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Changing Trends?

Re: Yes, the average person NEEDS more CPU speed

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.
Click to expand...

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... :eek:

just my 2¢...
 
Dual 800

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!
 
Re: Re: Yes, the average person NEEDS more CPU speed

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>
Click to expand...
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!
 
Re: Re: It may sound like an iMac...

Originally posted by blakespot

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

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.
 
OS 10

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...
 
Re: Re: Re: Yes, the average person NEEDS more CPU speed

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!
Click to expand...

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?!
 
Actually

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.
 
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.
 
DP under OS 9.2

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

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.
 
The Photoshop thing

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.
 
A correction not a catch all.

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.
 
AltiVec is the key

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!
 
Re: A correction not a catch all.

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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
Re: DP under OS 9.2

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>
Click to expand...
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.
 
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!
 
"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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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...
 
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