Steve Jobs: G4 is slower than Intel CPUs

[Karlos]

Slower or not, lets just see OS4 and MOS running on 933MHz G4 systems and sit them side by side with XP or 2003 on the fastest x86 you can find...

Obviously for processor intensive work there's no contest but I've seen my OS3.5 on my 040 be more responsive than my friends AlthonXP 2800 many occasions :-)

[Karlos]

Hammer wrote:

Karlos wrote:
Slower or not, lets just see OS4 and MOS running on 933MHz G4 systems and sit them side by side with XP or 2003 on the fastest x86 you can find...

Obviously for processor intensive work there's no contest but I've seen my OS3.5 on my 040 be more responsive than my friends AlthonXP 2800 many occasions :-)

Overall (WindowsXP/2003) speed is dependant on surrounding installed components i.e.
1. The amount of installed ram (important for XP/2k3).
2. Installed video card (and drivers).
3. Motherboard chipset.
4. Windows’s available free physical memory.
5. Boot'vis application.
6. the type of hard disk installed.

I run, Athlon XP @ 2.2Ghz/Geforce 4600 TI/nForce II 400 Ultra/1Gb PC3200 DDR SDRAM (dual channel)/2x 80Gb 7200RPM UDMA IDE RAID (boot drive). It’s faster than my old A3000/040@25Mhz (no gfx card).
Such a hardware setup should fly with AROS i.e. PC world’s brute force method with near Amiga like OS efficiencies.

With ‘1Gb PC3200 DDR SDRAM’, it reduces the WindowXP’s use of the slower virtual memory. RAID IDE setup accelerates disk access.

So you need all that hardware acceleration to make your windows box snappier than an 040 powered no-graphics-card amiga 3000 eh?

My point was, a friend has a 'half decent' AthlonXP 2800 400MHz FSB, Asus A7V8X-X mobo, 768M DDR400, 128M Radeon 9800 and ATA133 120G drive. It's a nice setup.

However, running Win2K, XP or 2003 (uninstalled after virtually nothing worked :lol: ) there were times when simply bringing up a popup menu caused a delay of a couple of seconds. For the power and acceleration available I'd expect a lot better.

My 64M BlizzPPC 040 with BVision gfx card, a combination with a tiny fraction of the raw hardware power he has at his disposal never behaves like this, the worst I get is being able to physically notice the draw sometimes ie an area full of icons is noticable when closing a window that had been over them...

This quite nicely demonstrates that even with hardware acceleration to crutch it up, windows is just too far gone - I don't care how fast PC hardware gets, youll never feel the benefit in the windows UI (unless they completely re write it from scratch).

If an ageing 68K system with a third rate graphics card (the hardware features of which are totally under utilized by the RTG software as it is) can have a more responsive UI, what does that say for MOS, OS4 and as you point out, AROS?

[Karlos]

Druideck wrote:
@Karlos
Quote:
Amiga improves measurably with faster hardware.

Amen! The switch from 1200 020@14MHz 2Mb to 040@25MHz with 16Mb fast ram (my first accelerator) was a real eye opener.

Moving to the BlizzPPC later, with the same power 040 was no big deal, although PPC datatypes and PPC optimised apps gave a similar kick. Man, I do regret not saving up more and going for the 060 combo but it was insanely expensive back then (I have the 603e+ 240Mhz with SCSI)...

Getting the graphics card to replace the native chipset was to everyday workbench use what the first 040 I got was to applications...

Conversely, my experience of windows usage is that it itself (not applications in particular) always feels lazy and sluggish no matter what you stick under the bonnet.

[Karlos]

This is the bit I don't get. Just because the G4 has been outpaced by x86, some people seem to be complaining and making out like it's crap all of a sudden :roll:

Hell, I wouldn't mind a G4 A1XE as an upgrade :-)