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Amiga goes Sonnet Crescendo PowerPC – part6 [EN]

What could be more exciting then Amiga equipped with Sonnet Crescendo G3? Off course Sonnet Crescendo G4! I got so lucky when two very good friends of mine borrowed me G3/500 and G4/400 models. If Crescendo G3 is very hard to find these days than G4 version is unicorn. Lets have a look on both cards side by side:

Sonnets_G3andG4_front Sonnets_G3andG4_rear

It is absolutely the same PCB, just with different CPU. This brings a question, if exchanging the CPU we could change G3 to G4?

Parameters of both compared cards are following:

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
CPU used 7400 750
CPU speed 400 MHz 500 MHz
Backside BUS speed 200 MH 150 MHz
L1 Cache 64k 64k
L2 Cache 1024k 1024k
Max RAM 192 MB (on Amiga) 192 MB (on Amiga)

I used latest PCI.library from Elbox v13.5 and latest Hedeons powerpc.library build 332. Testing machine was following:

Amiga 4000, Cyberstorm MK3 060/50 MHz, 128 MB, Mediator 4000Di MK3, Deneb, Voodoo3 3000

I was worried about stability of G4 accelerator in the desktop version of Mediator, because this one does not have additional power molex plug. G4 consumes slightly more power then G3, but I havent noticed any stability issue so far. Just to mention that testing Amiga 4000 uses 300W ATX PSU build in the original PSU case.

This is how WhichAmiga tool sees both cards:

WhichAmiga

sonnetg4-400_whichamiga sonnetg3-500_whichamiga

 

Then I started some benchmarks:

UltimatePPC (smaller = better)

sonnetg4-400_ultimateppc sonnetg3-500_ultimateppc

Result: G3/500 mathematically beats G4/400, most probably frequency is the key here).

 

Syspeed (PowerPC benchmark G4/400 x G3/500 x 604e/200)

sonnetg3vsg4_syspeed

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
MIPS 453,05 566,33
MFLOPS 351,98 466,21
Readb 138,20 148,23
Readh 135,58 125,11
Readw 120,52 110,17
Writeb 106,99 76,15
Writeh 102,35 62,42
Writew 90,23 58,54
Copyb 45,08 39,95
Copyh 40,57 38,24
Copyw 58,78 36,75

Result: G3/500 better in MIPS and MFLOPS, but G4/400 rules with memory performance.

 

Voxelspace (highest settings)

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
Res 320×240, TurboGFX, Columns 320, PixDepth 256) 36,8 fps  36,8 fps
Res 640×480, TurboGFX, Columns 640, PixDepth 256) 21,6 fps  21,6 fps

Result: I have no idea why it is both same result. Strange.

 

GearsPPC

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
Silver (num key 1) 79,0 fps 85,0 fps
Gold (num key 2) 86,3 fps 92,4 fps
Both (num key 3) 46,1 fps 50,2 fps

Result: G3/500 is winner here.

 

FroggerNG (Mpeg4 360p)

sonnetg4-400_froggerng sonnetg3-500_froggerng

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
Mpeg4 360p 298/2001 frames skipped (14%) 589/2001 frames skipped (29%)

Result: Mpeg4 360p video played on G4/400 is much smoother (it skipped only 14% frames), the G3/500 skipped 29% of all frames.

 

And then tested Quake and Quake2 games:

 

Quake (timedemo demo1)

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
640×480 SW 24,4 fps 22,6 fps
640×480 HW 45,3 fps 44,8 fps

Result: Slightly faster with G4/400.

 

Quake 2 (timedemo 1, demomap demo1.dm2)

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4 Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G3
640×480 SW 15,8 fps 15,3 fps
640×480 HW 48,0 fps 47,2 fps

Result: Also just slightly faster with G4/400.

 

Sonnet Crescendo 7200 G4/400 is very rare and very valuable card these days. I was very curious how fast is G4/400 comparing to G3/500 and obviously in most of the tests G4/400 was really slightly better. But just slightly, except video player. The biggest advantage called Altivec cannot be used yet, so G4 cannot show its real power now. Lets wait…

Updated: 2018-04-15 — 23:56

3 Comments

Add a Comment
  1. the only reason why the G3/500 wins is the 100mhz bump if you do the math you will see that if the G4 was at 500mhz it would tie where it loses but gain even more where it wins

    eg
    G4/400 MIPS=453/400=1.13 G3/500 MIPS=566/500=1.13

  2. maybe the reason for same score for voxel is due to both run at 66mhz bus

  3. About low FPS in Voxel Space.
    You can tray option CGX, not P96 (gfx driver from Elbox have inside both API CGX and P96) and you will see difference.
    I have on my Sonnet G3 400Mhz about 103 FPS

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