Low End Mac Benchmarks

Mac II

Dan Knight - 1998.10.25 - Tip Jar

The Mac II uses a 16 MHz 68020 CPU. Drive is an ancient 5.25" 80 MB Apple-branded Quantum drive formatted with Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5.

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

Speedometer 3.06

The system was tested on 25 October 1998 under System 7.1 with all inessential extensions off. Computer attached to a 17" Megagraphics monitor with 1-bit video card. Results are relative to a Mac SE or Classic, which rates 1.0. Numbers rounded off to two decimal places.

These numbers compares performance at different cache settings.

cache  video   CPU  graphics  disk   math
 32KB  1-bit   3.42   4.40    1.35   5.79
 64KB  1-bit   3.43   4.40    1.35   5.79
128KB  1-bit   3.46   4.41    1.35   5.76
256KB  1-bit   3.44   4.41    1.33   5.79
512KB  1-bit   3.43   4.40    1.34   5.78
  1MB  1-bit   3.44   4.40    0.49   5.78

The cache setting should have little influence on non-disk tests, which these numbers bear out. With this particular setup, cache size makes no appreciable difference until 1 MB, at which point it is significantly slower than with a smaller cache. This demonstrates that the System 7.1 cache was not very good.

The older hard drive is probably the main reason drive performance lags so far behind the IIcx.

Speedometer 4.02

The system was tested on 26 October 1998 under System 7.1 with all inessential extensions off. Computer attached to a 17" Megagraphics monitor with 1-bit video card. Results are relative to a Quadra 605, which rates 1.0. Numbers rounded off to two decimal places.

These numbers compares performance at different cache settings.

cache  video   CPU  graphics  disk   math
 32KB  1-bit   0.22   0.19    0.53   0.82
 64KB  1-bit   0.22   0.19    0.53   0.82
128KB  1-bit   0.22   0.19    0.53   0.82
256KB  1-bit   0.22   0.19    0.53   0.82

The cache setting should have little influence on non-disk tests, which these numbers bear out. As above, cache size makes no appreciable difference, at least up to 256 KB. This demonstrates that the System 7.1 cache was not very helpful.

Go to the Mac II profile.

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