Power Mac G4 GeForce2 MX in a Cube--How Fast Is It?

Last week we received our G4 Cube from Smalldog.com, an Apple refurb with a one year warranty for $1099, along with AppleCare for $209. The Cube is the base configuration of a 450 MHz G4 CPU, 64 MB RAM and an ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics card. We immediately added 256 MB RAM because we plan to run Mac OS X Server 10.0.4 on it. The Cube is the best desktop computer ever made, in our opinion, and it makes a superb 24/7 server since it is very quiet and fast.

We have an extra NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 2x AGP graphics card that was pulled from our Power Mac G4 533 DP when we got out GeForce3 graphics card last month. The GeForce3 was reviewed here on Macs Only! We wondered if the GeForce2 MX pulled from our 533 DP would work in a G4 Cube. It has a smallish heat sink, about 1.5" on a side, and no fan. The GeForce2 MX previously available for the Cube by BTO from the Apple Store has a huge 4" by 4" (or so) heat sink so we worried about the potential for heat problems. Still we decided to give it a try to see if it worked and how it compared with the ATI Rage 128 Pro graphics card. Here are the results of runs with several applications and benchmarks:

Application	GeForce2	Rage 128 Pro
G4 TimeDemo v0.32 (fps)	56	61
ThroughPut v1.5 CPU (Mb/sec)	59	47
- FPU (Mb/sec)	94	78
- AltiVec (Mb/sec)	134	118
- CopyBits (Mb/sec)	201	176
Walker 1.2 Atrium Spin (fps)	38	42
MacBench 50 Graphics	4198	3197
Scroll VPC 4 Manual (sec)	30	33
Cinebench 2000 - Shading C4D	4.7	4.5
- Shading OpenGL	5.9	5.7
- Raytracing	5.6	5.8
Quake III Arena v1.17 Demo1 (fps)	45	21 (34)
Thermograph (deg C)	57	46

The Rage 128 Pro holds its own against the GeForce2 for the most part. It bests the GeForce2 in the G4 TimeDemo (a test of the Altivec G4 engine), the Walker spin (a test of QuickDraw 3D) and the Cinebench Raytraycing. The big difference is in the frame rate for Quake 3 Arena where the GeForce excels.

While the GeForce2 MX is faster than the Rage 128 Pro, it also makes the CPU run hotter, 57 deg C vs 46.