Changing Trends?

[arn]

According to this CNet article (http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-8517593.html?tag=tp_pr), users are buying higher end machines... at least based on the limited evidence from the last 3 months of 2001:

Many consumers have been purchasing desktops with memory allotments of 256MB or more and hard drive sizes of 60GB to 80GB or even more. The buyers often paired those features with flat-panel displays--which doubled in sales in 2001--wireless networking equipment, and DVD recordable drives. At retail, sales of notebooks, more expensive than desktops, are also on the rise.

Sounds like an iMac... :)

[Unregistered]

It may sound like an iMac, but could you just image how great it would be if Apple actually had pro towers that had any serious ability whatsoever! Wow, people would actually get what they *wanted* instead of buying whatever underpowered, last year's technology at double the price, pretty-cased machines Apple chose to dump on their unfortunately loyal customers. Wow, would that be great!

Go Apple go; suck that 30% margin dry as long as you can -- it won't be there for long.

[gandalf55]

the previous post sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of ant farm...

[Unregistered]

Yeah, that guy has an itch somewhere he can't reach!? Aww, poor baby... didn't get what *he* *wanted*

Funny, I have an iBook with a 500MHz G3 and I don't feel that it is "underpowered" at all; works fine for me. I recently purchased a digital camera and have been making movies with iMovie and sure it takes it's time processing effects, but it's certainly capable of such a task. I would love to have a system with a 700MHz G4!!! Or even better an 800MHz G4 with a built-in DVD burner. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

[Unregistered]

Yeah, that guy has an itch somewhere he can't reach!? Aww, poor baby... didn't get what *he* *wanted*

Funny, I have an iBook with a 500MHz G3 and I don't feel that it is "underpowered" at all; works fine for me. I recently purchased a digital camera and have been making movies with iMovie and sure it takes it's time processing effects, but it's certainly capable of such a task. I would love to have a system with a 700MHz G4!!! Or even better an 800MHz G4 with a built-in DVD burner. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

[Unregistered]

What's the deal? In a worsening economy it's logic that low end gets a bigger kick then top end.

[Macmaniac]

I can just smell %10 of the market as ours!

[Unregistered]

Uh, duh? That's because all those features are becoming "standard" on the mid-level PC system. People aren't seeking out these systems. They're walking into the store intent on spending the same amount of money that would have gotten them a lot less last year and the sales people are getting them to spend it. It's just that $1,500 buys a whole lot more these days. Idiot.

[dantec]

Yeah... the tech industry is constanly evolving... so called "high-end" machine half a year ago... A high end machine today has about a gig of ram 2 ghz (if an intel), GeForce 3 etc...

[eyelikeart]

what is pretty interesting is the actual need for these "high end" machines...

many consumers & users complain about not getting enough power, speed, etc....but do they honestly need it? I would love to get my hands on a G4 867....but quite honestly, I do completely well with my 400....

I know this post will get some huffs & puffs but it's something to consider...

so fire away at me!!;)

[cplmd]

When you think about what computers have turned into,
I remember when I made my first one it was for word processing and spreadsheets. You can still do both of those on a 100Mhz pentium or hell my still working Mac Clas sic SE.

What computers have become are communication devices, consider, how useful is your new computer without Internet access???

So even for web browsing and e-mail - is a 2 GHz monster with 1 GB RAM and 100 GB hard drive needed? No.

Now if it's a server handleing 100 requests a second then yes but in the PERSONAL computer area - I hope to see things getting SIMPLER and CHEAPER. Why? So you can have devices that do one thing REALLY REALLY well (think a PlayStation or Xbox or iPod) or more than one that's REALLY REALLY convenient to have all the time, like a PDA slate (as i duck under the table ;) to access movie times, directions, news, e-mail.

just a thought.... :D

[greenplacticcup]

a year from now, people will be whining that they dont' have 3 ghz machines availible to them, and saying how d r e a d f u l l y s l o w their 1.4GHz machines are. People always complain. A year ago, it was whining they didn't have something as fast as what is now available. (dual 800).

I really like my g4/466. The only thing I wish I had right now was a flat screen. 22" display still (2+years later) is something I have my eyes on (I wish!)

cheers.

-----
color cl***ic, ibook 500, g4/466, g4/400
-----

[Foocha]

People are never satisfied... and that's actually a good thing. It's what stimulates growth in the ecconomy. The day everything is perfect and everyone is happy we can all go home... because we're out of work.

Today's PCs (especially Macs) are not fast enough. They never will be. There will always be a demand for something faster.

I don't subscribe to the popular aguement that we don't need more powerful processors these days. Even a home user needs a faster chip these days if they're going to get a reasonable experience out of OS X - Aqua is *SO* processor intensive.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a good thing. OS X has been designed with the Processor of the future in mind, and it's all part of the process of fuelling future demand.

[Unregistered]

If you just look at hardware, Apple's PowerMac G4s are pretty much underpowered... I mean, I recently built an Athlon XP 1600 based system with high-end parts all through it for about $850, including the $199 for Windows XP Pro. In fairness, it would have cost $1000 if I put Gigabit Ethernet in it.

But, the lucky folks who get to use it, unfortunately, have to use Windows to get anything out of it. This means all kinds of things like:
- There's no way to make a window zoom to a logical size... It either takes over the whole screen, or is minimized, or is just randomly placed.
- Screen real estate is wasted because child windows are forced to stay within the bounds of their parent window.
- They can't drag things around their hard drive and expect them to still work, because the paths linking programs to libraries are cryptically written into a database called the registry.
- It takes a control panel to remove programs correctly without polluting the system with junk, but the operating system lets new or careless users throw things out incorrectly anyway.

I suppose I could go on. It would be really nice if Apple could make it possible to buy or build a system with the power of a Tyan based Dual Athlon system... Even better if they made it possible at the < $1500 price point that is possible on Pentium compatible hardware. But, the fact that Apple's hardware runs Mac OS pretty much makes it beat anything out there.

(I won't even go into Notebooks... The best Wintel portables don't even come close!)

Cheers

[iSteve]

Get a life, lemurs. Apple blew it big time by introducing gay iMac instead of anticipated Pro towers.

[mischief]

If you don't have anything to Add, kindly shut your sphincter.

Talking anuses do better when they learn the value of silence: All that comes out is stinky hot air and rude noises.:p

[networkman]

is driven by gaming software

major titles like microsoft office and microsoft works do not drive the hardware to go faster even though they are the most common titles in the computer store

but home based games like tomb raider and castle wofenstein, and others, seem inadequate when used with the current top of the line computers on the shelf today which don't kick out the frames per second that we crave for

due to the huge gaming industry and the money generated in high tech due to home gaming, the pc and mac business has a market and a market the pushes the need for faster hardware

if it was only ilm, adobe software, scientific labs, and autocad, then the machines would probably be built on site (or ordered thru a professional trade industry catalog at astronomical prices) on a custom basis and we consumers would never see anything cutting edge

...so let us give thanks to those time wasting computer games

[eyelikeart]

first off.....nice original name.... :rolleyes:

second....why don't u eat my iPoop.... :D

third.....there is no third....just couldn't have 2!

[networkman]

if apple blew it by introducing the gay imac, then why did it save apple

in that case, i would like a gay g5 and a gay 1 ghz machine right away

[eyelikeart]

but it would add confusion to the reason why Apple changed their logo from rainbow to all white....

:D ha ha ha.....

sorry just had to jump in on it....

[HumanJHawkins]

Hi,

I have to say, that most people are spending more and more time in front of their computers... On the order of 2 hours a day average, with some people spending more time than that.

I won't go into details, because it is boring and not all that important anyway, but even a tiny speed up for the average user will add up to 30+ hours saved over the course of a year.

But much more importantly than the time savings is the comfort factor... Who cares about "need" as it has been described. If I do something every day for two hours, I need just about anything that makes it more pleasant... Yeah, I may not die because I have to wait 6 seconds for MS Word to load, but it is so much nicer to be able to just click the icon and have it spring up in front of me... It should be waiting on me, not the other way around.

Frankly, life is too short to endure even minor annoyances every day.

[networkman]

very true

[Kiera]

I see lots of people complaining about the new iMac and the lack of the intro of new pro machines, get over it! This is the time for the home consumer to focus on the consumer machines. My Grandma is looking at upgrading from her old Performa to a new mac. She looked at the difference between the Pro machines and the new iMac and immediately asked me why anybody would pay all that extra money for those (big bulky) Macs when the new one was such a good deal. She has already ordered hers. I imagine that this is exactly the kind of reaction that Apple was hoping for. What better way to have a hit on your hands than to make people an offer they find hard to refuse?

The timing also makes sense if you think about about it like this.

Adobe has said that Photoshop for OS X should be out at the end of this quarter (march/april). It totally makes sense for Apple to announce the new Pro level macs during that timeframe because that will be when the pro market will start seriously upgrading to OS X (many high-end shops have not upgraded yet simply because Photoshop run in cl***ic on top of OS X is painful and slow) and also when they may start looking at upgrading the hardware to run the new system (what better excuse is there?). I am sure that there will be plenty of fanfare and interest raising for the new Photoshop and how the new G5s are just what you need to really max out the new features.

Look how popular the rumor sites for Apple are. How dissappointed are you if there is no good news or gossip about Apple/products out there for months at a time? (be honest!) If Apple only announced new products once (or twice) a year people would be even more disappointed than if there is always something right around the corner. This kind of timing keeps the hype going (one dribble at a time) on the new lineup...

[networkman]

photoshop X and a g5 coming out at the same time will be a revolution and anybody on the fence who thought of using photoshop on a wintel will think twice and think different

hey, i hit 100 posts

again

[blakespot]

Originally posted by Unregistered
It may sound like an iMac, but could you just image how great it would be if Apple actually had pro towers that had any serious ability whatsoever! Wow, people would actually get what they *wanted* instead of buying whatever underpowered, last year's technology at double the price, pretty-cased machines Apple chose to dump on their unfortunately loyal customers. Wow, would that be great!

Go Apple go; suck that 30% margin dry as long as you can -- it won't be there for long.


How does the dual G4 800 lack "serious ability"? Please explain.


blakespot

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by HumanJHawkins
Hi,Yeah, I may not die because I have to wait 6 seconds for MS Word to load, but it is so much nicer to be able to just click the icon and have it spring up in front of me... It should be waiting on me, not the other way around.

Frankly, life is too short to endure even minor annoyances every day.

I suppose that's the difference between me & u....

I *need* photoshop to rasterize a 64 MB eps file as fast as possible since time is money in production.....however, my year and a half old G4 does it fine for me....but a faster machine would make my workflow much smoother....esp. for photoshop....

I do honestly feel that using Word as a base for argument isn't a just cause...
besides....it takes so damned long to load.....worthless as far as I'm concerned... :o

just my 2¢...

[HumanJHawkins]

Ha... Another funny thing most non-techie Windows only people don't know is that the majority of Dual Xeon Servers (Xeon is Intel's highest end 32-bit chip) being built today run on less than 1 GHz CPUs.

There are lots of people doing serious work on Wintel that would love a Dual 800 MHz Xeon box. Then you hear people whining about the Dual 800 G4 Mac... It just boils down to most people not really understanding computer hardware or software.

Frankly, the Pentium compatible market does have faster chips these days. In the case of a Dual Athlon MP 1900+ system, a lot faster. But the missing link is the fact that there are different tools for different jobs... The best rock hammer in the world is garbage if you are trying to drive ten-penny nails.

If you want a reliable full function server with lots of commercial IT software, Get a dual 800 or better Xeon box.

If you want computational speed, and don't care about high maintenance and a complicated interface, build yourself a Dual Athlon MP system based on either a Tyan S2460 motherboard or so.

If you want a highly functional computer with low maintenance and a user friendly interface, with plenty of power and responsiveness, and don't mind that certain kinds of computationally intensive tasks will be a little slower, get an iMac G4, or a high end PowerMac Tower.

Cheers!

[HumanJHawkins]

Originally posted by eyelikeart

I suppose that's the difference between me & u....

I *need* photoshop to rasterize a 64 MB eps file as fast as possible since time is money in production<CUT>
I wasn't saying that people with big jobs don't also need more speed... I was just saying that even someone who uses software with low requirements has a legitimate reason to seek speed... Several of the other posters were either stating or implying that the average user doesn't need a faster machine.

In my opinion, even someone who uses their computer only for web surfing, if they surf frequently, has a fair reason for speed. (And if you have ever tried to surf the web on a slow machine and then a fast one over the same internet connection, you know that machine speed makes a big difference!)

Cheers!

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by blakespot

How does the dual G4 800 lack "serious ability"? Please explain.
blakespot

I'd be happy to explain blakespot, thanks for asking:

The dual G4 800 uses a 133MHz system bus while Intel and AMD systems have been using a 400MHz system bus for a year. It also uses SDRAM, which is way slower than the DDRRAM that even some mid-range Wintel systems use now. Beyond that, OS 9 -- which almost all professionals need to continue using because many peripherals don't funciton properly in OS X and because there is still so much missing X software -- doesn't use the 2nd processor. Only Photoshop (whith the apropriate plug-in) and a few other applications can use the dual processors. So, most of the time, even with this top-end Mac, you're basically stuck with single 800MHz G4 using a slow bus and slow RAM

Finally, the top-end Mac tower is extraordinarily expensive. And that's not your usual "Macs cost too much rant". I don't mind paying extra for the increased usability, enjoyability and efficiency of the Mac platform -- it saves me and my company money in the long run. But when I pay extra for those things, I expect the performance of the hardware to at least be on par with what's offered on the dark side. Unfortunately, Apple is way, way behind in their pro machines and seem to be falling further, not catching up.

[dantec]

is ther reason we need faster machines... The message i've got from apple is 10.1 will be the "only" optimization we will get and until we buy better and faster machines were screwed...

The G5 will bring hope... and hopefully bring the speed gap of OS 10 and OS 9 closer and closer...

[dantec]

When I read that, it blew me & my Quicksilver away...:eek:

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by HumanJHawkins

I wasn't saying that people with big jobs don't also need more speed... I was just saying that even someone who uses software with low requirements has a legitimate reason to seek speed... Several of the other posters were either stating or implying that the average user doesn't need a faster machine.

In my opinion, even someone who uses their computer only for web surfing, if they surf frequently, has a fair reason for speed. (And if you have ever tried to surf the web on a slow machine and then a fast one over the same internet connection, you know that machine speed makes a big difference!)

Cheers!

I completely understand your posting...and I have surfed the net on a slow system vs. something fast....and I can appreciate the desire...

I guess I'm speaking more in terms of people griping to go past 867 Mhz on a PowerPC platform for their needs of power....for what?!

[dantec]

<[url]133MHz system bus supporting over 1-GBps data throughput

If a G4 can have 1 gbps throughput, does a pentium or athion have 4 gbps???

Even if a Pentium and Athion are supposivly so much better and more powerful than my G4, why is a 133mhz G4 still managing to woop the Pentiums *** in Photoshop?

[mischief]

OS 9.2.2 has a dual processing extension.

[spuncan]

Actually if you think about it its impossible for the 800mhz dual to be underpowered. This is beacuse there's nothing better then it. Except CRAYS so if we all have an extra house for the cooling tank and 10 million dollars to buy then the dual 800 is underpowered. Butr anyways on the highend during recesion thing. People are buy highends so they can wait 2-3 years to buy a new computer instead of buying a $799 every 6 months. This shows that people thought this was a long recesion but instead its just a re-normalizing period cuz the economy was falsly inflated cuz of .com and Slick Willy.

[Foocha]

I hope you're right je... I mean networkman. But from everything I've seen, Photoshop on OS X is likely to take a performance hit. I predict we'll see a lot of people on this board getting pretty hot under the collar on the subject.

G5 may be key to the widespread adoption of OS X. I wonder how many graphics professionals will value OS X's stability more than the crude simplicity and speed of OS 9. Hmmm, it will be an interesting one to watch. If enough developers take Microsoft's lead and stop supporting OS 9, graphics professionals will be left with little choice, but if Adobe keeps shipping OS 9 compatible apps, Apple might have quite a wait on their hands until the uber-conservative graphics professionals jump ship to the big X.

Personally, I haven't looked back since upgrading to OS X, but if I was stuck with a slower machine I wouldn't be so happy. I guess it's similar with Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Different horses for different courses.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by mischief
OS 9.2.2 has a dual processing extension.

Check out any of the performance reports of the dp 800 on http://macspeedzone.com -- they make it quite clear that speed gains in OS 9.2 are only realized if an *application* is specifically written to be "dual processor savvy." They say that all Carbon or Cocoa apps running in OS X are, by nature, dp savvy. This corroborates every other article I've ever read on Apple's dp systems -- that the 2nd processor has almost no effect in OS 9 except for specifically dp written programs like Photoshop.

As for the gigaflops question above, I have never heard any other computer company refer to gigaflops, so I doubt there is an answer to your question. I do know that the 400MHz bus in my P4 system is described as a dual DDR 100MHz bus so I seriously doubt their is a true 4-fold increase in performance, but it's obviously better than a single 133 bus. Ditto on the Double Data Rate RAM.

[Foocha]

Apple is a bit naughty using Photoshop in all its "speed" tests against Intel. I think it's pretty clear that Photoshop is better written for Mac than PC. If you were to do broader based tests examining a wide range of commonly used apps with comparable tasks on both platforms, the results are likely to be revealing!

An app like Photoshop is likely to perform better in OS 9 because it can take over the hardware and be a processor hog (until it crashes resulting in a system freeze ;) ). In OS X, Photoshop will be forced to behave, and performance will suffer as a result. I guess it's likely that Photoshop on W2K is similarly throttled.

I think there's no doubt that you get more bang for your buck with a Windows box these days. As a Mac fan, I'm hoping Apple with correct the situation very soon.

[mischief]

I was correcting the implication that OS 9 has no access to dual processors. As to the "enabled only" info: most of those FAQ statements were written B4 OS 9.2 came out and added a system DP extension.

[eric_n_dfw]

As most of us know, the only reason Mac trounces Wintel in those Photoshop bake-offs is because Adobe has optimized their code for the AltiVec (aka Velocity Engine) processor functions in the G4.

I'll bitch about Motorola's ineptitude as much as the next Mac user, but they hit the ball out of the park with AltiVec. Intel's MMX is way behind the times and since they rely so heavily on the brute force of the main processing units, Windows developers don't seem to take too much time to learn MMX (or SSE or KNI or whatever they call it now) even though the P4 is supposed to have pretty decent vector processing.

The superiority of software that is carefully crafted for AltiVec is most apparent, to me at least, in Final Cut Pro 3. Even on a 500 Mhz G4 you can do real-time titling over DV25 (MiniDV) footage. That's incredible people! This just doesn't exist under Windows - not without some kind of PCI card doing the work. That's the power of well written software.

That being said, the G4's Altivec registers could be fed so much faster if that dang memory bus got out of the 1990's! DDR ram on a 200Mhz bus should be a minimum for the next "bump". In fact, if they didn't increase the G4's clock speed but got 200Mhz DDR RAM - I'd bet AltiVec application performance would go out the roof! (I'd upgrade my G4/400 upgraded Blue & White in a heartbeat)

If you haven't read it already, take a look at these chip reviews at ArsTechnica:
- Jan 2000 article comparing vector processing architectures:
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/1q00/simd/simd-1.html
- Current series comparing the G4e to the P4:
Part 1: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q2/p4andg4e/p4andg4e-1.html
Part 2: http://arstechnica.com/cpu/01q4/p4andg4e2/p4andg4e2-1.html

These guys are not MacHeads - their not WinBigots either. They do praise AltiVec for it's power and capabilities though. (See the Jan 2000 article above)

Apple - PLEASE get that DDR in the G4's - NOW!

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by mischief
I was correcting the implication that OS 9 has no access to dual processors. As to the "enabled only" info: most of those FAQ statements were written B4 OS 9.2 came out and added a system DP extension.

Many of the articles I have read about Apple's double processor usefullness in OS 9 were, perhaps, written before 9.2 but the MacSpeedZone reports specifically note that they are using 9.2. They are looking at the actual performance results of running software on the dp 800 vs. the single 867 and thier conclusion is that the 2nd processor on the dp system does not have an impact in OS 9 except in applications specifically written to take advantage of it. (http://www.macspeedzone.com/html/art/edge/misc/a/quick_733_vs_867.html) Though, you are right that in the Finder, there is a slight improvement with the dp system, but check out all the tests where the single 867 was faster than the dp 800!

Since half the processing power of Apple's top system (which also costs huge heaps of coin) is illusionary most of the time, I think it's a significant problem. (Added to the slow system bus and slow memory, I think is a huge problem.) But, hopefully, we'll all see next Tuesday if they've addressed any of it or just stuck newer, barely faster chips in the same old slow architecture.

[networkman]

twelve to eighteen months from now we will be laughing at these speed debates because we will hopefully be comfortably over 1.5 ghz in speed and the current fastest dual 800 will be old hat

when i got my 300 mhz ibook in 1999, it was the world's second fastest laptop next to the g3 powerbook which sped at a then amazing 333 and 400 mhz

[HumanJHawkins]

Originally posted by Unregistered


Check out any of the performance reports of the dp 800 on http://macspeedzone.com -- they make it quite clear that speed gains in OS 9.2 are only realized if an *application* is specifically written to be "dual processor savvy.<CUT>
Howdy,

I hate to break it to you, but all programs must be specifically written to get benefit from dual processors. It is true that without special programming, if you run two programs at once, each will get the full benefit of one of the processors, and MacOS 9 may not support that... I bet it does, but don't know for sure.

But, every program by default has a single thread. A single thread can not run on more than one processor. Most programs are in fact written to spin off more threads that can end up running on a second processor if one is available, but this is usually only to keep the interface active. For example, if you have some long calculation to do, you spin off a thread to process the calculation, while the main thread keeps looking for mouse movement or keyboard strokes.

The important thing to remember here is that the calculation which will be using 100% of it's CPU, does not benefit except maybe 0.01% from the other CPU because of the user interaction it doesn't have to deal with. Only if the calculation is broken into big chunks that are then spun off into threads, can any real benefit be gained from dual CPUs.

This is the nature of multiprocessing today, Win XP, MacOS X, or Mac OS 9. Frankly, there is so much complexity in breaking calculations up into workable chunks without introducing errors, that the few extra hoops you have to jump through on Mac OS 9 are not that big of difference.

[krossfyter]

what? now try that in english.

heh! the funny thing about it is you probably did break that down to its simpilist denominator but im still not getting it.

oh wait.. i know, i know... the benefits of the dualie may only be enjoyed by the tech savy!

[anshelm]

"The dual G4 800 uses a 133MHz system bus while Intel and AMD systems have been using a 400MHz system bus for a year. It also uses SDRAM, which is way slower than the DDRRAM that even some mid-range Wintel systems use now."

Intel claims a 400MHz system bus by running a 100MHz bus on 4: it sends four different times to the memory, twice on the up and twice on the down (of the clock cycle). AMD claims a 266MHz or a 200MHz system bus by running a 133MHz or a 100MHz bus and relies on DDR SDRAM to send signals on the up and the down of the clock cycle. They are, in effect, STILL 100MHZ AND 133MHZ SYSTEM BUSES. Get your facts straight before knocking Apple's "ancient" 133MHz system bus.

That is not to say that Apple shoudln't release a PowerMac with DDR SDRAM. I'm holding out on buying a mac until they do (since I have an Athlon 1.2GHz). But please understand that it would be THE SAME SYSTEM BUS as my current config.

[krossfyter]

right:confused:

[anshelm]

I'll try to explain frequency by using analogies. :-)

Imagine you are at a beach. You are watching the ocean lap against the shore. Obviously, you see waves. Now walk into the water. A ways in you'll feel the waves lapping against your legs in an easily measureable manner. Now stop and pull out your water-proof stopwatch. Wait until a wave hits you and start the watch. Count 100 waves hitting you and stop the watch. The watch says its been (I'll make this number up to give it a better divison) 40 seconds. Divide the waves (100) by the seconds (40) and you end up with the number 4. (As suming this is one heck of a windy day) That means there will be 4 waves per second.

That is what "MHz" is: a measure of how many millions of times per second the clock cycles (well, add in multipliers, but that's too advanced for this). Electricity "flows", and the clock cycles make "waves" (not exactly, but this is just a simple explaination). The frequency is higher with the more clock cycles produced. So a 100MHz rating means the clock cycles (like a wave: from peak to peak) 100 million times per second.

This is all very simplified so I hope you understand that this is not exactly the case.

Now, on to the harder to explain part... (Intel's and AMD's "higher" clocks)

Imagine that you are back on the beach, but it is a *much* nicer day. The waves are nice and shallow. You and a friend go out into the water and stop. Since it's a nice day and you want to do something, you decided to play catch. You start tossing a rubber ball back and forth. Now, just to make this analogy make sense, you are throwing the ball to each other once per wave. A wave hits you and you throw the ball to you friend. Next wave you get your ball back. You are sending and recieving at the same speed of the waves. Then, because this is too slow, you start throwing (just bear with me here) a second ball. Each wave you throw a ball right after a wave hits you and then right before the next wave hits you. Your friend throws it back the same way. Now, to be like Intel, you throw four balls: twice on the up (right after the wave hits you) and twice on the down (right before the wave hits you).

Does that help?

[krossfyter]

DUDE you hit the nail on the head with that one.

thanks. very interesting. a new way of seeing it. now i will always remember the beach when ever i hear mhz . thanks.

[krossfyter]

wheres the bus speed fit into that analogy? and what exactly is bus?

[anshelm]

Thanks!

Since I'm in an overly analogy dripping manner, I hope you won't mind if I try to answer your question (I'm a programmer and I enjoy 'splaining things), as well as your question about threads...

Bus:
Let's pretend that there is only ocean between you and your friend (you can't get to anywhere else, so it doesn't exist, right? :) ). The "bus" is where you and your friend can throw the ball. You can only throw the ball back and forth on a set path (the bus). The "bus speed" is how fast you could throw the ball if you followed the waves (the MHz rating, or bus speed).



Threads:
Imagine you are making a nice cherry pie. You have a couple friends over who are anxious to eat. As you sit down to make the pie, you realize it will take awhile. So, you ask one friend to make the filling, and another to make the crust, while you do a few tasks like heat up the oven and prep the pie tin. After both friends finish their parts in making the pie, you put the crust (it's actually dough at this point...) in the tin, and then the filling on top of that. You then put the pie in the oven, cook it, and eat it.

Obviously, it went much faster since your friends were willing to help make the pie from scratch. How does this relate to threads in a computer program? Simple: You are like the appplication (the major thread, or "task"). When you get to the point of making the pie, you ask your friends to help, so they are like the "threads" (this is a bit simplified, but easier to understand). When they finish, they hand their things back to the "task" to do with as the task pleases. You could have thrown out the pie stuff and told them to do it again if you wanted. (Most threads terminate upon completion, sort of like if you created your friends out of thin air to help you, then deleted them when done. Some are sort of like your friends, you create them and then they stick around to do their stuff again, if you wanted to make multiple pies, but I fear I'm making this murkier... am I?)

Help at all? Sorry for rambling on so long, I got carried away...

[krossfyter]

lol


this is good. very helpful and its making me a little hungry.

[Reality Cheque]

Originally posted by anshelm
"The dual G4 800 uses a 133MHz system bus while Intel and AMD systems have been using a 400MHz system bus for a year. It also uses SDRAM, which is way slower than the DDRRAM that even some mid-range Wintel systems use now."

Intel claims a 400MHz system bus by running a 100MHz bus on 4: it sends four different times to the memory, twice on the up and twice on the down (of the clock cycle). AMD claims a 266MHz or a 200MHz system bus by running a 133MHz or a 100MHz bus and relies on DDR SDRAM to send signals on the up and the down of the clock cycle. They are, in effect, STILL 100MHZ AND 133MHZ SYSTEM BUSES. Get your facts straight before knocking Apple's "ancient" 133MHz system bus.

That is not to say that Apple shoudln't release a PowerMac with DDR SDRAM. I'm holding out on buying a mac until they do (since I have an Athlon 1.2GHz). But please understand that it would be THE SAME SYSTEM BUS as my current config.

anshelm, my facts *are* straight. In an earlier post I said my 400MHz system bus on my P4 system was described in the specs as a dual 100MHz double data rate bus. Just because there is a more complex explaination for how it all works under the hood does not mean that that dual DDR 100MHz bus doesn't kick the crap out of a single 133MHz bus. Same goes for DDR RAM; PC manufacturers moved to it because it's faster. Period. If all you're arguing is that my system bus is not *four times* as fast just because it's called "dual" and "double" data rate, no problem -- I hear you. But it is faster.

So, when Apple rambles on about the megahertz myth on their CPUs, they should at least be providing the rest of their architecture at performance levels equaling thier PC competitors. Especially since they charge a premium for it. (I'm happy to pay more for my Macs; I'm simply tired of paying more and getting much less performance.)

[anshelm]

Yes, unforunately for Apple, right now "Reality Cheque" is correct about the P4's bus performance being higher (like I tried to explain, the bus *speed* is still 100MHz) :( But not by 4x, although that's what Intel would have you believe. (There are some peformance issues with the DDR part of things, so it doesn't get actual 200% performance.)

For those of you who would like to check out a simple article that mentions this, check out Tom's Hardware:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/blurb/00q4/001128/p4-03.html

(Technically, so people don't get confused when they hear "dual 100MHz double data rate bus", the P4 is actually TWO buses at 100MHz that are double pumped, but Intel intends for them to act as a 100 pumped 4, so that's why I explained it that way. Hope nobody got too confused!)

[anshelm]

Reality Cheque, let's see if I can clear up the water here:

Apple's 133MHz system bus is actually FASTER then your Intel P4's 100MHz bus pumped 4.

A quad pumped 100MHz bus doesn't make things transfer at 400MHz (that's just Intel's markerting). It makes 4 times as much DATA pass through the bus, but still at the SAME SPEED as a 100MHz bus.

Let's say you are a coach for a track and field team. You have a team of four guys who can run at 20mph. You discover that the opposing team has someone who runs at 25mph. So, to make better marketing, you tell everyone your team can run at 80mph. It's a lie, of course, but your give the excuse that's a "quad pumped 20mph machine"!

Let me reiterate: Apple's bus IS faster, but it can only push 33% of the data that Intel's can!

If you need another source, once again browse to Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001120/p4-04.html

Bus performance on a 133MHz system is this: 1,066 MB/s (1GB/s). Bus performance on a 100MHz system quad pumped is this: 3,200 MB/s (3.2GB/s).

And for the last time: Intel's bus is NOT 400MHz! It DOES matter how things work on the inside! Let me explain for you: DDR SDRAM is NOT FASTER. It can only push more data at the same time. It has NOTHING to do with BUS SPEED, only bus WIDTH.

(And AMD is lying, too. It is a 100MHz or 133MHz system bus DOUBLE PUMPED. NOBODY has a faster system bus then Apple, just a larger "WIDTH"!)

*phew* Now with that said, does anyone have any questions? (I hope nobody minds my shouting, but I'm trying to fight Intel's and AMD's false marketing.)

[krossfyter]

i love you techies.

[cplmd]

Coming from the biological sciences, this thread has been very educational - thanks guys - great analogies anselm

I grasp that the speed of a 133 vs quad pump 100 is faster on a 133 but the movement of data - what matters to me as a computer user is thoughtput is the quad 100 (notice I didn't say 400 MHz ;) )

I just got a new Sony MSX1 for my 17 year old today (yea, means I'm the rare 40 sumpin on here) we looked at Macs - mainly to humor me I think!!!!!

But the "but Dad, it burns CD, DVD plus it can catch and record radio and play and record TV and all my games like Acheron's call on play on Windows" was the deciding factor.

Now I don't expect most games to go Mac as much as XP - I understand business - the margins as slim and market share can make or break them - but why can't Apple even entertain other areas besides destop/laptops????

check out this:
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/pogo/

neat little gaget - be nice if Apple could improve it like the iPod did for mp3 players.

also I found this series interesting today:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tc_special/apple.htm

so anybody want a better server platform from apple?

[krossfyter]

muncho thanks for those link.

[Reality Cheque]

Originally posted by anshelm
Let's say you are a coach for a track and field team. You have a team of four guys who can run at 20mph. You discover that the opposing team has someone who runs at 25mph. So, to make better marketing, you tell everyone your team can run at 80mph. It's a lie, of course, but your give the excuse that's a "quad pumped 20mph machine"!

And for the last time: Intel's bus is NOT 400MHz! It DOES matter how things work on the inside! Let me explain for you: DDR SDRAM is NOT FASTER. It can only push more data at the same time. It has NOTHING to do with BUS SPEED, only bus WIDTH.

*phew* Now with that said, does anyone have any questions?

Hi anshelm;

I get your point. I always did. You object to me using the term "faster" instead of something like "moving more data concurantly at a slower speed". No problem.

But data is not like the runners in your example; it would be more like buckets of water the runners were carrying: If you (the computer) needs to move 4 buckets of water (data), the single faster runner (the Apple bus) would need to run back and forth 4 times to accomplish that. The slower team of runners (the quad bus) could move all 4 at one time, but at a slower rate. Using an arbitrary distance of 1 mile, the team could move all 4 buckets of water (data) in 3 minutes (a single trip) while the faster single runner would take 9.6 minutes (4 trips at 2.4 seconds each, ignoring, of course, the return distance for each trip -- the analogy only goes so far).

Absolutely, the faster runner is just that: faster; but the slower team accomplishes the task in less time (also commonly know as doing something faster). It's a questions of semantics that I accept is important to you to get correct. But the bottom line is that the quad 100 bus in my Intel computer is better. I know it; every tech document I've ever read states it; and Apple doesn't dispute it (like they fight the "MHz myth").

So thanks for taking the time to explain the technical error I was making in describing why I want Apple to improve their architecture beyond just adding faster chips. I hope we're on the same page now. Cheers.

[HumanJHawkins]

Originally posted by anshelm
Reality Cheque, let's see if I can clear up the water here:

Apple's 133MHz system bus is actually FASTER then your Intel P4's 100MHz bus pumped 4.

Here is a reality check from someone who also has a solid understanding of this subject: You are right about most of your data. But, you are wrong in your conclusion.

Let me put it this way: A freight train is a much faster way to move 100 tons of grain from New York to Portland, OR, than a Ferrarri. The train is faster in the context of the job at hand.

And, I don't care whether you dwell on the MHz, the bus width, or the number of times data moves per cycle. DDR memory is faster than PC133, and RAMBUS is faster than DDR. If you had a 2048 bit wide bus operating at 66 MHz, it would be faster than anything we have today if you are speaking in the context of the job memory exists to accomplish.

Also, you have made one glaring technical error. RAMBUS does in fact use a 100 MHz clock crystal to keep itself timed. However, it does operate at 400 MHz. Hz is a rating of how many times per second something happens. The clock runs at 100 MHz on RAMBUS. However, the memory operates four times per clock cycle. Thus, the memory is in fact operating at 400 MHz, being kept in time by a 100 MHz clock.

Since we are into analogies today, lets look at it this way... A drummer is tapping his beat to 2/4 time. 1 - 2- 1 - 2, etc. But, he goes into a drum roll, hitting the snare 4 times for every tap of his foot. Now, the time didn't get any faster. It is still 2/4 time, and his foot is still tapping twice per measure. But he is playing faster. He is hitting the drum 8 times per measure. If one measure lasts one second, the song's timing is operating at 2 Hz. However, the drumming is operating at 8 Hz, guided by a 2 Hz clock.

That, my friends, is the real deal.

Cheers!

[anshelm]

My point, as Reality Cheque pointed out, was that we were refering to *bus speed*. Not the actual performance, but the term *bus speed*. Apple's is a faster MHz (which is used to refer to the *clock cycles per second*, not how much you DO during clock cycle... it has never been used to mean how much you DO during clock cycle).

The line you quoted was incorrectly stated on my part and I am sorry I misled your interpretation. That should have read: "Apple's 133MHz system bus [speed] is actually FASTER then your Intel P4's 100MHz bus ["speed" is infered here] pumped 4. "

Datawise the Intel is faster. And yes, your analogy is better then mine! :)

[anshelm]

To put it simply: Hertz (Hz) is the measurement of a FREQUENCY of one cycle per second ( http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=hertz ). To say Intel's quad pumped 100MHz system bus is 400MHz is actually a glaring techincal error on your part. Hertz HAS a definition (It is a unit of measure in the SI. It was not invented by computer companies!).

I am frustrated by the misuse of terms by AMD and Intel. Their *bus speeds* are slower, but they have more throughput. So, because people are trained to look at bus speed and not bus performance, they try to reinvent what the word "hertz" is. The MHz is only equal to the clock cycle. The bus BANDWIDTH is increased (by 4). Not it's technical SPEED.

(You do transfer more FASTER by using Intel's bus, just to reiterate)

Hope that clears what I am trying to say!

(Edit: Before anyone misunderstands, "frequency" used here means frequency of the peaks, not frequency of "something". This is an actual technical term with a rigid definition being misused by Intel and AMD.)

[cplmd]

back to the original thread topic.....

So what will sell in 2002?

Apple claims that 40% of people buying in their stores are non-Mac or first time Mac owners. When you compare the population of the US vs the number of computers owned in households their are many homes for Apple to conquer.

In the original post, the point was people who buy are buying more memory and bigger hard drives (duh cheap as both have gotten - why not)

The dvd burners are puzzling - unless it's like a few of my friends who got one mainly because:

1. It's how most new ones are configured.
2. They thought they could copy DVD movies with it.

(Of course, since the bought the DVD and owned it, they should be able to copy it - but that's another, much longer thread in itself :) )

So, with cheaper hardware and more capable hardware it means it all boils down to - SOFTWARE.

OS X continues to improve - having hacked around with Linux some - i'd like to see Apple make setting up a Web Server, SQL Database, DNS server and LDAP server as easy as iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD.

[krossfyter]

anshelm....


what your opinion on the thread boggin down the system?

[krossfyter]

anshelm..

bust out with some more anaglogies if you can...


like for piping..or whatever else you can think of . Thanks for the ones so far.

[BurntCalc]

The trend ISN"T that people are buying higher end machines. It's that the consumer is now more educated and is fed up with buying half-**** systems from Compaq that suck donkey balls. They figure if they're gonna get a machine, it's worth it to at least have it work right.

People got burned a lot. Nowadays, they're a lot more cautious.

:cool:

[anshelm]

I wouldn't say that people are getting smarter (about components in the computer, not companies... people are definitely getting smarter about who they BUY from)... or buying more "high-end" machines...

The problem with the article is that it is considering the middle-end machines as "high-end". Are more people buying more Athlon XP 2000+ or Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz machines? No. Are they buying machines with 512MB to 1GB of memory? No. Are they buying machines with hard drives that are 100GB to 160GB? No. (And they do exist for those who don't know, check out Maxtor's site).

The basic misunderstanding of the article is that 256MB of memory is "high-end" (it's not at all) and that 60GB to 80Gb is "high-end" (far from it).

You can't use yesterday's standards of "high-end" and claim that people are buying more "high-end" machines today. With every new hard drive and processor that was better then the last, the bar of "high-end" goes up. People are buying the same range of computers that they usually do, it's just that those computers were considered "high-end" more recently then in the past.

(To krossfyter: Why don't I start a thread about explaining computer concepts in analogies? It wouldn't keep interfering with other topics' posts...)

[krossfyter]

how can anyone say that when moorse law is around! :D

[stoid]

I think that if Apple releases machines with clock speeds comparable to that of PCs all hte stupid PC buyers that are like "Ohhhhh, 2 GHZ, Wow!" are oing to flock to the mac that has always been superior and flood the "Macintosh population" with ignorance, I knida like been one of the intelligent few that own a Mac. No offense to the intelligent PC users out there, if you read this hopefully though you've seen the light, and plan on buying a Mac next time around.

[krossfyter]

how the hell did mac get stuck with the behind in numbers with mhz but not in speed? how the hell did that happen? i dont get it.

ex: 800mhz mac = 1.2ghz peecee (something like that)

how the hell did this happen?

[crassusad44]

A long, long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away. Apple was the first to push a computer past the 300 MHz mark.... (PM 6500/300)...

[krossfyter]

and today in our galaxy....

[oldMac]

Geez...

And I thought it was because the market for lower-end machines is still paying for the ones they bought on easy credit 2 Christmas's ago.

Wait until Mom and Dad get hired back on at the factory when orders pick up. Then, maybe we'll see a rise in low-end computer sales again.

[dantec]

So what we're really waiting for is Apple to launch a "true" 400mhz bus, which would be quad. Using intel terms that would be... 1600mhz of throuput!!! Wow.

I'll always remember the days when Apple and the PowerPC toasted intel in public at macworld! What goes around comes around! What we need now, is something soooo supirior, so advanced, it would wow the pants of any Peecee computer, like...

"The new Powermac G5, Starting at 5 ghz"! If that could be unvieled again, we could flock back ignorant consumers, educate them about the myth, and gain market share!

Always remember, Apple was the first one to reach a "gigaflop". Now they have reached 15 gigaflops. Maybe they should use a Gigaflop rating instead of a Mhz one!

[krossfyter]

okay define a gigaflop and how it relates to mhz and why it matters?

[HumanJHawkins]

Originally posted by krossfyter
how the hell did mac get stuck with the behind in numbers with mhz but not in speed?

I am a Mac fan, but I have to correct part of that before I answer... The Mac is behind in both MHz and speed right now. It is just not as far behind as the numbers make it look.

Anyway, MHz just indicates how many times per second the processor does some work. It says nothing about how much work it does each time.

It is kind of like knowing how many times the delivery truck comes without knowing how much stuff it delivers. One company is saying "We can make 300 trips a year." Another is saying "We can make 200 trips per year, but we carry twice as much per trip."

Obviously, the slower delivery company in this case is delivering more stuff. That is like Apple compared to Intel. But, Intel started going so much faster, that even though it does much less work per time, it still is getting more done computationally these days. AMD is another story... They are about as efficient as Motorolla, and also run at 1.6 GHz, making them both way faster and way more productive on a purely computationally level.

This says nothing about the efficiency of the OS, which more than makes up for the difference for most Mac fans.

If your question was about, how did Apple's chips (Motorolla) get so far behind in MHz, it is because making chips is an extremely difficult thing to do. Why did the Chicago Bulls dominate basketball for so long? Because they worked hard, had talent, and got lucky.

Motorolla may be working hard and may have talent, but perhaps they just havent gotten some of the breaks they need. It will see-saw the other way eventually, or maybe IBM will come up with something that moves the B3, G4, G5 line forward.

There is also some decision making going on about stratagy for advancing the chips... Intel for example sacrificed a lot of efficiency to come up with the P4 design that can run at such high MHz. They made choices that made a P4 chip much less efficient than the PIII. A 1.5 GHz P4 chip is about as fast as a 1.0 GHz PIII chip.

But, the PIII chip can't be made to run at more than about 1.2 GHz without a lot of expense and effort. The P4 can easily run at 2.2 GHz these days. So by being less efficient but having a higher potential MHz, the P4 is actually made faster than the PIII.

Motorolla seems to have taken the approach of increasing efficiency and speed. Most engineers will tell you that this is the better way to go from a scientific standpoint. But if consumers continue to focus only on MHz, this will be a markeing nightmare.

[krossfyter]

thanks for that humanjhawkins....

my thoughts comming a bit later...but good stuff by the way.

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by HumanJHawkins


I am a Mac fan, but I have to correct part of that before I answer... The Mac is behind in both MHz and speed right now. It is just not as far behind as the numbers make it look.

Anyway, MHz just indicates how many times per second the processor does some work. It says nothing about how much work it does each time.

It is kind of like knowing how many times the delivery truck comes without knowing how much stuff it delivers. One company is saying "We can make 300 trips a year." Another is saying "We can make 200 trips per year, but we carry twice as much per trip."

Obviously, the slower delivery company in this case is delivering more stuff. That is like Apple compared to Intel. But, Intel started going so much faster, that even though it does much less work per time, it still is getting more done computationally these days. AMD is another story... They are about as efficient as Motorolla, and also run at 1.6 GHz, making them both way faster and way more productive on a purely computationally level.

This says nothing about the efficiency of the OS, which more than makes up for the difference for most Mac fans.

If your question was about, how did Apple's chips (Motorolla) get so far behind in MHz, it is because making chips is an extremely difficult thing to do. Why did the Chicago Bulls dominate basketball for so long? Because they worked hard, had talent, and got lucky.

Motorolla may be working hard and may have talent, but perhaps they just havent gotten some of the breaks they need. It will see-saw the other way eventually, or maybe IBM will come up with something that moves the B3, G4, G5 line forward.

There is also some decision making going on about stratagy for advancing the chips... Intel for example sacrificed a lot of efficiency to come up with the P4 design that can run at such high MHz. They made choices that made a P4 chip much less efficient than the PIII. A 1.5 GHz P4 chip is about as fast as a 1.0 GHz PIII chip.

But, the PIII chip can't be made to run at more than about 1.2 GHz without a lot of expense and effort. The P4 can easily run at 2.2 GHz these days. So by being less efficient but having a higher potential MHz, the P4 is actually made faster than the PIII.

Motorolla seems to have taken the approach of increasing efficiency and speed. Most engineers will tell you that this is the better way to go from a scientific standpoint. But if consumers continue to focus only on MHz, this will be a markeing nightmare.



Okay. Thanks for that. Good analogy by the way.
So intel sacrificed efficiency for the numbers (mhz) or speed....thats what you are telling me right? Intel is delivering 300 trips per year with not less of a load then the motorolla trips at 200 per year...thus making motorolla more effecient....is this correct? I hope i got that right. So where does AMD fit into this analogy?

[krossfyter]

Originally posted by krossfyter




Okay. Thanks for that. Good analogy by the way.
So intel sacrificed efficiency for the numbers (mhz) or speed....thats what you are telling me right? Intel is delivering 300 trips per year with less of a load then the motorolla trips at 200 per year...thus making motorolla more effecient....is this correct? I hope i got that right. So where does AMD fit into this analogy?