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:

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

 

Then I started some benchmarks:

UltimatePPC (smaller = better)

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)

	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)

	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…