Review of Giga Designs Fanless 1GHz Cube CPU Upgrade

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Review: Giga Designs 7455A G4 1GHz Cube CPU Upgrade
(2MB L3 SDR Cache)
Tested: 12/5/2003

Benchmark Test Results

Intro | Benchmarks | Apps Tests | Game Tests | Installation | Specs/Design

Benchmark Tests

Benchmark tests were run with Altivec Fractal Carbon demo 1.2, CineBench 2003, and Xbench 1.1.3. I reboot between all tests (benchmarks and apps/game tests) to ensure as clean/consistent a cache/memory state as possible. Pure benchmarks are far less important than real-world applications tests, but many want to see them regardless. (The Apps tests page has results of tests with iMovie3, iTunes4 , MPEG4 movie conversion and Photoshop 7.0. The game tests page includes results with popular 3D games like Jedi II, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake3.)

Fractal FPU Benchmark:
I used the freeware Altivec Fractal (Carbon) demo v1.2 program (available here) to compare FPU performance of the original Dual G4/533 system and each of the upgrades. Test run in OS X 10.3.1 (not OS 9). Default settings were used. This is basically a FPU test (Altivec boosted and dual CPU aware). (Note: MegaFlops/sec = Millions of Floating Point Operations per Second.)

Fractal Demo Results

CineBench 2003 Results:
Since probably less than 1% of Mac users own Maxon's Cinema4D application, I use their freely available CineBench benchmark. (Which does more than just a simple timed render of a scene file - it also does shaded and wireframe model spins, "fly-throughs" of a 3D scene, etc. to show graphics card and cpu performance, not just rendering times.) CineBench 2003 is available at http://www.maxon.net/jumps/cinebench.html. As with all tests in this review, the desktop was set to 1600x1200 model, millions colors.

CineBench 2003 Results
I also recorded the FPS (frames per second) rate from the scene tests (these are not saved in the results normally). Here's a graph of the FPS rates from the 2 scenes in the Benchmark (results from OpenGL Hardware mode)

CineBench 2003 Scene FPS

XBench Results:
Results from tests using v1.1.3 of XBench.

XBench 1.1.3 Results

The next page has results from real world applications. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page.
(For other cpu upgrade reviews/articles, see the CPU upgrades page)

Giga Designs 1GHz Cube CPU Upgrade Review Pages
Intro | Benchmarks | Apps Tests | Game Tests | Installation | Specs/Design

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Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM

Copyright © 2004, all rights reserved.
All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies.
Web site privacy and terms/conditions of use.

The Source for Mac Performance News and Reviews
Review: Giga Designs 7455A G4 1GHz Cube CPU Upgrade (2MB L3 SDR Cache) Tested: 12/5/2003
Benchmark Test Results
Intro \| Benchmarks \| Apps Tests \| Game Tests \| Installation \| Specs/Design
Benchmark Tests
Benchmark tests were run with Altivec Fractal Carbon demo 1.2, CineBench 2003, and Xbench 1.1.3. I reboot between all tests (benchmarks and apps/game tests) to ensure as clean/consistent a cache/memory state as possible. Pure benchmarks are far less important than real-world applications tests, but many want to see them regardless. (The Apps tests page has results of tests with iMovie3, iTunes4 , MPEG4 movie conversion and Photoshop 7.0. The game tests page includes results with popular 3D games like Jedi II, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake3.) Fractal FPU Benchmark: I used the freeware Altivec Fractal (Carbon) demo v1.2 program (available here) to compare FPU performance of the original Dual G4/533 system and each of the upgrades. Test run in OS X 10.3.1 (not OS 9). Default settings were used. This is basically a FPU test (Altivec boosted and dual CPU aware). (Note: MegaFlops/sec = Millions of Floating Point Operations per Second.) CineBench 2003 Results: Since probably less than 1% of Mac users own Maxon's Cinema4D application, I use their freely available CineBench benchmark. (Which does more than just a simple timed render of a scene file - it also does shaded and wireframe model spins, "fly-throughs" of a 3D scene, etc. to show graphics card and cpu performance, not just rendering times.) CineBench 2003 is available at http://www.maxon.net/jumps/cinebench.html. As with all tests in this review, the desktop was set to 1600x1200 model, millions colors. I also recorded the FPS (frames per second) rate from the scene tests (these are not saved in the results normally). Here's a graph of the FPS rates from the 2 scenes in the Benchmark (results from OpenGL Hardware mode) XBench Results: Results from tests using v1.1.3 of XBench.
The next page has results from real world applications. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page. (For other cpu upgrade reviews/articles, see the CPU upgrades page)

Giga Designs 1GHz Cube CPU Upgrade Review Pages Intro \| Benchmarks \| Apps Tests \| Game Tests \| Installation \| Specs/Design - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
Copyright © 2004, all rights reserved. All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies. Web site privacy and terms/conditions of use.