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Dual 1Ghz G4 tower beats 1.67 G4 Pbook...

Erendiox

Erendiox

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 15, 2004
706
12
Brooklyn NY
in H.264 playback off apples HD site.

I was messing around with a G4 tower at school. I was curious to see how well it handled the HD playback in comparison to my friends brand spankin new 15 inch Powerbook. The results kinda bothered me, as i'm in the market for a powerbook very soon. The tower was getting about 15-20 fps, while occasionally making it up to 24. It was very watchable nonetheless. My friends powerbook stumbled all over the place. I didn't get a fps reading, but it wasn't nearly as good (ie. would drop out for a split second and only got maybe 10fps). I knew dual processors made for a great speed boost in terms of processor speed, but this seems kinda ridiculous to me. Should an old dual 1Ghz processer beat out a brand new 1.67 like that?
 
Video can make full use of dual processors. (I assume this was in 1080p, although 720p can do it too, for that matter all video can).

So yes, it makes sense. Dual processors in video effectively doubles your speed. Not to mention we don't even know about the video card, and that the PowerMac has Level 3 cache...

So yes, it is completely reasonable.
 
sjpetry said:
Where do you go to find out how many fps their is? 😕

Thanks
Click to expand...

You go into quicktime, then go to window>show movie info (or command-I). There you can get the fps of the movie and the fps your computer is playing back.

And maybe my friend's powerbook is doing something wierd. Anyone else want to chip in on their powerbook's HD playback?
 
Mine seems to play back 720p at a quite decent speed, I haven't tried 1080p yet. I do have 128 megs of video ram, so that makes some difference, I suppose.
 
my powerbook (see sig below) plays back the nasa hd vid on the quicktime site at 30fps at 720.. i dont think its too bad..

ps. i managed to sneak a serial for qt pro for free upon install, couldnt stand all those blanked out features with 'PRO' written next to them 😡
 
Erendiox said:
You go into quicktime, then go to window>show movie info (or command-I). There you can get the fps of the movie and the fps your computer is playing back.

And maybe my friend's powerbook is doing something wierd. Anyone else want to chip in on their powerbook's HD playback?
Click to expand...

I'm getting about 10 fps on average for playback of the Space Shuttle HD clip on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook (768MB RAM).
 
QuickTime (as well as every Apple video application) supports Dual processors. On top of it, the new 1.67GHz G4 used in the new PowerBook (as well as the new Gigadesigns G4 upgrade cards) has no L3 Cache. According to many benchmarks done at Macbidouille and barefeats, the 1.67GHz with no L3 is slower than the 1.4GHz G4 WITH L3. In fact, the Gigadesigns overcloked 1.8GHz in some applications is also slower than the 1.4GHz WITH L3 Cache.

Unfortunately, the last PowerBook with L3 cache was the 1Ghz model.
 
plastique45 said:
QuickTime (as well as every Apple video application) supports Dual processors. On top of it, the new 1.67GHz G4 used in the new PowerBook (as well as the new Gigadesigns G4 upgrade cards) has no L3 Cache. According to many benchmarks done at Macbidouille and barefeats, the 1.67GHz with no L3 is slower than the 1.4GHz G4 WITH L3. In fact, the Gigadesigns overcloked 1.8GHz in some applications is also slower than the 1.4GHz WITH L3 Cache.

Unfortunately, the last PowerBook with L3 cache was the 1Ghz model.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mine is 1GHz with 1MB of L3 Cache,...but it's just too slow to render the HD movies to any playable extent.
 
plastique45 said:
Unfortunately, the last PowerBook with L3 cache was the 1Ghz model.
Click to expand...

Well thats... a step backward 😕 . Did they do away with it for a reason? Thats just kinda a pisser if you ask me 😡
 
Erendiox said:
Well thats... a step backward 😕 . Did they do away with it for a reason? Thats just kinda a pisser if you ask me 😡
Click to expand...

The G4 variant used in the 1GHz TiBook (7455) only had 256KB of L1 cache. The G4s used in newer PowerBooks have 512KB of L1 cache. The doubling in size of the full-CPU speed L1 cache meant that Apple did not deem it necessary to include a L3 cache (which is also quite expensive).
 
I hope they'd introduce at least new PBs with 7448 CPUs soon. It's the G4 with 1MB L2 cache and 200MHz FSB made with 90nm process so it's even cooler and cheaper to manufacture.
 
this is what im waiting for too, but...

Hydra said:
I hope they'd introduce at least new PBs with 7448 CPUs soon. It's the G4 with 1MB L2 cache and 200MHz FSB made with 90nm process so it's even cooler and cheaper to manufacture.
Click to expand...

.....who knows if apple will use it ?? If they can get the G5 out they won't but if they can't then they will for sure.

just to clear the specs on the tibook

it read like this: 64k of L1cache 256k of L2 and 1mb of L3. i use to have the 867.

PB 17" 1.5ghz/1GBRam
 
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