Sam460 V Mac Mini G41.5

[Spectre660]

It will be interesting to see what graphics and video performance  will be achieved on Sam460 machines with MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.1 with Warp3d and the new RadeonHD v2.4 driver and AmigaOS 4.2 .

The Mac Mini is at least 2x as fast, probably more in some circumstances. This becomes very obvious when for example watching videos (under MorphOS the Mini can play most x.264 720p streams without frame skipping) and browsing websites of the heavier kind. MorphOS has pretty solid support for the Mac Mini HW, the GFX is for example completely supported (2D + 3D acceleration, Overlay), even the Airport Extreme WiFi card (if present) is supported.

The Mac Mini is a very cool little machine. It's compact and powerful - in PPC terms of course (which honestly is quite weak by today's standards, but then again, the Sam460 is less than half as powerful, so...)

MorphOS is by far the best Amiga NG OS in existence; compared to OS4 (I have both) it has more features, it has better features, it has all the best Amiga standards built in (like Poseidon, CGX, etc, etc), it has better Amiga compatibility, it supports a lot more HW (both in terms of systems and peripheral HW), yet it costs a lot less, and it even comes with a 30 minutes unlimited "try before you buy" demo mode.

To me it's a no-brainer, go for the Mac Mini (if you can find the 1.5/64MB VRAM model). Or why not a laptop? MorphOS supports plenty of models! But if you still want to go the Sam460 route, then you will probably be pleased to know that MorphOS will soon support that HW as well, perhaps already in the next release even...

Happy Hunting!

[itix]

64MB is enough for full HD screens and graphics will be faster on G4 thanks to faster CPU and AltiVec.

[Spectre660]

Anyone want to do a mplayer  benchmark using the following video ?
http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/Mplayer/Superman.flv

mplayer -quiet -nosound -benchmark Superman.flv

BENCHMARKs: VC: 28.429s VO: 10.055s A: 0.000s Sys: 0.529s = 39.013s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 72.8722% VO: 25.7731% A: 0.0000% Sys: 1.3547% = 100.0000%

Sam460ex results from
http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewtopic.php?post_id=91172#forumpost91172

[pVC]

With my Mac mini 1.5GHz (I didn't shut down any programs, I had browser, amircs etc running):

BENCHMARKs: VC:  10.910s VO:   2.542s A:   0.000s Sys:   0.354s =   13.806s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 79.0239% VO: 18.4125% A:  0.0000% Sys:  2.5636% = 100.0000%

[Spectre660]

2.83 times faster than Sam460ex .
Close to X1000 performance below

mplayer-altivec -quiet -nosound -benchmark -ao null -vo comp::argb  Superman.flv

BENCHMARKs: VC: 6.228s VO: 3.852s A: 0.000s Sys: 0.253s = 10.332s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 60.2760% VO: 37.2801% A: 0.0000% Sys: 2.4439% = 100.0000%

With my Mac mini 1.5GHz (I didn't shut down any programs, I had browser, amircs etc running):

BENCHMARKs: VC:  10.910s VO:   2.542s A:   0.000s Sys:   0.354s =   13.806s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 79.0239% VO: 18.4125% A:  0.0000% Sys:  2.5636% = 100.0000%

[zylesea]

Anyone want to do a mplayer  benchmark using the following video ?
http://www.amiga-ng.org/resources/Mplayer/Superman.flv
post_id=91172#forumpost91172[/url]

Powerbook 5.6 (1.667 GHz)

BENCHMARKs: VC:   7.819s VO:   3.808s A:   0.000s Sys:   0.255s =   11.882s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 65.8037% VO: 32.0497% A:  0.0000% Sys:  2.1466% = 100.0000%
VO: Enabling blanker

Pretty close to X1000.

While I prefer MorphOS over OS4 I must say the Sam 460 is an interesting machine though. Albeit a bit expensive. But it's new (which in some occasions is a plus) and speed is okay for many things.

Generally I don't have concerns to buy used computers, I never had a failure and my mini is up and running since 5 years (-3 days to be precise, MorphOS 2.4 got released on 12 October 2009) now. If it fails tomorrow I just head over to ebay and get a replacement machine which costs pocket money only (quick check on ebay.de reports G4 1.5 GHz mini 1 GB RAM 64 MB VRAM, refurbished with 1 year warranty starting at 109 EUR). It's a easy shot. If you don't like it dump it off to ebay again and get the similar amount back.

[LiveForIt]

Powerbook 5.6 (1.667 GHz)

BENCHMARKs: VC: 7.819s VO: 3.808s A: 0.000s Sys: 0.255s = 11.882s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 65.8037% VO: 32.0497% A: 0.0000% Sys: 2.1466% = 100.0000%
VO: Enabling blanker

Pretty close to X1000.

Not really, because your comparing bananas with apples.

Your comparing ARGB bitmap graphics with YUV420 overlay, two different technology’s.

YUV420p is a 12bit format vs ARGB a 32bit format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV

ARGB = 640x480*4 = 1 228 800 bytes
YUV420p = 640x480*6/4 = 460 800 bytes

ARGB takes 266% more space then YUV420p, conversion & bandwidth is also costly when you most use ARGB.

So basically the AmigaONE-X1000 has to work harder to display the same graphics.

[spirantho]

The Mac Mini does have altivec, though. Saying it's nearly 3x faster is not accurate, as most apps don't benefit from Altivec to that extent. Of course if all you want to do is use Altivec apps, then yes, it's fair... but that's not what the poster asked.
Yes, the Mac Mini is faster, though.... just not 3 times faster for most things.

[zylesea]

Not really, because your comparing bananas with apples.

Your comparing ARGB bitmap graphics with YUV420 overlay, two different technology’s.

YUV420p is a 12bit format vs ARGB a 32bit format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YUV

ARGB = 640x480*4 = 1 228 800 bytes
YUV420p = 640x480*6/4 = 460 800 bytes

ARGB takes 266% more space then YUV420p, conversion & bandwidth is also costly when you most use ARGB.

So basically the AmigaONE-X1000 has to work harder to display the same graphics.

Sorry, but that's just a (lame) attempt of a academic excuse.
I compare exactly one thing:

How fost does my powerbook replay a certain video and how fast does it an X1000 or Sam460.

Today, reproducible and reliable. Why the result is like it is is not of my interest. I wanna watch that video, not think about the technical internals. And I give a certain brown matter about what could be in future. It matters what's actually there. And for that i provided numbers. They speak for themselves.

But hey, yeah - two more weeks and everything's brilliant of course.

[LiveForIt]

Sorry, but that's just a (lame) attempt of a academic excuse.
I compare exactly one thing:

How fost does my powerbook replay a certain video and how fast does it an X1000 or Sam460.

Today, reproducible and reliable. Why the result is like it is is not of my interest. I wanna watch that video, not think about the technical internals. And I give a certain brown matter about what could be in future. It matters what's actually there. And for that i provided numbers. They speak for themselves.

But hey, yeah - two more weeks and everything's brilliant of course.

Well, I'm just saying if you like to know how fast PA5T is. FFMEG might be nice benchmark tool, or maybe you can benchmark MP3 Decoding.
Try not to compare things that use overlay with things that do not.

[Spectre660]

Please guys, don't fight.
I was the one who brought up the mplayer benchmarks.
Before my Sam460ex got fried and before the LiveForit Mplayer,
the Sam460ex was the machine that I watched videos on.
I would just convert them to xvid using a quad core pc
and they played back on the Sam460ex nicely.

[wawrzon]

Before my Sam460ex got fried

is there no way to repair 3-4 years old board?

[Spectre660]

Not in my case.
a power supply failure burned out a piece of the motherboard and took the video card out too.
 

is there no way to repair 3-4 years old board?

[pVC]

Generally I don't have concerns to buy used computers, I never had a failure and my mini is up and running since 5 years (-3 days to be precise, MorphOS 2.4 got released on 12 October 2009) now.

Yeah, I haven't had problems with used computers either. Only problem was that year ago one of my a1200s died, but it was a find which was stored on outside in the rain in pile of junk and it had got rusty all over, but still it worked fine for years

But anyway, my newest computer is Powerbook which is 8 years old now. My old Peg1 (bought used) and even classic Amigas work still. And my newest PC is from 2004 and working fine too. Mac mini has been the daily machine since release of the MorphOS for it and still going strong.

[itix]

The Mac Mini does have altivec, though. Saying it's nearly 3x faster is not accurate, as most apps don't benefit from Altivec to that extent. Of course if all you want to do is use Altivec apps, then yes, it's fair... but that's not what the poster asked.
Yes, the Mac Mini is faster, though.... just not 3 times faster for most things.

Any application having graphics or sound output benefit from AltiVec. It is not sitting there unused waiting that some app has specialized AltiVec routines.

But yes, not 3 times faster for most things although Mac Mini G4 will be faster in general.