Period-accurate benchmarking tools?

[This Does Not Compute]

I'm working on a project where I need to benchmark a couple of Macs from the 1993-1995 era to see how they compare, at least in terms of computational performance. I never really got too much into this during that time period, so I can't remember many benchmarking utilities. Can anyone recommend something appropriate that would work on both 68k and PPC?

 

[Kai Robinson]

I would definitely recommend Macbench 4.0, as this was the last version to support 68K, but also supports PPC.

Link on Macintosh Garden: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macbench-40

 

[alxlab]

Here's a few that I've used:

Speedometer 4.0.2
MacBench 4.0
Apple Personal Diagnostic v1.1.1 - 1.1.3
Norton Utilities 3.1.x

Traditionally I've used Speedometer for benchmarking since it's small I've saved records from doing benchmarks from many different computers.

I like the Apple Personal Disgnostic as well. It works on my Mac SE and I guess it would on a Plus as well. It has benchmarking but I use it mainly to test the system hardware and to check if the ram sticks I get are good.

Norton Utilities also has diagnostics and benchmarks but it's a lot bigger application than Apple Personal Diagnostics.

Haven't used MacBench 4.0 too much but it seems to be another benchmark used commonly.

 

[ScutBoy]

I have Speedometer handy, and while it's basic it tells me what I want to know. Plus, I figure if I use the same tool all over, the results should be fairly consistent within that universe of data.

 

[This Does Not Compute]

So I tried Speedometer 4.02 on both machines and it works great -- the results it generates feel accurate to me, considering the systems. MacBench, however, was a no-go on one of them. I tried versions 3 and 4, and for both, they just hung at the splash screen. I even wiped the machine and reinstalled Mac OS 8.0, no change. I suspect it's simply incompatible with this specific machine because of some of the upgrades it has, which is strange but perhaps would be asking too much considering what MacBench's main use case was. Speedometer reported the wrong CPU (like, by a lot) in the same machine. (You'll see what machine it is in an upcoming video.)

 

[Patrick]

are you also paying attention in WHAT you are testing?

that is, for powerpc, are you testing the 68k emulation or native powerpc.

 

[JDW]

I would recommend MacBench 3.0 (when it works) because you can then run it on an SE/30 too. If you go with MacBench 4.0, you can't use it on the SE/30. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but that's my personal rule of thumb. Admittedly, I don't use OS 8 on my vintage 68K Macs, opting for speedier System software like 7.5.5 and below, which is perhaps why I've never had an issue getting MacBench 3 to work. I also prefer MacBench to other benchmarking utilities because it is the most extensive, taking almost 2 hours to complete. No other benchmarking app takes that long or does as many tests.

I do like Speedometer, but keep in mind version 3 and version 4 yield different results. So if you start with 4, be sure not to fall back to an older version 3.x because the results will be way off.

Also be sure to use Norton System Info too, as a part of Norton Utilities 3.5.x.

It's best to set colors to 256 (on color or grayscale Macs), and the cache to 128K, before testing.

There are other benchmark utilities too, like SCSI Director Pro 4.0, but that is mainly useful if you wish to focus on hard drive (or SCSI2SD) performance.