Real CPU Speeds

[mw84]

I was reading in some computer mag the other day that although macs tend to have a lower CPU speed than PC's, mac processors are more efficient so they're actually as quick or faster than their pc counter part processor.

So, just out of curiosity, what roughly are the PC equivalent processor speeds to say a 1.25Ghz G4 mac or a 2.7Ghz G5?

[Cat]

I do not think there is a definite answer to that question. Both the G4 and G5 are very good at floating point computations and pretty bad at integer computations in comparison to stock x86 processors. It all depends on the software you use. Most of the "raw" benchmarks are just plain silly, what matters is real-world performance. But real-world performance depends on the OS and the Apps you use and whether thay are optimised for your platform. Apple consistently demo-ed photoshop on stage, trying to show it runs faster on a Mac thatn on a PC, however if you are not using photoshop, what do you care? If you need fast integer computation or higher FPS in a game, that comparison is not worth a penny. So, there is no consistent way to compare processors just like that across the board. Processors can be said to be efficient at a specific task, not as a whole. Then you have to take into account the other components, the FSB for instance, which is dog slow on most G4's, etc. etc.

[contoursvt]

Hi MW84. Not sure what you're asking... are you asking how will a Mac compare to PC of the same clockspeed or in general? My Pentium4 3.0 Ghz is roughly equal to a dual 2Ghz G5 for photoshop (+/- 1 or 2 seconds for either cpu depending on what filters are run). My dual 3.0Ghz Xeon system is a little faster than a dual 2.5Ghz G5 but a little slower than dual 2.7Ghz for photoshop.

For games, the PC side of things are generally better, but for some scientific apps, the Mac side is stronger. Its hard to really compare but in either way its like comparing a bunch of similar cars and asking which is faster - depends on the condition really.

Porsche 911 Carrera Vs BMW M3 Vs Corvette C6. I think each manufacturer can make their car look leaps and bounds faster but for 99% of the people, all are definitly fast enough for anything they can throw at it.....

[scruffy]

It depends entirely what you're doing, really. And of course, it depends what OS you're running - a given PC with pick-yer-distro-of-Linux will feel a lot more responsive than the exact same PC running Windows XP...

G5s are also rather nice in terms of bus speed and bandwidth. If you're doing small amounts of processing on large amounts of data, an x86 might become CPU-starved where a G5 wouldn't.

[Lt Major Burns]

swings and roundabouts

always has been, but not for much longer. we shall see with the intels, just how good the OS is compared to windows. is it actually just as bloated as windows when compared to linux' stripped bare attitude? or is it thoroughly good base-level coding equating to the most responsive, snappy, gorgeous, friendly and powerful OS around. we shall see in 3 years time, transition complete and Longhorn nearly out