I know it is 64bit but just how much faster will this cat be then the Tiger? Will apps like iLife and iWork run faster because of the 64bit-ness? Or will it be like the house of MS and be so heavy it can't run faster... wondering...
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Just how fast is Leopard?
- Thread starter vansouza
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A 64 bit OS speeds up processes that work with large files and large amounts of data on 64 bit apps. You might notice Leopard being a bit more snappy, but don't expect too much unless you are doing heavy video, audio or photo editing on optimized programs.
Yeah, I don't think you understand 64 bit computing at all. Why would iWork of all things benefit from 64 bit computing?
In the past, new versions of OS X have been slightly faster -- ~5% doing the same task on the same hardware -- than the version they succeed. No one has test data on the release, optimized Leopard yet, but if anything, you'll see it's somewhere between static (no speed difference) and about that much gain. Which is already pretty much better than every other operating system out there.
In the past, new versions of OS X have been slightly faster -- ~5% doing the same task on the same hardware -- than the version they succeed. No one has test data on the release, optimized Leopard yet, but if anything, you'll see it's somewhere between static (no speed difference) and about that much gain. Which is already pretty much better than every other operating system out there.
we can hope
My naive hope was that the iWork and iLife 08 DVDs had 64bit versions on them. After all we are not talking about just past versions, this is a 64bit version running on the newest processors, in my case 2.8 iMac; I want if not expect it to scream.
My naive hope was that the iWork and iLife 08 DVDs had 64bit versions on them. After all we are not talking about just past versions, this is a 64bit version running on the newest processors, in my case 2.8 iMac; I want if not expect it to scream.
Sorry, unfortunately, it is an extremely naïve hope.... you can look at something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
Basically, to the extent that the architecture is 64-bit, you can frequently do tricks like moving two 32-bit sets of data simultaneously through a 64-bit bus. But those kinds of tricks usually don't require 64-bit APIs to begin with. There's not necessarily anything about 64-bit processing that will make those kinds of apps "scream." Unless perhaps your spreadsheet in Numbers has 10 gigs of data in it. In which case, one would wonder why you are using Numbers at all instead of industrial class data mining software.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
Basically, to the extent that the architecture is 64-bit, you can frequently do tricks like moving two 32-bit sets of data simultaneously through a 64-bit bus. But those kinds of tricks usually don't require 64-bit APIs to begin with. There's not necessarily anything about 64-bit processing that will make those kinds of apps "scream." Unless perhaps your spreadsheet in Numbers has 10 gigs of data in it. In which case, one would wonder why you are using Numbers at all instead of industrial class data mining software.
Thank you
I appreciate you being kind, but you just sucked all the joy out of my expectations. Well not all, but a lot; ok not a lot but some anyway.
ps: thanks for the link.
I appreciate you being kind, but you just sucked all the joy out of my expectations. Well not all, but a lot; ok not a lot but some anyway.
ps: thanks for the link.
Just curious, will 64 bit increase speeds of things such as rendering in Final Cut Pro? Will it help the pro-apps, or what? I don't exactly understand the concept of 64 bit, so sorry if I sound like an idiot!
From what I know, the only big benefit from 64-bit is that it allows the program or hardware to use more than 4GB of memory. There are others, but that one is kind of big.
Which makes sense, right now, Photoshop is 32-bit application and does not allow you to allocate more than 4GB of RAM specifically to Photoshop. (IIRC, it only allows 3GB MAX) So, this just means Mac OS X will allow you to run 64-bit apps (kind of like Windows XP 64-bit version, which was horrible and had many problems). I don't think we'll notice the true benefit until developers really come to the 64-bit scene. (I'm sure we'll see some after Leopard)
Check out what Adobe has to say about this: http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/12/64_bitswhen.html
Which makes sense, right now, Photoshop is 32-bit application and does not allow you to allocate more than 4GB of RAM specifically to Photoshop. (IIRC, it only allows 3GB MAX) So, this just means Mac OS X will allow you to run 64-bit apps (kind of like Windows XP 64-bit version, which was horrible and had many problems). I don't think we'll notice the true benefit until developers really come to the 64-bit scene. (I'm sure we'll see some after Leopard)
Check out what Adobe has to say about this: http://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/12/64_bitswhen.html
64-bit integer arithmetic can be used extensively in various applications including video processing and text searching. These will benefit when the applications are rewritten to take advantage of it. The thing that will make Leopard feel snappier is the increased use of multithreading which will particularly show up in dual and quad (and octo) core machines.
Actually the thing that will make it feel faster is 2+ years of optimization work over Tiger, by many different teams at Apple. Safari 3 is a great example of this (primarily because I can actually talk about it, as the key parts are open source and released for Tiger): it's still 32 bit and single-threaded, but is much faster than Safari 2. This wasn't achieved by a single huge improvement, it was just a continuous process of applying tiny (sometimes less than 1%!) speedups. See http://cia.vc/stats/project/WebKit/.message/1263750 for an example from tonight. 153 lines changed for around a 1% speed improvement on their new JavaScript benchmark.
Sometimes there's also optimizations where it really is one change that speeds things up, but even then it's usually not a technology you've heard of (or even one that has a name) causing the speedup. It's just some engineer getting a bug report "foo is slow, fix it", looking at the code, slapping his forehead, and rewriting it. See http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3266/contributors/25416/commits/12521809 for an example of a change like this that I made to WebKit (
), which dramatically sped up one particular benchmark, although it had little or no effect on most others.
Then every once in a while, there's some technology big enough that they actually bother hyping it, and it has a noticeable effect on the system. 64 bit will do this for a few apps, multithreaded OpenGL did it for a few others, etc...
Sometimes there's also optimizations where it really is one change that speeds things up, but even then it's usually not a technology you've heard of (or even one that has a name) causing the speedup. It's just some engineer getting a bug report "foo is slow, fix it", looking at the code, slapping his forehead, and rewriting it. See http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3266/contributors/25416/commits/12521809 for an example of a change like this that I made to WebKit (
), which dramatically sped up one particular benchmark, although it had little or no effect on most others.Then every once in a while, there's some technology big enough that they actually bother hyping it, and it has a noticeable effect on the system. 64 bit will do this for a few apps, multithreaded OpenGL did it for a few others, etc...
vansouza, why would you need 64bit in iwork or ilife? those apps, even if they are 64bit, will not spot any real difference. 32bit is way enough for all the stuff you do there.
64bit makes a lot sense for the more pro apps like photoshop, 3d applications, after-effects/ motion, etc. where a lot more power is required.
64bit makes a lot sense for the more pro apps like photoshop, 3d applications, after-effects/ motion, etc. where a lot more power is required.
I would think a 64-bit iDVD would produce a big speed improvement over 32-bit if nothing else. The Professional quality rendering setting takes a lot of CPU power. Moving the data from RAM through the processor in bigger chunks can only help that big time (if Apple have coded it that way).
You know how it is, things like rendering can never be fast enough
True that.
I really only ever write audio CDs and data discs, so I feel like the whole process has gotten plenty quick for me, but it's good to remember that when it comes to laying down high quality video, the computers could actually use a lot more power.Does/can iDVD make use of coreservices to offload video work on the GPU? That seems like it would have a huge advantage to the extent that its possible.
64 bit chips have nothing to do with data load size. The G5, for example, has a 128 bit wide bus, while the G4 has a 64 bit wide bus.
64 bit chips in general change two things only:
1) pointer size. This allows >4GB of memory, but reduces the effectiveness of caches
2) (optionally) integer size. This allows working with numbers larger than 4 billion without breaking them into pieces and doing extra work.
64 bit x86 chips change a few further things:
1) memory addressing is slightly more complex
2) twice as many architected registers are available
3) some old instructions have been removed, breaking compatibility with ancient apps
4) probably a few other minor changes I don't know about
and last but definitely not least, OSX makes a few changes in 64 bit mode:
1) It maps the kernel address space into the first 4 GB of each process, avoiding the need for TLB flushes when making system calls.
2) Certain old APIs (and even some newish ones!) don't exist in 64 bit mode, breaking compatibility with some apps
3) The need for backwards compatibility in many frameworks is gone in 64 bit mode, since there are no 64 bit GUI apps to be backwards compatible with. This lets them revise some things that they couldn't revise before without breaking compatibility, for some nice benefits in certain places.
If it seems complicated that's because it is.
It says on Leopard it is further optimized for the Intel Duo's and that some of the task managers are optimized for dual cores so that should help out the speed and responsiveness....if that makes any sense. It would be nice to have OS X feel a bit more snappy...similar to what Win2k had going on a fresh install!