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In response to the confusion over nVidia's new GeForce4 MX, Mike Breeden of Accelerate Your Mac! pits the first two AGP graphics cards available for the new Power Mac G4s against each other in a no-holds-barred shootout. The article showcases the real differences in performance between the ATI Radeon 7500 and the GeForce4 MX. A variety of tests were conducted in both Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.1.2 on a 1 GHz Dual Processor Power Mac G4 with all variables identical except for the graphics card:

2D Tests

• MacBench 5 Graphics/Publishing Graphics test results (at 1600 x 1200/millions colors)
  
• Scrolling Tests in Photoshop 5.5 (OS 9.2.2) at 1600% Zoom
  
• Scrolling Tests in AppleWorks 6.2 (OS X) with 100 page newsletter (images+text)
  
• Create/close 1000 windows in OS X

3D Tests

• G4Timedemo
  
• Cinebench 2000
  
• RaveBench (Speed and Image Quality RAVE tests)
  
• Walker 1.2 (QD3D Spin Test)

Game Tests

• Quake 3 1.31 beta 4 (OS X) at 640x480 to 1600x1200 32-bit/HQ modes
  
• Unreal Tournament (v436, OS 9) UTbench and Wicked400 demos (RAVE and OpenGL modes at 640x480 and 1024x768)

Other Tests

• DVD playback Image Quality and CPU Load

From what I have seen so far with these two cards, both offer good performance in games and applications. The GeForce4 MX in my opinion has a higher GPU clock rate than the Radeon 7500, but similar memory bandwidth. Both cards deliver good framerates in games, with the GeForce4 MX a bit faster at 800x600 to 1280x1024 modes (nearly identical at 640x480 and 1600x1200) in Quake 3 with the current drivers. Both cards deliver similar performance in Unreal Tournament, which is usually CPU bound.

Accelerate Your Mac: Radeon 7500 vs GeForce4 MX

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