I've also included results with three memory bandwidth benchmarks to see what the G4 CPU offers in that area, and to check Apple's claims of 2x higher bandwidth in their Sawtooth G4 systems. As you'll see below - there were some very odd and interesting results from the memory bandwidth tests. I'm not a big fan of BYTEmark as it is not a good indicator of other important system performance areas like disk, memory and graphics card. Remember the most important results are on the next page of the review which covers real world applications performance. This is where the rubber meets the road so to speak.
Benchmarks have their place, but actual applications performance is what really matters.
As you'll see in the Photoshop 5.5 test results, until benchmarks like MacBench take advantage of Altivec, they are not an indicator of what the G4 is potentially capable of. However, MacBench CPU scores seem to be a pretty accurate gauge of non-Altivec G4 performance except that the higher FPU MacBench scores don't seem to show any benefit over the G3 in applications. Be aware that Macbench Graphics scores will vary depending on graphics mode and the installed video card. Since the two Macs tested here have graphics cards that use the same Rage128 chip, performance is similar. All systems had OS 9, 256MB of RAM, VM Off, and OpenGL 1.1.2 with its ATI driver update.