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PowerMac 970 Benchmarks?

Indeed...

It seems to be all about avoiding bottle necks, how great!. Yes, finally we'll have high-end Macs (he up-market in MacBidouille diction) again.
If the PPC 970 is really to have such a crushing performance, I wonder who's gonna buy single processor iMacs anymore (allegedly with a G4). After all, iMacs are used for video stuff as well. Will Apple make pricing such that iMacs will be a bargain ? Or will the Pro models just be super-expensive. I hope the latter will not come true because then Apple would bump into the same car again, so to speak, and possibly miss a wonderful opportunity to attract switchers.
 
Re: Two things jump out at me...

Originally posted by suzerain
All of the apps are 32-bit, and the OS was Alpha.
Click to expand...

in previous macrumors threads its been discussed that current applications, even writen in 64 bit code wouldnt see performance increases with 64bit computing. this is because the applications that are out there dont demand a 64bit computing experience. in other words they dont need it. i think the performance increases will come from other facets of this chip. meaning that the 64bitness is just a plus but wont be actually used to its fullest potential.

im not sure but i BELIEVE apps like photoshop might not even really benefit from 64bit computing.
 
Ye gads! If these are fake, they will be forever damned, but if even close to true, they will be the rumor site of all time.

I expect the 970's in late June or early July, but this performance gain is far beyond anything I would have thought possible.

We will know soon.
 
Sorry, but Bryce does not support more than 1 processor, so the numbers can't be real :-(
 
hmmmmmm

i am typically quite the dreamer and optimist (ie still holding on buying macopener for my mac formatted iPod/dell for a nice new PB 15), but this report seems almost too good to be true.

where are they getting this info? wouldn't apple try to shut this down ASAP? i mean, let's assume this info is true . . . they have build numbers on an alpha of the next big osX release. seems like some pretty high up the ladder source. also, slightly convienent that the old PM is slower than the pentium 4, yet every incarnation of the 970 systems is faster . . . hope our mac-frenchy comrades have a day job, cause this could bite em in the butt.

for the first time in a long while, i hope i am super super wrong!
cheers
 
Originally posted by Tobsen
Sorry, but Bryce does not support more than 1 processor, so the numbers can't be real :-(
Click to expand...
What if the design is such that it pretends to be one processor ? I'm not sure but can you exclude such a possibility ?
 
Ohhhh Nooo

I am all ready to buy my new IMac this week. I was so excited...Now what do I do? Wait and save up for a 970. Or just move ahead as planned? What to do???? What to do?
 
If this is true I can't wait to see Adobe crawl back with their tail between their legs.

I'm a little gutted considering that I've just gone and bought a 12" powerbook, 🙁

AppleMatt
 
Originally posted by dekator
What if the design is such that it pretends to be one processor ? I'm not sure but can you exclude such a possibility ?
Click to expand...

From what I have seen, I do not belive this feature will make into this processor, but will be seen in the upcoming "980" PPC chip.

Of course this is only an opinion.😛
 
Originally posted by Frobozz
I don't think your criteria is complete to pass these off as fake. Although you are correct if you were comparing today's machines, the software and hardawre combination that these benchmarks are being run may indeed see increases that older software and hardware combos do not. Keep in mind that the motherboards talk to each cpu better, and to the memory faster.

I'm not saying a disgree with you. I'm only saying that these could very well be accurate numbers.

Maybe Macbidouille is making up numbers and rumors for traffic related revenue.... but it seems weird for them to intentionally do that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Click to expand...

I can understand that you want these numbers to be right, but Bryce uses only 1 cpu.
Cinema 4D is 1.7 to 1.8 times faster on a dual cpu machine, both on the mac and the pc. And these machines are quite different in how the mobo communicates with the cpus.

Of course, they could have accidentaly switched the Cinema 4D and Bryce 5 results.. 😉
 
Originally posted by dekator
What if the design is such that it pretends to be one processor ? I'm not sure but can you exclude such a possibility ?
Click to expand...

More likely (to me anyway) is that they have a pre-release patch that supports dual processors.

Most likely of all, they faked the results with the single 1.4 score and scaled to 1.8 with a fudge and halved the time for the second processor.

I still think these things are going to rock and they do seem to be coming soon!!!

😎
 
results

In addition to the obivious bryce 5 statements already made. It seems odd to me that all of the benchmarks resulted in complete seconds. Sure if you were doing really long processes such as video encoding this makes sense. But some of the benchmarks yeilded results of only 7 seconds, and in a tie at that. You would think they would have at least gone out one decimal place on the results. Also they seem overly optomistic based on the performance of the parent Power4 processor.

I'm definetely looking forward to the 970 Macs but these numbers seem fishy.
 
I think this is total BS. Why? Check out their Bryce graph. Why would there be dramatic gains in a DP 1.8 vs. a SP 1.4? Bryce has no DP or Altivec optmizations! so the benchmarks are bogus.
 
Re: Re: Two things jump out at me...

Originally posted by beatle888
i think the performance increases will come from other facets of this chip. meaning that the 64bitness is just a plus but wont be actually used to its fullest potential.

im not sure but i BELIEVE apps like photoshop might not even really benefit from 64bit computing.
Click to expand...
You are 100% correct. There are two main benefits to a 64-bit OS:

1. The ability to address more than 4GB of memory.
2. The ability to use 64-bit registers.

Every day it seems that I read a post by someone that thinks a 64-bit OS will magically double the speed of their computer. This is just not the case. You will usually only see a marginal (5-10%) speed increase, and usually only on applications that do a lot of heavy floating point type number crunching. 64-bit does nothing for your memory bandwidth or throughput, which is, IMO the most important benchmark you should be looking at.

The biggest problem with the G4 right now is not low clock speed, but low bus speed. The P4 is enjoying a healthy 533 mhz. (soon to be 800) FSB. G4 is stuck at 167 mhz. I also don't understand why Apple thinks sticking 333mhz. DDR memory on a 167 mhz. bus will increase performance.

Apple engineers must have been on crack when they thought they could double memory bandwidth without increasing FSB to match. It makes all those that went out and upgraded their PowerMacs just to get DDR memory look like fools.

I think they did it just for marketing reasons, because too many PC switchers were saying: "It doesn't have DDR memory like a PC so it is half as fast."

The new benchmarks are very encouraging indeed! I don't put much stock in the rumors, but I hope that the new 15" AlBook has a low-clocked (1 ghz. or 1.2 ghz) 970. I am waiting to buy one.
 
whoa

I don't know about these numbers...hope they are true because my G4 450 would like to retire!

Hmmm, let's see, how could Apple screw this up?

1) Offer speed bumped G4's to 1.6ghz in July, intro 970 in Jan, OR have the new 970's performance be equivalent to a speed bumped G4.

2) Price the low end 970 at $4000, or even 3,000 for that matter.

3) Somehow retain that memory bottleneck that's been screwing us for so long.

4) Have 64-bit Panther be incompatible with most current OSX software.

5) Make the 970 so ugly that we all have to put paper bags over it...though I'm not going to mind a paper bag if the thing has performance numbers like MacBidouelle has posted!

Can anyone else think of how Apple could screw this up?
 
Originally posted by Remus
From what I have seen, I do not belive this feature will make into this processor, but will be seen in the upcoming "980" PPC chip.
Click to expand...
Correct you are. If the 980 processor is based on the Power 5 architecture, it should inherit a new technology that both IBM, Sun, and Intel have been making, multiple cores:
IBM disclosed in an interview with EE Times that its next-generation Power5 chip would support two cores, each running two simultaneous threads. "We have the chip back and we are in early testing of the processor. It is performing exactly as we hoped," said Papermaster.
Click to expand...
Read this article for more details.
 
Re: How Apple could screw it up

My vote would be for the classic...

1) Announce in June with availability in July

2) July comes and goes with delays until August

3) First machines ship in August with manufacturing delays which limit significant supply until September

4) Meanwhile, everybody stops buying G4s in May in anticipation of a June launch.

Yup... That sounds about right. 🙂
 
fingers crossed

between these new rumors and the new ipod, all my summer money is as good as spent- and i haven't even made it yet...

😀
 
Re: Re: How Apple could screw it up

Originally posted by oldMac
My vote would be for the classic...

1) Announce in June with availability in July

2) July comes and goes with delays until August

3) First machines ship in August with manufacturing delays which limit significant supply until September

4) Meanwhile, everybody stops buying G4s in May in anticipation of a June launch.

Yup... That sounds about right. 🙂
Click to expand...

I was asking for real screw-ups. This is standard! 😀
 
Originally posted by AppleMatt
If this is true I can't wait to see Adobe crawl back with their tail between their legs.

I'm a little gutted considering that I've just gone and bought a 12" powerbook, 🙁

AppleMatt
Click to expand...

thats what sorta has me stumped. i thought apple provided their main developers with test systems. so wouldnt adobe already have a 970 machine if it was in the works? and if they did, wouldnt they be excited about the speed and look toward the near future? so why would they post the remark that windows based systems are preferrable for their video applications when they know that apple has a gem right around the corner?
 
Nothing to support this rumor!

I have never seen apple release a dramatically new product like a 970 PPC and not radically trim inventory early.

Look at the iPod. 2 months before it came out they started restricting availability. Selling them off, getting out of a bad situation.

If Apple is still making G4 based powermacs there is no way they are introducing an entirely new architecture based on the 970.

Call me once the G4 desktops stop rolling off the line and they start depleting inventory.
 
jesus!

ok i've just read the specs and i think i've soiled my pants! sign me up for a render farm. Quality nice!
 
Originally posted by illumin8
Correct you are. If the 980 processor is based on the Power 5 architecture, it should inherit a new technology that both IBM, Sun, and Intel have been making, multiple cores:
Read this article for more details.
Click to expand...

you are aware that the power4, on which the 970 is based, has always been dual cores. Dual cores is not new technology. And its existence on a high end chip has absolutely no bearing ona deriviative chip, as evidence by the fact that the 970 is only a single core chip.
 
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