Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) on G3 Macs--How Fast Is It?
Last week we posted our usual speed test of Apple's newly-released Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). We used a couple of G4 Cubes and a Power Mac G5 to demonstrate Panther's significant increase in the speed of 2D graphics and Finder operations. A number of readers wrote us asking if the speed increases also extend to supported G3-based Macs, so we decided to see.
We used an original white 12" iBook Dual USB with a 500 MHz G3 and a CD-ROM drive and a newer 14" iBook with a 700 MHz G3 CPU. Both use ATI Mobility graphics but the 12" has only 8 MB VRAM Rage 128 graphics while the 14" has 16 MB Radeon graphics. The 12" has 192 MB RAM and the 14" has 256 MB, both are minimal.
A subset of our usual speed tests were run to look primarily at the Finder and 2D graphics speed. Here are the results and we've also included the G5 scores to show how far the Mac's speed has come:
| Test | iBook 500 MHz | iBook 700 MHz |
G5 dual 2-GHz
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac OS X Version: |
10.2.8
|
10.3
|
10.2.8
|
10.3
|
10.2.8
|
10.3
|
| Benchmarks: | ||||||
| Altivec Fractal 1.1.3 (GFLOPS) |
0.3
|
0.3
|
0.5
|
0.5
|
10.3
|
10.3
|
|
Cinebench 2003 - Rendering
|
43
|
43
|
68
|
68
|
520
|
523
|
|
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
|
59
|
58
|
114
|
111
|
1347
|
1384
|
| Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec) |
113
|
73
|
73
|
45
|
19
|
34
|
| Xbench 1.1.3 - CPU |
32
|
34
|
47
|
47
|
194
|
193
|
| - Threading |
38
|
44
|
52
|
63
|
205
|
209
|
| - Memory |
16
|
17
|
23
|
26
|
302
|
311
|
| - Quartz Graphics |
40
|
44
|
77
|
90
|
279
|
274
|
| - OpenGL Graphics |
66
|
64
|
85
|
83
|
178
|
179
|
| - User Interface Graphics |
34
|
52
|
68
|
113
|
215
|
348
|
| - Hard Disk |
30
|
26
|
42
|
40
|
110
|
110
|
| "Real World" Tests: | ||||||
| Startup (sec) |
81
|
56
|
65
|
51
|
43
|
45
|
| Shutdown (sec) |
30
|
14
|
22
|
15
|
9
|
7
|
| Launch Classic Mode (sec) |
60
|
64
|
30
|
30
|
16
|
11
|
| Copy 160 MB File (sec) |
36
|
36
|
23
|
24
|
11
|
12
|
| Scroll 142p Acrobat Reader File (sec) |
-
|
-
|
46
|
46
|
14
|
13
|
| Export QT Movie in iMovie 3.0.1 (sec) |
-
|
-
|
53
|
47
|
24
|
23
|
| Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec) |
16
|
16
|
32
|
32
|
281
|
291
|
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