The slogan is well worn - "Every year computers get cheaper and faster." Yes, but how much cheaper and faster do they become? What kind of price/ performance break are we Macintosh consumers getting with the release of each new machine upgrade? We thought we would take a look at this issue by comparing the price/performance equation of most of the high-end PowerMacs since mid 1995. To do this we took the MacBench 4.0 scores and divided the cost of the machine by each individual test result. What we then had was the cost per MacBench performance point for each test; processor, fpu, disk and graphics. You will find the detailed results on the graphics below. We also provide a table of the actual MacBench 4.0 results and the cost for each individual machine.
So how much of a price/performance advantage does the top of the line Blue and White PowerMac G3/400 have over the top of the line machine of mid 1995, the PowerMac 9500/132? The current G3/400 cost only 1/10 of what the 9500/132 cost for the same amount of processing power. However the biggest single percentage drop in the price/performance ratio between consecutive professional machines has been between the current G3/400 and its direct predecessor the 9600/350. The G3/400 cost less than 30% of what the 9600/350 cost, for similar processing power.
Of course there are other things to consider besides raw processing power, such as features and expandability. However it is undeniable that the current professional G3s provide a dramatic price/performance improvement over their predecessors.
On the graphs below, where there is a score of zero, this means that we either did not have data for that test or that the data was not sufficiently reliable to use it.
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For Great Prices On Upgrades 
