1.5 vs 1.67 PBs - maccentral suggests little difference

[Surreal]

Uh, 533 Mhz have to be cooled down, my friend. And not to mention that such a machine would drain your batteries sooner.

It's so hard to design a good laptop machine. I'd never choose any PC laptop just because of the wonderful design ideas implemented in Powerbook and it's stunning 1" thickness.

For professional audio, desktop is still a way to go. Buy yourself a dual G5 and be happy.

it is hard to design. which is why i havent siad that it "should be out" or "apple is so bad" and 533 does have to be cooled, but this all ties into me disagreeing wiith your last point. a desktop is NOT the way to go for pro audio. not until you are INCREDIBLY well established at least.

i use reason and make songs. i could burn a n arrangement and perform to it, but the is not all that professional. the aspect of live performance that is desired gets killed.

i want to buy a MOTU HD896 and record small bands to pay bills and build chops. i live in NY and i cannot afford a studio. AND i will have to reord people on their gigs sometimes.

i simply said that it dos not make sense to buy in right NOW. i am going t wait till it is.

a G5 powermac would be a WONDERFUL thing to own but i still wouldnt be in a position to make money off of it. and seeing as i have to look at 3000 dollars as an investement because i am a student and that is MONTHS of money....not making money is not really an option.

 

[Travis Novak]

Wow....
I have never seen so may people complaning abouts better preformance and new features for less money.

It's a small upgrade...but it's still just that.... AN UPGRADE

 

[Flynnstone]

I little competition between IBM & Freescale would be nice.
Freescale (Motorola) hasn't done much to upgrade the G4. They're likely selling a ton to Apple for use in the Mac mini.
If Freescale came out with a G4 without a front side bus (FSB) per se, like AMD, we'd see some dramatic performance improvements.
So, Freescale, put the memory controller on chip. Put some life back into the G4!

 

[maxvamp]

Wow....
I have never seen so may people complaning abouts better preformance and new features for less money.

It's a small upgrade...but it's still just that.... AN UPGRADE

Then you have not been reading these forums long enough.

It does not matter whether Apple released a **very** minor update, or designs the ultimate in the fastest, newest, and most innovative designs. People here will bitch about something, and often about the new item not having a fictitious, or unrealistic feature or component. ( READ Dual Core mobile G5 ).

This is just par for the course and is part of what makes these forums entertaining.

Max.

 

[Jimong5]

the g4 is NOT worthwhile in it's current form. 200 mhz fronside bus? pc laptops have 533...then imac has 300 MIN and the g5 tower...oh my. these benchmarks show that they may be comparable. the benchmarks do NOT establish the simply scaling a G4 is all that needs to happen.

Front side busses have so many factors that can be misleading though. 200 MHz for a chip pushing 6 years old is actually pretty good (the bus is single rate, not quad pumped, so its not misleading). my dual 867 desktop handles most stuff I throw at it, and its only at 133 on the bus. The problem I think has to do with the lack of L3.

Take this about buses as an example with the pentium 4:

Intel's 800MHz FSB is actually a 200MHz FSB that is quad pumped.* A double pumped CPU can be thought as similar to DDR, which is able to access the memory two times per clock cycle.* Similarly, a quad pumped CPU is able to access the front-side bus four times per clock cycle.* Theoretically, the performance of using a quad-pumped bus should be four times that of a normal bus, but when other variables like latency are taken in account, the performance increase does not even reach double the theoretical speed.

http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/intel_800mhz_fsb/

so that intel 533 bus is only really 133, with 4 accesses a cycle, but it will only preform at about a 167 level.

 

[John Rivers]

Some real world application questions on the new Powerbooks...

Hey I was interested in getting one of the newer 15" Powerbook G4s and had a few questions regarding them (am COMPLETELY new to mac and wanna join up soon) .

Let's assume I get the 128 mb VRAM upgrade and also 1 GB of RAM...

Q #1: OK, so im planning on getting into film and music. Will the Powerbook G4 be able to run the apps I will likely be using most (Logic, FC Pro HD, various Adobe apps) pretty well?

Q #2: And how about Motion? Will I be able to lightly use Motion, or is this one of those apps that is just gonna HAVE to be used on a high end Powermac?

Q #3: Alot of the other "real world test" scores for the new Powerbooks use the included 512 MB or ram. How much faster will the Powerbook be with 1 GB?

Thanks a ton for everyone's help.

 

[oingoboingo]

Q #2: And how about Motion? Will I be able to lightly use Motion, or is this one of those apps that is just gonna HAVE to be used on a high end Powermac?

Specifically addressing this point, Barefeats ran a suite of Motion tests on a range of machines, including a 1.5GHz PowerBook with the 128MB Radeon 9700, 1.25GB RAM and a 5400rpm drive. The results are here:

http://barefeats.com/motion.html

It's a mixed bag of results. You'll have to decide for yourself if this type of performance is acceptable or not.

You should take a close look around the rest of the BareFeats site also. It isn't very well laid out, but there are plenty of tests which have been performed which include PowerBook models similar to the one which are thinking about ordering...especially this page:

http://barefeats.com/pb11.html

 

[JFreak]

except...when i run logic. or protools. or..well, i think you know what kind of applications i would say.

the g4 is NOT worthwhile in it's current form. 200 mhz fronside bus? pc laptops have 533...then imac has 300 MIN and the g5 tower...oh my. these benchmarks show that they may be comparable. the benchmarks do NOT establish the simply scaling a G4 is all that needs to happen.

as someone who wants to use my computer for pro level audio, i have to consider how a computer will run the latest versions of programs. a 3000 dollar computer should eat anything i can throw at it without a hiccough. powerbooks are not currently capable of that. i have tripped powerbooks up teaching garageband.

just two days ago i ran protools with my low-end G4@1.25GHz powerbook in a LIVE gig doing a front-of-house mix for a crowd of thousand people. i also provided monitor mixes for the band, and recorded the whole show. i took 17 inputs and provided 6 outputs, had cpu load at +75% and there was ZERO hiccups during the whole day. ten hours activity, zero seconds downtime.

my powerbook cannot "eat everything" i throw at it, but on the other hand, there just is not any other (portable or desktop) mac solution available that would be able to do that. so i have to accept there are certain limitations. guess what? that only forces me to make better decisions regarding the audio i am processing. not a bad deal

if your powerbook cannot handle garageband, then there is something wrong with either your powerbook or apple's garageband.

 

[Surreal]

well, that was one way to find out how the powerbook runs strenuous audo work.

i think you replaied before to my question but it never clearedf up HOW well the powerbook handled recording many ins and outs.

and the only other issue is logic and virtual instruments. recording is a pretty steady affair, but how does you pb handle 4-5 large virual instruments. that was really when the G4s hurt in my opinion, recording is a smaller issue of through put but on an exs((24?) the biggest one) putting 2-3 puts visible strain on the cpu.

so, yes, i conceed that the powerbook can handle a great deal (and is fine for recording and monitoring) but can i program synths and samplers without freezing tracks. thanks for the input

o and i think the wholle garageband thing was ram. they didnt have it maxed out (wasnt my comp) but i am pretty sure with a bigger bus the ram would be used a little more efficiently(could be wrong. but that is my thinking based on what i understand the fsb to be).

 

[Demon Hunter]

Front side busses have so many factors that can be misleading though. 200 MHz for a chip pushing 6 years old is actually pretty good (the bus is single rate, not quad pumped, so its not misleading). my dual 867 desktop handles most stuff I throw at it, and its only at 133 on the bus. The problem I think has to do with the lack of L3.

Take this about buses as an example with the pentium 4:

http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/intel_800mhz_fsb/

so that intel 533 bus is only really 133, with 4 accesses a cycle, but it will only preform at about a 167 level.

What exactly is quad-pumping? What's the advantage over single cycle? And is there a compelling reason why the G4 doesn't have quad-pumping, or is it just heat-related?

 

[cemil]

What exactly is quad-pumping? What's the advantage over single cycle? And is there a compelling reason why the G4 doesn't have quad-pumping, or is it just heat-related?

Dferrara,

Quad-pumping refers to using being able to transfer 4 pieces of data in one clock cycle. If you think of a clock cycle as a regular wave (up, down, up, down), normally data is transferred only on the up portions. Double-pumping (DDR) is able to burst and transfer on the down but ONLY in certain situations. Therefore, you do gain some speed when bursting data from RAM to CPU but not the theoretical max (x2). Quad pumping is very similar.

RE the G4 not having quad pumping - not sure, I'm guessing it would involve a mobo redesign, and I'm not sure that the chip could handle it either.

-Cemil

 

[sofla100]

G4 1.67 PB is best PB overall

I just bought the 15 inch G4 1.67 PB from Amazon and am very satisifed with it. Yes, I did seriously consider waiting for the "much hoped for" G5 powerbook. But, I don't think it will be out much before well into summer. The other issue, the G4 is probably near the end of its production time especially with the 1.67 gig now (vs the 1.5). So, I am confident the "kinks" are pretty well worked out. That is why I went with the little bit more expensive G4 vs discounted 1.5 gig G4's, although, I agree the 1.5's are a good deal if you don't have the $$$. Also, the SuperDrive on the 1.67's I think is an improvement. Finally, when the G5 does finally come out, you will have to deal with the fact that a few "kinks" will have to be worked out, so you will say to yourself I might as well wait (right?) till the end of the year, but, then we wil be pushing towards the "G-6'es," right. No matter what you do, technology will always escape you. But, no matter what, you cannot go wrong anyway when you buy a PB, G5 desktop, or any of Apple's latest creations really. When you have to work on PC's all day (and have XP suck the soul out of your body), its always a relief to come home to OS/X.

 

[Nemesis]

Yes, PowerBook can handle it.

Q #1: OK, so im planning on getting into film and music. Will the Powerbook G4 be able to run the apps I will likely be using most (Logic, FC Pro HD, various Adobe apps) pretty well?

Q #2: And how about Motion? Will I be able to lightly use Motion, or is this one of those apps that is just gonna HAVE to be used on a high end Powermac?

Q #3: Alot of the other "real world test" scores for the new Powerbooks use the included 512 MB or ram. How much faster will the Powerbook be with 1 GB?

Thanks a ton for everyone's help.

1. It will be good machine for that. It depends how complex your projects are, but generally, FCP will be okay, and Photoshop too.

2. Motion is a new app, not yet quite optimised. But you can definitely use it. Same with GarageBand -- contrary to some people's opinion, GaragaBand 1 was NOT optimised at all. A junk piece of code. Even Logic Express performed MUCH better on the same machine -- you could do things GarageBand woudn't in a dream.

But GarageBand 2 is now much better.

3. Yes, increase of speed when putting in extra RAM is more than visible. 1 GB makes your Powerbook snappier and you can start enjoy working on it, and 2 GB makes it grrrreeeeat. 2 GB inside is the best you can do to boost application performance. It's worth every penny!

Plus, consider 17" Powerbook -- extra screen real estate and *definitely* cooler machine (it won't burn your knees as 15" PBook will) makes lots of difference!

 

[Evangelion]

I am a Mac newbie, but it seems like the lack of competition to produce processors may be affecting things... On the PC side, AMD and intel are in constant competition to make the latest and greatest processors

Well, not quite. First of all, Freescale competes with IBM. And second: Freescale (and IBM) compete with AMD and Intel! If Freescale starts to rest on their laurels and offer only mediocre chips, consumers will move to other products. In this case, Mac-users who want faster CPU's could buy a (*shock and horror!*) a PC-laptop instead.

Competition is there. Maybe not as in-your-face as with AMD and Intel, but it's definitely there.

I don't know, I know that there is a lot of PC hostility here, but let's face it, the competition to produce components DOES drive down costs and it forces innovation....

And there is competition in Mac-components as well. If Freescale can't deliver decent CPU's for Apple, you can bet that IBM would be more than willing to do so! If Hitachi can't deliver good HD's, Samsung or Seagate might.

 

[Evangelion]

BT 2.0? What devices support BT 2.0, pray tell?

So Apple should wait around untill there are devices to take advantage of BT2, before they will support BT2? Why not release compatible products NOW, so that their products would be ready for BT2, when such devices start appearing on the shelves? Would you be happy if you had some whiz-bang BT2-device, but you couldn't use it to it's full potential since your other hardware only supported older version of BT?

I will not be buying a new powerbook until FSB speeds are up to snuff.

Is the FSB really be-all end-all when it comes to performance? Why are G4 and G5 more or less equal clock-for-clock, even though G5 has ALOT faster bus?

 

[Lacero]

You definitely can feel a difference with a faster bus. Much smoother in multitasking. The processor may perform at the same speed but the information flows more freely. When doing several tasks at the same, the finder feels extremely smooth compared between a 900Mhz FSB vs a 167Mhz FSB.

 

[Evangelion]

Lets see:

Same resolution screen
slightly faster CPU
More RAM
Slightly better (faster, bigger) HD
Slightly better video card
BT
Yes, a few other small knick knacks.

Now, explain where the $500 difference is, except in keeping an artificial price difference to make it seem to the average consumer that the powerbook is better because it is more expensive.

Well, people have been raving about faster FSB. PB has faster FSB, yet all of a sudden it's only "slightly faster CPU". Granted, the difference is not huge (133Mhz vs. 166Mhz), but it's there. And the CPU itself is faster as well.

As to the price difference. Apart from the differences you mentioned (which do cost money you know). you get

- Aluminium case, instead of plastic
- Better keyboard (I have heard this on several sites/magazines)
- Ability to use the machine with the lid closed
- DVI-output instead of standard VGA
- Audio-in port
- Smaller size and weight
- Scrolling trackpad

In total, that extra $500 gives you

- Faster CPU
- Twice as much RAM
- Bigger and faster HD
- Faster vid-card
- Aluminium-case
- Better keyboard
- Lid-closed-operation
- DVI
- Audio-in
- Bluetooth (Wireless keyboards/mice....)
- Better trackpad
- Smaller size

I's that REALLY too little for extra $500? Depends of what you want from the machine. If you simply stare at CPU-specs or the like, then maybe 12" PB is not worth the extra money it requires. But you DO get quite alot for that money, IMO. And since many people are buying the 12" PB instead of the 12" iBook, they see the extra value it offers.

 

[sunilraman]

. Hell, it seems that a dual MDD PM is better than a single 1.6 G5!!

dude, i don't think so for CPU-intensive tasks like software synthesis. (MUSIC production) Exactly the same song i have in Reason, maxed out my 1.25 dualie MDD PM...

Same song, in 1.6ghz SINGLE PowerMac G5, handled the song like a f8cking champ... cpu was averaging 15-20% (the Reason CPU meter), didn't even break a sweat.

A dualie 2 ghz PowerMac G5, 1 GB Ram, 7400rpm HD, you are f8cking flying my main man, you won't even toss a glance at a G4 anymore.... Only it is BIG, a bit hard to move around

 

[sunilraman]

I just bought the 15 inch G4 1.67 PB from Amazon and am very satisifed with it. Yes, I did seriously consider waiting for the "much hoped for" G5 powerbook. But, I don't think it will be out much before well into summer. The other issue, the G4 is probably near the end of its production time especially with the 1.67 gig now (vs the 1.5). So, I am confident the "kinks" are pretty well worked out. That is why I went with the little bit more expensive G4 vs discounted 1.5 gig G4's, although, I agree the 1.5's are a good deal if you don't have the $$$. Also, the SuperDrive on the 1.67's I think is an improvement. Finally, when the G5 does finally come out, you will have to deal with the fact that a few "kinks" will have to be worked out, so you will say to yourself I might as well wait (right?) till the end of the year, but, then we wil be pushing towards the "G-6'es," right. No matter what you do, technology will always escape you. But, no matter what, you cannot go wrong anyway when you buy a PB, G5 desktop, or any of Apple's latest creations really. When you have to work on PC's all day (and have XP suck the soul out of your body), its always a relief to come home to OS/X.

well said. especially re: refilling your soul after XP soul-sucking

 

[JFreak]

i think you replaied before to my question but it never clearedf up HOW well the powerbook handled recording many ins and outs.

very well i'm not complaining about performance but rather would want digidesign to introduce such LE hardware that would allow bigger simultaneous i/o counts than 18. it would be great to be able to record all those 32 voices at once... without jumping to TDM systems, that is

the only other issue is logic and virtual instruments. how does you pb handle 4-5 large virual instruments. can i program synths and samplers without freezing tracks. thanks for the input

i don't do virtual instruments and don't use logic, so i cannot comment on this one with personal experience; however, my friend uses my previous powerbook (667MHz) and can use two atmosphere instances simultaneously, if that information is of any help.

i am pretty sure with a bigger bus the ram would be used a little more efficiently(could be wrong. but that is my thinking based on what i understand the fsb to be).

if you can stress the cpu to very high levels (+85%) for very long periods of time (one minute is forever for a cpu), then you can clearly prove that the FSB of the system is sufficient. the cpu cannot keep up if it cannot pump data to and fetch it back from memory. if it can, that is enough.

the on-die cache is also something that cannot be overlooked when this issue is discussed; many times it is of greater importance that the cpu has large cache compared to a great FSB, because cpu will always first store data where it "costs" less to re-use it. just think about it: what does the cpu use RAM for? for storing data that cannot fit in its registers (primary data storage) or on-die cache (secondary data storage). only after those resources are already maxxed out, the system will store its data to RAM. and, ideally, either the on-die cache should be so large that ram would be unnecessary, or that accessing ram would be as fast as accessing on-die cache.

oh well, enough tech-talk. back to music

 

[Demon Hunter]

And there is competition in Mac-components as well. If Freescale can't deliver decent CPU's for Apple, you can bet that IBM would be more than willing to do so! If Hitachi can't deliver good HD's, Samsung or Seagate might.

I think he was refering more to the fact that OS X only runs on Apple's machines. Yeah, there's competition to get the components inside of the machines, but not directly with other computer makers.

Of course it's important that Macs perform as well as their PC counterparts. Apple knows this well. However, because Macs offer so much more in addition to normal computing such as an attractive GUI, friendly applications and a largely troublefree user experience, performance is sometimes given second priority. And this works, because Apple's market base is willing to make the sacrifice. This is nothing new.

If you talked to a graphics designer in 1989, they wouldn't complain that their Macintosh Portable was rendering files in Photoshop too slowly. It increased their productivity -- that was the point. But as industries like graphics design change, Apple needs to keep up or risk losing this edge.

Because as Apple's market base continues to expand into areas that require extreme performance -- the sciences, research, film -- it becomes mission critical to choose the right chip maker.

Performance can't slide like it used to, or Apple could lose these segments.

If the people who needed faster laptops haven't switched already, they must be coming close?

EDIT: I'm Ron Burgundy?

 

[intlplby]

i think the deciding factor on whether or not it is worth upgrading now or not really depends on what you currently have....

if you have a 1.33 or a 1.5 powerbook and want to upgrade already of course you are going to be disappointed.....

i for one can't wait for the the next big powerbig update either, but i would also love to have a 17" in 1.67 to replace my 12" 1.0

i guess it's all relative isn't it......

 

[Eastend]

i think the deciding factor on whether or not it is worth upgrading now or not really depends on what you currently have....

if you have a 1.33 or a 1.5 powerbook and want to upgrade already of course you are going to be disappointed.....

i for one can't wait for the the next big powerbig update either, but i would also love to have a 17" in 1.67 to replace my 12" 1.0

i guess it's all relative isn't it......

Very Good. I think you hit the nail right on the head. Actually I thought this update was only going to be about a 4 per cent increase, they fooled me. I believe the benchmarks are over 7 closer to a 9 per cent increase, it's really not that bad. However, it was not good enough for me personally, but that should not stop anyone else needing a PowerBook from buying one.

Brian

 

[risc]

Not that I believe XBench here are the results from my PowerBook G4 1.67 GHz 15" http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge.xhtml?doc2=98908 - I dunno what to think when I compare it to the scores of the iMac G5 1.6.

Best notebook I've ever owned, and imho it's damn fast for what I do!

 

[Sundance Kid]

Well, I too am stuck between the 1.5Ghz and the 1.67Ghz model with the 128 graphics card. I mean if i'm going to be playing game on it should i go for the more expensive model? I'm not going to be upgrading my computer for at least 3 or 4 years after i buy it (i might do the ram though). Since i live in Canada, it will cost me 500$ to upgrade for the 1.5Ghz to the 1.67Ghz and the 128mb card. Is it really worth it? I hear there is almost no difference between the 1.5Ghz model and the 1.67Ghz model, but does the graphics card actually improve the computer by half?

Thanks for the help,

The Sundance Kid