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Marc's Notes: Comments, Ramblings, Rants & Tips

G4 Digital Audio CPU Benchmarks

This weekend (early June, 2006) I upgraded my G4 Digital Audio to it's ultimate performance level. For a shade under $600 Other World Computing shipped a Sonnet Duet 1.8 GHz G4 processor upgrade to me on a Saturday Morning - 9:30AM - And I'm creating this web page at 5:00PM running on this wicked dual processor G4 tower.

Part 1: Xbench CPU Comparisons

The transition from the OWC 1.33 GHz single G4 was not without a few glitches, and I had a graduation party to attend mid afternoon, so the applied time to figure this all out and work around the issues took somewhere around 4-1/2 hours. I'll get into the "gotchas" in a minute, but first let me wow you with some raw performance data.

Xbench Version	1.1.3
System Version	10.4.6 (8I127)
Physical RAM	1536 MB
Mac Model	PowerMac3,4
Bus Frequency	134 MHz
	Apple 533 MHz G4		OWC 1.3 GHz G4		Sonnet 1.8 GHz Dual G4
Processor	PowerPC G4 @ 534 MHz		PowerPC G4 @ 1.33 GHz		PowerPC G4x2 @ 1.80 GHz
Version	7410 (Nitro) v1.3		7455 (Apollo) v3.3		7447a v1.1
L1 cache	32K (instr), 32K (data)		32K (instr), 32K (data)		32K (instr), 32K (data) per CPU
L2 Cache	1024K @ 267 MHz		256K @ 667 MHz		512K @ 900 MHz per CPU
L3 Cache	—NA—		2048K @ 4.13 GHz		—NA—
CPU Test	44.95		157.77		217.24
GCD Loop	42.47	1.66 Mops/sec	145.45	5.68 Mops/sec	223.01	8.71 Mops/sec
FP Basic	57.22	206.94 Mflop/sec	157.35	569.03 Mflop/sec	211.19	763.72 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic	25.04	727.51 Mflop/sec	163.49	4.75 Gflop/sec	209.32	6.08 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT	63.79	990.32 Mflop/sec	166.74	2.59 Gflop/sec	219.05	3.40 Gflop/sec
FP Library	68.50	2.74 Mops/sec	157.53	6.31 Mops/sec	224.53	8.99 Mops/sec
Thread Test	46.09		112.34		274.31
Computation	31.82	429.50 Kops/sec	81.17	1.10 Mops/sec	218.54	2.95 Mops/sec
Lock Contention	83.57	1.05 Mlocks/sec	182.37	2.29 Mlocks/sec	368.31	4.63 Mlocks/sec
Memory Test	66.47		114.75		94.30
System	59.66		169.83		111.28
Allocate	228.67	149.16 Kalloc/sec	690.87	450.65 Kalloc/sec	897.60	585.50 Kalloc/sec
Fill	91.64	729.44 MB/sec	253.80	2020.21 MB/sec	176.10	1401.74 MB/sec
Copy	91.64	142.86 MB/sec	81.45	407.26 MB/sec	49.59	247.95 MB/sec
Stream (AltiVec)	75.02		86.65		81.81
Copy	79.62	582.03 MB/sec	85.97	628.45 MB/sec	81.26	594.00 MB/sec
Add	75.73	558.89 MB/sec	89.84	663.02 MB/sec	80.85	596.70 MB/sec
Scale	72.19	462.01 MB/sec	85.52	547.34 MB/sec	84.31	539.60 MB/sec
Triad	73.00	446.03 MB/sec	85.40	521.79 MB/sec	80.90	494.31 MB/sec
RESULTS	58.15	100%	125.24	215.37%	174.07	299.35%

Note— The dual G4 benchmark doesn't represent the true picture... the XBench application, for the most part, only beats on one of the processors. Something that measures the base CPU ability. In the real world this is a true measure of how a single application will cook on the processor, but it isn't being dragged down at all by the other tasks running under OS X - which also rocks on a dual CPU machine.

Part 2: Sanity Check

First question: Why, on the dawn of the day of Mactel machines, would an otherwise sane Mac consultant spend six bills to soup up his 2001 model year G4 tower?

Easy answer: Because I can, so there!

Hard answer: This is my primary machine. Having a stable box is critical, and I want to make sure that the "first edition" bugs are dead before leaping on the next technology band wagon. I will be buying a new MacPro in early 2007, probably when Leopard is released and my primary applications are Universal. Then again, my Pismo is getting a bit long in the tooth, and my foray with the Intel side of Macs may first go to the MacBook or MacBook Pro as I'll need intel capability for at least one of my clients. Stretching the G4 out for another year or two works.

Second question: Wasn't the 1.33 Ghz OWC processor fast enough to meet your needs.

"Yes" answer: For most of my needs, the single G4 OWC upgrade rocked.

"Maybe" answer: There were some stability issues that I never tracked down and I started getting the gut feeling that it might be a CPU bug. But then I also had a flaky RAM module I replaced at the same time as today's upgrade, and there were some other "phase of the moon" issues. It's a pain when Photoshop CS2 panics the machine 5 times in a row when I'm trying to get work done.

"No" answer: The dual processor solution has real applications in the heavy processing end of things, like video processing and the higher end applications. Since I am not buying a G5 tower to tide me over until the MacPro move, I wanted (probably as much as needed) the boost that TWO processors bring to the table—and if I'm going to slap down cash for an upgrade, it made sense to get the top end product. The G4 will move to very a very respectable server job down the road.

Part 3: The Ugly Side of Upgrades

Usually the gods are either smiling—or at least not paying attention—when I start messing with my own hardware. The Apple to OWC Mercury processor upgrade a couple years ago took literally 10 minutes, and yes, it's been up for most of the past few years without too many kernel panics and the like (OK PC guys, Mac's do crash, and we've been blowing smoke when we say they don't... happy now?)

Today's upgrade, turned into a 4-1/2 hour adventure. Here's the short process for the Sonnet processor installation:

Boot into Mac OS 9.2 to install the Sonnet firmware patch — power down the machine.
Install the processor — three screws out and in.
Power up — be amazed.

Well, that step 1 was a bear. I hadn't booted 9 on this Mac in a while, and it simply refused to be coerced into starting up in Mac OS 9. So I booted the 9.2.1 CD and installed a fresh 9 on one of the OS-less drives. I "option-booted" to ... the OS X drive (???), installed the original Apple CPU (hey - I got original benchmark numbers while there) ... and up came OS X (???!!), and all sorts of other junk (time so far: 2-1/2 hours) ... and OS 9 was still not an option (#%$$?@).

The dawning of the root problem was in the hard drive controller card. I have a Sonnet Tempo Ultra ATA 133 card supporting four Maxtor internal beasts, and I had never tried booting Mac OS 9 after installing that card 6 months ago. Duh!

I grabbed a spare "expendable" drive, a short ATA cable, and plugged it into the Apple ATA connector after pulling the cables off the ATA card. Then I booted the Mac OS 9.2.1 CD and wiped the target, installed OS 9, and presto, the "Happy Mac" boot icon greeted me from the spare drive.

I popped the Sonnet CD in, applied the patch, did the interrupt-start to flash the firmware, and the next startup ended with a dialog telling me it was OK to install the processor card (time so far: 3-3/4 hours).

Off too Sarah's graduation party... argh.
Really Sarah, congrats! You're awesome!

Pulled the old CPU, buttoned in the Sonnet, restored my drive configuration, pressed the power button... Joy!

This processor smokes! Really fast, but the best news is that the kernel panics and random crashes are gone. As I complete this more than two weeks after the upgrade, the only time the box has been restarted was after a software update 13 days ago. Sweet!

(1) The opinions expressed in Marc's Notes: Comments, Ramblings, Rants & Tips are exclusively those of Marc Wolfgram.
(2) Only one Macintosh™ computer was permanently harmed - link. (3) Any references to real people may be intentional.
(4) Don't try certain things while driving or at home without proper adult supervision. (5) Microsoft Windows—Just say NO!