From MacUser, May 1994

(c) 1994 Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., a division of Ziff Communications Co. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


The Pentium Challenge

Welcome to the face-off of the year: Power Macs versus Pentium PCs. Apple's aggressive pricing structure assures that Power Macs can compete successfully with Pentium PCs in the features-per-dollar category. Now, we're waiting to find out whether Apple's PowerPC Macs can outrun machines based on Intel's fastest chips, the Pentium and the 486DX2.

The early returns are in, and it looks like the Power Macs will win. We tested two Intel systems, one a 60-megahertz DEC DECpc XL 560 Pentium system and the other a Dell 466/MXV, which has a 486DX2/66 processor. These systems were running fully optimized, shipping applications under the Windows 3.1 operating system. On the Power Mac side, we tested all three models plus a 6100/60 and a 7100/66 each with an L2 cache card installed. (A cache card is standard on the DECpc XL 560 and the Dell 466/MXV.) These systems were running a prerelease version of System 7.1.2 for the PowerPC and prerelease versions of native applications. All scores are referenced to those of an LC III with an optional FPU, which are assigned a score of 10.

Despite the Power Macs' handicap in running unoptimized, prerelease code, they still outran the Dell 466/MXV when performing typical business, publishing, and rendering tasks. Even better, except for the stock 6100/60, the Power Macs also outran the DEC Pentium system in most tests. / Henry Bortman

Business Tasks
We performed a variety of standard productivity tasks, using applications such as WordPerfect and ClarisWorks.
Publishing Tasks
To perform a variety of publishing tasks, we used FreeHand, PageMaker, and Photoshop.
Painter
To test the rendering speed of the various machines, we applied lighting to an image in Painter.

	Business Tasks	Publishing Tasks	Painter
LC III	10.00	10.00	10.00
Quadra 610	20.44	26.79	22.98
Quadra 650	25.44	33.75	30.59
Quadra 840AV	28.54	59.48	36.48
Power Macintosh 6100	26.32	50.25	86.30
Power Macintosh 6100 (w/ optional cache)	34.51	60.66	88.35
Power Macintosh 7100 	33.98	60.73	95.01
Power Macintosh 7100 (w/optional cache)	41.82	67.05	96.48
Power Macintosh 8100 (cache standard)	46.49	78.54	116.26
Dell 486 (L2 cache standard)	20.02	42.11	28.35
DEC Pentium (cache standard)	26.57	63.63	45.17

