Performance Centrino vs G4

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by legion
...totally kill...slow...slays...outperformed...

-legion

I've heard these qualitative words, as well as "slaughtered", "totally destroyed" when referring comparisons of the Pentium M and Pentium 4 to the performance of the G4.

These are all relative terms. The original question was a quantitative request for a shootout - which precludes benchmark tests as well because benchmarks measure tachometeric speeds, but tend to miss the "cornering abilty" and "road hugging" performance of a computer.

Personally, I found the overall performance of the two to be relatively comparable - of course, that's from a Mea$ly Office perspective, but I'm no fool, I know the T40 will outperform the 867 when pressed.

I'd be interested in seeing numbers. Someone with identical art and identical filters in photoshop, or running Filemaker queries, with a stopwatch.

But I have an add-on question: Who really cares anymore? Seriously. What do you need the speed for?

 

[acj]

So much confusion here. Funny how we laugh at PC users when they don't understand Apple.

A side note I wanted to mention about the Pentium M. Some laptops with that processor have DOUBLE the battery life of a G4 when playing DVDs. They might be more similar when doing more processor intensive stuff, but I thought it was cool that a laptop could play dvds on one battery throughout a 4 hour flight.

 

[iPC]

Originally posted by acj
So much confusion here. Funny how we laugh at PC users when they don't understand Apple.

A side note I wanted to mention about the Pentium M. Some laptops with that processor have DOUBLE the battery life of a G4 when playing DVDs. They might be more similar when doing more processor intensive stuff, but I thought it was cool that a laptop could play dvds on one battery throughout a 4 hour flight.

Yeah, 2hrs of DVD on my iBook (max volume, only 4 bars used on screen brightness), and it is nearly done (less than 1/2 hr left). Turning off airport card probably would add 15min... and that is for the power friendly G3 800 with proc speed set to slowest setting OS X allows while on battery power. *sigh* Too bad the optical drive is not a removable module like the G3 powerbooks were...

 

[patrick0brien]

-All

That battery time is the most attractive component to me, but I abrogated that as I have the iGo Juice, therefore never needing to use the battery of either machine (T30, 12PB - I travel with both), so I save $1500

 

[asphalt-proof]

I don't know if this helps but there are lots of sites showing comparisons of the Pentium M chip to a desktop processor. they usually show that an 1.6 M chip equals a 2.4Ghz. desktop processor. If you wanted, then to compare a desktop to a G4 desktop you could draw some ROUGH idea of a speed comparison. I think that thre are no comparisons because the main competition for the M chip is the 4M and AMD chips.
The Pentium M is undeniably fast. As for the (con) profusion of options for laptop processors... when the M chip came out it was really hard to figure out if a consumer was buying the 4M chip, the M chip, or a P4 chip. The only sure way to tell was te centrino logo. I noticed that someone is using the T40p. That was the only laptop that was compelling to me when looking for a computer. thankfully I switched to a Mac though. By the wy, how do you like the IBM. I fell in love with it, but did not want to deal with XP anymore.

 

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by asphalt-proof
By the wy, how do you like the IBM. I fell in love with it, but did not want to deal with XP anymore.

-asphalt-proof

It's my third Thinkpad, and I'd say the best yet, though it's outer skin absorbs fingerprints like you wouldn't believe - it's even worse than my 12PB.

But, as you say it's XP Pro...

 

[legion]

Originally posted by patrick0brien
-legion

I've heard these qualitative words, as well as "slaughtered", "totally destroyed" when referring comparisons of the Pentium M and Pentium 4 to the performance of the G4.

But I have an add-on question: Who really cares anymore? Seriously. What do you need the speed for?

Those qualitative words only come into play for myself when one laptop that is almost 6 months old is running at the very least 50% faster at most processes over a brand new laptop. Add to that the near silent running, long battery life and cool-to-touch-factor, the 17" PB is outclassed on the hardware level. When I received the 17"PB, my first thought was "this machine is really going to plow through my work"; a few minutes later and I realized that _wasn't_ going to happen. If the difference in performance was less than 20%, then it's not really a big deal because the OS fun-factor makes up for it, however this is/was way too much of a difference.


As for the need for speed... if I have to wait for any operation to run, then I need more speed. Simple as that. The current crop of machines out on the market are still a far cry from what I'd like to use to eliminate any wait periods.

(I'd love to post numerical data on my personal tests, but these were really just run in-house for our comparison use. Around here (the web in general), posting such data where Apple ends up losing is tantamount to a charge of heresy and it seems that I'd have to have all my ducks in a row with testing conditions and such to weather such a flame war.)

 

[legion]

Originally posted by Macpoops
So your running a pre-release beta OS with software that isn't optimized for the changes in the new OS...probably doesn't make that much of difference but it definately opens the door for quite a bit of doubt

As another poster mentioned, Panther is far faster than Jaguar so since this was for our own internal use, it was important to see that fastest results we could get from the PB. Leaving Jaguar on and then saying that the PB was slow would have been a pointless test for our usage.

As for "software" optimized for Panther vs Jaguar, I'd hope that isn't necessary ever for a ".1" ugrade. Optimization for a different architecture (eg, the G5) is one thing, but incremental OS updates shouldn't need optimizations.

Personally, I have no "doubt" over performance in the current laptop market and anyone who is wedded to one platform will not be swayed by my results and opinion. I'm just placing this info out there for the OP who was wondering about performance. As my workplace is filled with more Mac zealots than mere Mac-aphiles, if I hadn't performed the tests in front of them, the zealot camp would have never believed me. As it is, none of them are leaving their PBs anytime soon (after all, why would you if the equipment has met your needs so far) but they are now very aware of how far Apple needs to leap forwarded on laptop tech. If you doubt my results that's fine; the one thing that would convince you would be to set up such a side-by-side test yourself to see the results with your own eyes.

 

[fraeone]

With the 17"/15" PB costing so much, I can see why the non-bleeding edge performance would be a little disheartening, but I'm preparing to buy a new laptop, and this is what I have come to:

a 12" PB w/ edu discount for 1400
a 1.4ghz Pentium M Dell 600m Laptop, which is slightly larger, and heavier for 1500 - $200 Rebate (configured with 256M, 40GHD, and a Combo Drive, similar to the PB)

To go up to the 1.7 Pentium M, it costs $250 more.

Assuming from previous posts that a 1ghz G4 is probably a little slower than the 1.4 Pentium M; I'm more than happy to pay a couple hundred more for a slightly slower machine with a much better form factor that is able to run a vastly better OS. An IBM T40 at a similar configuration is more like $2000. ($600 to gain back some of that form factor ground)

So my conclusion? If I was planning to spend three grand on a laptop, it's hard to beat the performance of a really loaded IBM T40. Got $1400 to spend? I can't imagine there is anything better than the 12" PB.

Just my take..

 

[switchingGeek]

Exactly..

As fraone says, If you have the money to go for an IBM, and you need the performance go for it. But for a $1400 budget, for the price, weight and performance, there are few laptops to beat the 12"PBook.

After seeing two of my friends suffering with their Dell's, I definitely won't be buying one.