Most of the games were run at 3 different settings.
The exception was Giants who's fame rates didn't seem to vary
much from setting to setting, and which really only looked
great at the default setting. So that is where we left it.
Quake was run under OS 9.2.2. The other two
games are modern ones that will run within OS X and that take
advantage of both the operating system & dual processors,
as well as the graphics card.
One test we ran, who's results are not listed
below, was to run 4x4 EV02 and a QuickTime movie render at
the same time. The QuickTime render ran in the background.
Both programs ran great, and at the same time without problems.
The frame rates of EVO were the same whether the QuickTime
render was going on or not ... Wicked!
EVO, when running solo, only used around 50%
of the processing capacity of the the 1.25 GHz Tower, leaving
plenty of processing power for other tasks.
On the gaming front, not surprisingly, the top
of the line Dual G4/1.25 GHz Tower is king. It turned in,
on average, 40 - 50% better frame rates over the 867 MHz machine.
However when EVO was set to high-quality, the 1.25 GHz leaped
ahead of the 867 by 71%.
Giants and EVO are demanding games and it is
only with the arrival these Towers that we are beginning to
see acceptable game play when the game is set to its high-quality
setting. If you are a hardcore gamer, and you have the cash
burning a hole in your pocket, you are going to want to go
with the high-end Tower ... you'll need its muscle. Don't
even think about getting an iMac! For those of you on a limited
budget ... there is always a graphics
card upgrade
For the graphs below frame rates were converted
to percentages, relative to the Power Mac Dual G4/867, which
is set to 100%. For all scores, higher numbers are better.
Quake III Tests
The Quake test were run when booted into OS
9.2.2. At the 'High Quality' setting Quake relies almost exclusively
on the graphics card. In fastest mode the processor plays
a big part.
The Giants & EVO tests were run under 10.2. Both games
take advantage of dual processors
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