So it's been a little while since I've had too much to add, but the other day, a Raspberry Pi 4 just fell into my lap. A Pi 4 with all the bits to make it a full computer, too. After setting up Raspberry Pi OS, I realized something, the performance felt a lot like a G5 running Linux. To be honest? Maybe a little better. I'm not complaining about this, but I'm also not here to say that there's something wrong with these old PowerMacs. First up, the Pi has no hardware video acceleration, so like any PowerMac, it has to do that on CPU. Mine is doing it all without a fan at the moment, with nothing more than a tall heatsink, and 720p Youtube is only barely possible at all.
The only real difference is that I can do that in a current version of Chromium with h264ify, while my G5 has to use forked versions of Firefox and a lot more hacks to get anything like that to work. There's definitely more current ARM Linux 32-bit and 64-bit software out there than PPC Linux 32-bit and 64-bit Big Endian software, which is definitely a shame.
I was even able to throw it at geekbench 2, which gave me some interesting results: https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2726922
This is the headline, but it's worth looking at the individual scores as from what I can tell, PPC chips are good at wildly different things from this ARM soc. And, while it does have its own retro OS to play with, RISC OS doesn't exactly have the app library of the classic Mac OS, it's not even close.
I think the most meaningful difference is that the G5 Quad, a machine I would love to have, can't really touch a score like this, and uses 450 watts to get where it can, while this pulled this off at 5 watts, without even a fan to cool it. I haven't even started to overclock this thing.
If anything, this is making me wish that someone could make a PPC system on a chip with at least some sort of Mac OS compatibility. But, at the moment, I'm going to see where emulators can get me. I've heard that a Pi is the best Amiga, I'll have to see if the same is true for similarly aged Macs.
I realize this might be a bit of an odd post, but isn't this the dream? that one day, you could buy a computer for $30 that's as powerful as something 15 years old that cost $3000? And that it could fit in your pocket? I know it's what I always wanted to see, and now it's real, and I didn't even realize it.
We don't usually have a lot to compare our old hardware to. Modern x86 is too powerful, never mind high end Apple ARM hardware. But this thing definitely felt familiar to run, and I couldn't help myself.
The only real difference is that I can do that in a current version of Chromium with h264ify, while my G5 has to use forked versions of Firefox and a lot more hacks to get anything like that to work. There's definitely more current ARM Linux 32-bit and 64-bit software out there than PPC Linux 32-bit and 64-bit Big Endian software, which is definitely a shame.
I was even able to throw it at geekbench 2, which gave me some interesting results: https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2726922
This is the headline, but it's worth looking at the individual scores as from what I can tell, PPC chips are good at wildly different things from this ARM soc. And, while it does have its own retro OS to play with, RISC OS doesn't exactly have the app library of the classic Mac OS, it's not even close.
I think the most meaningful difference is that the G5 Quad, a machine I would love to have, can't really touch a score like this, and uses 450 watts to get where it can, while this pulled this off at 5 watts, without even a fan to cool it. I haven't even started to overclock this thing.
If anything, this is making me wish that someone could make a PPC system on a chip with at least some sort of Mac OS compatibility. But, at the moment, I'm going to see where emulators can get me. I've heard that a Pi is the best Amiga, I'll have to see if the same is true for similarly aged Macs.
I realize this might be a bit of an odd post, but isn't this the dream? that one day, you could buy a computer for $30 that's as powerful as something 15 years old that cost $3000? And that it could fit in your pocket? I know it's what I always wanted to see, and now it's real, and I didn't even realize it.
We don't usually have a lot to compare our old hardware to. Modern x86 is too powerful, never mind high end Apple ARM hardware. But this thing definitely felt familiar to run, and I couldn't help myself.