switching to intel why... [Archive]

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MongoTheGeek

Oct 21, 2005, 08:14 AM

According to El Reg the new paxville chip idles somewhere around where a g5 runs flat out so Apple is going to Intel chips why again?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/intel_pax_bench/

iMeowbot

Oct 21, 2005, 08:21 AM

Don't worry about it. Paxville is trailing edge Netburst stuff, a stopgap until the new stuff arrives.

caveman_uk

Oct 21, 2005, 08:42 AM

Why?

Look at the powerbook. I think you'll find your answer.

There isn't a problem on the desktop with IBM and PowerPC. The problem is notebooks.

...and I think Steve Jobs has been jerked around by IBM and Motorola enough to REALLY piss him off.

Brian Hickman

Oct 21, 2005, 09:19 AM

Don't worry about it. Paxville is trailing edge Netburst stuff, a stopgap until the new stuff arrives.

This is correct. Paxville will never find its way into a Mac. The first processor that will likey show up is Yonah. Look up the information on this processor ad you will see exactly why the switch is occurring.

Hickman

cubist

Oct 21, 2005, 01:50 PM

strider42

Oct 21, 2005, 02:33 PM

Even Yonah is crap, really. Two cores on a chip that have to communicate off-chip? Stinks.

Switching from PPC to Intel is like switching from Mercedes to Hyundai. It has nothing to do with quality, performance or power consumption. It is Apple saying "good enough" and going for the mainstream, increasing market share.

I completely disagree. IBM obviously has no interest in making chips for apple at a competative level. Intel is offering a much better roadmap with some great technology. Just because its fashionable to hate intel doesn't mean it isn't a good idea to switch. Lets face it, PC's are faster than macs in most every day tasks. If apple hadn't been offering dualies for so long, they would have been in a lot of trouble. Intel has much better mobile processors too. Plus they have lots of other chips liek the xScale chips apple may want to use in the future. you can bet that stuff was all considered.

But to continue your analogy, hyundai is a much more reliable care than a Mercedes, and still does the job just fine. And it costs less and gets better gas mileage. Oh sure, there are some thing the Mercedes just kills hyundai for, its certainly sexier, but that' doesn't mean its a smart decision to mortgage your future for one.

lasuther

Oct 21, 2005, 02:51 PM

Pentium M chips have 2MB of Cache and 533MHz of FSB. Compared to the PowerBooks 512kb Cache and 167MHz of FSB. And the PowerBook processor has topped out. The Pentium chips will be getting better and faster.

No one wants to get run around in their Mercedes by some kid in a Hyandia Elantra. Its just embarissing and its about time Jobs did something about it. I'm tired of the professional line of laptops meaning the book that's silver. Intel will bring the Power back to PowerBooks and I can't wait.

lasuther

solvs

Oct 21, 2005, 03:02 PM

It's all about the G4, and the future of the G5. For now, the G5 is fine. By 2007, who knows. Supposedly Intel has something really good coming for desktops. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it too, but there it is. And the portables are going nowhere fast.

Quixcube

Oct 21, 2005, 03:16 PM

minimax

Oct 21, 2005, 05:26 PM

I completely disagree. IBM obviously has no interest in making chips for apple at a competative level. Intel is offering a much better roadmap with some great technology.

Are you on acid or what?? The new dualcore G5 will show the fastest Pentium D / Xeon D all corners of the room. This is consumer retardism in full effect. (or was it called RDF :rolleyes: )
Have fun working on your new quadcore Intel Roadmap processor :cool:

You bet it was from a marketing perspective. In case you didnt know, Apple is a school example of a marketing driven corporation (it's a popular case study @ technical management faculties around the globe).

strider42

Oct 21, 2005, 05:59 PM

Are you on acid or what?? The new dualcore G5 will show the fastest Pentium D / Xeon D all corners of the room. This is consumer retardism in full effect. (or was it called RDF :rolleyes: )
Have fun working on your new quadcore Intel Roadmap processor :cool:

You bet it was from a marketing perspective. In case you didnt know, Apple is a school example of a marketing driven corporation (it's a popular case study @ technical management faculties around the globe).

yeah, nice that apple has to use dual core to even keep up with intels single core offerings. When intel has dual cores working at faster clock rates, they are gonna spank the G5's, which still aren't at 3 ghz even, are they. And that's probably what apple will be using. You should also note that apple probably won't be using the pentium D derived chips, but rather than pentium M derived chips that are coming. Do you really believe that the G5's are as fast as intel's. Apple hasn't been faster than intel stuff in like 10 years. Certainly not at a comparable cost or with comparable chips.

You should buy apple stuff for OS X and good hardware integration. Buying them for pure power is ridiculous in most cases.

Edit: You are right though, apple is all about marketing. that's how they've convinced people their computers are as fast as intels stuff for so long. It just hasn't been true.

Brian Hickman

Oct 21, 2005, 07:02 PM

Even Yonah is crap, really. Two cores on a chip that have to communicate off-chip? Stinks.

I believe that you are thinking of the Pentium D. That is essentially 2 cores crammed together. Yonah was designed from the ground up to be dual-core.

Hickman

javiercr

Oct 21, 2005, 07:30 PM

Lets face it, PC's are faster than macs in most every day tasks. I.

What PC is more powerful that Dual-Dual G5?

Brian Hickman

Oct 21, 2005, 07:57 PM

What PC is more powerful that Dual-Dual G5?

Well, those dual-duals aren't even out on the market yet. But it is a very good value.

Hickman

maxterpiece

Oct 22, 2005, 03:31 AM

Apple hasn't been faster than intel stuff in like 10 years. Certainly not at a comparable cost or with comparable chips.

From about 98-2000, with a maturing G3 and early G4 processors, apple was faster than intel and was roughly comparable in the $/power category. The G5 was arguably more powerful than any pentium offerings when it was released... it was still more $/power though.

iMac G3 400mhz were great machines in their time.

Let's be honest here - Intel has a whole market of consumer PCs that it sells to. The only legitimate PC manufacturer that IBM was dealing to was Apple. That gives Intel a much bigger incentive to build processors that accomodate the PC market.

Furthermore, now you can run any of those little windows apps that you wanted/needed to run for work. No need to emulate. I'm looking forward to playing Civilization 4 on the first Mac that goes intel.

javiercr

Oct 22, 2005, 08:01 AM

Furthermore, now you can run any of those little windows apps that you wanted/needed to run for work. No need to emulate. I'm looking forward to playing Civilization 4 on the first Mac that goes intel.

First is not 'now' , second, you don't know if you are going to be able to run windows apps, probably and hopefully not, if you could run photoshop for windows in a mac and all the other apps then the mac would have really disapeared, not mac design guidelines or anything. Games is something else but I don't think we know.

revisionA

Oct 22, 2005, 11:27 AM

Even Yonah is crap, really. Two cores on a chip that have to communicate off-chip? Stinks.

Switching from PPC to Intel is like switching from Mercedes to Hyundai. It has nothing to do with quality, performance or power consumption. It is Apple saying "good enough" and going for the mainstream, increasing market share.

I have found that Albeton Live is a great judge of cpu horsepower.

My pentium 3.2ht is rated the exact same as my pro 1.8 G5 single. And using them side by side, the overall computing experience is smoother with the mac, web pages load a lot faster and I havent had barely any software issues.

I think that with rosetta running at 85% that means you need a 15% horsepower edge in memory controller and cpu to have a balanced transition. Thats why the developer macintel is a 3.6, to match a 2.0 g5 single's performance. Thats why a single 2.0 is the base for their on the fence performer, the iMac, clearly good enough for just about everything but not super fast. When there are dual core intel chips running at what equates to thier p4 dualcore running at 4.0ghz, then we have over 3.6ghz of G5 dual performance. Add that to a newer tigher integrated custom motherboard (to keep vista away), and the 2006/7 macs will be smooth.

There is also a consumer issue affecting all the r and d decisions, people want luxury feel over techno logic. They want computing to be simple, elegant and painless. Sometimes speed is not the only way to acheive that.

$#

quagmire

Oct 22, 2005, 12:45 PM

yeah, nice that apple has to use dual core to even keep up with intels single core offerings. When intel has dual cores working at faster clock rates, they are gonna spank the G5's, which still aren't at 3 ghz even, are they. And that's probably what apple will be using. You should also note that apple probably won't be using the pentium D derived chips, but rather than pentium M derived chips that are coming. Do you really believe that the G5's are as fast as intel's. Apple hasn't been faster than intel stuff in like 10 years. Certainly not at a comparable cost or with comparable chips.

You should buy apple stuff for OS X and good hardware integration. Buying them for pure power is ridiculous in most cases.

Edit: You are right though, apple is all about marketing. that's how they've convinced people their computers are as fast as intels stuff for so long. It just hasn't been true.

Great another person who thinks faster Ghz=better performance. A single dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 will be right up there with the 3.2 Ghz Pentium D or even beat it. The dual core 2.3 Ghz G5 already beats the dual processor 2.5 Ghz G5. So grow up. The G5 is still one of the best CPU's. I say 2nd only beaten by AMD's chips.

Abercrombieboy

Oct 22, 2005, 01:40 PM

Do you really believe that the G5's are as fast as intel's. Apple hasn't been faster than intel stuff in like 10 years. Certainly not at a comparable cost or with comparable chips.

You should buy apple stuff for OS X and good hardware integration. Buying them for pure power is ridiculous in most cases.

Edit: You are right though, apple is all about marketing. that's how they've convinced people their computers are as fast as intels stuff for so long. It just hasn't been true.

Silly me...all along I was thinking the new Dual-Dual Core 2.5 Ghz G5 was going to be fast.

wdlove

Oct 22, 2005, 01:47 PM

The simple and succinct reason that Apple is deciding to switch to Intel, Steve made the decision. I trust his judgment.

Mechcozmo

Oct 22, 2005, 03:53 PM

Furthermore, now you can run any of those little windows apps that you wanted/needed to run for work. No need to emulate. I'm looking forward to playing Civilization 4 on the first Mac that goes intel.

OS X will never run Windows applications natively. NEVER EVER EVER EVER FOREVER NEVER. However, (it rhymes!) this will allow for extremely easy virtualization of Windows/Linux. Virtualization is like emulation, but it can access the CPU natively-- no need to translate instructions. This also allows for easy access to the video card, RAM, etc. It is tricky business, but doable.

The simple and succinct reason that Apple is deciding to switch to Intel, Steve made the decision. I trust his judgment.
Steve has proven to be correct throughout history... I hope he is correct this time. I did like PowerPC chips, though...http://forums.macrumors.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

iGary

Oct 22, 2005, 04:14 PM

I have a brother-in-law who is an engineer at Intel (and no, I'm not trying to sound like a pompous SOB) who says very exciting things are on the way.

Doesn't excite me a bit until I get ready to buy a PB.

I wich Apple was staying with IBM PPC for desktops, but not reasonable, I guess.

maxterpiece

Oct 22, 2005, 08:11 PM

First is not 'now' , second, you don't know if you are going to be able to run windows apps, probably and hopefully not, if you could run photoshop for windows in a mac and all the other apps then the mac would have really disapeared, not mac design guidelines or anything. Games is something else but I don't think we know.

It is essential that any program like photoshop or word works like the OS it is being used in - there needs to be drag and drop between apps, clipboard integration. Save dialog boxes, menus, etc, all need to share the same metaphor that the OS uses to present software. Because of this it would be ridiculous for a company like adobe to only release a windows version of its software and just let mac users run the app through virtualization. It would be so much less functional. I don't see htis as being something you need to worry about.
Now a game doesn't need to integrate with the OS and there is very little that most games use that vary from OS to OS, so for this purpose I would be perfectly happy running Civilization 4 Windows on my mac.

OS X will never run Windows applications natively. NEVER EVER EVER EVER FOREVER NEVER. However, (it rhymes!) this will allow for extremely easy virtualization of Windows/Linux. Virtualization is like emulation, but it can access the CPU natively-- no need to translate instructions. This also allows for easy access to the video card, RAM, etc. It is tricky business, but doable.

So what you are saying is that OS X won't run windows natively, but with some extra software it could run them at almost native speeds and it would seem to the user that they run natively. Functionally speaking, what's the difference? It will still be humongously faster than VPC for mac is now. Finally, I'll be able to install windows on my mactel, so I will be able to get native performance that way.

dmw007

Oct 22, 2005, 10:25 PM

quagmire

Oct 23, 2005, 12:08 AM

I think some of the reason to the switch has to do with the iPod's success. Just read my whole writing about it.

http://homepage.mac.com/quagmire2/Personal8.html

beatle888

Oct 23, 2005, 12:48 AM

The simple and succinct reason that Apple is deciding to switch to Intel, Steve made the decision. I trust his judgment.

he also made the decision to go with IBM. at that time he could of chose intel if he had foresight.

mcarnes

Oct 23, 2005, 01:25 AM

he also made the decision to go with IBM. at that time he could of chose intel if he had foresight.

IBM was the better choice at that time. Steve could not have predicted IBM would drop the ball so badly on chips for the mac portables.

Excrement happens.

ehurtley

Oct 23, 2005, 03:11 AM

Great another person who thinks faster Ghz=better performance. A single dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 will be right up there with the 3.2 Ghz Pentium D or even beat it. The dual core 2.3 Ghz G5 already beats the dual processor 2.5 Ghz G5. So grow up. The G5 is still one of the best CPU's. I say 2nd only beaten by AMD's chips.

You're right. And Steve-o even admitted this. He said that there are great PPC products coming. BUT, in the long term, Intel looked better. Intel's 'NetBurst' architecture (Pentium 4, Pentium-D, and the latest Celerons,) is crap. And I used to work at Intel. I know. It was a hack. It was a backup plan for if Itanium didn't take off. (Which, as we know, it didn't.) That said, Intel has done amazing things with it. They pushed it to almost 4GHz. They've slapped dual-cores in. They even have cheap dual-cores. (Unlike both IBM and AMD at present.) But, the steam for the NetBurst line is basically out. Unfortunately, so is PowerPC's. The G4 is floundering at 2GHz with a 200MHz bus. The G5 is an amazing architecture, but IBM has dropped the ball. IBM committed to providing custom processors for the next three big games systems, to the detriment of Apple. (They should have had a 3GHz proc for Apple a year and a half ago. They still don't have 3GHz for Apple, even though they've promised Microsoft a TRIPLE-CORE 3.2GHz chip for the new Xbox.)

Prediction: We won't see a single Mac with a NetBurst processor in it. Because Steve knows it sucks. He went with Intel for their NEXT generation of machines. (Why else would he have not just released the IntelMacs already?)

I, for one, am a huge PowerPC fan. I am extremely sad to see that fantastic architecture go. (And Apple's implementation is the best around, for ANY processor.) The G5 looked very promising. But IBM dropped the ball, and Steve can't/won't stick around to let IBM jerk him around anymore. If The G5 were at dual-core 3GHz, with a roadmap for 4GHz (or triple/quad core) next year, MAYBE it would be worth sticking with.

And that's only on the desktop. While you COULD cram a G5 into a laptop now (P4 laptops suck down way more power than the G5,) it wouldn't be able to be elegant. It would be a big-ass brick like all the Windows 17" laptops, with a jet-powered fan. Steve doesn't want that. He wants to get Pentium-M/Centrino in his laptops. (Or its sucessor. I have a feeling he's waiting for the 64-bit Pentium-M replacement.)

Mechcozmo

Oct 23, 2005, 03:29 AM

So what you are saying is that OS X won't run windows natively, but with some extra software it could run them at almost native speeds and it would seem to the user that they run natively. Functionally speaking, what's the difference?

Hold your horses their, I didn't say you could just double click and it would run. That would involve the Windows API sitting next to the OS X API... not going to happen, nor could it work. More like something where you open a program that either, like WINE, runs in the background to allow you to doubleclick on a program and have it run, or something like VPC is now. You open VPC, start Windows, and play in there-- but it runs at near native speeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine
That should help... it is a complex idea, but workable.

It will still be humongously faster than VPC for mac is now.
Very true, with ease of use that is the same or greater.

Finally, I'll be able to install windows on my mactel, so I will be able to get native performance that way.
Maybe. Apple said they wouldn't stop Windows from running on the Intel Macs. That doesn't mean that Windows WILL run on Intel Macs correctly. Yes, on the developer boxes they work, but the dev boxes are NOTHING NEAR the real thing. Get that right everybody. Just because the developer kit can run Windows doesn't mean the final product will.

CubaTBird

Oct 27, 2005, 05:37 PM

two words:

cost efficiency :cool:

blitzkrieg79

Oct 27, 2005, 08:47 PM

Great another person who thinks faster Ghz=better performance. A single dual core 2.5 Ghz G5 will be right up there with the 3.2 Ghz Pentium D or even beat it. The dual core 2.3 Ghz G5 already beats the dual processor 2.5 Ghz G5. So grow up. The G5 is still one of the best CPU's. I say 2nd only beaten by AMD's chips.

And I am gonna be even bolder and say that the G5 is the best desktop processor considering that most of my applications are Altvec optimized which basically puts G5 above anything there is right now...

Anyway, to those who know what is going on in the CPU industry, AMD is too tied up with IBM (IBM helps them out a great deal with developing new technologies)... One thing no one can take from IBm is that they definately have the best processor designers in the world (G5 being a prime example, they designed/delivered a great desktop processor in short amount of time per Apples request)...

Roadmaps don't mean squat to me, most of the time they never come true... Intel, supposedly the greatest CPU manufacturer in the world, is getting beaten badly by IBM in the high-end computing arena (Power5+ vs Itanium), it was beaten to 1 GHZ by a much smaller AMD company and is still getting beaten by them in the desktop arena performance wise...

Only advantage they have is the mobile chips but its nothing revolutionary, they basically abandoned NetBurst and went back in time to Pentium 3 architecture and reworked it so its just a matter of time when they will get beaten up by someone else in the mobile arena... Those people who think that Intel came out with some magically revolutionary architecture needs to wake up and smell the coffee, they are moving towards more parallelized architectures (specialized processors/coprocessors inside making up the entire CPU), something that IBM/SONY/Toshiba has ready for production NOW...