Which benchmarks would I run on an Intel Mac?

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

If I decide to open this little box of mini goodness in front of me, where would I find suitable benchmarks to run? Assume I have nothing installed except for the default apps - no 3rd party games, apps, etc.

Any suggestions? At the very least, I'll run them on my 17" Intellimac to ensure they run and get some baselines, then I'll decide about opening the box.

badmofo9000 · Mar 1, 2006

Xbench is now a universal app.

gnasher729 · Mar 1, 2006

badmofo9000 said:
Xbench is now a universal app.

XBench is also the lamest excuse for a benchmark ever seen.

Try this: Download Handbrake. Take a DVD and convert it to H.264, using two pass conversion for optimum quality. That is a real benchmark: It measures the time for something that people actually do, and they care if it runs faster.

Or import two hours of digital video into iMovie, then convert it to a single sided DVD. That's something that takes hours and hours and people have to wait for it.

Just make sure that you can reproduce exactly what you are doing; H.264 encoding for example depends extremely on what exactly you do; converting digital video to DVD depends on the amount that you convert, above one hour iDVD has to work really hard to fit things on a DVD.

Spanky Deluxe · Mar 1, 2006

Windows Vista!!

{s******s} - Edit: Woah, that wasn't a swear word! Ok {snickers} then!

But no, seriously, gnasher's on to something with Handbrake.

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

gnasher729 said:
Or import two hours of digital video into iMovie, then convert it to a single sided DVD. That's something that takes hours and hours and people have to wait for it.

This looks like a good one to me. I noticed this used both cores (up to about 150%) on my iMac. (By the way, iMovie and iDVD are excellent consumer apps - the newer themes aren't too cute and can look quite professional. I used "reflection - white" for my Christmas 2005 DVD.)

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

gnasher729 said:
Try this: Download Handbrake.

Would the 512MB in the stock mini "invalidate" the test, or is Handbrake less memory-intensive?

godbout · Mar 1, 2006

This is not all that fair though because Handbrake is using the GPU to a VERY large extent and GPUs with h.264 decoding built in (X1600) will dominate without showing you how fast (all around) your comupter is. You should do mutliple benchmarks if you want to be fair like an xcode build or something... I guess the important thing is that if you are seeing how fast the intel mac is in optimal conditions or under normal use... if you are seeking the latter than maybe a THE photoshop test or iTunes encoding as well... just some suggestions...

tjwett · Mar 1, 2006

badmofo9000 said:
Xbench is now a universal app.

it is indeed but just a heads-up on this...

i recently ran XBench on the Core Duo iMacs at the Apple store (all had 128MB graphics and 2GB RAM) and they all scored around 50. that's about half what my dual G5 1.8 w/1.25 GB RAM and lame 64MB video consistently scored. so i don't know how much i trust the overall XBench with the Intels. they felt twice as snappy as my G5 but scored half in XBench. perhaps it's just one portion of the test that is way off and can be disabled?

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

tjwett said:
it is indeed but just a heads-up on this...

i recently ran XBench on the Core Duo iMacs at the Apple store (all had 128MB graphics and 2GB RAM) and they all scored around 50. that's about half what my dual G5 1.8 w/1.25 GB RAM and lame 64MB video consistently scored. so i don't know how much i trust the overall XBench with the Intels. they felt twice as snappy as my G5 but scored half in XBench. perhaps it's just one portion of the test that is way off and can be disabled?

Odd. Results from my 17"/128MB/2gb Intel iMac:

Code:

Results	[b]92.64[/b]	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.2
		System Version		10.4.5 (8G1454)
		Physical RAM		2048 MB
		Model		iMac4,1
		Drive Type		Maxtor 6L160M0
	CPU Test	70.91	
		GCD Loop	238.28	12.56 Mops/sec
		Floating Point Basic	83.35	1.98 Gflop/sec
		vecLib FFT	41.42	1.37 Gflop/sec
		Floating Point Library	62.24	10.84 Mops/sec
	Thread Test	174.45	
		Computation	152.11	3.08 Mops/sec, 4 threads
		Lock Contention	204.49	8.80 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
	Memory Test	99.53	
		System	96.80	
			Allocate	92.77	340.67 Kalloc/sec
			Fill	97.45	4738.22 MB/sec
			Copy	100.49	2075.55 MB/sec
		Stream	102.43	
			Copy	84.63	1747.97 MB/sec
			Scale	89.64	1851.94 MB/sec
			Add	125.81	2680.07 MB/sec
			Triad	122.97	2630.69 MB/sec
	Quartz Graphics Test	68.13	
		Line	63.74	4.24 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
		Rectangle	57.85	17.27 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
		Circle	58.05	4.73 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
		Bezier	82.50	2.08 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
		Text	90.39	5.65 Kchars/sec
	OpenGL Graphics Test	124.16	
		Spinning Squares	124.16	157.50 frames/sec
	Disk Test	82.26	
		Sequential	94.25	
			Uncached Write	106.45	65.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	94.76	53.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	117.48	34.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	71.53	35.95 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	72.97	
			Uncached Write	40.53	4.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	94.91	30.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	90.86	0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	116.31	21.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

tjwett said:
it is indeed but just a heads-up on this...

i recently ran XBench on the Core Duo iMacs at the Apple store (all had 128MB graphics and 2GB RAM) and they all scored around 50. that's about half what my dual G5 1.8 w/1.25 GB RAM and lame 64MB video consistently scored. so i don't know how much i trust the overall XBench with the Intels. they felt twice as snappy as my G5 but scored half in XBench. perhaps it's just one portion of the test that is way off and can be disabled?

See my thread about this here. This describes how to improve your Intel Mac XBench results with a simple tweak to the Quartz settings.

XBench is almost certainly badly written if I can improve my performance from 55 to 90 by changing one configuration.

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

plinden said:
See my thread about this here. This describes how to improve your Intel Mac XBench results with a simple tweak to the Quartz settings.

XBench is almost certainly badly written if I can improve my performance from 55 to 90 by changing one configuration.

Interesting... I didn't change anything, and got the score above.

Gotta love pseudo-random benchmarking apps.

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

jsw said:
Odd. Results from my 17"/128MB/2gb Intel iMac:

Code:

Results [b]92.64[/b]

Do you have "beam synchronization" turned off?

Edit: ok, you don't - did you download XBench today? I wonder if they updated it. Although it appears to be the same version.

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

plinden said:
Do you have "beam synchronization" turned off?

No (see above), but I can try it.

Or maybe I should say "no, as far as I know." I play with the dev tools at times, so maybe I do... but I don't think so.

Edit: yes, I just got it today, but it does seem to be the same version.

tjwett · Mar 1, 2006

plinden said:
See my thread about this here. This describes how to improve your Intel Mac XBench results with a simple tweak to the Quartz settings.

XBench is almost certainly badly written if I can improve my performance from 55 to 90 by changing one configuration.

good to know.

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

jsw said:
Interesting... I didn't change anything, and got the score above.

Gotta love pseudo-random benchmarking apps.

You also get Random Uncached Write 5x my result. All my results were in line with every other XBench result I've seen for the Intel iMac.

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

plinden said:
You also get Random Uncached Write 5x my result. All my results were in line with every other XBench result I've seen for the Intel iMac.

Maybe they did change something recently. Dunno.

Result using "Disable Beam Synchronization" (apparently, it had been set at "automatic" before):

Code:

Results	[b]110.72[/b]	
	System Info		
		Xbench Version		1.2
		System Version		10.4.5 (8G1454)
		Physical RAM		2048 MB
		Model		iMac4,1
		Drive Type		Maxtor 6L160M0
	CPU Test	70.91	
		GCD Loop	238.49	12.57 Mops/sec
		Floating Point Basic	83.34	1.98 Gflop/sec
		vecLib FFT	41.39	1.37 Gflop/sec
		Floating Point Library	62.28	10.85 Mops/sec
	Thread Test	174.72	
		Computation	155.99	3.16 Mops/sec, 4 threads
		Lock Contention	198.57	8.54 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
	Memory Test	97.20	
		System	92.16	
			Allocate	89.75	329.59 Kalloc/sec
			Fill	97.29	4730.50 MB/sec
			Copy	89.85	1855.80 MB/sec
		Stream	102.81	
			Copy	84.16	1738.28 MB/sec
			Scale	89.13	1841.30 MB/sec
			Add	127.90	2724.64 MB/sec
			Triad	125.22	2678.71 MB/sec
	Quartz Graphics Test	114.31	
		Line	102.57	6.83 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
		Rectangle	113.48	33.88 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
		Circle	112.50	9.17 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
		Bezier	110.88	2.80 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
		Text	137.55	8.60 Kchars/sec
	OpenGL Graphics Test	122.68	
		Spinning Squares	122.68	155.63 frames/sec
	User Interface Test	239.28	
		Elements	239.28	1.10 Krefresh/sec
	Disk Test	83.12	
		Sequential	96.81	
			Uncached Write	107.11	65.76 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	94.78	53.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	119.71	35.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	76.47	38.43 MB/sec [256K blocks]
		Random	72.82	
			Uncached Write	40.65	4.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Write	95.38	30.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
			Uncached Read	90.04	0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]
			Uncached Read	114.44	21.23 MB/sec [256K blocks]

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

jsw said:
No (see above), but I can try it.

Or maybe I should say "no, as far as I know." I play with the dev tools at times, so maybe I do... but I don't think so.

Edit: yes, I just got it today, but it does seem to be the same version.

Ok, I compared your results to my 2 week old results, yours don't have the User Interface Test. All the other tests except for the Disk tests are the same as mine. I'm guessing they've done a silent update to XBench by removing the UI test rather than fixing any code.

I'm at work so can't test this on my own iMac. That'll have to wait till to get home in 4 or 5 hours. What's your hard drive? I'll check that too when I get home.

jsw · Mar 1, 2006

plinden said:
What's your hard drive? I'll check that too when I get home.

Stock 160GB model:

Code:

Maxtor 6L160M0:

  Capacity:	152.67 GB
  Model:	Maxtor 6L160M0
  Revision:	BACE1GE0

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

jsw said:
Maybe they did change something recently. Dunno.

Result using "Disable Beam Synchronization" (apparently, it had been set at "automatic" before):

Code:

Results [b]110.72[/b] ... User Interface Test 239.28 Elements 239.28 1.10 Krefresh/sec ...

Ok, this is confusing. UI test shows up now. So they've modified the code to do the UI test if beam synchronization is off? And possibly modified the disk tests. Agghh, why do I have to work?

Edit: shows how much you can trust xbench ...

plinden · Mar 1, 2006

jsw said:
Stock 160GB model:

Code:

Maxtor 6L160M0: Capacity: 152.67 GB Model: Maxtor 6L160M0 Revision: BACE1GE0

So, I removed xbench from my iMac, and downloaded it again from the website, but got the same results as before.

Ostensibly, you and I have the same iMac (17", 1.83 GHz, 160 GB HD, 2 GB RAM), but your hard disk is a Maxtor. Mine's a Seagate, ST360023AS.

Anyway, I've wasted enough time with xbench. It's obviously not worth using, if modifying a single config item increases the score on my iMac from 55 to 90.

risc · Mar 1, 2006

Play a 1080p H.264 video via QuickTime and tell us if it drops any frames since Apple are saying these are home theatre boxes.

Eidorian · Mar 1, 2006

godbout said:
This is not all that fair though because Handbrake is using the GPU to a VERY large extent and GPUs with h.264 decoding built in (X1600) will dominate without showing you how fast (all around) your comupter is. You should do mutliple benchmarks if you want to be fair like an xcode build or something... I guess the important thing is that if you are seeing how fast the intel mac is in optimal conditions or under normal use... if you are seeking the latter than maybe a THE photoshop test or iTunes encoding as well... just some suggestions...

Is HandBrake GPU intensive at all? I can't find documentation on it's GPU requirements.

I know you need a G4 for the stable official releases.

I'd test iSquint, Handbrake, iMovie/Quicktime encoding on it. Then I'd follow up with 1080p trailers for fun.

Which benchmarks would I run on an Intel Mac?

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