PowerPC G4 performance against rivals

[Zotaccian]

This thread contains some benchmark results which compare G4 CPU against x86 offerings.

*** Machines and operating system:
iBook G4 : Mac OS X 10.5.6
Medion MIM 2080 : Windows XP Pro SP3 (this wasted with two different CPU's)
ThinkPad X40 : Crunchbang Linux (kernel 3.2.0-4-486)

*** Processor:
iBook G4 : PowerPC "G4" 7447A, 1.33GHz, FSB 133MHz, L1 cache 64k, L2 cache 512k, AltiVec
Medion MIM 2080 : Intel Celeron M 320, 1.30GHz, FSB 400MHz, L1 cache 64k, L2 cache 512k, SSE2
Medion MIM 2080 : Intel Pentium M 1.60GHz, FSB 400MHz, L1 cache 64k, L2 cache 1024k, SSE2
Thinkpad X40 : Intel Pentium M 710, 1.40GHz, FSB 400MHz, L1 cache 64k, L2 cache 2048k, SSE2

All machines have DDR SDRAM, iBook G4 and X40 use RAM @ 333Mhz while Medion uses @ 266MHz.

Note that FSB speed makes difference in these tests, PowerPC G4 is unable to utilize full memory bandwidth available because it only has SDR FSB-design while Intel Celeron and Pentium have Quad Pumped Bus (100Mhz x 4 = 400Mhz). None of the G4 systems had anything else than SDR FSB so it is not that the iBook G4 used this test would be "crippled" or anything, it's just the way it is.


*** Tests.

1. Geekbench 2.2.7

* iBook G4 2005 1.33GHz : 713 (Full result in PDF file http://www.sendspace.com/file/2imx57)
* Medion MIM2080 Celeron M 320 : 819 (Full result in HTML file http://www.sendspace.com/file/3c2zvw)
* Medion MIM2080 Intel Pentium M 1.6GHz: 1018 (Full result link http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1740002)
* Thinkpad X40 Pentium M 710 : 1153 (Full result link http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/view/1711794)

Higher is better.

2. Handbrake 0.9.4

Encoding with default settings (to H.264), the file used can be found here (QuickTime Files -> test 15, 65MB:
http://download.wavetlan.com/SVV/Media/HTTP/http-mp4.htm

* iBook G4 2005 1.33GHz : 1 minute 56 seconds
* Medion MIM2080 Celeron M 320 : 1 minute 1 seconds

Time it took to encode was measured so less is better.

3. Cinebench R 11.5 (CPU render)

Running only the CPU render part of this benchmark.

* iBook G4 2005 1.33GHz : 0.17 (http://aijaa.com/08BtOD)
* Medion MIM2080 Celeron M 320 : 0.22 (http://aijaa.com/bBQ8nG)

Higher is better.

4. Creating a ZIP-file using OS native compression tools

Testing involved compressing Cinebench installation directory (317MB) using compression tools built in each operating system.

* iBook G4 2005 1.33GHz : 2 minutes
* Medion MIM2080 Celeron M 320 : 1 minute 38 seconds
* Thinkpad X40 Pentium M 710 : 1 minute 25 seconds

Time it took to create the file was measured so less is better.

 

[jchase2057]

Nice info. 1995 through 2005 are my favorite years for computers. I had a Compaq Armada e500. Held 3 batteries and ran like a champ. Sold it a few years back. I regret that. As far apple computers go, The G3 iBooks and iMacs were amazing. I wish apple would start making their machines in a variety of colors again.

 

[Zotaccian]

I'm not familiar with older, classic Macs and when I got introduced to Apple products the first computer used was eMac G4. By that time Apple had already made the switch to Intel (year 2006). The first Mac I owned was iMac G5 1.6GHz, altough I was very impressed by the design and the look of the OS, I was not that impressed with the web and general perfromance (yup, Flash) altough iLife apps ran great. This was of course the first revision of iMac G5 so I was also surpised how noisy the machine got when taxing the CPU. I did not own it for long, my PC had Athlon64 -processor and even though iMac looked nice I decided that it cannot replace my PC and sold it. However, after that I have owned countless G4 laptops, couple PowerMacs, one G4 Mac Mini and couple iMac G5s, usually I buy and repair them, some cases they might of course be fully working or be missing just a hard drive, charger etc. Great looking machines with questionable CPU's.

 

[Wildy]

I have an IBM Thinkpad X40 of similar vintage (2005 1.4 GHz Celeron M processor) - if you are interested I can run the same tests to add to yours?

 

[Zotaccian]

Yes, go ahead, I'll then add them to the original post. Cinebench was painfully slow with both of my machines so you might wanna have coffee or something while test is running

What is the exact model of your Celeron M? Geekbench will probably find that out anyways. Mine was with the Banias core so 512Kb L2 cache, before the test I thought I had newer Dothan with twice.

EDIT: Is it really Celeron M ?

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X40

 

[jchase2057]

It would be interesting for us all to run the same test on our 2005 and older laptops. Not that we haven't done similar threads but it would be cool to see peoples results from non iBooks and PowerBooks and compare them with apples offerings from that same time.

 

[Wildy]

I meant Pentium M, I happened to be reading your post while I was writing and accidentally put down Celeron. It's the Dothan core.

 

[Goftrey]

Had a 1.6 Pentium M in an old Dell Latitude a while back. From my experience, (unfortunately) it really totally blew my 1.67 PowerBook out of water in pretty much every aspect bar the graphics department. Integrated Intel chipsets have really come a long way in a few years.

PS. Of course this is talking 2005 tech, which was a time when the G5 was really beginning to show it's age, Apple couldn't quite shoe-horn a G5 into their laptops & Intel were continuing to evolve their low wattage notebook CPU's.

 

[Wildy]

Thinkpad X40 (1.4 GHz Pentium M Dotham core, 512MB DDR RAM) Crunchbang Linux results:

mike@thinkpad:~$ uname -a
Linux thinkpad 3.2.0-4-486 #1 Debian 3.2.35-2 i686 GNU/Linux

mike@thinkpad:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 13
model name	: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.40GHz
stepping	: 6
microcode	: 0x18
cpu MHz		: 600.000
cache size	: 2048 KB
fdiv_bug	: no
hlt_bug		: no
f00f_bug	: no
coma_bug	: no
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 2
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2
bogomips	: 1196.12
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

mike@thinkpad:~$ glxinfo | grep -n OpenGL
33:OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
34:OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 852GM/855GM x86/MMX/SSE2
35:OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 8.0.5
36:OpenGL extensions:

Geekbench 2.2.7 Linux: 1153 - http://browser.primelabs.com/geekbench2/view/1711794
Handbrake: 34 seconds (could only get hold of 0.9.8 - will try to find sources for 0.9.4)
Cinebench: Couldn't run (OpenGL crash with Wine - even with -cb_cpu1 option)
Zip compress: 1 minute 25 seconds (this thing has a pitiful 1.8" HDD - I suspect that is why this score is not better).

 

[Zotaccian]

Yes it would be nice if I could include Pentium III -tests but I don't have anything that old, Intel of course had Pentium 4-M between that and Pentium M. I could test against desktop Athlon 1.4GHz but after that I'm out of options, I do have Core 2 -based systems but it's quite obvious that they are much faster

EDIT: Wildy I added your ZIP result. It would nice to have same versions of all software, although of course when running ZIP benchmark that's definitely not the case. Very impressive result in Handbrake compared to others, I can see why Pixar and others use Linux -machines to render. I'm not sure how big role L2 cache plays in rendering? I remember looking some Intel Celeron benchmarks in the Pentium 4 era and there was some render tests where Celeron fared pretty well despite having only pitiful 128k of L2 cache.

 

[Wildy]

Of course, I wasn't expecting you to add the Handbrake result until I re-did it with the same version.

I'm not sure what to make of the encoding result as it seems too good to be true - though I used default settings so there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. Not sure about the effect of L2 cache sizes. This benchmark doesn't show much of an improvement with 4MB over 2MB for Cinebench: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2045/4

 

[Zotaccian]

Upgraded the processor on the Medion. Upgrade brought 300Mhz more, twice the L2 cache, Speedstep and more active fan (which is sad ) Temperature seems to be just at the limit very often, the fan starts to spin and almost immediately shuts down, no change that it actually impacts temperatures noticeably

 

[Project Alice]

I was curious about the performance of a ThinkPad X40 vs a PowerBook G4 and stumbled on this thread from google. I recently acquired an X40. It has a 1.2GHz Pentium M and 1GB of RAM. Those of you that know me on here (though I haven't been super active in recent months) might remember that I like to collect IBM machines, specifically ThinkPads as much as I do old Macs.

I've been using this X40 a few days now. it got the same treatment as my PPC Macs with a 256GB SSD in an adapter. However being an x86 laptop it can more easily run a modern OS. I was going to run FreeBSD or NetBSD but I kept running into problems during installation (possibly a dying flash drive). Anyways it is running the most recent Debian 11 with XFCE. I am so surprised at how well this thing runs. It is snappy and quick even with Debian. It runs latest Firefox ESR and browsing the web is great even with 3-5 tabs. At 1.2GHz, it feels so much faster than even my fastest PowerBooks, I'm not sure if that's due to the modern OS or the CPU. But this makes me really want to try something other than Mac OS X on one of my PowerBooks. Or were ThinkPads really that much better at the time? I'd bet every Mac has better graphics though.. I can't even get cool retro term to run on it presumably due to the 855GM Intel graphics.

 

[Dronecatcher]

At 1.2GHz, it feels so much faster than even my fastest PowerBooks, I'm not sure if that's due to the modern OS or the CPU.

I have the same model - the key is the Pentium M, it hugely outclasses the G4 - mine benchmarks higher than the DLSD, Geekbenching at 869 despite being 467Mhz slower than the Powerbook!

However, I've found - just like with Powerbooks - a modern OS slows this class of hardware down - so after trying Linux, mine has XP2020 with Basilisk and Palemoon for browsers - it handles 720P Youtube with ease.

Thinkpads are great and I certainly hold them in the same esteem as Powerbooks...well, nearly anyway.

Here's mine on Propellerhead Reason 4 duties:

 

[Amethyst1]

I have the same model - the key is the Pentium M […]

It’s no surprise the Core Solo and Core Duo were enhanced Pentium Ms, and the Core 2’s microarchitecture was based on it.

 

[Dronecatcher]

It’s no surprise the Core Solo and Core Duo were enhanced Pentium Ms, and the Core 2’s microarchitecture was based on it.

Indeed - I have a Compaq NC2400 based hackintosh than can only operate with one core of it's 1.2Ghz Core Duo CPU - even so, it benchmarks a respectable 1174 - high as a 1.8Ghz Powermac G5!

 

[weckart]

I am so surprised at how well this thing runs. It is snappy and quick even with Debian. It runs latest Firefox ESR and browsing the web is great even with 3-5 tabs. At 1.2GHz, it feels so much faster than even my fastest PowerBooks, I'm not sure if that's due to the modern OS or the CPU.

It will be down to the processor. My first hackintosh was the venerable Dell Latitude D600 with a Banias processor. I think it might have been 1.6GHz but otherwise, the standard would have been a 1.4. Nevertheless, running Tiger and with unaccelerated Radeon 9000M graphics, it blew my Power Book G5 1.5GHz away. Back then, you had to run hackintosh distros with all sorts of hacks and kludges just to stop it locking up or kernel panicking so it was anything but optimised and yet...

 

[Amethyst1]

My first hackintosh was the venerable Dell Latitude D600 with a Banias processor. I think it might have been 1.6GHz but otherwise, the standard would have been a 1.4. Nevertheless, running Tiger and with unaccelerated Radeon 9000M graphics, it blew my Power Book G5 1.5GHz away.

Go ahead and kill me but IMHO, Apple should™ have transitioned their laptops from the G4 to the Pentium M in 2003/2004.

 

[weckart]

Go ahead and kill me but IMHO, Apple should™ have transitioned their laptops from the G4 to the Pentium M in 2003/2004.

Yes/no. The first Apple Intel computers with slightly more refined processors still were clunkers (except the Mac Pro) but the Dell I had ran very hot, so with Apple's attitude to cooling...

I suppose Apple must have known by then that the game was up with PPC but probably still had to iron out some issues with Marklar before committing to hardware.

 

[MysticCow]

Had a 1.6 Pentium M in an old Dell Latitude a while back. From my experience, (unfortunately) it really totally blew my 1.67 PowerBook out of water in pretty much every aspect bar the graphics department. Integrated Intel chipsets have really come a long way in a few years.

PS. Of course this is talking 2005 tech, which was a time when the G5 was really beginning to show it's age, Apple couldn't quite shoe-horn a G5 into their laptops & Intel were continuing to evolve their low wattage notebook CPU's.

Which was exactly why the Intel switch happened in the first place. PPC chips stagnated while Intel didn’t.

Today it feels quite the opposite. ARM is evolving while Intel stagnates. And when Intel stagnates, all they do is pimp out higher clock speeds and call it a day.

 

[Amethyst1]

And when Intel stagnates, all they do is pimp out higher clock speeds and call it a day.

Before AMD and ARM-based CPUs were serious competitors (again) they could afford to.

The first Apple Intel computers with slightly more refined processors still were clunkers (except the Mac Pro) but the Dell I had ran very hot, so with Apple's attitude to cooling...

Good point. The slightly lower-clocked "low voltage" variants of the Pentium M/Core Solo/Core Duo still packed a serious punch at a substantually lower TDP.

 

[rampancy]

I was curious about the performance of a ThinkPad X40 vs a PowerBook G4 and stumbled on this thread from google. I recently acquired an X40. It has a 1.2GHz Pentium M and 1GB of RAM. Those of you that know me on here (though I haven't been super active in recent months) might remember that I like to collect IBM machines, specifically ThinkPads as much as I do old Macs.

Oh man, this makes me want to break out the X40 I have in storage. I think it needs a new hard drive and CMOS battery; I'd love to pick your brain over what would be the best way to bring it back to life.

 

[ahurst]

Oh man, this makes me want to break out the X40 I have in storage. I think it needs a new hard drive and CMOS battery; I'd love to pick your brain over what would be the best way to bring it back to life.

Unless it's one of the models known for weird hardware faults (e.g. my A21e, which is horrendously cursed by the infamous "blink-of-death" issue if I leave it plugged in too long), it should be up and ready to go as soon as it's out of storage! You may want to replace the CMOS battery though since those are annoying.

If you want to get some extra performance out of it though, maximizing the RAM and swapping the old IDE drive with an mSATA-to-IDE adapter and a cheap mSATA SSD would be the biggest improvements. You can also replace the thermal paste if you want to be thorough, though it's not entirely necessary unless you plan on working it hard over long periods (or really dislike fan noise).

 

[Amethyst1]

I had an X41 with the 1.6 GHz low-voltage Pentium M, 2 GB RAM and a 32 GB Mtron PATA SSD. Awesome little machine although the SSD was slow and small, so the mSATA route is the way to go.

 

[Project Alice]

I have the same model - the key is the Pentium M, it hugely outclasses the G4 - mine benchmarks higher than the DLSD, Geekbenching at 869 despite being 467Mhz slower than the Powerbook!

However, I've found - just like with Powerbooks - a modern OS slows this class of hardware down - mine has XP2020 with Basilisk and Palemoon for browsers - it handles 720P Youtube with ease.

Thinkpads are great and I certainly hold them in the same esteem as Powerbooks...well, nearly anyway.

Here's mine on Propellerhead Reason 4 duties:

View attachment 1985647

That thing is beautiful! Mine is about just as nice but there is a slightly unnoticeable crack on one of the corners that appears someone dropped it at one point.

I didn’t expect it to run as well as it does on Debian 11. I thought about running XP (or rather 2003 as IMO NT 5.1 < NT 5.2) but I already have a couple computers I run old Windows on and I wanted to use this ThinkPad more like I do my PBG4s. I haven’t attempted YouTube on it yet but I don’t suspect it will have too much trouble. I always find myself watching YT on my phone anyways.

It’s no surprise the Core Solo and Core Duo were enhanced Pentium Ms, and the Core 2’s microarchitecture was based on it.

I didn’t realize this. I always equate the Pentium name to the P/PII/PIII/P4 chips and we all know how well those perform. I think I posted something on here a couple years ago about how my 1.5GHz PowerBook whooped my 2.4GHz Pentium 4. So these Pentium M’s are kind of like having an early Core Solo machine? I also have a (really beat up) Dell Inspiron 6000 with a Pentium M I always thought was way too fast for 1.6GHz.

Unless it's one of the models known for weird hardware faults (e.g. my A21e, which is horrendously cursed by the infamous "blink-of-death" issue if I leave it plugged in too long), it should be up and ready to go as soon as it's out of storage! You may want to replace the CMOS battery though since those are annoying.

If you want to get some extra performance out of it though, maximizing the RAM and swapping the old IDE drive with an mSATA-to-IDE adapter and a cheap mSATA SSD would be the biggest improvements. You can also replace the thermal paste if you want to be thorough, though it's not entirely necessary unless you plan on working it hard over long periods (or really dislike fan noise).

Ah, the A series. Aside from my iBook G3, an IBM ThinkPad A22m was one of my first laptops. It still works save for me removing the cmos battery in attempt clear a BIOS password. After I did that it became a power-on password and is now a paperweight. I do however have a much slower yet perfectly functioning A21m.

I second this about the X40; just plug it in and it’ll probably still work fine. An mSATA to IDE adapter will fit perfectly. However a word of advice if you decide to do this; the X40 has a weird sized 1.8” HDD. Make sure to get a small adapter and not a full 2.5” one like we usually stick in PowerBooks. If you do this, I found it much easier to take the bottom case off the ThinkPad rather than try to fenangle the adapter in there. I spent a good 10 minutes trying to get it plugged in before I just took it apart. Taking it apart is not hard either. No harder than a 15” PowerBook.