Opinions on OSX's Rosetta for PPC software?

[QSDP-User]

I'm curious on others thoughts on the efficiency of Rosetta's PPC emulation.

I've got a ton of PPC software.
I have played PPC game versions on my MacPro 1,1 (flashed Radeon 5770) running Snow Leopard/Rosetta.
I'd think that running PPC games would be a kind of benchmark for Rosetta.
Games like Postal 2 run a lot better on this MacPro than my Quicksilver Dual 1 GHZ (albeit 64 MB video card).

Alas, my PowerMac G5 2.0 GHz had a power-outage-death last year.
Getting a working PMG5 logicboard or a bargain craigslist PowerMac G5 would be nice,
but I'm thinking, why bother & also save on the electric bill.

Now I know my situation is different from a collector's POV or anyone who currently uses his/her reliable Power G5,
but what do you think of Rosetta?
Granted, one has to have outdated Snow Leopard installed on a partition.

 

[bunnspecial]

Steve Jobs called "Rosetta the best piece of software you'll never know you're using" or something to that effect. In true Apple fashion, it just works.

Most programs that run well on a G4 will run a fair bit faster under Rosetta on higher end and newer Intel Macs. There are exceptions, but games would not be one of them. Heck, just on clock speed alone, the standard 1,1 configuration is faster than all but one G5 and also has four cores. Granted clock speeds don't compare directly across architectures, but still you're getting not only a higher clocked but also a more modern architecture. Your 5770 is overkill for any game that will run decently on an G4-compatible card.

There are several PPC guys on here who also have MP 1,1s, myself included, and they remain a great machine and probably the longest lived computer Apple has ever made(I use mine daily at work). I've upgraded mine to 2,1 specs with a pair of X5365 processors(quad core 3.0ghz) and have an 8800 GT.

 

[MagicBoy]

Rosetta runs well for normal apps, but there's a couple of gotchas :
1) No G5 instruction support
2) No support for Apple Pro Apps.

The guidelines did state : "[An application] that has intense computing needs isn’t compatible. This includes applications that need to repeatedly compute fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), that compute complex models for 3-D modeling, or that compute ray tracing."
(http://web.archive.org/web/20130202...ceptual/universal_binary/universal_binary.pdf)

Which would indicate that gaming isn't recommended. Try it, YMMV.

 

[AmazingHenry]

Was wondering something about Rosetta the other day... if you ran a PPC version of Geekbench on it, would you get a different score than the actual computer? It's something I'll need to try in SL.

As for my opinion, most apps work great in Rosetta, and simple ones are actually a lot faster for me. Games should work. Try!

 

[MagicBoy]

Was wondering something about Rosetta the other day... if you ran a PPC version of Geekbench on it, would you get a different score than the actual computer?

Yeah, you would. There's an overhead to the translation.

 

[AmazingHenry]

Yeah, you would. There's an overhead to the translation.

I see. Thanks!

 

[MagicBoy]

Was wondering something about Rosetta the other day... if you ran a PPC version of Geekbench on it, would you get a different score than the actual computer? It's something I'll need to try in SL.

Wonder no longer. I tried it.

 

[AmazingHenry]

Wonder no longer. I tried it.

View attachment 705632 View attachment 705633

Jeez that score is a lot lower. Plus, it says the processor is PowerPC which is interesting. I guess this is more of an emulated PPC Mac than I thought!

 

[MagicBoy]

As a reference - In PPC terms that headline score is similar to a Power Macintosh G5 1.8 DP. That said Rosetta is translating G4 binary code to Intel.