Another question about Speed

[ulrik]

I know that the discussion about MacOS X speed is old and most of you might be tired about it, but please bear with me this last time.

1) Is it only me or does the whole graphic engine get's slower the more stuff I put into the dock? I noticed that on single processor machines (around 500 Mhz), a full loaded dock slows down the minimizing of windows and that stuff. I upgraded last week from a 450 Mhz to a Cube 500 Mhz with a ATI Radeon and expected a major speed gain from the much faster graphics board...but it's the same as with the old card. Is MacOS X not taking advantage of the OpenGL features from the Radeon which ARE faster than the ones from the Rage? Is the drawing of Aqua handled by the 2D Routines from OpenGL or is it done via PDF or Quicktime or what???

2) I performed the following test to compare my work machine and my home Mac. The result stunned me.

At work: G4 Dual 450, 384 MB Ram, MacOS X 10.0.3, 17 Inch CRT Monitor
Carbon Altivec Fractal Benchmark: 3,4 Gigaflops at Processor 0

At home: Cube G4 500, 512 MB Ram, MacOS 10.0.3, 22'' Cinema Display
Same benchmark: 1.1 Gigaflop at Processor 0

could anyone explain this to me? Is the Cube that much slower than the normal G4 or is something pretty wrong with my machine???

thanx!

 

[Murderer909]

it might be the difference in the screens and the resolution and possibly the number of colors the machines are set to...not to mention the two processors do get utilized in X....

 

[ulrik]

At work, the machine is running at 1200x1024 in Millions of Collors, at home at 1600x1024 (Cinema Display Res) in Millions. If I understand the readme from the altivec fractal benchmark right, the benchmark is performed at ONE processor (at processor 0, at processor 1 etc.).
The readme says the benchmark is resolution independant since it is a processor benchmark, not a graphics benchmark. Still, even IF it is the res, a difference from 2 gigaflops from a FASTER 500 Mhz Cube to a SLOWER 450 normal G4...is that possible???