MorphOS : PowerMac G5 Port Update

[takemehomegrandma]

There is an update from Piru regarding the benchmarks, including numbers from a 2.5GHz G5 system!

Benchmarks were updated again. After some tweaking 2.0GHz G5 lame is now 2secs faster (using the latest lame version with altivec patch and built for G5 specifically).

Also, the graphs now include 2.5GHz G5 results from my Power Mac G5. 9 seconds for lame, 39.9 seconds for mplayer.

http://sintonen.fi/pics/lame_benchmark.png
http://sintonen.fi/pics/mplayer_benchmark.png

Wow, the 2.5GHz G5 is TWICE(!) as fast as the X1000 in the lame test, and ~75% faster in decoding the H.264 full HD movie! :banana:

And it's not even the fastest G5 either...

It has been said before, but should be said again — The MorphOS Team for sure made the right decision when going for those cheap, widely available second hand Mac machines.

That was clearly the winning move!

[takemehomegrandma]

The only faster one for single-processor use is the 2.7, which isn't that much difference.

That 8% extra in clock frequency could push the lame benchmark not too far off of 8s though (with a little creative rounding)... :p

But more seriously: It is the fastest PPC desktop system ever built AFAIK. The champion of the class. It represents the peak of the PPC desktop era, how far the PPC platform ever reached in a desktop context. I hope MorphOS will run on it, as some kind of statement if for no other reason (like putting a flag on the moon or something).

(And soon it's about to be beaten by ARM )

[takemehomegrandma]

Sick of Mac talk.. Macs are only good for the following

http://www.newlaunches.com/entry_images/1007/04/mac2_couch.jpg

Too bad for you then, since the PPC Mac HW is the cheapest and most powerful PPC mainstream hardware suitable for OS's tied to the PPC platform, like MorphOS and OS4 both are, and it comes in all kinds of shapes and forms; tiny footprint by the Mac Mini, big box by the Power Mac, true laptop by the PowerBook (and soon iBook as well). They are the only viable options, they are simply the best. But again - this is only relevant to anyone interested in OS's tied to PPC of course...

[takemehomegrandma]

2 bad my NVidia based Macs are not supported.

If the model per se is supported and it only comes down to some unsupported nVidia graphic card, then it can easily be replaced with a supported card. Cheap, and not particularly troublesome by any means.

If multicore support is ever implemented in Amiga world things would start to be interesting.

Multicore is irrelevant to anything Amiga, true SMP simply can't be achieved without breaking the Amiga compatibility. And if that's what you want to do — break the "Amiga" to introduce new, modern features like SMP, true memory protection, 64-bit etc, etc — then why bother with PPC at all? Wouldn't it be better to go x86 or ARM then, migrating to some platform that still has a pulse?

:confused:

[takemehomegrandma]

There are various macs with nvidia video that cannot be replaced.

...and those are obviously macs that per se isn't supported!

Multicore wouldn't really help the LAME benchmarks, but it would be useful in video encoding/transcoding and 3D rendering (i.e. fancy raytraced amiga balls).

I'd like to point out, too, that classic MacOS supported multiple CPUs in that it allowed specific applications to take advantage of them.  Some of the old dual and quad PPC 603 systems had photoshop plugins that allowed photoshop to use multiple CPUs.  The OS itself wasn't MP-aware and didn't do squat with the extra CPUs.  Here's an example:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1028

I'm just thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have Blender or Lightwave or whatever take advantage of multiple CPUs?  Leave the rest of the OS and games and applications as they are.  And classic MacOS did that without true memory protection, without 64-bit, and even without being a stable OS!  

I'm not saying it's a must-have ability in MorphOS or AmigaOS 4.x or anything like that, but I think there are solutions that won't break existing things and there are benefits for multiple CPUs on a computing platform that's supposed to have a multimedia focus.

PowerUP all over again. Amiga did that in 1997 already, and this is very far from being as useful as SMP. Over at AW.net some are dreaming (they are always dreaming there, aren't they, always *waiting* for something) of telecom/network infrastructure CPU's like T4240, 1.8GHz with 12(!) dual threaded cores, which would of course be terribly unsuitable and an awful waste of resources with a aingle core OS doing it the PowerUP way. And if you are to break the Amiga compatibility anyway (hence starting over with a clean slate) in order to achieve modern features in the OS, like the true SMP that would be required to make real use of multiple cores, then why on earth would you use these kind of PPC CPU's instead of using proper mainstream desktop CPU's...?

:confused:

[takemehomegrandma]

Wow, the 2.5GHz G5 is TWICE(!) as fast as the X1000 in the lame test

Correction: Make that THREE TIMES as fast!

Holy Crap Batman! :crazy:

[takemehomegrandma]

If you compare the ghz instead of the the fastest G5, the Amiga One is only 4 seconds slower.

What do you mean?

:confused:

[takemehomegrandma]

@Duce

What's really funny is how some (always the same it seems) people so predictably gets upset as soon as something like this is being compared, and can't restrain themselves from moaning about it. Comparisons are good things, not bad, it helps shedding light about different options, it brings enlightenment, even with isolated and "synthetic" benchmarks it helps bringing a picture about how different options relates to each other in a bang for buck context:

• IIRC, a X1000 system did cost $3,000+
• A second hand PowerMac G5 2.5 GHz costs 1/10th of that (or much less even) and shows THREE TIMES the performance in the lame test.

Updated graph

Higher performance = better.
Lower price = better.
Those two combined = the best.

(And this without even touching the benefits of MorphOS in favor of OS4)

[takemehomegrandma]

@Duce

no one in their right mind is going out to buy 150 used PPC Mac's or X1000 machines to set up a render farm.

Which, of course, nobody claimed either! :confused:

But as long as PPC is the common denominator it is interesting to compare the available options (though "availability" regarding the X1000 was always a matter of "creative definition", even before it was "discontinued"), and computing power is interesting in more contexts than render farms, like for instance normal every-day use when browsing heavy web pages or watching modern x.264 video streams. Ask a Sam (440/460) user how fun it is browsing the web using their precious "Timberwolf" (based on the bloatware Firefox). They would say it's not even usable. A X1000 user would perhaps say usable, but would probably still prefer Odyssey nevertheless. A Sam 440 with OS4 can't play normal DVD resolution MPEG-2 streams AFAIK (at least not the lower end ones), A Sam 460 might, at least with a graphics card that supports proper overlay. A fast Mac G4 with MorphOS can play 720p x.264 HD streams, and a G5 will play 1080p streams.

We aren't talking about render farms here, but simply CPU resources needed to achieve the normal, everyday computing use of today. These comparison charts is directly relevant for this, and when you also factor in the price tags (and availability) of the various options, the picture becomes clear.

[takemehomegrandma]

If you're going to compare a MOS G5 machine with an AOS 4 X1000 you should also compare it with AROS

Why? The PPC is clearly the common denominator here, and what is being the topic of the thread, everyone knows that x86 (and ARM as well for that matter) is better off than PPC, but how does that matter for MorphOS and OS4? It's a comparison between what's available for MorphOS and OS4, about the PPC options these teams has chosen (besides, AROS already runs on the Sam 460, so so in a way AROS is included in the discussion (and in a way raising the question why AROS only runs on the slowest/least usable option)).