's overall
about 25% faster than the G4/867 or G4/533MP. But
when you consider it's only 26% more costly when
similarly equipped, it's not a bad deal.
Many readers have
indicated angst whether to buy the 800MP or 867.
Unless you are doing 3D model rendering, you'll
need a stopwatch to tell the difference. I chose
the 800MP because it has the most speed potential
with new OS X aware and MP aware software coming
down the pike (like Quake 3 Arena OS X and
Photoshop OS X). If $3600 is too much to pay, buy
the 800MP stripped for $2670. (See Small
Dog or
Apple
Store for
Build-To-Order options.)
The new G4/733
withOUT L3 cache was only slightly slower than the
"old" G4/733 WITH L3 cache. I'd say it is a great
buy at $1695, especially if you don't need a
SuperDrive or 7200 rpm hard drive. Then again, you
can get a G4/867 for $1999 from Small
Dog.
RELATED TEST
PAGES
Remember the "17"
rating the G4 dual 800 got above? Did you know in a
recent test, a single 1.7GHz Xeon only gets a "16"
rating. Of course, a dual 1.7GHz Xeon gets a "28"
rating. Read about the Xeon on aceshardware.com.
I've posted a
special
page on
Quake 3 Arena 1.30 running on a G4/800MP with
GeForce3 and OS X 10.1. It includes a comparison
with the Pentium 1.6GHz.
MacSpeedZone
has a comparison between the G4/733, G4/867 and
G4/800MP. Note that their Quake 3 time is for the
old version under OS 9. For OS 10.1 and new 1.30
version of Quake 3, see my special
page.
WHERE TO
BUY
WHERE TO ORDER YOUR APPLE PRODUCTS
When ordering products from Apple Store USA, please click THIS TEXT LINK or any Apple display ad as your "portal" to the online store. In so doing, you help to support Bare Feats.
Small
Dog Electronics also
does "build-to-order" on new Power Macs and doesn't
charge you state sales tax. You can get a stripped
G4/800MP for as little as $2699. They have G4/867's
for as little as $1999 and G4/533MP's for
$1949.
Need big, fast,
second drive? I like the new 80G 7200 rpm Seagate
Barracuda ATA IV. It clocked 41MB/sec sustained
read and write on the 800MP. Check newegg.com
for very low pricing.
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