XLR8 550 MHz G4 CPU in a Cube--How Fast Is It?

As we previously noted, Bill Wong installed a new XLR8 550 MHz G4 CPU upgrade for "Sawtooth" Power Mac G4s (AGP Graphics and Gigabit Ethernet models) in his Power Mac G4 Cube. Over the weekend he did some speed tests and has given us permission to reproduce them on Macs Only! Bill's report follows:

"Here are some preliminary Benchmark scores comparing my upgraded G4 Cubes. I'm not an expert at running benchmark tests, so I just used tests that were available and used on other web sites (thanks to www.barefeats.com). One premise that I used was that timed scores in seconds are 100% better if the time to complete the task is half the time compared to the base unit. Similarly, a Cinebench score (higher is better) that is twice that of the base unit is also 100% better. Clear as mud?

"The base unit was a G4 450 MHz. I added the scores from my G4 867 Tower for comparison (133 MHz bus compared to the Cube's 100 MHz bus).

"Cinebench 2000 is not Carbonized, so I ran it in Mac OS 9.2.2 (the scores in Mac OS X Classic mode were slower, of course). Cinema 4D XL is carbonized and runs on Mac OS X. Rendering 3D images is supposed to be a good CPU intensive task.

Speed Tests of Power Mac G4 Cube with 450, 550 and Dual 500 G4 CPUs and Power Mac G4 867

Processor (MHz)	G4 450	G4 550	Dual G4 500	G4 867
No. CPUs	1	1	2	1
RAM (MB)	384	384	384	768
Cinebench 2000 (OS 9.2.2) Scores (Higher is faster)
- Shading (Cinema 4D)	4.65	5.72	5.35	7.20
- Shading (OpenGL)	6.19	7.22	6.74	9.61
- Raytracing (single CPU)	5.81	7.12	6.44	10.81
- Raytracing (multiple CPU)	-	-	11.48	-
Cinema 4D XL (OS X 10.1.4) Time in seconds (Lower is faster)
- Blobb	26	22	12	17
- Sunblast	106	82	60	65
Average improvement (%)	-	22	12	66
Dual Processor Improvement	-	-	101	-

All tests used an ATI Radeon graphics card at a resolution of 1280x1024 pixels and a color depth of millions of color.

"I used the raytracing multiple CPU and Cinema 4D XL scores to come up with the multiprocessor improvement, since these scores seem to reflect the benefit of Dual G4 chips. The rendering in Dual G4 aware programs involves splitting the image in half and allowing each processor to work on one half at the same time, effectively reducing the rendering time by almost one half.

"Others may represent the changes from the base unit differently, but this seems to make sense to me.

"It is clear that the 550 MHz processor is about 20% faster than the 450 MHz processor unit. The Dual 500 MHz processor is twice as fast for programs that can split the work between the two processors. Otherwise it is about 12% faster (500 MHz vs 450 MHz). My G4 867 certainly is faster than the cubes (benefits from 133 MHz bus in addition to 867 MHz speed). Imagine what the Dual 1 GHz can do in 3D rendering.

"So what can you make of this? If you use dual processor aware aps, go for it. Otherwise, the 550 MHz upgrade does what it is supposed to do, increase speed about 20-22%."

[At $299 plus your old G4 CPU, XLR8's 550 MHz upgrade is attractively priced for those looking for more speed out of their 450 MHz Cubes. The XLR8 CPU is a more recent model of G4, a 7410 that uses less power and creates less heat which may help with Cube longevity. Hopefully, XLR8 will be offering higher speed G4 CPU upgrades in the near future.--ed.]

-- Weekend, May 4-5 --

[Update] No Reset/Programmers Buttons on eMac and LCD iMac: According to this Apple KBase article, the power button is multipurpose. Hold it down for more than 5 seconds and the Mac will power off, even if unresponsive, and reset. For firmware updates, one doesn't need to use a programmers button as in previous Macs. Just power off, wait for the power button light to go out and then press it for several seconds until the firmware update tone is heard and the power button light flashes. [Dana Baggett]