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Developer Transition Kit Benchmarks
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stockscalper said:
IMHO, Apple was happy enough with IBM regarding desktop computers, at least when comparing to their competition.
The problem was with portables. Freescale (G4) seemed to have stalled at ridiculous speeds, and IBM (G5) has not presented a viable alternative for two years, and probably, when described the roadmap to Apple, showed they did not have any for the future's mid-term either (1-2 years). While Intel has stalled just as IBM with desktop CPUs, they have had and do have a roadmap for portables that is going well.
So Apple had to decide if it was supportable to have their biggest stake in their computer business (portables) without any kind of update in two years (or maybe pathetic ones), or swap the whole thing.
It is not so much about if Intel are hotter than IBM or not. It is simply that, for portables, there seems to be nothing but intel (or amd).
The thing about Nintendo, MS, and Sony I think does not relate, honestly. You are talking about a product that does not have heat issues and that does not need any sort of R&D for about, at least, 4 years. All those consoles are going to have the same inner parts by then as they will when they are released.
stockscalper said:
Yes. Everyone knows that Macs suck for gaming, so why on earth would game consoles switch from intel to PowerPC? And Xbox is a Microsoft product... very strange.
I believe that Apple switched because of power consumption differences. Laptops are getting more popular than desktops, and intel offers the most performance per watt. We want laptops that don't burn our laps, and we want the batteries to last.
Game consoles plug into the wall, so power consumption is not much of an issue for them.
Nermal said:
By Signing up for WWDC, you agree to an NDA which covers everything but the keynote.
From the website:
Note that with the exception of the WWDC 2005 Keynote, all information presented or provided to you by Apple during WWDC 2005, including the information on the Attendee Site, is considered Confidential Information and is subject to the terms and conditions of your ADC Membership Agreement with Apple.
I believe the big thing about MS, Nintendo and Sony is that IBM lost their focus on Apple, and broke their promises to Apple, when they got the big deals to produce chips for the game consoles. Apple helped restore IBM and showcased the PowerPC chip. Then IBM said thank you by tossing Apple 2-3% of production capacity at Fishkill, NY and by failing to deliver upon the "3 GHz in a year" promise that they made to Steve back in 2003. I personally don't blame Steve for looking for a new direction. I hope that the switch does not mean that IBM will continue to not deliver anything useful to Apple over the next two years, but I highly suspect that this will be the case as Apple is a guppy amongst tuna as far as IBM is concerned.elmimmo said:
Ok, Yonah/Jonah/dual core Centrino- whatever the hell it's called- isn't supposed to ship till next year. And at least on paper doesn't look any better than the dual core G4 MPC8641D that Freescale announced 9 months ago. Plus it still sucks over twice as much power as the dual core G4. Does this mean that we'll see a Powerbook update with the dual core G4 before we see one with a Pentium or will Jobs saddle us with the power hungry Yonah/whatever next just to push the transition through faster? Any thoughts?
In my opinion, this will be a great move from Apple...
What this is really about is gaining level ground with the PC manufacturers. You can talk all day about how great the mighty PowerPC is or was, but to the consumer 2.7Ghz vs 3.4Ghz is still going to look a like a big deal. This puts Apple directly in competition with everyone else and more importantly... it gives Apple a much larger selection of future processors.
Bottom line, IBM couldn't and wouldn't deliver on a processor that was going to be put into a Powerbook and to Apple that notebook market is huge. Intel will supply Apple with processors that they can use in a variety of products that we can't even imagine right now.
Last but not least, this allows Apple to shine where it always has... software. Those PC fanboys have no excuse now to say Apple's hardware is behind or slow or whatever they say.... now it's on... OS X versus Windows. Sure you still need Apple hardware to run OS X, but now they are on level playing ground.
After some thought, I'm pretty excited.
What this is really about is gaining level ground with the PC manufacturers. You can talk all day about how great the mighty PowerPC is or was, but to the consumer 2.7Ghz vs 3.4Ghz is still going to look a like a big deal. This puts Apple directly in competition with everyone else and more importantly... it gives Apple a much larger selection of future processors.
Bottom line, IBM couldn't and wouldn't deliver on a processor that was going to be put into a Powerbook and to Apple that notebook market is huge. Intel will supply Apple with processors that they can use in a variety of products that we can't even imagine right now.
Last but not least, this allows Apple to shine where it always has... software. Those PC fanboys have no excuse now to say Apple's hardware is behind or slow or whatever they say.... now it's on... OS X versus Windows. Sure you still need Apple hardware to run OS X, but now they are on level playing ground.
After some thought, I'm pretty excited.
Steve will do whatever makes Apple money. If Freescale or IBM deliver faster / better PowerPCs that are better than Intel possibilities, Steve will continue to use them. IBM and Freescale (Moto) have made many promises over the years and have failed to deliver on many of them. In 2003 IBM gave us a 1.8 (or was it 2) GHz G5 Single. Today, the bottom PowerMac is a 1.8 GHz G5 Single. Progress I tell you ... Progress!!Ravenflight said:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/122862/
see post 315
GuyClinch said:
Oh yeah, I forgot that DOOM is a great example of "real world" use of a G5.....Why do you WinHeads ONLY care about f*cking games??!!!
I am upset about the transition because I use non-real world applications such as Maya6.01 Unlimited, AE PB, Motion, FCP, ZBrush2, Vue5 Infinite, Photoshop, etc.
Gee....I hope those framerates I get in Maya will be improved with a P4...
GuyClinch said:
Another newbie posting anti-mac rhetoric. Three thing there pardner. First, The graphics drivers for the PC are way better than those for the mac. Second, A computer doens't need to have multiple processors to run multithreaded applications. Third, Doom 3 is a GPU limited game, you can take a much slower intel processor and not take much of a performance hit. So, if you joined this forum just to post this garbage, you should consider having a dick-measuring contest somewhere else.
Who effectively "showcased" the PowerPC before Apple? PowerPC became a household name because of Apple's use in Macs. Apple's advertising pumped and promoted it. Apple's benchmarks of it again the Xeon etc. showed it's speed, power and capabilities. Apple is not leaving IBM because of it's unusable chip. Apple is leaving IBM because IBM has told Apple that they mean nothing to IBM now that IBM has BIG CUSTOMERS like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. Apple is leaving IBM because of broken promises. Steve Jobs does not like to be thought of as a second fiddle to MS and company, but that is how IBM has treated Apple. Thanks Steve for all your help (and advertising dollars) in showing the world what our processor can do, now shoo ... shoo fly!! We want the money now!!elmimmo said:
This thread has been fun to read.
It seems to me, it is full of people who have no, or little idea what they are talking about.
A major point to remember is that the keynotes main focus was developers.
It was presented at the World Wide Developers Conference.
It is us, the Mac OS X developers, who will have to do the work getting this transition to run smoothly, and as a mac fanatic myself, i can't quite work out why such a fuss i being kicked up by users.
All this rubbish about Apple killing a platform.
Apple has chosen Intel because of the roadmap ahead. We are talking about future processors, and the released benchmarks relate to current generation Intels, released only for development purposes. There is absolutely no reason to make crazy statements regarding emulation speeds, platform transition, or anything else at this early stage.
Please, save your observations and judgements for 12 months down the track. Only then will we all truly understand the way this is all going to play out.
It seems to me, it is full of people who have no, or little idea what they are talking about.
A major point to remember is that the keynotes main focus was developers.
It was presented at the World Wide Developers Conference.
It is us, the Mac OS X developers, who will have to do the work getting this transition to run smoothly, and as a mac fanatic myself, i can't quite work out why such a fuss i being kicked up by users.
All this rubbish about Apple killing a platform.
Apple has chosen Intel because of the roadmap ahead. We are talking about future processors, and the released benchmarks relate to current generation Intels, released only for development purposes. There is absolutely no reason to make crazy statements regarding emulation speeds, platform transition, or anything else at this early stage.
Please, save your observations and judgements for 12 months down the track. Only then will we all truly understand the way this is all going to play out.
sbarton said:
I totally agree. Why are these benchmarks being reported at all.
This would be like comparing Windows benchmarks on my P4 against OSX benchmarks running on PearPC.
Possible headline... "Benchmarks prove Windows beats the crap out of OSX 1000 to 1!"
*sheesh*
-rich
Mr Maui said:
I totally agree.. Apple DID showcase it in a big way, who in the computer industry hasn't heard of the G5? Who wasn't completely blown away by the G5's specs when they were announced 2 years ago? I sure as hell was and I'm a major PC user. Virginia Tech Supercomputer anyone?? Maybe Apple is part of IBM's advertising budget.
I have no doubt that Apple will do amazing things with Intel. There is much more to a computer than just the processor.
sbarton said:
Furthermore (I think I'm understanding this correctly, so correct me if I'm wrong) many applications with Altivec optimizations can fall back to the CPU when Altivec is not present.
And in the case of applications that are cross-platform, like Photoshop, they must have optimized parts of the application for Intel processors. Shouldn't those parts port over fairly easily? SSE may suck compared to Altivec, but that doesn't mean that Apple developers shouldn't use it, right?
PEOPLE DON'T PANIC!
Comments/Info on the Mac X86/Pentium 4 Development system -
Check this out at http://xlr8yourmac.com/
"First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really."
WE HAVE REASON TO FEEL OPTOMISTIC ABOUT APPLE'S FUTURE!
And remember the near future is Pentium M Yonah DUAL CORE 2.5Ghz which will absolutely destrtoy the Dev Kit P4 !!!! ... and not its not vaporware like the fabled mobile G5 ... it actually exists right now in Intel's lab and will ship very early 2006 in single and dual cores!!!
Comments/Info on the Mac X86/Pentium 4 Development system -
Check this out at http://xlr8yourmac.com/
"First, the thing is fast. Native apps readily beat a single 2.7 G5, and sometimes beat duals. Really."
WE HAVE REASON TO FEEL OPTOMISTIC ABOUT APPLE'S FUTURE!
And remember the near future is Pentium M Yonah DUAL CORE 2.5Ghz which will absolutely destrtoy the Dev Kit P4 !!!! ... and not its not vaporware like the fabled mobile G5 ... it actually exists right now in Intel's lab and will ship very early 2006 in single and dual cores!!!
the_ki said:...SSE may suck compared to Altivec, but that doesn't mean that Apple developers shouldn't use it, right?
Not always. The x86 build is likely using Microsoft's compiler which can make system calls differently than the GCC compiler Apple uses. So the Intel specific code may still take some development time.
I'm sure most of code for apps such as Photoshop are nicely cross-platform and compiler independant, but there was no reason to make the x86 system code that way until now.
-rich
It's Altivec!!!!
This is the only reason the benchmarks are slow. The emulator CAN NOT pass through instructions to the Altivec engine on the Intel processor, it does NOT exist. So any instruction using this will be very slow. In fact it actually causes MORE trouble in translation than straight code.
This is why I am not worried. Anyone who buys a new Intel Mac will upgrade, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple (Final Cut) software etc....Because they will be optimized for the coming SSE3 engine in the Intel chips and will not rely on Altivec.
End of story
This is the only reason the benchmarks are slow. The emulator CAN NOT pass through instructions to the Altivec engine on the Intel processor, it does NOT exist. So any instruction using this will be very slow. In fact it actually causes MORE trouble in translation than straight code.
This is why I am not worried. Anyone who buys a new Intel Mac will upgrade, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple (Final Cut) software etc....Because they will be optimized for the coming SSE3 engine in the Intel chips and will not rely on Altivec.
End of story
Spazmodius said:
Man I haven't seen so much BS being flung since I was at the zoo. Steve never claimed that it would be at native speeds. Rosetta is there to ease people off the PPC or allow them to use critical apps. Just as VPC is there to allow Windows users to ease off the platform or use critical apps. You are NEVER. NEVER. Even with a 5Ghz CPU going to get native speeds of the PPC. Just as you would NEVER get native speeds from a PPC when emulating a X86. Steve knows this and is why he didn't claim it. He claimed that it will allow you to run your apps and it runs fast enough. Its a DAMN good stopgap until a product is ported over. Would you prefer that they give you NOTHING instead and you end up getting screwed until the developer ports his stuff over?
My 2 cents.
1. The Video card is a SIIG PCI w/32 megs ram
2. the CPU is a P4 3.6 with EM64T 64-bit technology ( prototype perhaps?)
3. A developer at the WWDC re-started one of the P4's and held down the del key and it booted into a BIOS where it showed the P4 and EM64T
4.XBench was compiled natively under OSX for the PPC.Comparing the two means nothing.ANY benchmark will be scewed under these conditions.
5. I ran an XBench on my powerbook G4 1.0 and the numbers were similar to the P4 albeit still beating it out.But it still means nothing.
6.I'm quit sure SJ knew some benchmarks would start leaking out.This guy isn't stupid.
1. The Video card is a SIIG PCI w/32 megs ram
2. the CPU is a P4 3.6 with EM64T 64-bit technology ( prototype perhaps?)
3. A developer at the WWDC re-started one of the P4's and held down the del key and it booted into a BIOS where it showed the P4 and EM64T
4.XBench was compiled natively under OSX for the PPC.Comparing the two means nothing.ANY benchmark will be scewed under these conditions.
5. I ran an XBench on my powerbook G4 1.0 and the numbers were similar to the P4 albeit still beating it out.But it still means nothing.
6.I'm quit sure SJ knew some benchmarks would start leaking out.This guy isn't stupid.