With 512MB of memory in each computer, identical Maxtor Fireball Plus AS 7200RPM ATA/100 drives, and Nvidia's 32MB GeForce2 MX there was little else we could do to make these truly comparable systems. Our test PC was running Windows 2000 while the G4 was set up to run OS 9.2 to insure the best software performance with our test program.

Using retail boxed versions of Photoshop 6, we installed the application on each computer and applied the latest patches available from Adobe's site (v 6.0.1). Besides updating each system's OS with the latest updates, we downloaded and added Adobe's CPU-optimized plug-ins and support for each platform respectively. As a final touch, we configured Photoshop 6 on each machine to use a similar amount of memory and to have similar program settings.

With our 105MB Photoshop test image copied onto each system, we performed a series of image-editing functions and timed how long each system took to complete the given tasks. For our benchmark, we picked the following Photoshop functions to compare:

• Gaussian Blur (10px radius)


• Unsharp Mask (10px radius)


• RGB to CMYK (color conversion)


• Rotate (44 degrees)


• Image reduction (-25 percent)


• Lighting Effects (default)

We performed these six functions in order with an "undo" after each function was complete -- always returning to the original source image before proceeding. We insured that each system was idling (no hard-drive access) before starting each test.