has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

anyone...you don't have to give long elaborate details of pci slot placement, room temperature, position of the moon...etc.
just a basic feed back. "be there" demo for instance.

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

I can tell you this much:

My DP 500 runs rings around my old clone with a G3 300 card...significantly faster (under Logic). I think much of that may be Altivec, and DP, however.

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

No need for an A/B test, even Apple will tell you G4's only have a 3-5% advantage over a G3 of the same clock speed for any non-altivec-enabled apps. That slim advantage comes from a marginally better FPU, which has very little effect on audio DSP, so in reality there is currently no worthwhile advantage to having a G4 CPU over a G3 for using ProTools, except that the G3 is not available at 733MHz.

ProTools also does not take advantage of dual processor G4 models, and won't until it's carbonized (made compatible with OSX natively). Neither does almost everything including OS9.x, except some graphics apps.

IMO, there are only two Mac models worth buying for using ProTools: a 500MHz B&W G3 at around $700 on used market, or the 733MHz G4 at $3000 retail. The 733MHz G4 is only worth buying if you're tight on space, since you can get two G3/500's and two Digi001's for $850 less than the cost of one G4/733 and one Digi001. The two G3's can be networked for a total of 48 tracks, 36 channel i/o, and over 25% more CPU power for plugs than the G4/733. Plus there's less financial risk in overclocking G3's http://duc.digidesign.com/ubb/images/icons/wink.gif

I sincerely hope the surprisingly high number of people reporting to be using low-end G4's and DP G4's didn't buy them for use as ProTools-dedicated machines...

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

thanks for the info and sadly, i did buy a g4 400 solely for digi001. also as a side note i'm currently buying a g3 300. but i saw you post about g3 500's going for around 700. well please give me more info because every time i find a good price at ebay the bidding has 3 more days left!!!

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

Hmmm....Sugarite's comments are interesting...
I can only tell you what I know from my personal experience and that is this:
On my G3 350 Mhz, when using 24 tracks, 2-3 D-verbs was all my system could handle without getting the PCI bus too busy error. The hard drive was a 10,000 rpm SCSI.
On my new G4 466, I had 9 D-verbs going plus several EQ's before it finally bogged down, and this is with an ATA drive.
Not an expert in the field, could be various system differences causing this discrepany, but PT LE version and Mac OS were identical on the 2 systems.
I think your G4 purchase is not a waste.
Later,
kc

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

Kerry: I suspect the G3/350 only had a 512k level 2 cache, which makes a big difference. Come to think of it, the new 733MHz G4 processors have both an on-die 256k level 2 cache and a 1MB level 3 cache. With that in consideration the G4/733 would probably be pretty close to the performance of two 500MHz G3's for ProTools. Unfortunately the G4/733 processor won't be available as an upgrade for probably 6 months or so, and even then it will cost almost as much as it would to upgrade to a used G4/733 tower.

Mullet: Keep an eye on usenet, lots of people only advertise locally when they want to unload a Mac cheap. I'm in Canada so I can't offer much advice on which US areas are good to monitor. Keep in mind 500MHz G3 upgrades are only $259 at OWC (macsales.com), and zif carrier cards have helped maintain decent resale value on slower G3 processors. Be sure to get a rev 2 B&W, the rev 1's have a bug in the ATA33 controller. Check www.xlr8yourmac.com to learn how to distinguish the two.

I hope that Digidesign gives us some warning when they eventually carbonize ProTools, so we know whether to hang on to G4's etc.

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

ahem, youve forgotten the system bus speed, and the memory addressing speeds. These are the primary reasons g4's are faster. And that g3's are buggy as hell. Get real G4 is current tech, g3 is a wash. Your dfinately not wrong in getting a good deal on a g4 now. Dont waste your money ona bunch of g3's

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

Ah, the system bus issue. I've worked with many Mac systems and I've found that the key factors in overall system performance with non-altivec apps are hard drive speed, hard drive interface speed, and cpu speed. System bus speed is simply far more advanced than these other factors, always has been, now it's getting out of hand.

I've seen G3-upgraded nubus machines running side-by-side with an early iMac, and once the hard drives are approximately equal they perform very similarly, despite the iMac having twice the system bus speed. I've also clocked the system bus in my beige G3 by 25%, from 66MHz to 83.3MHz. NO appreciable difference, zero. My experiences with non-altivec apps on G4's haven't impressed me in the slightest.

According to my math, 24 tracks of 24-bit 48kHz audio requires 3.3MB/s or 26.4Mbps of throughput. The throughput of a 100MHz 64-bit data path is 6400Mbps. So in theory there would have to be over 200 operations on ALL 24 tracks to saturate the system bus of a B&W G3. That's a lot of plugs...

Altivec represents the only ram bandwidth jump that could possibly seriously impact system performance, 100MB/s to 250MB/s on Sawtooth models, and more importantly 128-bit throughput, so more complicated instructions take fewer cycles. Moot point really, ProTools is not Altivec-enabled, therefore no improved ram bandwidth or memory addressing with G4 processors, as I said before maybe 3-5% improvement on a same-clock G3.

G3's buggy? I assume you mean the beige and B&W G3 motherboards. Without belaboring the issue too much, you're dead wrong. Besides even if they were, G4 motherboards are far worse. Even current G4 motherboards are still just hastedly modified versions of the Yosemite (B&W) G3 motherboard. Yikes added the memory addressing support onto the same 100MHz chipset, and the Sawtooth added a new 100MHz chipset and the AGP slot (dealing only with core processing architecture, not ATA controllers etc). Notice how the Voodoo 4 and 5 video cards came out in PCI versions long before AGP? It's because the AGP slot is a crude hack and very difficult to develop hardware for.

Also the Digi001 was originally developed specifically for the rev 2 B&W G3. If Digi kept up with updates to reflect changes in hardware, ProTools would be altivec enabled. Since they don't, it's safe to say that the Digi001 will never work as seamlessly with any model other than the B&W G3.

I'm not saying that G4's aren't excellent machines, I'm saying that the benefits of G4's are largely unimplemented, especially in ProTools. It's a crying shame really, and very irresponsible of Digi not to make these aspects known to their clients.

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

My G4 533 is absolutely superior to my old G3 400 AND my old G4 450.
Pro Tools is a dream on the G4 533.
Everything works better on the new G4's

Re: has anyone a/b\'d performance of a g3 vs. a g4
 

Hey Sugar--The system bus speed in the new G4's is 133mhz....for your info(you never mentioned this.

This is why a new 466 burns an old 500!!!!

System bus speed!!! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]