PPC better than Intel for PPC apps?

Woodcrest64 · Nov 14, 2012

My wife is using an old program report card program from 2000 designed around the PPC architecture on her 2011 intel Macbook Pro. On both a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini running Snow Leopard and her 2011 Intel i7 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard through VM fusion the program is EXTREMELY slow. Hitting back space to delete a word can take forever at times. The processor usage hits 90% or higher all the time.

I have made two separate bids on two Apple G4 iBooks running Tiger. I'm just wondering if buying a PPC base laptop is going to get better results vs running the program on an intel machine.

Jessica Lares · Nov 14, 2012

I have the Skyrocket too!

And yes, running the apps natively vs in an emulator is going to be much, much, much better. Make sure the hard drive is in good shape as it makes all the difference.

dukebound85 · Nov 14, 2012

Jessica Lares said:
I have the Skyrocket too!

And yes, running the apps natively vs in an emulator is going to be much, much, much better. Make sure the hard drive is in good shape as it makes all the difference.

not unless the emulator is running better than native. I would imagine any modern 10.6 capable mac is loads faster emulating ppc via rosetta than a g4 ibook running ppc natively

wobegong · Nov 14, 2012

dukebound85 said:
not unless the emulator is running better than native. I would imagine any modern 10.6 capable mac is loads faster emulating ppc via rosetta than a g4 ibook running ppc natively

Yes I think the newer Intel processors will be faster even with Rosetta than a native PowerPC, even at release they were not as slow emulating as you might expect and they have improved very dramatically since then. Against an older Core Solo or even CoreDuo though PowerPC would definately be better.

throAU · Nov 14, 2012

How much ram is in the machine?

If you're running Snow Leopard in a VM, you will need enough RAM to hold both copies of OS X before you even consider running applications.

If you're running with 4gb of RAM or less, it will probably be slow.

A modern intel CPU with Fusion should be able to run non-3d applications almost as fast as natively - if you have enough RAM.

As far as rosetta goes - I've run Diablo 2 in rosetta on my mac mini without issue. I didn't even realize it was a PPC only app (i installed from CD i bought for my PC - it had both OS9 and Windows versions on it)

The way rosetta works, it caches translated instructions so performance isn't horrible...

Woodcrest64 · Nov 15, 2012

The Mac mini running snow leopard as its main OS has 2gb of ram. The MacBook pro from 2011 running snow leopard via vm fusion has 4gb of memory .

I'm not sure why the Mini with a core 2 duo with snow leopard and 2gb is running an old PPC app from 2000 soooooo slowly. It's pretty much unbearable at times. Like I said the processor hits 90% on both machines.

throAU said:
How much ram is in the machine?

If you're running Snow Leopard in a VM, you will need enough RAM to hold both copies of OS X before you even consider running applications.

If you're running with 4gb of RAM or less, it will probably be slow.

A modern intel CPU with Fusion should be able to run non-3d applications almost as fast as natively - if you have enough RAM.

As far as rosetta goes - I've run Diablo 2 in rosetta on my mac mini without issue. I didn't even realize it was a PPC only app (i installed from CD i bought for my PC - it had both OS9 and Windows versions on it)

The way rosetta works, it caches translated instructions so performance isn't horrible...

Woodcrest64 · Nov 15, 2012

wobegong said:
Yes I think the newer Intel processors will be faster even with Rosetta than a native PowerPC, even at release they were not as slow emulating as you might expect and they have improved very dramatically since then. Against an older Core Solo or even CoreDuo though PowerPC would definately be better.

So I found out the PPC app was written back in 2000 for OS8 using File Maker I think.

I changed VM Fusion to use 1 core out of the 4 on the processor and only 1gb of memory instead of the 2gb out of 4gb on the macbook. It does seem snappier but I will need my wife to verify that.

Ariii · Nov 15, 2012

MacOS 8 runs incredibly fast on most G3's or newer. The only problem I could think of you having would be how the app runs through emulation. And many apps aren't nearly as good through emulation as they are natively. Get something that can boot MacOS 9 natively (MacOS 9 is newer but is much, much more compatible with MacOS 8) so that you are able to run the app more quickly. In fact, a PowerPC emulating MacOS 8 through Classic Environment might be even slower than your MBP. Later iBooks cannot boot MacOS 9 natively, only older ones. You will likely have better performance if you get a machine that can boot MacOS 9 natively for a cheaper price.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 15, 2012

I wasn't aware that Fusion can run PPC applications on an Intel Mac... it simply translates the x86 calls and turns them into PPC ones. Are you referring to Rosetta on Intel?

Woodcrest64 · Nov 15, 2012

Jethryn Freyman said:
I wasn't aware that Fusion can run PPC applications on an Intel Mac... it simply translates the x86 calls and turns them into PPC ones. Are you referring to Rosetta on Intel?

I was running Snow Leopard in VM Fusion. SL supports PPC apps via Rosetta I believe. I wish Lion and ML had Rosetta.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 15, 2012

Woodcrest64 said:
I was running Snow Leopard in VM Fusion. SL supports PPC apps via Rosetta I believe. I wish Lion and ML had Rosetta.

Ah OK, I guess Rosetta would then take an affinity for single-core performance/clock speed.

If it's never been on an Intel Mac you can be nearly totally sure it's not able to take advantage of more than one CPU core.

Colpeas · Nov 16, 2012

My G5 tower runs PPC applications much fast than my old 13" C2D MBP ever did. I am yet to find an app which would run better in Rosetta than native.

spoonie1972 · Nov 16, 2012

have you considered trying sheepshaver?

Woodcrest64 · Nov 16, 2012

spoonie1972 said:
have you considered trying sheepshaver?

Sheepshaver? Do tell me

spoonie1972 · Nov 16, 2012

it's an os9 emulator. i've found it very effective for really, really old software.

but i do agree with above - some of those apps should be zipping along via rosetta in a parallels environment.

shiekh · Nov 11, 2014

Woodcrest64 said:
My wife is using an old program report card program from 2000 designed around the PPC architecture on her 2011 intel Macbook Pro. On both a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini running Snow Leopard and her 2011 Intel i7 Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard through VM fusion the program is EXTREMELY slow. Hitting back space to delete a word can take forever at times.

Something is very wrong, as deleting a word should be relatively trivial; so while in general it might not help much to go native PPC, in this case it might well.

Woodcrest64 · Nov 12, 2014

shiekh said:
Something is very wrong, as deleting a word should be relatively trivial; so while in general it might not help much to go native PPC, in this case it might well.

Thanks for the reply Shiekh. She still running the app via snow leopard server through VM fusion on top of OSX Mavericks. It still slow at times but I think the latest version of VM Fusion has helped her out a bit.

Eventually her school will be switching over to a new system that will be entirely web based.

MichaelLAX · Nov 17, 2014

2GB or even 4GB of RAM is way to little for running Snow Leopard in a virtualization program. Get at least 8GB and as Bill Gates used to say:

"You can never be too rich or have too much RAM!"

And YES, in today's i7 environment, it will outperform its original speeds on a PPC Mac!

More information on running Snow Leopard in Parallels here

poiihy · Nov 17, 2014

MichaelLAX said:
2GB or even 4GB of RAM is way to little for running Snow Leopard in a virtualization program. Get at least 8GB and as Bill Gates used to say:

"You can never be too rich or have too much RAM!"

And look at Microsoft and Windows today.

goMac · Nov 19, 2014

The VM is probably the issue, not the Intel machine. Mac OS X under a VM does not have graphics acceleration, so it will be pretty slow.

The Core 2 Duos were pretty competitive under Rosetta with a real PPC.

MichaelLAX · Nov 19, 2014

goMac said:
Mac OS X under a VM does not have graphics acceleration, so it will be pretty slow.

Graphics acceleration for a report card program???

PPC better than Intel for PPC apps?

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