Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New barefeats article proves G4s sometimes faster, sometimes slower than AMD/Pentiums
- Thread starter gopher
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Sam... you need to chill.
Personal attacks and pure emotional posts are not very helpful. The point of this site is not to be Pro-Mac at all costs.
A fast enough Pentium will beat a 1.25GHz G4. How fast the Pentium has to be appears to be a point of contention... but that's all it is... as long as people keep it civil... it's cool.
Besides, alex_ant's post was a joke. Slow down, and read the intent of the posts.
arn
sorry arn, but it pisses me off! i mean really, i am very pro-mac and i should chill, but what does a pc person have business doing here... sorry though!
Sam
I share your very pro-mac attitude, but it IS pro-mac to call a spade a spade. I hate to admit it too, but Wintel is getting faster and faster and we're sitting still.
OS X is an amazing Unix based os that should Scream in every app, and yet Wintel is kicking our buts in 3D graphics which should be a mac relm. Instead of blindliy saying that Mac is best we should self examine and send Apple our opinion via their feedback on their website.
I know that people hate car examples so I will use a totally different one. War history.
Hitler was not only an evil Nazi facist, but he was once a corporal and knew little or nothing about war tactics/strategy. He had some of the greatest generals of the 20th century working for him. Field Marshalls Von Manstein, Von Rundstedt, Rommel & ColonelGeneral Guderian but to name a few. Read up on military history, these were great leaders of fighting men, and Hitler was a politician.
They constantly told him that he was doing things wrong and he just refused to listen, to the point of firing all of them at one time or another for telling him The Truth Now, granted, we are better off that Hitler lost (those Generals themselve were even happy about it) but that proves that you gain nothing by denying the truth.
now back to Apple. Apple is only gonna make machines that are faster than Intel (i.e. G5, G6 etc...) if we DEMAND it. If we are content with 800MHz note books, while IBM makes 2.0GHz and Alienware makes 2.6GHz ones that smoke us, then we are doing ourselves a disservice.
I am a dedicated Apple user, but only because of OS X, until OS X, I was a Windows guy and wanted an Apple, becasue back in 2000, the G4 was the top. I figured that between the G4 and Unix, I was gonna be top. But Apple has stood still (compared to Wintel) and I am starting to get anxious, and so are others.
there, I've said my $.02............can we still be friends?
I share your very pro-mac attitude, but it IS pro-mac to call a spade a spade. I hate to admit it too, but Wintel is getting faster and faster and we're sitting still.
OS X is an amazing Unix based os that should Scream in every app, and yet Wintel is kicking our buts in 3D graphics which should be a mac relm. Instead of blindliy saying that Mac is best we should self examine and send Apple our opinion via their feedback on their website.
I know that people hate car examples so I will use a totally different one. War history.
Hitler was not only an evil Nazi facist, but he was once a corporal and knew little or nothing about war tactics/strategy. He had some of the greatest generals of the 20th century working for him. Field Marshalls Von Manstein, Von Rundstedt, Rommel & ColonelGeneral Guderian but to name a few. Read up on military history, these were great leaders of fighting men, and Hitler was a politician.
They constantly told him that he was doing things wrong and he just refused to listen, to the point of firing all of them at one time or another for telling him The Truth Now, granted, we are better off that Hitler lost (those Generals themselve were even happy about it) but that proves that you gain nothing by denying the truth.
now back to Apple. Apple is only gonna make machines that are faster than Intel (i.e. G5, G6 etc...) if we DEMAND it. If we are content with 800MHz note books, while IBM makes 2.0GHz and Alienware makes 2.6GHz ones that smoke us, then we are doing ourselves a disservice.
I am a dedicated Apple user, but only because of OS X, until OS X, I was a Windows guy and wanted an Apple, becasue back in 2000, the G4 was the top. I figured that between the G4 and Unix, I was gonna be top. But Apple has stood still (compared to Wintel) and I am starting to get anxious, and so are others.
there, I've said my $.02............can we still be friends?
yes, we can still be friends, and i am sorry about comparing you to hitler... i am jewish and know the seriousness of that!
No....you did no such thing, and no offense was taken. I didn't join this thread till the last post. I only used Hitler as an example becasue it rang true of the same kind of "head in the sand" attitude we in the Mac community take at times.
This is my first post but I think I can comment on this thread because my wife and I use both a Mac and a PC in our business.
People get hung up on bench tests but, for me, the real 'speed' difference between a Mac and a PC is uptime.
When my wife's hogging the Mac and I'm stuck on the PC she will be sailing through her work while I'm having to to reboot every couple of hours or so. While the PC is stalling and crashing, the Mac just keeps on working. Benchmarks, more often than not, deal in seconds whereas crashes and reboots are wasting minutes at a time.
On the whole, I use resource-intensive programs, for image/video/audio editing. If I used mainly office programs or if I was a gamer, I'd probably stick to a PC for reasons of cost.
As it is, I'm simply waiting for G5 developements next year to do away with the last PC I'll ever own.
People get hung up on bench tests but, for me, the real 'speed' difference between a Mac and a PC is uptime.
When my wife's hogging the Mac and I'm stuck on the PC she will be sailing through her work while I'm having to to reboot every couple of hours or so. While the PC is stalling and crashing, the Mac just keeps on working. Benchmarks, more often than not, deal in seconds whereas crashes and reboots are wasting minutes at a time.
On the whole, I use resource-intensive programs, for image/video/audio editing. If I used mainly office programs or if I was a gamer, I'd probably stick to a PC for reasons of cost.
As it is, I'm simply waiting for G5 developements next year to do away with the last PC I'll ever own.
Hi AtomBoy......great english for being from Japan, or are you an ex-pat?
Anyway, I agree, the OS X part of a Mac is worth being a little behind on Mhz/DDR/etc...but I still want Apple to be "on par" atleast with Wintel, since I am spending close to double for their machines as if I had bought an unglybox.
Anyway, I agree, the OS X part of a Mac is worth being a little behind on Mhz/DDR/etc...but I still want Apple to be "on par" atleast with Wintel, since I am spending close to double for their machines as if I had bought an unglybox.
Ummmm...
Unfair Test.
They are using Apples latest and greatest processor.
The P4 has 2.6GHz out now...
AMD has like 2.2GHz out...
Unfair Test.
They are using Apples latest and greatest processor.
The P4 has 2.6GHz out now...
AMD has like 2.2GHz out...
Hi WanaPBnow,
Yeah, you guessed it, I'm an ex-pat!
You're right. Apple needs to 'kick-start' the Power PC. I hope the IBM rumours are true and we'll see a G5 sometime next year that can really compete with Intel/AMD.
If the speed/cost ratio continues to widen considerably over the next 12 months Apple might lose a number of loyalists.
Yeah, you guessed it, I'm an ex-pat!
You're right. Apple needs to 'kick-start' the Power PC. I hope the IBM rumours are true and we'll see a G5 sometime next year that can really compete with Intel/AMD.
If the speed/cost ratio continues to widen considerably over the next 12 months Apple might lose a number of loyalists.
I love Macs but...
I for one think the current lines of macs are MUCH slower than the current comparable PCs. And to Back to the Mac, you may have heard of piplines and branches etc.. but do you have any idea what you are talking about?
"25 years old arch... the x86 sucks" Well you enjoy OS X and that's 25+ architecture also, so whats your point? Also, I think it is very hard to compare a Dual 1.25 to a single 2 Gig processor. Especially when the price difference is 500-1000+ I mean I would pay for performance, but the Macs are more than that. I am on a 1.6Athlon at school right now and it kicks the **** out of my 933. This 1.6 has 512 Ram I have 1.28GIGS. Simple things like starting Explorer to read macrumors is executed with NO DELAY. Bringing up Control Panels is also instantanious. I dont mind the fact my G-4 is slower, I enjoy OSX and my mac, but as far as speed I think you BACKTOTHEMAC needs to open your eyes.
I for one think the current lines of macs are MUCH slower than the current comparable PCs. And to Back to the Mac, you may have heard of piplines and branches etc.. but do you have any idea what you are talking about?
"25 years old arch... the x86 sucks" Well you enjoy OS X and that's 25+ architecture also, so whats your point? Also, I think it is very hard to compare a Dual 1.25 to a single 2 Gig processor. Especially when the price difference is 500-1000+ I mean I would pay for performance, but the Macs are more than that. I am on a 1.6Athlon at school right now and it kicks the **** out of my 933. This 1.6 has 512 Ram I have 1.28GIGS. Simple things like starting Explorer to read macrumors is executed with NO DELAY. Bringing up Control Panels is also instantanious. I dont mind the fact my G-4 is slower, I enjoy OSX and my mac, but as far as speed I think you BACKTOTHEMAC needs to open your eyes.
Re: I love Macs but...
Why is the PC faster? It is the OS, not the processor. Windblows uses .dll's Dynamic link libraries. They allow programs to load only what is needed (GUI, and primary API's) and then load pieces of the program as the user uses it. Macs on the other hand load all of the program into memory because, Mac's don't use dll files. So. It takes longer to load a program on a Mac, however once loaded the program will actually perform faster.
As far as Macs being slower at everything. Dude, you obviously have not put a PowerBook up against a PC based notebook recentlly have you? See we sell IBM and Apple. We recently put my 667 up against a 2.0GHZ IBM laptop. The 667 was faster at everything in photoshop than the PC, encoded MP3's faster, and the only it did slower was render HTML. Now you say how much faster? Doesn't matter. If it was .1 seconds faster, it still shows the superiority of the PPC design.
Sure OS X is a 25 year old architecture. My reference is to the flaws of the X86 vs the PPC architecture. If you would like to discuss the flaws in Windows compared to OSX. Well, arn would have to make a dedicated topic for us to discuss it.
Macs run slower than winblows machines. So what. Would you really like to run winblows fast? That would be cool. Sure my machine goes 2.8GHZ, but it crashes once a day. I have never crashed X. Not even when it was a PB. Oh, and btw. I am an MCP, and Apple certified, so yes, I do know what I am talking about.
Why is the PC faster? It is the OS, not the processor. Windblows uses .dll's Dynamic link libraries. They allow programs to load only what is needed (GUI, and primary API's) and then load pieces of the program as the user uses it. Macs on the other hand load all of the program into memory because, Mac's don't use dll files. So. It takes longer to load a program on a Mac, however once loaded the program will actually perform faster.
As far as Macs being slower at everything. Dude, you obviously have not put a PowerBook up against a PC based notebook recentlly have you? See we sell IBM and Apple. We recently put my 667 up against a 2.0GHZ IBM laptop. The 667 was faster at everything in photoshop than the PC, encoded MP3's faster, and the only it did slower was render HTML. Now you say how much faster? Doesn't matter. If it was .1 seconds faster, it still shows the superiority of the PPC design.
Sure OS X is a 25 year old architecture. My reference is to the flaws of the X86 vs the PPC architecture. If you would like to discuss the flaws in Windows compared to OSX. Well, arn would have to make a dedicated topic for us to discuss it.
Macs run slower than winblows machines. So what. Would you really like to run winblows fast? That would be cool. Sure my machine goes 2.8GHZ, but it crashes once a day. I have never crashed X. Not even when it was a PB. Oh, and btw. I am an MCP, and Apple certified, so yes, I do know what I am talking about.
Re: Re: I love Macs but...
What? No Dynamic Link Libraries in the MacOS X? You've got to be kidding me. That's a very bad choice on Apple's part. Especially since UNIX has their own type of DLL's. The whole point of a DLL is to make it so that programs don't need to load the same exact libraries into memory and waste space... the standard C library alone is about 2 megs. And the speed benefit from static libraries versus dynamic in *nix is nill. I know, I've compiled the same library both ways just to test that fact. (For those that don't know, static libraries are compiled into an app, and dynamic libraries are stored only once in memory.)
The point you had said before was that the reason x86 sucked was that it was 25 year old technology. Your exact wording was:
What? No Dynamic Link Libraries in the MacOS X? You've got to be kidding me. That's a very bad choice on Apple's part. Especially since UNIX has their own type of DLL's. The whole point of a DLL is to make it so that programs don't need to load the same exact libraries into memory and waste space... the standard C library alone is about 2 megs. And the speed benefit from static libraries versus dynamic in *nix is nill. I know, I've compiled the same library both ways just to test that fact. (For those that don't know, static libraries are compiled into an app, and dynamic libraries are stored only once in memory.)
The point you had said before was that the reason x86 sucked was that it was 25 year old technology. Your exact wording was:
Yea, OSX uses libraries, but not specifically poorly designed libraries like winblows. .dll files are attributed to the majority of crashes on a PC. The structure of windows .dll and libraries in Unix are totally different. And yes, the X 86 structure sucks. 
OS X being 25 years old (actually, UNIX is much older) is a GOOD thing, Software (Read OS) can evolve much more easily than hardware. Unix is a work in progress to this day, and this is why it is years (literally years) ahead of windows.
As for X86 being great. I think that sure, the top X86 at 2.8Ghz is faster than the top G4 at 1.25Ghz, but not 2.2 times faster, as the clock would have you think. And when you add Altivec coded software like Photoship, then you actually get more IPC's than the P4. So the archtecture of the G4 is superior, However the P4 is faster by a small margin due to the significant speed advantage and its long pipeline.
I think a G5 with multicore process and a bump in clock will eclips the X86 entirely. AMD is the best bet against the G5 and when that day comes, as it will, this arguement will be moot.
I for one am still waiting on Apple to make a PB worth my $3500 investment. That I think is long overdue.
As for X86 being great. I think that sure, the top X86 at 2.8Ghz is faster than the top G4 at 1.25Ghz, but not 2.2 times faster, as the clock would have you think. And when you add Altivec coded software like Photoship, then you actually get more IPC's than the P4. So the archtecture of the G4 is superior, However the P4 is faster by a small margin due to the significant speed advantage and its long pipeline.
I think a G5 with multicore process and a bump in clock will eclips the X86 entirely. AMD is the best bet against the G5 and when that day comes, as it will, this arguement will be moot.
I for one am still waiting on Apple to make a PB worth my $3500 investment. That I think is long overdue.
The points I was trying to make
The point you had said before was that the reason x86 sucked was that it was 25 year old technology.
For all purposes I think the PPC is a fast architecture, BUT and here is the but lets say the factor is 1.2 or 1.3, or 2.0 (for BACKTOTHEMAC) All that was well and fine when the clock speed was not a HUGE gap as it is today. Now I have the fastest Single Proc and my 933 is NOT NOT NOT the same speed as a 1.8PV or Athlon 1800+ Also, the 933 was offered by Apple only a few months ago, where a 1.8 can be had in the low end lines on the PC world where the iMac is supposed to compete.
My 933 on the 133 bus is only going to do so much. With the 933 they increased the pipelines(just like PV to scale MHZ) and increased the cache. As far as speed, I think Windows itself is fast software(2K and XP, and the x86 as an entire arch is fast (SYS, MEM, CPU, etc) It may not be the most effecient, or crash proof but who cares, its 2-3X in terms of speed FASTER(Machine speed, not actual). OSX.x may never be as fast as its Microsoft counterpart, but the services and UI are of greater importance.
Also, while intel released 3.0GHZ and new tech after new tech, are you still going to say Apples newest offering in 4 months say (Dual 1.4, with 2 SUPERDRIVES, or some other goodie to direct you away from its slow speed increase) is going to keep up?
Face it, as it stands x86 is CHEAPER, and FASTER, BUT I avoid PC's at all costs. 1. I live in Cupertino (Home of Apple) 2. I am more than an Apple user, I am a fan of its products.
This is an Apple site, and I am on an Apple as we speak, but I will not fall for the fallacious arguments you are trying to make
The point you had said before was that the reason x86 sucked was that it was 25 year old technology.
For all purposes I think the PPC is a fast architecture, BUT and here is the but lets say the factor is 1.2 or 1.3, or 2.0 (for BACKTOTHEMAC) All that was well and fine when the clock speed was not a HUGE gap as it is today. Now I have the fastest Single Proc and my 933 is NOT NOT NOT the same speed as a 1.8PV or Athlon 1800+ Also, the 933 was offered by Apple only a few months ago, where a 1.8 can be had in the low end lines on the PC world where the iMac is supposed to compete.
My 933 on the 133 bus is only going to do so much. With the 933 they increased the pipelines(just like PV to scale MHZ) and increased the cache. As far as speed, I think Windows itself is fast software(2K and XP, and the x86 as an entire arch is fast (SYS, MEM, CPU, etc) It may not be the most effecient, or crash proof but who cares, its 2-3X in terms of speed FASTER(Machine speed, not actual). OSX.x may never be as fast as its Microsoft counterpart, but the services and UI are of greater importance.
Also, while intel released 3.0GHZ and new tech after new tech, are you still going to say Apples newest offering in 4 months say (Dual 1.4, with 2 SUPERDRIVES, or some other goodie to direct you away from its slow speed increase) is going to keep up?
Face it, as it stands x86 is CHEAPER, and FASTER, BUT I avoid PC's at all costs. 1. I live in Cupertino (Home of Apple) 2. I am more than an Apple user, I am a fan of its products.
This is an Apple site, and I am on an Apple as we speak, but I will not fall for the fallacious arguments you are trying to make
i don't think there is an easy way to test a mac vs a pc for speed issues
but overall, i like barefeats and i think those tests give one a general idea of what a machine can do and are not specifically one hundred percent accurate all the time in the tests
sometimes magazine comparisons between two pc machines are not equally matched in terms of ram, video card, etc...
one thing is certain, the athlon is faster than the duron, the pentium 4 is faster than the celeron, and the G4 is faster (in photoshop) than the G3...but beyond that, it is hard to get a perfect reading
my overclocked 2 cents
jefhatield has it right
one thing is certain, the athlon is faster than the duron, the pentium 4 is faster than the celeron, and the G4 is faster (in photoshop) than the G3...but beyond that, it is hard to get a perfect reading
Now I will agree with that!!!!
one thing is certain, the athlon is faster than the duron, the pentium 4 is faster than the celeron, and the G4 is faster (in photoshop) than the G3...but beyond that, it is hard to get a perfect reading
Now I will agree with that!!!!
Re: Re: I love Macs but...
Come on.. lets get real..
1) Macs don't use shared libraries? You must be using System 6. For the folks who aren't familiar with the concept of the shared library (what Microsoft calls a dynamic link library) simply put shared libs are object orientated pieces of code containing functions/methods and other objects that can be invoked upon from other code. Mac OS X being highly object orientated relies almost exclusively on shared libraries. In the modern world of software engineering we rarely find it necessary to statically build an executable. If you look back at OS 7/8/9, while not as much as 10, developers could take advantage of off the shelf code. (eg, sprockets, mp lib, etc). Also you are not accurate in saying OS X is a 25 year old archiecture.
1.5) Microsoft OS's that use versions of the Windows 2000 kernel (2000 itself and XP) just like Mach, have a hardware abstraction layer. The "DLL Hell" days (Windows ME and below) are over. This is no longer an issue with the new kernel. The fact of the matter is that my P4 2.8 machine running XP is equally as stable as my PowerBook G4 800 running Mac OS X. I have not *ONCE* had either one core dump or "blue screen". Sure programs screw up, and when they do, they die, not the OS. Both OS's are very mature.
2.) I have *literally* put my PC up against my PowerBook, and the PowerBook fails miserably. I've wrote a simple stopwatch Java application that iterate through floating point instructions, and if I my PC finished 2.5 times faster than the PowerBook. If you want more details (hell I'll even give you the code) of my app, I'll be glad to share it with the community. Playing/decoding MP3's faster on the Mac? No way in hell. Winamp uses 0-1% CPU, iTunes consumes 8-12%.
3.) You speak of flaws of the "x86 architecture" but do not provide us specifics as to why you say this. The x86 processor began in the late 70's when Intel first offered the 8086 as a CISC successor to it's 4004 line of processors. Many, many things have changed over the course of 20 years. Had they sit still (like the G4/motorola chip) intel wouldn't be selling products today, now would they? The G4 is not much more than an improved G3 series processor with vector processing instructions. Be honest (especially be honest to yourself!) if you look back and compare the G3/G4, you do see improvements, but not drastic improvements. More clock, the maxbus protocol (debatable), and more cache. One of the reasons why you see Apple adding cache like mad to it's recent products is because they are in between a rock and hard place with this Motorola chip. This is exactly the same approach AMD took with their failing processor, the K5/K6. I want you to contrast this to a P4 with an i850e chipset: Insanely high clock speeds, a 533mhz bus, fast memory with RIMMs @ 4.2GB/s, with a next stop of 9.6GB/s -- to MaxBus. You will soon see why the current generation of PowerPC processors is "inferior", dare I say it.
For the most part I think its fare to say that the current Macintosh hardware performance is status-quo. The current best of breed of Macintoshes are slower than the current best of bread PCs. Macs are slower - just accept it. I dont like it any more than you do.
Come on.. lets get real..
1) Macs don't use shared libraries? You must be using System 6. For the folks who aren't familiar with the concept of the shared library (what Microsoft calls a dynamic link library) simply put shared libs are object orientated pieces of code containing functions/methods and other objects that can be invoked upon from other code. Mac OS X being highly object orientated relies almost exclusively on shared libraries. In the modern world of software engineering we rarely find it necessary to statically build an executable. If you look back at OS 7/8/9, while not as much as 10, developers could take advantage of off the shelf code. (eg, sprockets, mp lib, etc). Also you are not accurate in saying OS X is a 25 year old archiecture.
1.5) Microsoft OS's that use versions of the Windows 2000 kernel (2000 itself and XP) just like Mach, have a hardware abstraction layer. The "DLL Hell" days (Windows ME and below) are over. This is no longer an issue with the new kernel. The fact of the matter is that my P4 2.8 machine running XP is equally as stable as my PowerBook G4 800 running Mac OS X. I have not *ONCE* had either one core dump or "blue screen". Sure programs screw up, and when they do, they die, not the OS. Both OS's are very mature.
2.) I have *literally* put my PC up against my PowerBook, and the PowerBook fails miserably. I've wrote a simple stopwatch Java application that iterate through floating point instructions, and if I my PC finished 2.5 times faster than the PowerBook. If you want more details (hell I'll even give you the code) of my app, I'll be glad to share it with the community. Playing/decoding MP3's faster on the Mac? No way in hell. Winamp uses 0-1% CPU, iTunes consumes 8-12%.
3.) You speak of flaws of the "x86 architecture" but do not provide us specifics as to why you say this. The x86 processor began in the late 70's when Intel first offered the 8086 as a CISC successor to it's 4004 line of processors. Many, many things have changed over the course of 20 years. Had they sit still (like the G4/motorola chip) intel wouldn't be selling products today, now would they? The G4 is not much more than an improved G3 series processor with vector processing instructions. Be honest (especially be honest to yourself!) if you look back and compare the G3/G4, you do see improvements, but not drastic improvements. More clock, the maxbus protocol (debatable), and more cache. One of the reasons why you see Apple adding cache like mad to it's recent products is because they are in between a rock and hard place with this Motorola chip. This is exactly the same approach AMD took with their failing processor, the K5/K6. I want you to contrast this to a P4 with an i850e chipset: Insanely high clock speeds, a 533mhz bus, fast memory with RIMMs @ 4.2GB/s, with a next stop of 9.6GB/s -- to MaxBus. You will soon see why the current generation of PowerPC processors is "inferior", dare I say it.
For the most part I think its fare to say that the current Macintosh hardware performance is status-quo. The current best of breed of Macintoshes are slower than the current best of bread PCs. Macs are slower - just accept it. I dont like it any more than you do.
Re: Re: Re: I love Macs but...
The floating point instruction set architecture of the x86 (silly stack based thing) is/was a naff design decision. I don't even know whether there are alternative routes to accessing FP ops on an x86 these days, as its ages since I've been interested in that level (tad of compiler writing in my history). [Intel did always work pretty hard to get IEEE FP conformance though, which is more than most other CPU mnfs.]
The limited number of GPRs is also a design flaw that has largely been worked around.
Maybe the best way to get an understanding of what Intel privately thinks is good/bad about x86 ISA is to look at what sorts of x86 instructions get translated into what sort of micro-ops internally - the larger the change, the less Intel like their original decisions.
The floating point instruction set architecture of the x86 (silly stack based thing) is/was a naff design decision. I don't even know whether there are alternative routes to accessing FP ops on an x86 these days, as its ages since I've been interested in that level (tad of compiler writing in my history). [Intel did always work pretty hard to get IEEE FP conformance though, which is more than most other CPU mnfs.]
The limited number of GPRs is also a design flaw that has largely been worked around.
Maybe the best way to get an understanding of what Intel privately thinks is good/bad about x86 ISA is to look at what sorts of x86 instructions get translated into what sort of micro-ops internally - the larger the change, the less Intel like their original decisions.
Re: Re: Re: Re: I love Macs but...
I'm actually not a Windows developer (hence my nick ) but from what I understand you can do most of your fp stuff using the P4's vector engine. I also wanted to add to my first post that in integer ops, the G4 only achives clock parity. It goes without saying that the massively clocked P4's will well outperform a G4 in integer.
I'm actually not a Windows developer (hence my nick
) but from what I understand you can do most of your fp stuff using the P4's vector engine. I also wanted to add to my first post that in integer ops, the G4 only achives clock parity. It goes without saying that the massively clocked P4's will well outperform a G4 in integer.I think the real world is more complicated than this. If Apple did not have financial and shareholder issues to think about, you'd have an absolute stonker of a box on your desk. I think if you peer behind the commercial front,
Apple is just as keen to get something faster. But "keenness" doesn't mean they can roll a new solution out tomorrow - unfortunately a really dull set of real world issues keep getting on the way. SJ has some problems to solve and the measure of him will be whether he solves them. Sure, everyone would like him to solve them on their own timescales, but Apple doesn't have the Si R&D budget of Intel, so they have to work smarter. This may indeed mean they produce machines that by some measures (whether valid or invalid is not a debate I care to get into) don't stack up for a while. The question is, and indeed their survival, will be measured against, whether they can fix this. This will happen in old fashioned real world engineering timescales, not rumor board timescales.
I know it's easy to get frustrated thinking there should be something better, but I strongly DON'T believe that the deciding factor is whether you demand a change or not. If you really want to demand something, demand a larger revenue and market share, etc, and the rest will sort itself out.
Sadly the lack of a system bus faster than 133/167 and use of leading edge RAM technology is a major downside to Mac hardware. G4 with software optomized for it is still on par with P4, but when Altivec is not in the picture or MultiProcessor awareness, the Mac slips very fart behind. I still have faith that the G5 will make up for this gap.
As for OS X vs Windows 2000, I am not as technically aware as the above poster, however my own experience in a large office environment with heavy networking is that Windows 2000 has failed us. We are switching to Unix and Sun, because we can't afford the down time that windows 2000 is giving us, the cost advantage of windows not withstanding.
I have not come accross many large computer operations people that will tell me that Windows is a replacement for Unix. Not unless dealing with small size and limited budget.
As for OS X vs Windows 2000, I am not as technically aware as the above poster, however my own experience in a large office environment with heavy networking is that Windows 2000 has failed us. We are switching to Unix and Sun, because we can't afford the down time that windows 2000 is giving us, the cost advantage of windows not withstanding.
I have not come accross many large computer operations people that will tell me that Windows is a replacement for Unix. Not unless dealing with small size and limited budget.