Benchmarks

Benchmarks provide measurements of a system and its components, or a change to a systems components, which can be used to quantitatively determine the performance values of a system and various components. Real world tests aside, benchmarking provides vital measurement of system performance, allowing ease of comparison of systems and components.

Benchmark scores can be found at most benchmarking utility sites, or from review testing of individual components. Google can be your friend.....
Rehashing baselines, or including other systems I didn’t test on my own, is not my intent.

The purpose here is to provide test results of individual components within a given system, and to show the performance values of various equipment configurations for ease of comparison. Some of the components tested here were not available in the machines heyday, so how these components work in a G4, along with current performance comparisons, are the focus.

First off, I’ll introduce the benching utilities that I use in the various tests.

Benchmarking Utilities
The following are utilities that I use to benchmark various systems and equipment configurations.

System Benchmarking

Geekbench
A system benchmarking utility that specifically measures the processing and memory power (independent of RAM capacity) of your system. A reliable tool for measuring system performance from Primate Labs.
Learn more and download Geekbench at http://www.primatelabs.ca/geekbench/

XBench
A full system benchmarking utility standard for Mac from Spiny Software.
Learn more and download XBench at http://www.xbench.com/

SantaDuck Toolpak
A tool kit that includes a benchmarking utility for Unreal Tournament 2004.
Learn more and download SantaDuck ToolPak at http://santaduck.com/
Use SantaDuck and UT2K4 Flyby tests to compare graphics card performance.
Botmatch results can gauge CPU performance for comparisons.

CineBench
A high performance 3D graphics benchmarking test suite from Maxon which measures the graphics processing power of the CPU and graphics card.
OpenGL is used in Maxons engine, but results for specific graphics cards may not mirror performance in other OpenGL benching software due to the implementation of OpenGL in the engine. Learn more and download Cinebench at :
http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/cinebench_e.html

Graphics Benchmarking

OpenGL Viewer
A very nice software which provides information regarding OpenGL system drivers from Realtech.vr.
Includes useful utilities, benchmark and testing modules.
Learn more and download at http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/index.html

GioFX Openmark
A dedicated OpenGL performance test which gives concise, easy to compare scores for the OpenGL version of importance to the OS X version being used.
Download v1.60: http://mac.majorgeeks.com/download5008.html

iMaginator
From Stone Design. This software is actually a graphics/photography enhancing software, based on Core Image. Though not intended for such, it can be used to benchmark Core Image performance of a system. Beyond that, it is really easy to use, and provides spectacular effects.
Learn more and purchase at http://www.stone.com/iMaginator/iMaginator.html

Games make for the best graphics card benchmarking. See Unreal Tournament/Flyby, Doom 3, Halo and Prey pages.

Hard Drive Benchmarking

QuickBench
An industry standard hard disk benchmarking tool from Intech Software Corp.
Learn more and purchase QuickBench at http://www.speedtools2.com/QuickBench.html

Aja System Test
This is a nice test suite for measuring the performance your hard disk and RAID arrays.
Learn more and download at http://www.aja.com/products/software/.

Also Use XBench for hard drive benchmarking.

For performance information on systems, or hardware, other than those included in these pages, visit the sites of the above utility makers.

My benchmark pages are linked in each of the following:

Hard Drive Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

Graphics Card Benchmarks

Performance and Benchmarks

For in depth information and testing on other systems, old and new, go to Bare Feats and Accelerate Your Mac.
To all these people, I say Thank You, as they and their sites have helped and inspired me with their respective efforts and abundance of information on all things Mac.