Low End Mac Benchmarks

Quadra 660av

Dan Knight - 1999.01.06 - Tip Jar

Known as both a Centris and a Quadra, the 660av uses a 25 MHz 68040 CPU. The hard drive is a 230 MB Apple-branded Quantum mechanism formatted with Drive Setup 1.4. Also tested was an older external 160 MB drive formatted with Drive Setup 1.4.

The drives were not optimized before benchmarking.

Remember that benchmarks are arbitrary. They measure certain types of performance that may or may not reflect the way you work.

Speedometer 3.06

Speedometer 3 refused to run on the 660av, generating a Type 1 error.

Speedometer 4.02

The system was tested on 6 January 1999 under System 7.5.5 and 8.1 with inessential extensions off. The 660av was attached to a 14" color monitor and tested in 24-bit video mode unless otherwise noted. Results are relative to a Quadra 605, which rates 1.0. Numbers are rounded off to two decimal places.

These numbers compare performance at different cache settings with System 7.5.5.

cache  CPU  graphics  disk    math
 32KB  0.89   1.01    1.45   14.99
 64KB  0.89   1.02    1.44   14.99
128KB  0.89   1.03    1.48   14.99
256KB  0.89   1.06    1.59   14.99
512KB  0.89   1.02    1.70   14.99
  1MB  0.89   1.02    4.34   14.89

These numbers compare performance at different cache settings with Mac OS 8.1.

cache  CPU  graphics  disk    math
 32KB  0.89   1.02    1.48   14.99
 64KB  0.89   1.01    1.48   14.99
128KB  0.89   1.03    1.48   14.99
256KB  0.89   1.03    1.59   14.99
512KB  0.89   1.02    1.69   14.99
  1MB  0.89   1.02    4.37   14.99

The cache setting should have no significant influence on non-disk tests, which these numbers bear out, nor does the use of Mac OS 8.1 vs. System 7.5.5.

As with most Macs, cache size makes no appreciable difference below 256 KB. Because Speedometer uses a 1 MB test file, as the size of the disk cache passes 256 KB, performance improves, reaching a maximum at 1 MB, where the entire test file is cached.

Testing the external drive resulted in identical figures, except for much lower (0.96 to 1.01) disk scores.

Testing at different video settings (b&w, 16 colors, and 256 colors) demonstrated an exceptionally stable video system: graphic scores ranged from 1.01 to 1.06 in all tests.

Go to the 660av profile.

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