Intel Mac comes very poor second to PPC

[blakespot]

billt wrote:
The first Intel Macs aren't as fast as the last PowerPC macs. Didn't people complain about the same thing back during the 68K->PPC switch? Did they fall apart because of transistion the first time?

The Intel Mac are rather fast actually.  G4 apps running under Rosetta on the new iMac Core Duos are generally FASTER than running native on G4 Macs.  (Complex 3D games a notable exception.)

http://www.maconintel.com/news.php?article=112

My 2.0GHz MacBook Pro (Core Duo) feels almost as fast as my dual G5 2.5 Power Mac.  Good stuff.




bp

[blakespot]

bloodline wrote:

The Price increase of the Mini is a bit hard to swallow... but it does have a better feature set than the G4 machine it replaces (more RAM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Digital Audio, more USB...). for it to be really attractive to me, It would have to be under the £300 mark... then I'd be a Mac Mini owner :-)

The graphics are better too.  OpenGL is over twice as fast with the new (yes, integrated) Intel GMA950 vs. the previous G4 mini, running Xbench - a Universal (PPC / Intel native) application.  It supports Core Image, too, unlike the Radeon 9200-based mini chipset of yore.

More here:

http://www.maconintel.com/news.php?article=140




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[blakespot]

Tomas wrote:

Ever used OS X? And I don't mean clicking around the screen for 5 minutes at your local Apple dealer. Because IMHO, it's the closest to a modern Amiga you're ever going to get.

I dont think it does... Both BeOS and QNX came closer then...

OSX is pretty damn resource hungry compared to AmigaOS and crawls even on current hardware.

Crawls even on current hardware?  Come try it on my dual G5 2.5, MacBook Pro, or G5 Mac mini.  Extremely responsive.  




bp

[blakespot]

Indeed, I wondered what kind of dilemma the Mac mini would put people saving $$ for a near $1000 PPC "Amiga" board.  For $499 you could get a 1.25GHz G4 with OS X.  Quite a complete OS and decent hardware.  Did many jump to OS X?

The current Intel mini's are $100/$200 more, but offer 4x the CPU power, or so.  Still an interesting situation.




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[blakespot]

Listen to bloodline.  Kathyone has no idea what she/he is talking about.

For a good history of NEXTSTEP/OpenStep to OS X, see this wonderful piece:

http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/index.html


I have long been a NeXT fan.  I ran NEXTSTEP for Intel v3.2 back in 1994 on my 486 66 - a powerful machine then.  Finally acquired my own NeXTStation and a HP to run NEXTSTEP.


NEXTSTEP was years ahead of its time, both as a user friendly, *NIX OS and also as a development platform.  Hell, the developer tools that can be found on a 1989-era NeXT box are ahead of most traditional development platforms today.  Mac OS X, an evolution of NEXTSTEP, is a notable exception, of course.

I am a big Amiga fan.  I've had many Amigas and currently enjoy my Amiga 2000 and Amiga 1200 060.  But I must say, there is no operating system I am aware of that combines power, stability, ease of use, and application range that OS X does.

(Not to say that I don't spend plenty of time with the old guys....)  

And I am also happy to say that my new 2.0GHz MacBook Pro feels about as fast as my dual G5 2.5GHz tower (note the top-left logo in the picture on the wall in that pic...).  With this move, Apple really has a chance to double its market share, or better.

Laptops are Apple's biggest Mac sellers.  Look - now we have a dual core laptop.  Many times faster than the G4 it replaced.  How is this not all good?  And don't lament Rosetta for legacy apps during the transition - I can play a smooth game of HALO under Rosetta on that laptop!  

I run a website concerning the switch, have a look:

http://www.maconintel.com




blakespot

[blakespot]

Kathyone wrote:
The PPC will triumph.

Where?  Macs no longer use them.  I know the fastest Amigas have PPC accelerators, but I don't think that's going to turn the world around to embrace the PPC for desktop computing.  

It's used all over the place in embedded applications.  In that capacity, it has triumphed.  

Is that what you meant?



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[blakespot]

Kathyone wrote:
The xbox 360 is a 970 or g5 core based design. With 3 cores.
Enuff said.

I love my liqiud-cooled, dual G5 2.5GHz Power Mac.  Don't get me wrong.  However, if Sony or Microsoft went with a modern Pentium, their new consoles would have much more horesepower.

See this article: "Why not the Cell?" Here's why....

From the piece - an AnandTech quote:

In the end, you get what you pay for, and with such a small core, it's no surprise that performance isn't anywhere near the Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 class. The Cell processor doesn't get off the hook just because it only uses a single one of these horribly slow cores; the SPE array ends up being fairly useless in the majority of situations, making it little more than a waste of die space.

The most ironic bit of it all is that according to developers, if either manufacturer (Sony or Microsoft) had decided to use an Athlon 64 or a Pentium D in their next-gen console, they would be significantly ahead of the competition in terms of CPU performance.

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[blakespot]

Hyperspeed wrote:
What happened to the other 68k machines like the Ataris and Acorns? From what I remember the Acorns went PPC too and an old Amiga company was selling the boards...

Did the Hitachi SH.x range of CPUs ever get used in the computing market?

Acorn went ARM.  StrongARM in the high end.  RISC.



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