Apple Mac Upgrades - RAM, SSD Flash, External Drives and More

Xbench 1.1.3 - Overall Score	L2 Cache	L3 Cache	Score

Reference Apple Systems

PM G4/400 Gigabit Ethernet	1MB SPB SRAM	0MB	56.49
PM 2x G4/450 Gigabit Ethernet	1MB SPB SRAM x2	0MB	74.33
PM G5/1.6GHz (800MHz Frontside Bus)	512k On Chip	0MB	140.35
PM G5/1.8GHz (900MHz Frontside Bus)	512k On Chip	0MB	162.03
PM G5/2x 2.0GHz (1GHz Frontside Bus)	512k On Chip	0MB	217.20

Acceleration Cards

OWC Mercury Extreme G4/700MHz	256k	2MB SPB SRAM	88.35
OWC Mercury Extreme G4/800MHz	256k	2MB SPB SRAM	98.24
Sonnet Encore/ST G4/800MHz	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	100.96
OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1GHz	256k	2MB SPB SRAM	107.89
Sonnet Encore/ST G4/1GHz	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	112.10
GigaDesigns G-Celerator G4/1.25GHz (@ 1.2GHz)	256k	2MB SPB SRAM	122.94
OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1.25GHz (@ 1.2GHz)	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	124.91
Sonnet Encore/ST G4/1.2GHz	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	124.97
OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1.33GHz (@ 1.3GHz)	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	131.89
GigaDesigns G-Celerator G4/1.25GHz (@ 1.4GHz)	256k	2MB SPB SRAM	134.11
OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1.467GHz (@ 1.4GHz)	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	136.48
Sonnet Encore/ST G4/1.4GHz	256k	2MB DDR SRAM	136.33

Score overall when using the XBench test - higher scores (longer bars) are better. Xbench was developed to provide a comprehensive benchmarking solution for Mac OS X. Xbench is useful not only for comparing the relative speed of two different Macintoshes, but also for optimizing performance on a single machine. Xbench is accompanied by a website that allows graphical side-by-side comparisons of any out of the tens of thousands of submitted benchmarks. Note: Frequently I receive emails from readers complaining that Xbench is not accurate time and time again when tested on the same machine. To be very fair in these tests, Xbench is the first application I test with on any machine, and my testing procedures are very consistent. I allow the machine to fully boot, and the processor usage graph must remain at 0 for 10 seconds before I start this test. Upon bootup, Mac OS X performs a number of housecleaning tasks and you will see that even though you can click and launch applications, the system is truly not idle immediately and it's safer to wait until it finished these processes before continuing. Another Note: The G5 systems were set to maximum performance in the energy saver preference pane, and disabled the bus slewing ability to allow these tests to be run at full speed. If you don't do that, the G5s scores are substantially less.