http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/geforce3/G4_733_GeForce3_tests.html
First Impressions/Tests Results of G4/733 with GeForce3:
Published: 5/30/2001
I finally got my hands on a 2001 G4 with GeForce3 card to test. Included in this first report are comments on what I've seen so far and results of some initial tests with Photoshop 5.5, iMovie2, Cleaner 5.02 (QT->MPEG conversion), G4Timedemo, Altivec Fractal Demo, GL Quake and Quake3. There's also a photo of the Mac GeForce3 card there.
The card (and 2001 G4 AGP slot) isn't an AGP Pro form factor.
The system came with PC133 CAS2 RAM (256MB Dimm), reports from some of the early 2001 systems noted they had CAS3 RAM. This can vary by build however and isn't a major difference (CL2 vs CL3), but I'd prefer to have the lower latency RAM.
The first thing I did was disable the ATI graphics card extensions (including OpenGL ATI Renderer) as well as trim some other extensions I do not use (Voice recognition, Multiple Users, Web sharing, USB extensions for devices I don't have, Palm related extensions, FAX, etc.). I then ran Software Update and installed all updates except for CarbonLib 1.3.1, as well as updating to Quicktime 5.01.
The system didn't arrive until about 2 PM yesterday, and it took some time to install applications on the hard drive. However I did have time to see how the system performed with Lightwave 3D 6.5B, Photoshop 5.5, Cleaner 5 (Mpeg), iMovie2 (QT export test), MacBench (Graphics/primitives, Disk and CD tests), CineBench, Throughput, RaveBench, Altivec Fractal Demo, G4Timedemo, Quake3 v117, GLQuake1, and Star Wars/Pod Racer. 2D scores from MacBench's scripted tests were impressive - the highest I've seen. I've not yet run tests of scrolling in apps, etc. however.
For pro-3D apps users, I'm sad to say that the Geforce3 (tested with the 2.1 and also the 2.1.1f1 drivers) has the same problems in Lightwave 3D as the MX card did with the 1.1.1, 2.0 and 2.1 drivers. (Missing features in scenes and generated previews - shown in this article.) I don't know if the modeler crashes are still an issue with the 2.x drivers however, as I've not tested for that. (Disabling the Nvidia OpenGL extension was a previously reported fix for the image problems and according to one user, also seemed to prevent modeler crashes.)
In addition to the image problems in Lightwave 3D, there seemed to be some transparency issues in games as well - noticed in GLQuake and Driver for instance. RaveBench's transparency test seemed ok however, which actually surprised me. (For info on RaveBench's tests, see the RaveBench illustrated guide I posted a few years back.)
Performance was impressive in GLQuake (appx 289 FPS at 1024x768). To test how the card performed at very high resolutions, Quake3 v117 (Demo1) at 1600x1200/32 Bit color with all options on, HQ settings, etc. ran 63.5 FPS. (The results at 640x480 with the same settings was only appx. 10 FPS faster.) Tests were run with sound enabled and starting with a clean .cfg file. (I'll run tests with Locki's config also just to see what the max rates are.)
More info and test results/comparisons will follow later (as well as graphs of results) but here's a few examples:
Photoshop 5.5 Tests
(21 Filter PSBench test - 10MB image size - lower times are faster)
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 76.1 seconds
* G4/733 w/Radeon: Ê 76.4 seconds
* G4/500 Dual w/Radeon: Ê 76.7 seconds
The G4/733 with Radeon tests were done by a reader, noted in a previous article here. (I didn't expect the graphics card to make any real difference in these filter tests, but just posting that score as a FYI.)
Cleaner 5.02 Tests
(21 Filter PSBench test - 10MB image size - lower times are faster)
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 5 Min. 36 seconds
* G4/500 Dual w/Radeon: Ê 7 Min. 19 seconds
iMovie 2 Tests
(Export tutorial movie to CDROM Medium settings - lower times are faster)
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 1 Min. 32 seconds
* G4/500 Dual w/Radeon: Ê 2 Min. 15 seconds
The G4/500 DP tests were run with QT 5 preview 3, but will be retested with QT 5.01.
Altivec Fractal Demo Carbonized version
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 2,650.5 MegaFlops (appx. 2.65 GigaFlops)
* G4/500 Dual w/Radeon: Ê 3,283.6 MegaFlops (appx. 3.28 GigaFlops)
The latest carbonized version of this Fractal benchmark uses both CPUs in a dual G4 system (plus other optimizations I suspect), since results were a shade more than twice as high as the previous version reported on my dual G4/500.
G4Timedemo
(Amazing quality, millions colors)
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 84.8 FPS
* G4/500 Dual w/Radeon: Ê 64.3 FPS
The G4/500 has 2X AGP and 100MHz bus speed, the G4/733 has 4xAGP and 133MHz bus (as well as the faster GeForce3 card of course).
I've not yet tested the Radeon with the latest ATI extensions and OpenGL 1.2.2 included on the G4/733, so for now the game scores below are just from the G4/733 with GeForce3.
GL Quake1
(1024x768)
* G4/733 w/GeForce3: Ê 289.3 FPS
Quake3 v117
(Demo1, all game options on, 32bit mode, High Geometric detail, texture quality slider one notch down from max, bilinear filtering, clean .cfg file.)
G4/733 w/GeForce3:
* 640x480/32: Ê 73.5 FPS
* 1024x768/32: Ê 73.5 FPS
* 1600x1200/32: Ê 63.5 FPS
* 1600x1200/16: Ê 67.4 FPS
I'll be posting the results of other tests later this week.
Êhttp://network54.com/Realm/tmp/991236555.GIF
