Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Super PI benchmark for powerbooks, G4 beats Centrino!?

D

dodoei

macrumors member
Original poster
notebookereview.com had this review that compared Super PI benchmarks among 15" PB and several intel machines. PB 15" was the fastest and faster than IBM T43 1.86G:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2400

This makes me feel that PB is still a great value and can last a couple more years at least. It also makes me want to switch now and I'm very interested in 12" PB for its portability. I'm wondering if anyone else in this board tried Super PI benchmark for their PBs (any model), could you post the results? SuperPI for Mac can be downloaded at:

http://ocing3.free.fr/FTP/overclocking/super_pi/Kanada_lab/exec_Mac_OSX/

cheers!
 
Not to sound like I'm downplaying the speed of the superpi results but I'm not sure if such benchmarks really mean much. Would be a more realistic thing to test photoshop or cinebench or 3dmax or something that people actually use. I guess this is a valid test if you had to buy a machine to calculate pi 🙂 I have a centrino laptop as well as a xeon machine and in superpi, the centrino is pretty close to the xeon in performance but it absolutely gets slaughtered in real world applications....
 
Thought I'd throw in an AMD processor for some contrast.

SuperPi from the given link for windows; 2M digits (2097152), there was no "21" option.
AMD64 3000+ (1.8Ghz overclocked to 2.16Ghz, 512mb)

1st run: 1m 37s (97s)
2nd run: 1m 39s (99s)

Very close to the 1.9Ghz iMac


I just tried it on my roommate's 1.42Ghz mini, 512mb:

1st run: 2m 57s (177.33s)

There are a few programs running in the background, but I didn't want to close them, so his time might be faster. I'll have him try it when he wakes up.
 
1.33GHz 12" PB RevC

Used 21

269.481 seconds (Reduced)
178.981 seconds (Automatic)
177.874 seconds (Highest)

Athlon 64 X2 4400+

88 seconds

When launching two instances of SuperPI

#1 91 seconds
#2 90 seconds

Too bad it's not SMP aware 😛


It's just a silly benchmark anyway that shouldn't be taken seriously (unless you're creating a machine just for PI calculations..)
 
of course the g4 would beat out the x86 cpu's on eaclulating pi- poewrpc computers are well known for thie floating point processing power. Thats part of the reason why its so populat in the science/mathmatics subjects . in other tasks tho.. the g4 is seriosuly outdated :X
 
Toreador93 said:
Thought I'd throw in an AMD processor for some contrast.

SuperPi from the given link for windows; 2M digits (2097152), there was no "21" option.
AMD64 3000+ (1.8Ghz overclocked to 2.16Ghz, 512mb)

1st run: 1m 37s (97s)
2nd run: 1m 39s (99s)
Click to expand...
Here's some others to add to the compilation:

Dell D400 (old 1.7Ghz Pentium M, 256mb RAM) - 2m 20s
Dell D410 (new 1.86Ghz Pentium M, 256mb RAM) - 1m 41s
Dell SX280 (old 3.00Ghz Pentium 4, 1Gb RAM) - 1m 41s
 
dferrara said:
1.67 G4 (17")

162.813s (used 21)

How did the reviewer get 99s with the same chip! 😕
Click to expand...

Because this test is utterly pointless because of the type of task it's trying to do.

Don't general usage feel and real world stats mean anything? Open up a program and lets watch even a "slow" Centrino SPANK a G4.
 
Has anyone confirmed that the program is a direct port? If it's not, it won't be a paricularly good program to compare architectures with. That said, here are the times for the computers at home:

ASUS W3N (Pentium-M Dothan 1.7GHz): 1m54s (114s)

AMD Sempron @ 2.2GHz (256kB L2): 1m31s (91s)

These CPUs seem rather close in terms of efficiency.
 
Abstract said:
Because this test is utterly pointless because of the type of task it's trying to do.

Don't general usage feel and real world stats mean anything? Open up a program and lets watch even a "slow" Centrino SPANK a G4.
Click to expand...

You mean you don't use your CPU to calculate pi all day? Damn hippies. 😀
 
How much faster is a top-of-the-line centrino VS a 1.67 G4?

I keep seeing people raving about the centrino and how it spanks a G4. Really? How badly? 😕
 
blaskillet4 said:
How much faster is a top-of-the-line centrino VS a 1.67 G4?

I keep seeing people raving about the centrino and how it spanks a G4. Really? How badly? 😕
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't get that either. Centrino is and always has been a piece of shitaki. Pentium M is a different story.
 
dferrara said:
Yeah, I don't get that either. Centrino is and always has been a piece of shitaki. Pentium M is a different story.
Click to expand...


Isn't a centrino a Pentium M? 😕 😕 😕

Uh-oh 😱 ... Shows what I know about intel... So yeah, how badly does Pentium M (Best one) spank a G4?


25% faster?
30% ?
50% ?

What? I can't be _That_ bad. Right?
 
blaskillet4 said:
Isn't a centrino a Pentium M?
Click to expand...

Centrino is just a marketing name for some specific combination of Intel tech (wirless, chipset, cpu). Pentium M is one of the parts.

So you're kind of right.
 
Mikael said:
Has anyone confirmed that the program is a direct port? If it's not, it won't be a paricularly good program to compare architectures with. That said, here are the times for the computers at home:

ASUS W3N (Pentium-M Dothan 1.7GHz): 1m54s (114s)

AMD Sempron @ 2.2GHz (256kB L2): 1m31s (91s)

These CPUs seem rather close in terms of efficiency.
Click to expand...

I think the actually test is in question. The software itself wouldn't use all the power of thea archtecture anyways. it sort of pointless. Basically, a RISC arch will be faster in calculating Pi anyways. it isn't a surprise.
 
Wow.. i never thought this day would come.

But having used a 1.6Ghz Centrino before, it seems like the PB does fair somewhat better in Photoshop! Even with 1/2 the ram!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back