Motorola 7457 in Q4 2003

[soggywulf]

Yeah, I agree. Windows is a schlocky piece of garbage, and I love MacOS too. Win2K is fine right after a fresh install, but within a week it will be bloated and slow and steadily go downhill from there. Haven't tried XP, but I assume the same for that.

But I disagree with hardware. Forget pipeline stages and MHz. I don't think we know enough about these things to see all implications of a any particular microprocessor design choice. The basic fact is that Mac hardware is slow and overpriced...at this time, by a lot. Games are an easily available high-CPU load which can demonstrate this fact; and the host CPU/mobo play a very large role in this performance, especially in the case of poor results as I have demonstrated above.

How long are we going to tolerate it? Maybe you don't need the speed and you don't want the speed. Fine, but then you are in the extreme minority...IMO there are not enough people with that attitude to support a company that can develop and support a complicated OS like MacOS X, not to mention hardware.

Before you shrug this off as yet another Apple doomsday prediction, remember that current powermacs are in fact selling really poorly compared with current PCs, as well as compared with their previous track record at a time when Mac hardware was more competitive. Marketshare is shrinking, and you can't go below 0%.

So here's hoping for 970's soon. Or 3 GHz G4s with 1.5 GHz FSB available cheaply and in quantity next month would be acceptable as well.

 

[BenRoethig]

Originally posted by soggywulf
Yeah, I agree. Windows is a schlocky piece of garbage, and I love MacOS too. Win2K is fine right after a fresh install, but within a week it will be bloated and slow and steadily go downhill from there. Haven't tried XP, but I assume the same for that.

Yeah. XP isn't much different. Good for games, but it'll drive you nuts if you use it everyday.

 

[pyrotoaster]

Originally posted by BenRoethig
Yeah. XP isn't much different. Good for games, but it'll drive you nuts if you use it everyday.

Now if the Mac could only become a superior or comperable gaming machine. That would bring over a couple million switchers...

 

[HornetOSX]

Originally posted by pyrotoaster
Now if the Mac could only become a superior or comperable gaming machine. That would bring over a couple million switchers...

Now here is my Take on the whole game performance issue ..........

I HONESTLY belive that 90% of the poor mac performance on games is BAD PROGRAMMING. (the other 10% being the lower speeds of course)

You cant tell me that Final Cut Pro or photoshop or some ofthese other high end Video apps or high end audio aps aree less hard on the system then some game ..... yet the mac can directly compete with the pc there... so that means one other thing ... Programming

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by HornetOSX
I HONESTLY belive that 90% of the poor mac performance on games is BAD PROGRAMMING. (the other 10% being the lower speeds of course)

Nah. Half of it is the lack of good cards...but now that we <finally> have the 9700 we are now somewhat closer in that regard. Too bad the 9700 is only available on "Pro" machines that are not supposed to be for games anyway. LOL. The consumer Macs are stuck with graphics cards from the bronze age. Poor programming for the drivers on these cards might be an issue...maybe.

The other half is slowness of the machines.

Originally posted by HornetOSX
You cant tell me that Final Cut Pro or photoshop or some ofthese other high end Video apps or high end audio aps aree less hard on the system then some game ..... yet the mac can directly compete with the pc there... so that means one other thing ... Programming

So is Photoshop still faster on the Mac? Have there been any bakeoffs recently? I suspect the mac is slower at the moment...like a $3000 Mac is slower than a $1500 PC.

Besides...many games tax the system as much if not more than real work. The days of Pac-Mac and Tetris are long gone.

 

[ddtlm]

HornetOSX:

I HONESTLY belive that 90% of the poor mac performance on games is BAD PROGRAMMING. (the other 10% being the lower speeds of course)

Perhaps bad programming in OSX.

I'm a guy who has written a couple "games" for my own amusement, using SDL, OpenGL and C/C++. Using SDL I am able to compile on many OS's, including Windows of course, and Linux, OSX and even OS9. OSX is without question the crappiest performing of them all. Even when the frame rate is OK the game lacks smoothness. On OS9, I have smoothness, so immediately I can see that OSX is the problem. Of course OS9 has it easy because the program totally takes over, which is ideal. It allows OS9 to be essentially perfect, so long as I don't exceed the performance of the G4 powering things.

You cant tell me that Final Cut Pro or photoshop or some ofthese other high end Video apps or high end audio aps aree less hard on the system then some game

Its not that games are harder on the system, the problem is that games are much harder to hand-optimize for AltiVec. Without AltiVec the G4 is toasted by modern PC processors. I run into this problem myself if I set the number of objects in my screwy game too high. The Mac drops out of the race long before the x86 hardware has problems. The Linux machine is actually less impressive hardware than the Mac too, its a dual 700mhz Xeon, 100mhz FSB&RAM, and a Matrox G400 Max... the Mac is a dual 800mhz G4, 133mhz FSB&RAM, ATI Radeon 8500. (All the major components of the Linux machine are a full year older than the Mac.) Of course I'm not about to sit down and hand-code AltiVec to hold the G4's hand... the P3-Xeon doesn't need its hand held, the Athlon doesn't need its hand held.

soggywulf:

Nah. Half of it is the lack of good cards...but now that we <finally> have the 9700 we are now somewhat closer in that regard.

This is not the problem at all. Macs have not recently trailed PC's in graphics by nearly as much as they still do in processor performance. (And OSX isn't helping matters.)

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by ddtlm
This is not the problem at all. Macs have not recently trailed PC's in graphics by nearly as much as they still do in processor performance. (And OSX isn't helping matters.)

It most certainly is a problem for the consumer macs. Consumer machines are intended for games, right? The options I see are ATI 7500 and GeForce 2MX.

Even the pro machines are behind with the 9700; and "behind" means "behind a $1K PC". But I will grant that at least the Pro machines are in the same ballpark as a $1K PC. If we get the 9800 and FX5900 in a couple months, then we will be back in the black as far as acceptable hardware lag, in terms of consumer video cards.


BTW...what is your theory as to the slowness of your game in OSX vs OS9? Personally, I do not think it is OSX itself, but rather the cross-platform libraries you are using are perhaps not optimized for OSX. After all, if you are not running anything else, the CPU is more than 95% idle...that's slim enough.

 

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by ddtlm
Of course I'm not about to sit down and hand-code AltiVec to hold the G4's hand... the P3-Xeon doesn't need its hand held, the Athlon doesn't need its hand held.

That's a very good point. People have to understand the programming is a massively complex task these days, expecially for complicated systems that must interact cooperatively. Take into account that PowerPC decided "less is more", thinking people would optimize (and not knowing we'd slog down in the MHz race). The Wintel world said "more is more." Well, what does this mean for Mac users today?

It means that if we had a 3.1 GHz G4 versus a 3.1 GHz P4, we'd be well ahead of them. When we start having less MHz, we start having to rely on "good programming." Right now programmers have to optimize their code for months just to get the same performance as an unoptimized Wintel box. Folks, I am the most die hard Mac advocate, but raw speed is always important to the pro-sumer and professional markets and always will be.

 

[job]

Originally posted by soggywulf
BTW...what is your theory as to the slowness of your game in OSX vs OS9?

Mac OS X does not allow one single application (i.e. a game) to gobble up all available system resources, RAM, etc.

In OS9 all available computing power is used for the game.

As a rule of thumb, most games will run faster in OS 9 than in OS X. A few exceptions to this include Myth II (v1.4) and possibly Quake3.

 

[job]

Originally posted by soggywulf
It most certainly is a problem for the consumer macs. Consumer machines are intended for games, right? The options I see are ATI 7500 and GeForce 2MX.

Eh. Kinda, sorta.

Just check out the hardcore gaming rigs available from Northwest and Alienware. Although the average consumer may want to play a few rounds of UT2k3 at a hideously low resolution, the majority of your PC gamers know that performance doesn't come cheap. I don't think your basic consumer Wintel clone tower is designed or intended for gaming.

On the Mac side of things, I'd have to say our consumer line-up does an OK job of handling games, as opposed to your consumer Wintel box. Speedwise, the Mac won't be able to hold it's own all the time, but for what it's worth, I think the consumer Macs do a decent job when it comes to games.

 

[ddtlm]

soggywulf:

Consumer machines are intended for games, right? The options I see are ATI 7500 and GeForce 2MX.

OK, it's a big problem with consumer Macs. Doh.

BTW...what is your theory as to the slowness of your game in OSX vs OS9? Personally, I do not think it is OSX itself, but rather the cross-platform libraries you are using are perhaps not optimized for OSX.

I rule out SDL for several reasons, one being that it doesn't suck up any CPU, it just neatens up keyboard/mouse input, sound, networking, threads and so on that that they look the same on many platforms. I also rule out SDL because it does work fast on OS9... and thats not a platform they spend a lot of time optimizing for these days. Also, I didn't really mean to imply that OSX was the slowest, it is just the crappiest. Its choppy even when the framerate is OK, and I think that is because the kernel is screwing around and interrupting all the time. I think Apple needs to work on that more... they'll make it better I'm sure.

After all, if you are not running anything else, the CPU is more than 95% idle...that's slim enough.

Hmmm, is your line of thought that this 5% figure represents the OS overhead all the time? If so, thats not entirely right. It probably uses 5% or whatever all the time, but it also additionally has a hand in all sorts of things, like talking to keyboards and showing graphics. Now some OS things are going to be done without any program switch (smooth), but others will be buffered and handled latter with a program switch (at which point my game might register a chop).

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by job
Mac OS X does not allow one single application (i.e. a game) to gobble up all available system resources, RAM, etc.

The difference between 95% CPU utilization and 99% utilization should not account for any perceptible speed difference...

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by job
On the Mac side of things, I'd have to say our consumer line-up does an OK job of handling games, as opposed to your consumer Wintel box.

In another thread on these forums, someone bought a Dell machine for about $1200 with an ATI 9800. That's on the high side of consumer prices, but that Dell will be more than an order of magnitude faster than an iMac, at games. You have to drop down to about $500 to find a PC as slow as the $1300 iMac. See http://www.portatech.com/7841/viewitem.htm

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by ddtlm
Hmmm, is your line of thought that this 5% figure represents the OS overhead all the time? If so, thats not entirely right. It probably uses 5% or whatever all the time, but it also additionally has a hand in all sorts of things, like talking to keyboards and showing graphics. Now some OS things are going to be done without any program switch (smooth), but others will be buffered and handled latter with a program switch (at which point my game might register a chop).

Yeah, that makes sense actually. You're right...this is definitely something they need to work on then. "Jitter" is much more perceptible than a low average.

 

[BenRoethig]

Originally posted by job
Eh. Kinda, sorta.

Just check out the hardcore gaming rigs available from Northwest and Alienware. Although the average consumer may want to play a few rounds of UT2k3 at a hideously low resolution, the majority of your PC gamers know that performance doesn't come cheap. I don't think your basic consumer Wintel clone tower is designed or intended for gaming.

On the Mac side of things, I'd have to say our consumer line-up does an OK job of handling games, as opposed to your consumer Wintel box. Speedwise, the Mac won't be able to hold it's own all the time, but for what it's worth, I think the consumer Macs do a decent job when it comes to games.

I beg to differ. I got my Compaq 8000Z for less than $900. It has a AthlonXP 1800+ and the GeForce4 MX420. It may be a bottom of the line hardware, it can handle even the newer games like UT2K3 at 1024 resolution very well. The Macs problem is in the processor. Even the Dual 1.42 G4 cannot use the 9700 to its full effect. If you buy a mac, you're buying it more for the operating system than you are the hardware. That's why the low end machines are flurishing and PowerMacs sales are rather lackluster. The latest advancements in the PowerMac line are more a marketing ploy than anything. Without a DDR FSB, PC2700 Ram isn't going to be much faster than PC133 and for most practical purposes, only one CPU is used. Hopefully in just over two weeks a lot of things will change.

 

[ddtlm]

My take on the whole CPU vs video argument is thus: if you have extra CPU such that it always is waiting for the graphics card to get done drawing things, then you'll have a good game experience because scenes that you are drawing present a semi-constant workload over short periods of time to dedicated hardware, so framerate has no sharp spikes or dips (still has ups and downs). However if your CPU is the problem, then every time that something needs to happen in the background all progress stops, every time more of the level needs to be loaded progress stops, every drive access, every periodic game task, everything has the potential to cause a visual disturbance.

I think a PPC970 with a GF2MX would be a nicer gaming box than a G4-1.42 with a Radeon 9700. It's probably the difference between 30fps smooth enough to play, and 100fps that chops badly a few times per second.

 

[job]

Originally posted by BenRoethig
I beg to differ. I got my Compaq 8000Z for less than $900. It has a AthlonXP 1800+ and the GeForce4 MX420. It may be a bottom of the line hardware, it can handle even the newer games like UT2K3 at 1024 resolution very well.

My post was in response to this:

Consumer machines are intended for games, right?

Did you buy your Compaq 8000Z specifically for games?

Gaming has carved out it's own hardware niche. Most serious gamers are willing to spend just as much as a G4 tower to play games. Thus, I didn't see soggywulf's point about consumer gaming machines as a valid one. Consumer PCs are not intended for games.

soggywulf:

You have to drop down to about $500 to find a PC as slow as the $1300 iMac.

I was thinking more along the lines of the midrange eMac for a grand. Compared to previous Apple machines it packs a nice punch for the price.

Considering that the eMac is the baseline Apple model, compare it with the baseline Dell and I think game performance wise, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

 

[solvs]

I get this a lot. People say Macs aren't gaming machines. Maybe it's the code, or lack of games. Maybe it's the graphics card, or the CPU, or whatever.

Who knows, who cares.

You want to play games, buy a PS2 or an xBox or a cheapy PC. Whenever someone says they won't get a Mac because you can't play games on it, my response is always the same.

"You can play on your PC, I'll get work done on mine" (not to be confused with "working on" a PC, or trying to get it to "work" when it won't).

For the record, I use both Macs and PCs. I love Macs. I tolerate Windows (barely).

 

[tazznb]

Re: Hey, lighten up guys & gals

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
The G4 is plenty fast for the average consumer. I see the eMac/iMac/iBook staying 32-bit for quite a while still. Maybe with 1.5 to 2 GHz 750GXs... Or even better, a 750GX+Altivec (760GX?) Already overkill for the needs of the average consumer.

If Apple keeps this mentality for the avg. consumer they'll never take any portion of the gaming market.

G4 anything needs to be sped up, and redesigned (with newer faster moboard) in a big way, or toss it out, all together.

 

[NicoMan]

Macs and games

I think Apple has to address that gaming performance problem. Why? I would say that at years go by, the new generations (of people) are more and more sensitive to a good game on their computer. Not that many people are hardcore gamers in the 50+ age bracket, but start looking at the 15/25 bracket, and you realize that PC gaming is not an isolated phenomenon.

We have to stop thinking that game performance is not important, because to a lot of people it matters. Ok not all games are power-hungry (Sims is the best-seller of all times), but games like UT and the other FPS are becoming ubiquitous. Apple are trying to woe people away from PeeCees, but as things stand (hopefully the trend will start reversing at WWDC) they don't stand a chance with gamers.

Of course those game performance issues will de-facto be addressed by the 970, if (when?) it makes into the Macs, and IF it lives up to the hype.

NicoMan

 

[NicoMan]

Re: Macs and games

Originally posted by NicoMan
Not that many people are hardcore gamers in the 50+ age bracket, but start looking at the 15/25 bracket, and you realize that PC gaming is not an isolated phenomenon.

Another thing in that line of thought: another reason Apple should pay attention to gamers. More often than not they are their future customers. Imagine a 7-10 kid playing a good game on his PeeCee (think UT2k3 or something... something he cannot do on a Mac and he sort of knows it). By the time he is 18-20 and gets his first credit card, he is a PeeCee user through and through and has been one for his last 10 years or so. How are you going to make him switch??

NicoMan

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by job
Considering that the eMac is the baseline Apple model, compare it with the baseline Dell and I think game performance wise, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

If we compare the $1000 eMac to a totally base $600 Dell, I am willing to entertain the possibility that they will be equal in games; perhaps the Mac wil even be slightly better! We have "Intel Extreme 3D graphics" in that PC, which sounds pretty dubious. OTOH, the rest of the hardware favors the PC. So it's a toss up. But I wouldn't call either of these machines "decent" for games. I'm not talking top of the line extreme game machine. Just decent, able to run the latest games at decent res. Neither of these machines will do that.

Move the PC up to $1000, and it's no contest. The PC becomes a decent game platform, according to the definition above. Point is, you can get a PC (even a Dell) in the consumer price range that plays games fairly well. You cannot do the same on the Mac side.

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by solvs
Who knows, who cares.

Oh yeah? well.... well.... Who cares about games anyway? Games are for babies!

 

[Sol]

Originally posted by soggywulf
...you can get a PC (even a Dell) in the consumer price range that plays games fairly well. You cannot do the same on the Mac side.

You can select any model of Apple's current line-up and it would be ready, out of the box to play any game available for OS X. The games may not be the reason most people buy Macs but there is a good library of titles for the platform.

 

[soggywulf]

Originally posted by Sol
You can select any model of Apple's current line-up and it would be ready, out of the box to play any game available for OS X. The games may not be the reason most people buy Macs but there is a good library of titles for the platform.

The discussion was about performance, not availability...