Review of Powerlogix's Single/Dual G4 7447A and 7457 CPU Upgrades

A Click shows your site support to my Sponsors

The Source for Mac Performance News and Reviews

Review: Powerlogix's 7447A & 7457 CPU Upgrades
(Single and Dual CPU - 1.2GHz to 1.8GHz)
Tests in Quicksilver G4/733
By Mike
Published: 7/1/2005
Updated: 8/9/2005 (for 1.7/1.8GHz results)

Benchmark Test Results

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

Benchmark Tests

Benchmark tests were run with Altivec Fractal Carbon demo 1.3, CineBench 2003 and (although I'm not a big fan of it) - Xbench 1.1.3. Benchmarks are less important than real-world applications and game tests, but many want to see them anyway. (The Apps tests page has results of tests with QT/H.264 conversion/playback, simple Multitasking tests, iTunes4.8, iPhoto 5, Photoshop 7.0, etc. and the game tests page includes results with popular 3D games like Call of Duty, Halo, Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2004, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom3 and Quake 3.)

Notes: (repeated on all test pages)
The 1.7GHz 7447A actually runs at appx 1.73GHz in 133MHz bus Macs like the Digital Audio and Quicksilver (QS model used for tests here)
For all the Dual 1.7GHz Upgrade tests CPU Director's DFS (Dynamic Frequency Switching) was enabled. It was not enabled for the other upgrade's tests.

I created a separate page on CPU Director 2.1 with screenshots and more info. It worked well (notice the 1.73GHz results vs the 1.8GHz w/DFS disabled) and was responsive (changes speeds quickly).

Fractal FPU Benchmark:
I used the freeware Altivec Fractal (Carbon) demo v1.3 program (available here) to compare FPU performance. Default settings were used and it uses both CPUs on the Dual upgrades. (Note: MegaFlops/sec = Millions of Floating Point Operations per Second.)

Fractal FPU Results
The higher clock speed 7447A's scored best (no L3 cache isn't a factor in this test).

CineBench 2003 Results:
Since probably less than 1% of Mac users own Maxon's Cinema4D application (or other 3D rendering Pro app), I use the freely available CineBench2003 benchmark. (Which does more than just a simple render of a scene - it also does shaded and wireframe model spins, shaded and wireframe "fly-throughs" of a scene to show graphics card and cpu performance, not just rendering times.) Longer bars are faster.

CineBench 2003 Results
You can see the rendering scores benefited from using both CPUs of the upgrades. (The 7457's L3 cache wasn't as much of a benefit on the render test as it was for the OpenGL fly-through tests. See the Scene FPS test results as well as H.264 playback and 3D gaming tests on the Apps tests page where the 7457 w/L3 cache shows more of an advantage. Both the 7447A and 7457 have 512KB of L2 cache on-chip, but the 7457 also has 2MB per CPU of L3 cache. The L3 cache is a benefit for tasks that stream lot of data.)
I also recorded the Scene1 and Scene2 fly-through FPS rates.

CineBench Scene FPS
You can search for other Mac system/CPU/Video card CineBench 20003 results at my Mac Game/Video card performance database. If you download CineBench 2003, please enter your results.

XBench 1.1.3 Tests:
I'm not really a big fan of XBench, but it has always seemed to be very popular so I'm including results with it as well. (There's now a version 1.2 available.)
Xbench compare
In some cases the scores weren't what I expected, but then Xbench scores can vary from run/run (even after a clean reboot) and keep in mind it's just a pure benchmark. As a reminder, the Quicksilver had a Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB) retail graphics card, 640MB of RAM, 133MHz (SDR) bus speed.

Benchmark Bottom Line: (But who cares that much about pure benchmarks...) The dual 1.8GHz was usually the fastest of the 5 upgrades in these pure benchmarks tests although the dual 1.2GHz 7457 w/L3 scored better on a few specific tests (like CB2003 GL/FPS and XBench UI tests).
The next page has results from real world applications. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page.
(For comparisons of other CPU Card upgrades, Systems or Video cards see the site list of CPU Card Reviews, Video card reviews and Systems page.)

Index of PL 7447A and 7457 CPU Upgrades
Intro | Benchmarks | Apps Tests | Game Tests | Installation | Specs/Design

- or -
Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM

Copyright © 2005.

No part of this sites content or images are to be reproduced or distributed in any form without written permission.
All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies.

Users of the web site must read and are bound by the terms and conditions of use.

The Source for Mac Performance News and Reviews
Review: Powerlogix's 7447A & 7457 CPU Upgrades (Single and Dual CPU - 1.2GHz to 1.8GHz) Tests in Quicksilver G4/733 By Mike Published: 7/1/2005 Updated: 8/9/2005 (for 1.7/1.8GHz results)
Benchmark Test Results
Intro \| Benchmarks \| Apps Tests \| Game Tests \| Installation \| Specs/Design
Benchmark Tests
Benchmark tests were run with Altivec Fractal Carbon demo 1.3, CineBench 2003 and (although I'm not a big fan of it) - Xbench 1.1.3. Benchmarks are less important than real-world applications and game tests, but many want to see them anyway. (The Apps tests page has results of tests with QT/H.264 conversion/playback, simple Multitasking tests, iTunes4.8, iPhoto 5, Photoshop 7.0, etc. and the game tests page includes results with popular 3D games like Call of Duty, Halo, Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2004, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom3 and Quake 3.) Notes: (repeated on all test pages) The 1.7GHz 7447A actually runs at appx 1.73GHz in 133MHz bus Macs like the Digital Audio and Quicksilver (QS model used for tests here) For all the Dual 1.7GHz Upgrade tests CPU Director's DFS (Dynamic Frequency Switching) was enabled. It was not enabled for the other upgrade's tests. I created a separate page on CPU Director 2.1 with screenshots and more info. It worked well (notice the 1.73GHz results vs the 1.8GHz w/DFS disabled) and was responsive (changes speeds quickly). Fractal FPU Benchmark: I used the freeware Altivec Fractal (Carbon) demo v1.3 program (available here) to compare FPU performance. Default settings were used and it uses both CPUs on the Dual upgrades. (Note: MegaFlops/sec = Millions of Floating Point Operations per Second.) The higher clock speed 7447A's scored best (no L3 cache isn't a factor in this test). CineBench 2003 Results: Since probably less than 1% of Mac users own Maxon's Cinema4D application (or other 3D rendering Pro app), I use the freely available CineBench2003 benchmark. (Which does more than just a simple render of a scene - it also does shaded and wireframe model spins, shaded and wireframe "fly-throughs" of a scene to show graphics card and cpu performance, not just rendering times.) Longer bars are faster. You can see the rendering scores benefited from using both CPUs of the upgrades. (The 7457's L3 cache wasn't as much of a benefit on the render test as it was for the OpenGL fly-through tests. See the Scene FPS test results as well as H.264 playback and 3D gaming tests on the Apps tests page where the 7457 w/L3 cache shows more of an advantage. Both the 7447A and 7457 have 512KB of L2 cache on-chip, but the 7457 also has 2MB per CPU of L3 cache. The L3 cache is a benefit for tasks that stream lot of data.) I also recorded the Scene1 and Scene2 fly-through FPS rates. You can search for other Mac system/CPU/Video card CineBench 20003 results at my Mac Game/Video card performance database. If you download CineBench 2003, please enter your results. XBench 1.1.3 Tests: I'm not really a big fan of XBench, but it has always seemed to be very popular so I'm including results with it as well. (There's now a version 1.2 available.) In some cases the scores weren't what I expected, but then Xbench scores can vary from run/run (even after a clean reboot) and keep in mind it's just a pure benchmark. As a reminder, the Quicksilver had a Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB) retail graphics card, 640MB of RAM, 133MHz (SDR) bus speed.
Benchmark Bottom Line: (But who cares that much about pure benchmarks...) The dual 1.8GHz was usually the fastest of the 5 upgrades in these pure benchmarks tests although the dual 1.2GHz 7457 w/L3 scored better on a few specific tests (like CB2003 GL/FPS and XBench UI tests). The next page has results from real world applications. Or you may use the links below to jump to a specific page. (For comparisons of other CPU Card upgrades, Systems or Video cards see the site list of CPU Card Reviews, Video card reviews and Systems page.)

Index of PL 7447A and 7457 CPU Upgrades Intro \| Benchmarks \| Apps Tests \| Game Tests \| Installation \| Specs/Design - or - Back to WWW.XLR8YOURMAC.COM
Copyright © 2005. No part of this sites content or images are to be reproduced or distributed in any form without written permission. All brand or product names mentioned here are properties of their respective companies. Users of the web site must read and are bound by the terms and conditions of use.