Intel Mac comes very poor second to PPC

[Waccoon]

Beller:   I did an in-store comparison of the iMac G4 and the iMac intel. The iNtel (new official Apple spelling) Mac was much faster running the native iPhoto and had the same photo libraries. There really was no comparison...it smoked the PPC with similar specs.

People need to keep in mind that the CPU alone isn't the only issue.  Like them or not, Intel still makes the finest chipsets in the world, and that is often the bottleneck in a PC.  Even notice how slow a budget 3GHZ PC feels?  Yeah, the CPU is fine, but those VIA/Ali chipsets suck.  Intel chips don't siphon everything off the PCI bus.

Amigans should've kept this in mind before bounding towards PPC and keeping their hopes up for Cell.  A rotten chipset brings the most powerful CPU to a screeching halt, and ArticaS was hardly decent even by PPC standards.  PPC isn't likely to get any good chipsets anymore, and Cell almost certainly will not.

I'm glad Apple went to x86, but I'm really disappointed that they're still using native code when they could've done what Amiga Inc wanted to do:  VP code.  Not a lot of stuff really needs native code these days, especially when it comes to GUI code, which means almost everything on a Mac.  Then again, Mac Java is the biggest pile of filth I've ever been forced to use.  It is SOOOOOOOOO damn slow.  Maybe using VP code isn't what Apple should be doing, after all.

I'm also glad Intel has put serious effort into making their CPUs cooler -- it's about damn time!  Of course, I still prefer AMD.  I'd love to see Athlon64/nForce4 in an Amiga.  I'd buy it instantly.

[Waccoon]

Hyperspeed:  Yes, that's right - a 2MB Intel graphics chipset. It can barely do 800x600 without flickering.

OK, OK, I conceed that their graphics sucks.

Hyperspeed:  Personally I was delighted when Apple announced the Dual-G5 was the World's most powerful computer.

Hard to vailidate, given that there were plenty of dual-CPU x86 solutions available at the time.  Of course, whether a computer is defined as a "PC" or a "Workstation" is just as fuzzy.

That dual G5 cost as much as a good x86 server, too -- with liquid cooling to boot.  ;-)

Hyperspeed:  Innovative things like the Transmeta Crusoe couldn't compete, it was Intel this, AMD that.

Duh.  Crusoe was slow.  x86 chips at Crusoe speeds don't make a lot of heat.  People don't seem to realize that the releationship between performance and heat is exponential.  If you pull back performance a little bit, heat goes down a lot, thus, low-end PPC chips run cool compared to scorching-hot x86 chips, and haphazardly overclocked G5 processors in high-end Macs need liquid cooling compared to one of the new x86 mobile processors.

It's not about technilogical supiriority.  It's about what the customer wants.  If people are willing to put up with heat to get killer performance, that's what they get.  Crusoe aimed for a niche market and just didn't strike it big.  Now that heat is a major problem in portable computers, the big dogs are changing their priorities.

Crusoe was a good idea that didn't perform well in real-world situations, and probably got its inspiration from the FPU bug in the Pentium ("fix it in software").  Sony thought the Cell would be a kickass general-purpose chip that would allow them complete independence from any graphics partners.  But, when they realized a dedicated GPU still does the job better, they changed their plans.  No, they're not using four Cell processors in the PS3, they're using a CPU with muticored DSPs.  Gee wiz.  It's almost a throwback to the times when we had to buy FPUs seperately.  These days, we call then "PPUs", or physics processors.  :-)

Hyperspeed:  For God's sake people. Buy something interesting. It's like everyone in the world buying a Mercedes when we could be driving minis, Smart cars, scooters, Quads and stuff.

I'd take this over a motorcycle, anyday.  God, I wish the US government would stop pushing SUVs up our butts.

Hyperspeed:  We have to double our CPU power every 18 months! So what if we wanted to triple it... would Intel break their own Daddy's "Law"?

GPUs were doing that for a while.  Of course, they're highly vectorized processors and generate about as much heat as a CPU, these days.  Also, once people realized that a dedicated coproccessor could do a better job than a CPU (imagine that!), the market grew REAL fast.  I'm sure Intel didn't see 3DFX coming at all while they were spending several years developing MMX.

When there's a sudden burst of innovation, usually it's because what we're using now isn't that good.  Hence, my belief that if PPC is sooooooo technologicly supirior to x86, why don't PPC chips run circles around x86, instead of just keep-up?

Bloodline:  I really don't think VP code is a good idea... Also Java is MUCH faster on the Core Duo than on the PPC, there have been quite a few threads about it on the Mac forums.

Why not VP?  It's stupid for time-critical code, but would be great for GUI stuff instead of using interpreted languages like Perl.  Also, Virtual Processing is a bit different than a Virtual Machine, like Java.  I do not see VP as a way of making things more portable.  Write-Once, Run-Everywhere is a pipe dream when everyone wants their hardware to stand out.  Coding for the lowest common denominator is dumb.

If there's one thing I've learned as a web programmer, is that things are portable because the developers are familiar with each platform they want to support, and WANT to support them all.  If a developer doesn't give a damn about a platform, their code not going to work on it.  Period.

I see using VP with native low-level code sort of like using a CISC front-end on a RISC core.  It has its uses, so long as it's not abused.

I also find it funny that Java would run faster on an x86 given that it, technically, is big-endian native.

Bloodline:  Apple had no choice...IBM weren't serious about pushing the 970 against the Athlon and P4.

Yeah, with the console market sewn-up, they have no reason to dabble with desktop computers, anymore.  And since consoles and purpose-build devices don't need robust chipsets with lots of expandability, I don't think Cell et al are going to have any place in the desktop market.  A CPU is no good without a decent chipset, no matter how much vector "supercomputer" power it has.

[Waccoon]

Uncharted:  I distinctly remember going into HMV and seeing that game that was the first to take advantage of MMX, that really crap racing game, can't remember it's name though. That must of been nearly 9 years ago. Man, i'm getting old

P.O.D., I believe.

Hyperspeed:  Could someone tell me what the hell makes a Mac?

The pretty packaging.  It really bugs me that iMacs still don't have any real expandability, but Apple is a hardware company, so of course they encourage people to throw their old machines to get brand new ones.  I was Amazed that Apple finally released a budget machine without a Mandatory Display Attached(TM).

Hyperspeed:  Someone enlighten me what makes OSX special and why everyone is ecstatic about iBooks...

I don't understand the iBook thing.  I've used plenty of good PC laptops, though they're usually all black.  iBooks do at least look better.

The thing I like about OSX is that it has a lot more tools built-in than a Windows machine.  Windows doesn't come with anything, really.  Of course, OSX weighs in at over 12GB, and sucks up a hell of a lot more memory than WindowsXP, which I didn't think was possible.

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

QNX?  Absolutely.  I was so mad when QNX got turned down as the foundation of the new Amiga.

I didn't think BeOS was all that interesting, and I hated the toolbar and context menus.

Tomas:  As for OS X being a resource hog and bringing modern systems to a crawl, I'm yet to see my G4 Mac mini grind to a crawl, or my kids eMac, or hang on, how about the 6 year old G4 PowerMac at work. Nope, they all run very well.

My mini was a snail with 256MB of memory.  I put 1GB into it and it's a whole new computer.  Apple is famous for mis-matching hardware in ways that makes any experienced PC builder cringe.  Funny how they'd happily applaud the mini with the faster CPU, but still give you 256MB of memory.  Though the price is now rediculous thanks to the system's popularity, at least the new minis have more memory.

I wouldn't say OSX is responsive, though.  I still get the pinwheel cursor far too often and OSX has a nasty habit of thinking for a long time before putting a window or something on the screen.  Just because something bounces on the dock doesn't mean the OS is giving appropriate feedback as to what's going on.

My Win2000 system likes to think every now and then, but since I keep it clean of spam, it boots in 20 seconds and windows pop-up like lightning -- far faster than my mini...  and that's with Apache and MySQL in the background.

They're both good OSes.  I prefer OSX technology, but I think Windows still feels much better.  The OS doesn't try to put all my files into places where I don't want them.

Bloodline:  The File system is much better than FAT32... and bit better than NTFS, with a cool resource fork feature, based and around special directories called bundles. This feature allows drag and drop installation, as we are used to with AmigaOS.

Bundles rock.  I've been wanting that for Windows for years, although integrated ZIP files are about the only thing Microsoft seems interested in offering, and not very well, either.  I still prefer WinZIP.

Still, I do miss having the quickstart links like on my Windows machine.  On the dock, everything is the same size, and it's hard to tell applications from folders.  I tend to move files around a lot and the new Finder has its issues if you want lots of folders open at once.  Though different from Windows, OSX is still very much an application-centric system, rather than document-centric.  Apple's obsession with brand-awareness ensures that, unfortunately.

[Waccoon]

Bloodline:  That's a good point! One thing I couldn't get to grips with when I first used Windows98 (The first version of Windows I owned) was the document centric approach... I've since become very accustomed to it, by using Windows for the last 5 years.

The hardest thing about going back to my 1200 is having to change Default Tools all the time when I download new software.  It's especially painful if something is a Tool instead of a Document, as double-clicking doesn't allow me to type in an app to use.  That annoyed the hell out of me even when I got my A1000.  The old Macs had the same problem, and Macs also wouldn't even ask what app you wanted to use to open the file.  Given that people insist on putting file extentions before the filenames (especially "mod"), this really shows how app-central the Amiga was in its day.  What's more important: the fact that the file is music, or that it's made in SoundTracker?  Many people still sort their music by filetype, than by genre.  What happens if you get a few OGG files?

I also hate tabbed browsing, for many of the same reasons.  I have a multimedia keyboard with keys mapped to Back/Forward/Close/Undo/Redo, and these keys make it ten times easier to control my browser than using the mouse to click tabs.  When a browser opens new tabs in the same window, I have a tendency to close the browser, and thus lose all my websites in one go, with no way to get them all back.  Of course, this also brings up the issue of persistence, which is really getting off topic.  :-)

It's a sticky situation, though, as power users tend to be app-centric, and normal people are document centric.  Which system does an OS support?  Finding a good balance is difficult.  Most OSes, including Windows, Amiga, and MacOS, don't really get it right, despite the patriotism expressed by each platforms' fans.

Agafaster:  actually, your statement is doubly incorrect: Amiga was invented before Commodore got their grubby paws on it.

Yeah, but OS2 was a hell of an improvement over OS1.x.  I'm shocked looking back on how I used my A1000, and that I actually managed to get anything done at all.  I was so mad when I found OS2 wouldn't run on my A1000, and I couldn't afford to get a 500 with a new ROM.  The 1200 was a brilliant upgrade in terms of usability, even though AGA was a huge disappointment.

Of course, to me, Workbench is the Amiga.  From a high-level view, not being a serious coder at the time, the Amiga's hardware features didn't really seem to set it far apart from other machines in terms of games (yes, really).  PC games were slower, less smooth, and sometimes uglier, but they played much the same way.  The desktop, on the other hand, was simply amazing.  MS-DOS and Win3.1 couldn't touch it.  That's why I want Amiga on x86 so bad, and want it based on practically any modern UNIX-like OS.  I just want a new Workbench.  That's my fondest memory.

But then, I want to be an interface designer.  So long as it handles vector graphics, hardware doesn't really involve me.  I care little about what's under the hood.

Uncharted:  Typing this on an old eMac 700MHz G4 with only 256MB, and it's running absolutely fine with 6 apps open. I'm not having any performance issues.

It's possible OSX scales back automatically for older Macs.  My mini was a performance slug before I put in more memory, even for simple things like e-mail.  I had to wait minutes for the OS9 version of Graphing Calculator to start!  I hear, though, that 10.4 is much, much more resource hungry than 10.3.  My mini came with 10.4.

The mini is also the first real Mac I've used since my OS8/G3 days, so I can't comment on older versions of OSX.  When I got it with the stock memory, though, the mini seemed a hell of a lot slower than OS8 on the old G3.  OSX can be a real memory hog at times.

[Waccoon]

That explains it!! Yeah if you run classic programs in MacOS X, you have to wait for OS9 to boot up and then run inside an OSX task... No wonder it worked better when you put more ram in it... you were running two OSes at the same time.

I should point out that with 1GB of memory, it starts in about 3 seconds.

Viola.

At the same clock speed it will annhilate the intel chip.

So will other x86 chips.

ppc 64 is better than intel.

So?  x86 is widely available and easily holds its own against the best PPC chips available at the same cost.  One thing Amigans still haven't learned yet is that the supiriority of an architecture is irrelevant if it isn't practical.  I don't care about the technical supiriority of a particular chip if I have to pay $800 for an obsolete motherboard, with the constant concern if a next-gen chip or motherboard is even going to be made.  Ah, the old Beta vs VHS arguement surfaces again.  We should all jump off cliffs, right?

There's a ton of reasons why Apple went to x86, and the future of desktop PPC processors is very questionable.  That's not supiriority.

The athlon runs hot. The core duo is the only energy efficent chip they have. The freescale chip is very thermally sound.

x86 runs hot because that's what the market demands.  Performance vs power consumtion is logarithmic, so to get a small boost in performance, you need to pump in lots of power.  Macs had PowerPC chips for years that had heatsinks large enough to smother a forrest fire, and they still burned your fingers.  Ramp up the speed of a PPC chip, and it'll pump out lots of heat, too.

Funny how when people applaud PPC, they always compare something like a Prescott to an embedded Freescale chip.  Those processors are for different markets, people.  PowerPC chips run pretty damn hot, too, once you really push them.  XBox 360, anyone?

OS4 and other Microkernal based preemptive multitasking cores like qnx are superior.

Microkernal design isn't really supirior.  There are lots of reasons why most OSes don't use them.  Low-level interface complexity comes to mind.

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

Cell is a bunch of DSPs attached to a single core CPU.  It's good for programmable DSP stuff and not much else.  Scalar performace isn't very good at all.

Don't dare say that on a gaming forum, though.  ;-)

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

They were used in CGI renderfarms a lot, though these days x86 dominates that field.