X1000 benchmarks

[Karlos]

I'm waiting for Linux benchmarks coming from the A1X1K.  Say running BF2 via WINE should do a nice stress test. Or would that be too much for the PA6T to even attempt?

:roflmao:  Wine? On linux PPC? QEmu, perhaps. Wine Is Not an Emulator.

[Karlos]

In all seriousness you don't really think people would spend all that money just to emulate Windoes do you? What a waste. Please, get that Windoes **** off here :rant:

Well, the benchmark discussions are pretty interesting. On the one hand, you have people pointing out that G4 class macs are at least as powerful (on the basis of tests so far) and others concluding that due to this, the X1000 is clearly a failure.

Label me a red-camp fanboy for saying this if you must, but I'm not sure I see it that way. Sure, it's an expensive system, no argument. If you consider it to be an over-priced yesterday's news machine, then don't buy it. You can pick up cheap PC kit and pay nothing for a high-quality, robust OS, like linux. Simple, really.

However, it's also a new system, designed and built from scratch that was (by those slamming it now) dismissed as pure vapour since the day it was announced. Now it's here and based on some quick benchmarks we can see that it's on par with old apple hardware and apparently that's really bad. Personally, I disagree. For such a project, going from "sheer vapourware that'll never appear" to "at least as good as Apple's G4-class PPC" is a pretty decent result. Something about saying that seems like deja vu. Weird.

I'm also not convinced we've really seen what the hardware is capable of yet. We know that OS4 certainly isn't making the most of it right now, being restricted to 32-bit operation on a single core. Even 64-bit PPC linux will have limitations if you use a modern graphics card with it as you are unlikely to get a vendor-supplied driver for PPC (unlike OSX) and will have to rely on whatever open source alternatives there are.

[Karlos]

You red-camp fanboy! I hope that curry does the flaming sword dance in your lower intestine!  

How did you know I had curry today? :lol:

-edit-

Sometimes I wonder what the deal with the ongoing camp arguments is. IMHO, people genuinely interested in getting an X1000 aren't going to be swayed by any of these benchmarks. If price/performance was your main motivator for your choice of "next gen" Amiga, you'd opt for AROS, end of story. There's absolutely no way you can compete with "costs nothing" running on commodity hardware that's faster than anything the combined purples can come up with. The traditional "blue" argument against it used to be that AROS is woefully far behind, but that's simply not true any more. In fact, it's OS4 and MOS that are lagging behind AROS in some areas now (3D springs to mind immediately).

I struggle to see that there are really any "would-be NG" Amiga users left these days that aren't fully aware of the main options on the table and what they each offer. We're not arguing to convince them. We're just doing it because we can

[Karlos]

The owls are not what they seem!

:lol:

There's a fake plastic one on the roof of a building opposite the office where I work. I thought it was to scare off feral pigeons. You can imagine my amusement when I noticed today that it's rather caked in bird crap. As if feral Manchester pigeons have ever seen an owl.

Nah, you mentioned it in another post. Man, now I want some curry!

Oh yeah, forgot about that. I had lamb too, albeit not the kind I mentioned (which was actually a clue to the thread tag thing). It was good stuff though

[Karlos]

apart from multicore support i dont see how 64bit operation would speed up anything. in fact my 64bit version of lightwave9 was marhinally slower than a 32bit on my then 64bit capable system. 64bit operation enabled amounts of memory are anyway marginally useful under amiga-like applications. so thats imho not a point.

That depends. I do have 32-bit compiled code for my Core2 that's faster than the same code compiled 64-bit native (as well as the sort of contrary examples I was expecting). However, as mentioned above by bbond007, whether any given system is faster or not in 64-bit mode ultimately comes down to how that chip is implemented and what features may or may not be available in a given operation mode. On thing 32-bit has going for it over 64-it generally is that pointers take up half the memory and thus half the amount of cache. That could make a difference to the performance of various inner loops of code where lots of pointer operations are used.

[Karlos]

Is X1000 sold at 3000$ your strategy to compete against AROS? :-)

It's not my strategy for anything. The whole reason this point has come up is the reiteration of the point that MOS runs on much cheaper hardware that so far seems to turn in equally good performance and that this is some sort of decisive factor in the X1000 being a failure; "I could buy 10 macs for that price and they'd each be as fast" may be a valid observation, but *if* performance versus cost was your only motivation you'd use AROS.

Neither OS4 or MOS can hold a candle to AROS on that front. It's free and it runs on commodity hardware as cheap or as expensive as you care to obtain. That's always been the case, but as you point out above, "red camp" trolls were always quick to point out that it lacked official sanction and that PPC was teh 1 true successor and so on. Likewise, despite your pleas to the contrary, "blue camp" trolls were always keen to point out that AROS was basically a hobby project not-quite-going-anywhere and certainly light years behind the level of maturity and compatibility of MOS and is thus not a serious option for the discerning Amiga users. I find it really hard to believe you've never come across the latter sentiment in your forum travels.

This X1000 project has big "dead end" written in the wall. The computer built in 2012 and sold at $3000 is only marginally better than used Macs from yesteryears.

As I said, considering many were insistent it would never arrive at any price, the fact it exists at all and is at least as good as a commercial machine that basically help put apple back on the map is quite an achievement, IMHO. It may very well be the last PPC desktop machine ever built, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it was realized.

It is time to admit PPC is finished. And when you have done that start enjoying old Macs, old Amigas, old/new AmigaOnes, SAMs, or whatever, again. The train is still here. There just aren't tracks anymore.

Erm, I currently have 2 PPC machines. One is a BlizzardPPC the other an A1. I'm not under any illusions about where they sit

Hmm... I think you are confused. MorphOS never had problem with AROS and they have shared their work in the past.

Not at all. The exchange of code between developers of the two has never had any bearing on the opinions of camp trolls. This just about summed it up perfectly: http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=3377

It is just that AROS not having binary compatibility and not so developed it has been dismissed by both MorphOS and OS4 users.

AROS has 68K binary compatibility. Janus UAE running in "coherence" mode has been around for a little while now. You may have to set it up initially (I had to, but I haven't tried more recent releases), but what do you want for free?

[Karlos]

@Karlos

You have good points there.

Thanks. It can be hard work trying to remain impartial, the old "red v blue" stuff is so tiring after all these years.

However, it has to be pointed out that the obviously incorrect initial benchmark results were readily accepted as facts by many. This I believe shows the amount of unrealistic expectations some might have had of X1000.

That's true too. I've mostly adopted a "wait and see" approach to this whole thing. Some people have assumed the PA6T is necessarily a G5 slayer and thus ready to stomp all other PPC machines, without considering that the PA6T was designed for a different market. Where it probably will smash the G5 is in performance per watt, but all considered, that's not saying much.

One thing that has come out of this, at least for me, is the realisation that the old PPC machines perhaps aren't quite as slothful for everyday use as many assume. At least if the lame benchmarks were any indication of single core performance.

[Karlos]

But you work for Hyperion to improve OS4, don't you?

That depends on how you define work. Work usually implies some sort of formal working contract and regular/pre-arranged payment. On that basis, no, I don't work for Hyperion*. I have, however, volunteered time to work on areas of OS4, principally for the classic version. And yes, that requires me to delve into the OS code here and there and so yes, I have an NDA.

I'll continue to work on it too, at least as long as I have a working machine. I'd like to do more, but my day job and other responsibilities keep me occupied.

*I suppose obtaining the latest classic release as well as a fully working BVision to replace my malfunctioning  one could be considered payment, but I see those as the minimum necessary tools for the task at hand.

[Karlos]

I can't say that I agree with that.
Anything that helps performance is useful.

I think what he meant was that even interpretive emulation on 1+ GHz class machines is usually more than capable of running 68K code faster than any real 68K used in an Amiga. However, JIT is always nice to have regardless and becomes essential on slower host systems. I don't think 68K emulation on OS4.1 classic would be much fun on my 603 sans JIT.