Preliminary OS X & PPC 970 Benchmarks 473
Dixie_Flatline writes "Macbidouille.com is reporting that they have
preliminary benchmarks involving PPC970 hardware. The results are seriously impressive. We're looking at a single processor PPC 970 1.4GHz machine quite strikingly outperforming a dual G4 1.42GHz machine. Don't worry, there's an English translation embedded in the page so you don't have to try to muddle through the French." Update: 05/05 19:58 GMT by T : Thanks to Eric from macbidouille.com, above link updated to a static page; hopefully you'll get better response this way.
FPU favoured? (Score:5, Interesting)
So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you'd looked at the bar charts in the artcle, you'd have seen that the 1.4 GHz
benchmarks at about the same or a little faster than a 3 GHz P4.
maybe Intel Xeon 1M comparisons more relevant (Score:2, Interesting)
Usually the bottleneck is in fast memory access..
I remember re-building a Dell 610 Xeon 550
Re:maybe Intel Xeon 1M comparisons more relevant (Score:3, Funny)
MAC
INTEL
XEON
WINDOWS
LINUX
Which of these are acronyms? None of them.
I guess I should spell your username as CINQDEMI? What is that an acronym for?
Re:time to take you to school, punk :) (Score:3, Informative)
An abbreviation is a shortening of a single word, not multiple words.
The two examples you give (LASER, SCUBA) were originally, printed in all caps, even though they were pronounced as single words right from the start.
Acronyms are often printed in all caps to make it clear that they are acronyms. Only many years of usage, and the consequent common knowledge that they are acronyms, results in their being printed in l
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Insightful)
Of they G4, they write,
Now, maybe I'm reading too much into a rough translation, but it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.Meanwhile, comparing *today's* Intel product against *tomorrow's* PPC must also be done with caution; by the time you can buy that PPC 970, Intel and AMD will have something else, too.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:4, Informative)
It didn't sound that way to me, it's already common knowledge that the 3.0 P4 beats the 1.4 G4 at most stuff. The impression I got was that they didn't want to deflate Apple's Power Mac sales by pointing out that a much faster processor is due shortly. But then they found that G4 PMac sales are already in the tank, so it wouldn't do any harm (which is also common knowledge, so that doesn't entirely make sense). Of course this is assuming they're not fabricating numbers out of thin air.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a Mac user you probably don't care about bar graph benchmarks. I am one and I don't. I just buy a new Mac every three years when my AppleCare is up and sell the old one for half what I paid for it originally and just laugh and laugh.
Mac users are more interested in feature lists like Rendezvous (zero conf networking), FireWire (hook up lots of disks and cameras real fast and easy), CoreAudio (flexibly utilize pro audio interfaces, applications, effects, and instruments simultaneously in real-time), CoreMIDI (route MIDI performance data between applications in real-time), SuperDrive (read and write CD and DVD), Unicode typography throughout, one-crash-per-year stability, etc. And of course I want it in an enclosure that is 50% of the volume of the last one, too.
Bar graphs of a particular render or a particular step or action are fairly useless in creative work. You get a better idea by just using the machine you plan to purchase for 20 minutes at an Apple Store or similar dealer. As long as it has all the necessary features (some noted above) and it feels good then you are set. Apple's Photoshop shoot-outs are not so bad because they run numerous day-long scripts on Photoshop on both platforms. These are scripts that it literally takes an artist all day to record in Photoshop, and you can play them back as fast as the machine can manage, so if you play back 20 scripts on both machines and one is consistently faster then that might be interesting. Not enough to make me ignore how much I don't want to run Windows, though. It's not worth if for so many reasons, not the least of which is the dearth of good creative software on MS Windows.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Insightful)
With OS X, the Mac world is so much better and more exciting than it was 2 or 3 years ago, so you experience gained 5 or 6 years ago is simply irrelevant.
As an long time UNIX and Windows programmer, I can tell you that OS X is truly a dream platform - better than Solaris, Windows and the old Mac OS in every way. I am now much more productive on my $999 iBook than on a $15K Sun Ultra Sparc machine.
Many UNIX and Linux geeks have switched to Mac OS X, including people like James Gosling, Bud Tribble, James Duncan Davidson, Tim O'Reilly, and most of the Perl 6 core team. At least 4 or 5 Slashdot editors are now Mac users.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Informative)
Test 1: Cinema 4D-XL
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 33 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 30 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 29 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 18 seconds
Test 2: Photoshop Actions
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 73 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 58 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 50 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 24 seconds
Test 3: Bryce 5
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 21 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 16 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 16 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 7 seconds
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Informative)
Lets get it out now.
The thing to remember is that the PowerPC is originally based on the IBM POWER chip -- a native 64 bit chip that can do 32 bit programs as well.
IBM tends to undersestimate and overproduce. They arent just making it for Apple, they will put the 970 in their own Linux blade servers and NetVista boxes for financial stuff. Also, the 970 is a variant of the POWER4 dualcore Risc monster processor in IBMs big server iron.
IBM doesnt screw around. Motorola is becoming irrelevant.
Heres another key reason why this chip might actually be as fast as MacBidoulle claims:
The system bus runs at 900 MHZ. The current mac system bus runs at 167 mhz. Think about it. A 900 lane highway vs a 167 lane highway? This chip will have monstrous bandwith. And the power consumption will be reduced a big deal as well..
Look at this official IBM presentation from last october [ibm.com]
and this [arstechnica.com] ArsTechnica review [arstechnica.com] as well
The 970, being a 64 bit chip, allows more memory than 4GB, the current 32 bit limit. Servers need more than 4 gigs, especially IBM's monster iron.
10 years ago my Mac used 32 MB's of ram. Now its up to 768 megs. Sooner or later, it will go past 4 gigs. Better to get this transition done now than later.
The current PPCs (The g4s) are wide, but shallow. The much faster Pentium 4s are deep but narrow.
This is a guess, and if any cpu engineer wants to help out, id appreciate it.
The P4 stuffs all execution data down the pipe as fast as it can. If there's a break in the chain of execution instructions, the whole chain must be shoved down the pipe again.
The G4 spreads it all out over multiple pipes, but the pipes arent deep. The main work is figuring out which pipe is free to shove stuff into.
This is a gross simplification, so please bear with me.
The 970, on the other hand, has more pipes than the G4 and the Pentium 4, but the pipes are deeper than the P4. So it can stuff a whole ton of stuff down and be very efficient. Wide and deep. Theres a bit of a tradeoff, but the chip is just engineered much better.
I read the Ars technica article a long time ago and the IBM PDF file a while ago too. I would not be suprised if the data on Mac Bidoulle is accurate.
I am waiting for apple to stuff a 970 into a PowerBook, preferably the 15 inch one. I am waiting on that for my next computer. I do not want the G4. The Mobo on the G4 just doesnt have a wide enough bus to suck up massive amounts of data. The 970 mobo will.
The 970 mobo will be 900 Mhz. Intel has the 533 mhz mobo and soon will have the 800 mhz mobo.
Motorola and Apple were fighting about how to make the data path on the mobo. Motorola had the chips, they were just being strange. Motorola's problems stunted apple with the g4 for a long time. Apple had to overclock the g4 so much that the g4 tower got obscenely loud.
I welcome the 970 and want it in a Mac ASAP. I think that WWCD was delayed to show the developers the chip and a version of Panther that will have it. Bring it on! Lets see IBM take on Intel in the chipmaking business.
My bets are on IBM
Re:The 970 vs The Opteron x44 ....... tsarkon repo (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, the 970 is far from vapor. It was first presented 6 months ago and they are now rumored to be falling off Hon Hai assembly lines. Not only was the PPC970 announced well -after- AMD and Intel's consumer 64bit solutions, it will most likely be the first 64bit CPU to appear in consumer desktops and laptops.
And finally, what good would an Opteron be to Mac users? Although Cocoa apps could probably be recompiled for a different CPU with minimal headaches, Carbon apps do not port well. Apple would have to create an emulation layer for Carbon apps. It would be a nightmare, it would take for ever to develop, there would be countless software incompatibilities at first, and Mac developers would throw a hissy fit. Shess, we're still coming out of a -major- OS migration.
I could go on and on about why an Apple AMD box would be technically impossible at this point in time...but hey, just trust me, ain't gon'a happen. The PPC970 is a smart move.
Re:The 970 vs The Opteron x44 ....... tsarkon repo (Score:3, Insightful)
Calm down, man. It's a company with products and a CEO.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:3, Insightful)
Right there in the article is a comparison to the P4 3Gz, which the 970 is only slightly faster than. Now, compare the price of a p4 3.0 (or a duel p4 2.6 or such) to the price of a 970...
Glad that there is a great chip out there (970) but price per performance, the guy (intel) that's making far more chips still is doign it cheaper. Economics.
Re:So it is faster than dual G4s (Score:5, Insightful)
great for us mac users (Score:5, Funny)
Re:great for us mac users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:great for us mac users (Score:3, Informative)
Right now I'm running Windows Server 2003 on my sub-$800 GeForce4 Ti4200-based 512M DDR Athlon XP 2000+ (1667) system which I built six months ago. It's fast and responsive. The UI is decent. I even set up an account so that the Pentium 90 laptop I have downstairs can log in and browse the web through terminal services (IE or Mozilla is a little pokey with 32M of ram).
So, take off your "OSX is better" glasses. Yes, it has some very nice features. Yes, it looks
This was the best translation... (Score:5, Funny)
That's all you need to know.
Oh, and it'll come in a new shade of White, called White Extreme, invented and patented by Apple.
Now I'm going to sit back, grab a Dew, and watch the trolls roll in and break themselves on the jagged rocks of Slashdot. Cheers.
Re:This was the best translation... (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid trolls! We have destroyed their mice upon meeting them with shoes!
Re:This was the best translation... (Score:5, Funny)
[The PPC970 makes the G4 look like grandma's computer.]
The funny thing is, my grandma has an iMac G3.
Interesting results - Emulation possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now, I've been thinking about upgrading my Windows 98 game machine and buying a new dual-processor Mac (and turning my current Mac into a server and replace my old Linux box that way). If this speed is true, I might get away with a dual 970 and run Virtual PC to run some games (Splinter Cell, etc) and do something else with my Win98 box.
Re:Interesting results - Emulation possible? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Interesting results - Emulation possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Microsoft sells copy of Windows, gets the fee for that.
2. Microsoft sells copy of VPC with Windows, gets the fee for Windows *and* the fee for VPC.
Which one is better for Microsoft?
Re:Interesting results - Emulation possible? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting results - Emulation possible? (Score:5, Informative)
Vmware has to run on an X86 chip. Virtual PC can run on PPC, because it emulates an X86 chip.
graphics - not CPU - emulation is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
*VPC emulates the equivalent of a 500-550Mhz PIII on my 1Ghz Powerbook. That's not too shabby, all things considered. The catch is that the virtual disk and graphics subsystems are dog-slow, which drags down perceived performance.
Re:graphics - not CPU - emulation is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
If there were a Mac OS X OpenGL -> LinuxPPC OpenGL shim, we could have Quartz Extreme accelerated graphics on Mac OS X running on Linux. I realize this is an unfunded request, but I wish a few more OpenGL hackers would start playing around with this sort of glue on Mac OS X for a while. I bet they could do a whole lot of damage pretty quickly.
Mac Rumour Mongering (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mac Rumour Mongering (Score:5, Informative)
Note that it is NOT a rumours site, but a Mac news / hacks site.
Re:Mac Rumour Mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty decent accuracy... for a rumor site. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mac Rumour Mongering (Score:2, Insightful)
I find it very hard to believe that a rumor consists of hardware benchmarks.
The article... (Score:4, Informative)
Vous allez comprendre en lisant ces tests pourquoi il nous était impossible de les publier avant. Maintenant que nous avons appris que les ventes de G4 pro sont anémiques, la publication de ces tests ne risque plus d'avoir d'incidence sur le marché. Cette publication ne fera plus qu'une chose, inciter les MacUsers qui passent au PC en désespoir de cause à attendre pour acheter un Mac.
[By reading these benchmarks you'll understand that we couldn't publish them before.
Now we know that PM G4 sells are stuck at a very low level, the following test results won't have much incidence. It will however make the ones switching to PC wait for the next generation of Power Macs.]
Ces premiers tests datent de mi Mars 2003. Ils ont été réalisés sur un modèle de présérie à 1,4 GHz. Le système était une Alpha de Panther en version 7B5 et 7B8 optimisée 64 Bits mais les applications testées étaient en 32 Bits.
[The first benchmarks were done during March 2003 on a preview model running at 1.4 GHz. OS was an alpha version 7B5 and 7B8 of Panther, optimised for 64 bits processor, but the applications tested were only using 32 bits.]
Sous Photoshop, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 87% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.
Sous Final Cut Pro, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 112% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.
Sous Alias|Wavefront Maya Render, le PPC 970 Mono 1,4 est 254% plus rapide qu'un Dual G4 1,42 GHz.
[Photoshop : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 87% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz Final Cut Pro : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 112% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz Alias|Wavefront Maya Render : PPC 970 mono 1.4 is 254% faster than a Dual 1.42 GHz]
Cette seconde série de tests a été réalisée sur des machines sorties de l'usine et donc identiques à celles qui seront en vente. Notez qu'il n'y a pas encore de certitude sur la mise en vente du modèle haut de gamme Dual 2.0 GHz, car la disponibilité en volume suffisants de ces puces n'est pas encore certain. Il reste donc possible qu'Apple ne fasse une gamme Mono 1,4,Dual 1,6, Dual 1,8 GHz.
[The second series of benchmarks were done on the same computers that will be sold. There is however a doubt on the presence of the up-market dual 2.0 GHz as the availability of these chips isn't sure. It seems Apple will surely be able to sell Mono 1.4 GHz, Dual 1.6 and Dual 1.8.]
Le commentaire est simple. Le PPC 970 relègue le G4 au rang de machines de secrétaire.
[The result is that the G4 compared to the PPC 970 is now a secretary computer.]
Voici les explications de ces résultats:
- L'altivec démontre une amélioration de performances de 80% sur le 970. Mais ce n'est pas à cause de la puce en elle même, mais grâce à l'accès extrèmement rapide du processeur à la
- L'optimisation de la carte mère est telle que le passage du mono au biprocesseur permet pratiquement de doubler la puissance effective. On arrive à 90% de performances en plus contre 50 pour le G4.
[A few explanations to the results
- The Altivec shows a 80% increase of performances with the 970. This is not due to the chip itself, but to the high speed access between processor and central memory. The Mach 64 motherboard is highly optimised for the use of DDR-SDRAM.
- There is no performance loss when the PPC 970 executes some 32 bits apps.
- The motherboard optimization almost allows dual processors to reach double performance. In fact it's about 90% efficiency gained with the second processor, compared to 50% for the G4.]
Lorsque l'on voit ces résultats on comprend mieux pourquoi
Re:The article... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !
I didn't know the former Iraqi Information Minister works at Apple now.
They almost got it. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !
cause it makes the whole article sound silly. I've been a Mac user since 1989, but I really, really, really, really wish people would find something more interesting to argue over than which platform/OS you use.
Re:They almost got it. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Actually its more like:
My friends, fans of the mac. Our wait will be rewarded. We will finish defending a difficult cause. Apple will become the king/ruler of the world.
They kinda left out a sentence. My French is a little weak these days..
This *is* slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm...I mean that's a great idea and all...but what the hell are you doing HERE???
Slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Sad... (Score:2)
Re:Sad... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
The 970 runs 32-bit PPC code and 64-bit PPC code. Only the kernel has to support the 64-bit mode and switching back and forth for the individual applications.
However, these benchmarks still might be fake. It's hard to tell since I can't even download the article.
Just had to look it up. (Score:3, Informative)
[ibm.com]
Power point presentation
This power point presentation in pdf form shows on page 10 that yes there are seperate 32-bit modes. It also explains the 'basic' differences.
[ibm.com]
DeveloperWorks page
This article explains in fairly basic manner the difference between 32 and 64 bit assembly under linux and from this you can derive that there are 2 seperate modes for the PPC 970 64-bit implementation. Also if you go and look at the PPC 64-bit ABI document at th
Re:Sad... (Score:2)
Re:Sad... - not needed (Score:4, Interesting)
But the 6 applications that could actually benefit from a process address space greater than 4GB, or were simulating 64 bit integer math are the only ones that need to be recoded. (Lets see, oracle server comes to mind, nothing like caching the whole database for performance. We do that regularly when possible. Is it on os-x yet? I'm not sure anything else comes to mind. I suppose the computational fluid dynamics folks and other simulations might appreciate it. In general it is the people who do a little bit of processing to large amount of data on a repetitive basis that benefit most from larger address spaces.)
Still, don't underestimate the importance of that code generator rework I mentioned before. I would presume that the applications benchmarked are the regular old 'optimized for motorola g4' versions and a recompile with the new code generator will result in 5-25% improvements. (You might wipe that number off before you use it anyplace else. It came out of my ass.)
What are you smoking? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about Photoshop, which could *easily* swallow 4gb of RAM?
Or VirtualPC running Windows XP + some program?
Or Classic running OS 9 + some program?
Or a combination of all three of the above at once?
Sure, only *some* applications can use the 64bit data paths, but every program can take advantage of the faster bus
Re:VERY MUCH NEEDED!!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Instruction size doesn't change.
Remember, when the PPC spec was set down over a decade ago, the 32 -> 64-bit transition was planned for. The PowerPC architecture is a 64 bit architecture with a 32 bit subset. All of the instructions are 32 bit, but some of them operate on 64 bit data. Really, there is no need for more than 2^32 or roughly 4 billion instructions. I don't know what the total instruction count for PPC is, but I'm sure it is less than 500. Altivec alone is 162 instructions
Anyway
Re:Sad... (Score:2)
Re:Sad... (Score:2)
So they claim to have a 64-bit optimized version of the OS, but were still running 32-bit apps. If this is true (questionable at best, IMO), then hopefully I can scrape enough enough $$$ to pick one of these up in the near future.
Re:Sad... (Score:5, Informative)
PPC was designed from the ground up to scale to 64bit without affecting the performance of 32bit apps on the same processor. 32 and 64bit comingled apps can live quite happily on the same machine. There is no porting or special software required.
When a developer gets around to porting their app(s) to 64bitness, they can take advantage of newer features and higher performance.
The 32/64 bit conversion should go at least as smoothly as all the others: System 6->System 7+,68K->PPC,G3->G4, OS9->OS x. In each case the developer was under no pressure to release (properly written) software specially compiled for the new arcitecture, the hardware and/or OS masked the change and allowed the older apps to "just work".
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
I'm skeptic (Score:5, Interesting)
(Of course, IBM may have been willing to enter Steve Jobs' reality distortion field this time, and have been misleading us all this time - but personally I find that unlikely)
Re:I'm skeptic (Score:2)
The reason they haven't announced 970-based Macs yet is that they'd really like for people to keep buying
Re:I'm skeptic (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be at all suprised... (Score:5, Interesting)
> distortion field this time, and have been misleading us
> all this time - but personally I find that unlikely
I've a couple of uncles who recently retired from IBM. And today's IBM isn't the "Big Blue" of the '80s. Things have changed.
For starters, the engineers, at least, don't wear suits anymore!
But that's not the important bit. The important bit is that ever since bill gates fucked them over, back in the early '90s, in the OS/2 incident, IBM has had an institutional hatred of microsoft the likes of which mere mortals can barely comprehend. They're nowhere near as rabidly vocal about it as the likes of Ellison, McNealy, or a big segment of the Linux community, of course. But, then, IBM has always been rathar understated. They don't bluster. But they *DO* remember!
Catch an IBM'er and have a frank discussion sometime. And you'll find that the prevailing attitude towards microsoft there is: "One day, maybe not soon, but one day... we WILL bend gates and his minions over a barrel and assrape them HARD. And as they say: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'".
It wouldn't be suprising at all if the RDF had nothing to do do with it; and IBM sped up production, and got prototypes to Apple early, JUST to spite gates.
cya,
john
Never worked with IBM people, have you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Never worked with IBM people, have you? (Score:4, Interesting)
-Erwos
The roadmap is interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
As was pointed out on Macrumors.com... (Score:3, Interesting)
a) have some really good contacts nobody knows about
or
b) is trying to cash in on money from adversiting on it's site and such, but is going to burn it's reputation to do so (come end of may we will know more).
I honestly hope thier reports are true. If they are, macbiduille will be given much status among mac rumor sites, if not, they will be ignored for a long time to come.
Re:As was pointed out on Macrumors.com... (Score:2)
Nice, but still skeptical.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, never underestimate the marketing power of 'hype'. Whether it's true or not, I hope the release is sooner than later.... I miss OS X.
Re:Nice, but still skeptical.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple must have had at least some "same machines that will be sold" at that time; they just did a really good job at keeping them under wraps.
These days the beans are typically spilled at least a few days prior to the announcement of new Apple products. It would be very difficult to have such a high-profile (and high-tech) company entirely leak-proof.
Take this article to mean what you want it to, but I think it is quite possible that it is true.
Remember the "Apple" section of /.? (Score:5, Insightful)
French? (Score:3, Funny)
Is this high performance hardware described in French???
No no, I don't think so. This is Freedom hardware!
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Small mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Altivec? (Score:4, Interesting)
This strikes me as being odd, considering that an IBM chip shouldn't have an "Altivec" unit (Altivec is a Motorola brand name.) I know the 970 is supposed to have a vector processor, maybe the author's just screwed up. I'd certainly like to believe this article.
Re:Altivec? (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
Go to http://www.macrumors.com/ for a detailed analysis in the forums of why these are fake benchmarks.
Beyond that, the release dates they give are insane, apple is still producing G4 desktops.
Call me when the G5 desktops stop rolling off the line and apple starts depleting inventory.
barely keeping up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:barely keeping up (Score:5, Interesting)
It says exactly what it should say about SIMD speed: "how fast does regular C/Fortran code run when I compile it with a regular compiler". If the compiler can figure out how to transform, say, Fortran array code into SIMD, it will help the SPECmarks. If not, then whatever SIMD features the chip has are useless for most applications, in particular scientific applications. The exception are a few specially crafted apps like Photoshop plugins and MP3 encoders.
Don't trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
Macintosh Nerd Factor @ All-Time High (Score:4, Insightful)
Throw in things like brilliant X11 [apple.com] support, a desktop graphics subsystem only dreamed about for other OS's now [apple.com], and even a Nightly Phoenix/Firebird build for OSX [mozillazine.org].
It's going to be a great time to upgrade a Mac, or buy one if you don't alreay have one.
Re:Macintosh Nerd Factor @ All-Time High (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, when I use the DP 1Ghz G4 at the school where I teach Final Cut Pro with a nice new Nvidia GPU, I notice a huge speed difference over OS 9 and OS X on my lowly G3 at home. For everyday web graphics use though, Jaguar running PS 7 and Illustrato
What about a dual PIV? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about a dual PIV? (Score:4, Interesting)
Um, maybe they didn't have one? At any rate, the main point of the benchmarks (making the large assumption that they're legit) was to compare the PPC 970 to the G4, not x86. Although since the low-end single 970 beat the 3.0 P4, I'd imagine a high-end dual 970 would beat a dual P4/Xeon. We'll just have to wait a few more months to see.
Re:What about a dual PIV? (Score:5, Informative)
The benchmarks are bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's how it will break down clock-for-clock:
Floating-point: the 970 will spank the G4e
Integer: The G4e will spank the 970
Vector: it's a tie, even though the 970's Altivec hardware is inferior to that of the G4e. What gives the 970 a boost is Dual-channel DDR400 and a real FSB. If you were to put the G4e in a similar system, it would out perform the 970 clock-for-clock pretty handily.
Anyway, I could elaborate more, but I'd rather work on my article.
Re:The benchmarks are bogus (Score:5, Informative)
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q= Y& a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=3470943335&p=5 6
Check out pages 52 onward for some detailed discussion of these issues in advance of my article.
Now for a preliminary explanation (let's see if I can condense this):
In a very small nutshell, the 970 has less general-purpose integer hardware than either the G4e or the P4. It has two general-purpose ALUs (or arithmetic logic units, which do integer computation) that are both mostly symetric. This means that both ALUs handle almost all types of integer ops with a two cycle latency. However, there are some differences, but more on that in a sec.
The G4e, on the other hand, has one complex integer unit and three simple integer units. The three simple integer units have a one-cycle latency and handle all the basic types of integer instructions (add, multiply, etc.). Longer, more complex multi-cycle instructions, of which there are few and these show up statistically more rarely than the fast integer ops, are handled in the complex ALU.
So a basic comparison of ALU hardware shows you that the G4e has slightly more integer hardware that's more specialized and hence potentially faster. (Think a supermarket with two general purpose checkout lanes vs. a supermarket with three express lanes and one general purpose checkout lane).
This doesn't tell you the whole story. First, the good: The 970 handles CR logical operations in a separate unit, the CR logical unit. These types of ops are done on the G4e in the complex integer unit. So this bit of specialization helps the 970 out just a bit, but only a bit because CR ops are relatively rare.
Now for the bad, which is a killer: the 970's group dispatching scheme dictates that one ALU is fed from dispatch slots 0 and 3, while the other is fed from dispatch slots 1 and 2. (If you don't know what a dispatch slot is, reread my first 970 article.) So of the four possible integer ops that can be dispatched in parallel on any given cycle to the 970's ALU issue queues, two are constrained to go to one unit and two are constrained to go to the other. This sort of partitioning scheme makes code scheduling critical, because if there's a mix of integer ops and other types of ops (e.g. loads, stores, etc.) then one ALU's issue queue(s) could be oversubscribed while the others' languishes, due to the fact that the other ops happen to be pushing all the integer ops into one particular pair of dispatch slots (i.e. either 0 and 3 or 1 and 2).
Now, this is potentially bad enough already. But when you factor in the fact that the ALUs are not symetrical, and that certain types of ops can only go to one ALU and hence MUST go into one of only two dispatch slots, then you get a recipe for further choking of dispatch bandwidth.
Ok, I've probably managed to confuse anyone who's read this far, but so be it. You asked for an explanation. Read that thread I linked above for more discussion, or just wait for my article (it should be finished any day now) for a more user-friendly explanation with nice color diagrams and such.
The end result is that the 970's ALU hardware is weaker than that of the G4e, the P4, and the Athlon. So its clock-for-clock integer performance will be worse, at least this is what I'm predicting. We'll see if I'm right.
Now, this really isn't too big a deal to my mind, because most people care more about floating point and vector ops for the types of desktop and workstation apps that run on a Mac.
More worrisome is the inferior Altivec (or, as IBM calls it, VMX) hardware. The G4e has a superior and more robust SIMD implementation, but it's severely hobbled by a lack of FSB and memory subsystem bandwidth. I'm sure that IBM will improve the SIMD situation in future releases of the chip, though. Right n
Re:Read the POWER4 Spec - The Sky Isn't Falling (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, I'm not going to argue this anymore. Real-world benchmarks will bear me out soon enough.
Re:Read the POWER4 Spec - The Sky Isn't Falling (Score:3, Interesting)
(The 970 has no L3.)
That is all.
Re:The benchmarks are bogus (Score:3, Insightful)
Panther version is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
These are fake (Score:5, Interesting)
Not serious (Score:5, Insightful)
This ''benchmark'' is really bullsh*t.
When you do serious benchmarks, you post details about the hardware and the used OS.
Well, they gave a few details about the Mac they claim to have. But what about the P4-PC?
What kind of RAM did they use? 100MHz? 800MHz? Something in between?
Which Windows version did they use? Was Hyper Threading enabled?
The list could be a lot longer, but you get the point.
Also: Wasn't the PPC970 meant to be a competitor to Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron CPUs rather that just the plain P4 (by price and aimed market)? (I'm not sure about this one.)
Why didn't they benchmark these as well? (They could at least get a Xeon, an Opteron is harder to get.)
The last sentence (''The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world!'') gives me an indication why they didn't do this: They seem not to be interested in an objective comparison.
Total fabrication... (Score:3, Interesting)
2. The Pentium 4 and 1.42Ghz DP G4 numbers were lifted directly off of Barefeats website!!! The odds of them using theEXACT combination of hardware and software setup to receive exactly to the second numbers is *HIGHLY* suspicious.
See this page to see where they got some of the numbers...
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.htm
3. In general they have been hit and miss on rumors.
I wouldn't believe these numbers at all. Although, I would love for them to be true.
Re:Apple Secrecy Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you should read the educational tale of the Osbourne to learn exactly how your reaction is exactly why Apple keeps this kind of thing secret:
-- From this [jvp.com] site.
Smoothing out the income curve... (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple sell computers seasonally for back to school and Xmas. They also sell when they announce the availability of a new model (or is it when they ship it? -- not the same thing unfortunately).
Whether these benchmarks are true or not they are going to depress sales of G4's even further (tho the author rationalizes this by saying pretty much they can't go any lower).
Personally, I was thinking about specifying a ref
The usual troll (Score:2)
Actually, this exact text gets posted to every mac story. Check some of the archives.
Re:Pot calling the kettle black (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IBM and AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
This probably has more to do with the manufacturing processes used rather than some weird conspiracy theory about the Opteron and the 970.
Regardless, the Opteron and this new PPC chip are a damn good thing for 64-bit computing. The Opteron appears to hit a real sweet spot for price, performance, and reliability featurs--let's hope the 970 will do the same.
Re:This is cool and all... (Score:4, Informative)
The PPC 970 is not simply a Power 4 with Altivec tacked on. Its had lots of stuff yanked (hw square root, single core, oxidation on the gates to extend life and improve reliability, etc.)plus it appears that there is no L3 cache support currently.
Read this. [arstechnica.com]
And this [infopop.net]
Oh and the 980. The 980 will probably be another recycling of the Power4, but the Power5 has been designed to scale from the P5 itself all the way down to "lower end systems" and will probably start its only PPC family 1000 maybe.
Technically they will be using a Power chip but no more than when they switch to 970. HTH
PS. IHBT
Re:Power4 & PowerPC 970 Review Announcement (l (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hold on a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Apple doesn't make PPC970 chips - IBM does. Apple's markup on the hardware is enormous - that's where they make their money. PPC970 machines, if they take over for the G4, will probably be around the same price point. Apple can easily absorb any extra cost of the PPC970 (keep in mind that as die size shrinks, so too does cost - so new generation processors get smaller as well as cheaper to make).
3) The same people that can af