The Obsolete G4/400 Yikes Challenges The
G4/400 Sawtooth Rev B.
12/17/99
© 1999 Rob Art Morgan, editor of BARE FEATS
rob-art@barefeats.com

 

Okay, you're feeling used right about now. You bought the Yikes and now Apple is selling a Sawtooth for the same price.

Or you're ready to buy a G4 system and you saw a closeout special on the Yikes G4/400. You are wondering if it's a better deal than paying $500 more for a comparably equipped Sawtooth G4/400 from the Apple Online Store.

Never fear, Bare Feats is here with some test numbers to ponder:

CPU (& FPU) crunching...

Winner: Sawtooth (22% faster)

 

Winner: Sawtooth (19% faster)

 

Hard Disk speed comparison

Winner: Sawtooth (11% faster)

Winner: Sawtooth (5% faster)

 

2D Scrolling

Winner: Sawtooth with Rage Pro 128 AGP (27% faster RAGE 128 PCI)
and with Voodoo3 3000 AGP (20% faster than Voodoo3 PCI)

(A Photoshop scrolling test is usually included
but there was no significant difference in speed between the 5 graphics boards.)

 

3D Game Frame Rates

Winner: Sawtooth with Rage Pro 128 AGP (52% faster RAGE 128 PCI)
and with Voodoo3 3000 AGP (3% faster than Voodoo3 PCI)

 

Winner: Sawtooth with Rage Pro 128 AGP (34% faster RAGE 128 PCI)
and with Voodoo3 3000 AGP (2% faster than Voodoo3 PCI)

 

Conclusion: Okay. I'll say it. "The King is wearing a bikini." The Sawtooth was 24% faster on average but costs 33% more (both models stripped*). The Sawtooth costs 25% more if you compare both machines with 20 Gig drive, 256MB of RAM, and a Voodoo3 board. All things considered, you should probably buy a Sawtooth.

If you already bought the Yikes, like me, take heart. At least you can fiddle with the jumpers or replace the ZIF cpu with something meaner and faster some day soon. Keep reading...

Other Analysis & Opinion: One thing disturbed me as I compared the two machines. When the same components were used in both machines, the speed difference dropped dramatically.

For example, the Sawtooth is supposed to have an Ultra-ATA/66 interface versus ATA/33 on the Yikes. Ooo, I'm impressed.... until I put the same hard drive on both systems and saw only a 5 to 11% difference in speed. Hmmm.

And the AGP Voodoo3 3000 in the Sawtooth was only 3% faster than the PCI Voodoo3 3000 in the Yikes. Hmmm.

It seems that the components (disk drives, graphics cards) are the limiting factor these days, not the interface speeds.

Reader Feedback:
"How does the G4/400 Yikes compare to a G4/350 Sawtooth?" Funny you should ask. I'll be testing the 350MHz Sawtooth in a few days. If I was guessing, I'd say they would about the same speed in most areas.

 

Test Configurations & Procedures

	Yikes!	Sawtooth
CPU	G4/400	G4/400
Bus Speed	100Mhz	100Mhz
Cache	1 MB at 2:1 (200MHz)	1MB at 2:1 (200MHz)
RAM	256 MB (8ns)	256 MB (8ns)
Graphics	66MHz PCI slot with either RAGE 128 or 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000	133MHz AGP 2X slot with either RAGE Pro 128 or 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000
Hard Drive	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
Base Cost with 64MB RAM,10 Gig Drive, RAGE card	$1499	$1949
Cost with 256MB RAM, 20 Gig Drive, Voodoo3 card (cheapest sources)	$2039	$2489

 

• 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. 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 WordPerfect 3.5.3 scrolling test, I created a 120 page document containing the sentence "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dogs" repeated over and over in paragraphs of 8 sentences each in 14 point Times font. Using a stopwatch, I timed how long it took to scroll from the beginning to the end of the document while holding the mouse button down with cursor over the scrolling arrow. (Font smoothing was turned off. If it's on, it will take you 50% longer to scroll through a document!)
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.)

BIG MAHALO TO....

...3Dfx for the use of the Voodoo3 3000 PCI & AGP cards

...Metacreations for the use of Bryce 3D

...and my new, best friend, Gregory Rand, for the use of his G4/400 Sawtooth Rev B