Apple CPUs falling below Intel in power

Ok, apparently at least part of what I said was misinterpreted, partly because I felt that I didn't need to explain it further. Fortunately, Hulkaros once again unintentionally came to my rescue:
Macs work. I sell Macs based on that one fact alone, and I have yet to have a customer come bak and say, "you were wrong, this Mac messes up as much as my Win(pick a version) PC." On the other hand, many PC people come back and say, "you know, doing this one thing or that one thing is a little slower sometimes, but it doesn't matter because my Mac doesn't crash or mess up in any way when I burn a CD (or DVD), edit video, do online research, send em@il, and listen to music all at the same time!" Ok, so our clock speeds are lower. binaryDigit, are you honestly calling SPEC or any other benchmark test a "real world" test? Because there is no such thing. The closest to a real world test you can have are the thousands of switchers who switched because, even with a lower clock speed, they get more done in a shorter time and with less stress on a Mac. You say clock speed is a problem. I say that lack of consumer awareness is the problem, and that it is being fixed.
 
Originally posted by sheepguy42
... binaryDigit, are you honestly calling SPEC or any other benchmark test a "real world" test? Because there is no such thing. The closest to a real world test you can have are the thousands of switchers who switched because, even with a lower clock speed, they get more done in a shorter time and with less stress on a Mac. You say clock speed is a problem. I say that lack of consumer awareness is the problem, and that it is being fixed.
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Where did I say that SPEC was realworld. I think if you go back and read my posts, I say the exact opposite.

And clock speed is a problem. If it wasn't a problem, why does Apple both spend a lot of time addressing it and ignoring it (or at least trying to?). Just because it's not an issue in reality, doesn't mean that it's not an issue. Like someone famous once said, "Image is everything". OK, not EVERYTHING, but it IS important, esp if you are the underdog. Remember, it's not good enough to be just as good as the champ, you have to decisively BEAT the champ to win. And by win I don't mean swaping market share #'s, obvously that won't happen. I'm talking about surviving. Apple has been living life on the edge for a while. While some here think that this can go on indefinitely, I don't agree. As with many things in life, there is a point of critical mass. While Apple certainly has suffered throughout the years, they've always managed to maintain themselves above this point. However, once you go below that point, you're toast. Betamax and Sega are excellent examples. Both had good products (maybe even better than the market leaders at the time), both had fallen into a niche (very hard core niches, those that supported them supported them with conviction). However, they both befell the same fate. That point came when the market couldn't support them any longer, and they both went away.

What's interesting is that people like to use the automobile industry as an example (i.e. Apple doesn't want to be GM or Ford, they are happy being BMW or Porsche). Well this is a crappy analogy, because autos are for the most part devices in and of themselves. You purchase the auto for the auto and third party support is not required to actually do useful things. Computer platforms are not like that, they are more like Betamax and Sega, where they live and die by third party support, content. Sega even being one of the best games writers around couldn't keep their own platform afloat by themselves. Sony even after acquiring Columbia couldn't keep their format alfloat (though the Columbia purchase was too little too late, perhaps MiniDisc is a better example here). Industries are littered with companies that have followed this fatal path.

So anyway, while people have been ringing the death knell for Apple for some time, and Apple fans are more than happy to point this fact out. However, to fool oneself into the mindset of "oh, if people don't buy Macs, their just ignorant, we don't have to worry about them", is a massive mistake.
 
I am a switcher (fulltime software developer (Java/C++) plus part time graphics/web person). I thought I'd share 'my' real world benchmark: starting a J2EE application server (webserver, servlet engine, database, etc, etc) - no graphics, just plain ol' number crunching, memory allocation and some disk access:

Athlon 2000*/Windows XP/512MB: 9 seconds
P3 500/Windows 2000/512MB: 43 seconds
Powerbook 867/OS X 10.2.4/640MB: 48 seconds
Celeron 1200/Debian/256MB: 63 seconds.
iMac DV 400 - I haven't even bothered.

* the Athlon 2000 is actually clocking at 1.7Ghz I believe.

I draw your attention to that fact the powerbook is slower in my day to day work than my 4 year old Dell laptop even though it has a faster bus and more memory! In case you were doubting - MHz MATTER! Plus the G4 seems to be able to do less per cycle than an Athlon or Pentium - do the maths.
The G4 CPU is *totally* embarassed by the 18 month old Athlon machine. I mean it is five times faster and cost me £400 to build whereas the Powerbook has just cost me £1300. The slowness of the G4 is exhibited across all my applications (dreamweaver, netbeans, photoshop). However - as a portable platform the powerbook rocks (albeit slowly :) and OS X wins in so many ways over XP. If only I could run OS X on the Athlon core.
 
The biggest problem with Apple is they don’t have a forum for the MAC users to talk directly to Apple. They don’t know is most important to their customers and sometime customers don’t know what is most important to them as well. You can have the fastest car on the road, but without highways, its no big deal. In this case with software a Mac is no big deal.

Software manufactures will follow the hardware and if the hardware is moving forward fast enough than the Software manufacture will follow. If the software is available on the hardware the customers will follow and so on and so on.

If all you do is Email and Browser the network anything will do. When I buy a high price computer as is the MAC or if I bought a fast car I expect the most out of it. I expect parts, software to be available for it. It is and endless cycle.

Apple has to stay up or get out end of story…
 
D Flett, I've got to admit, you make a great point. But I would like to ask you one thing - Does this speed difference matter in your work? I can see that a 9 second startup is way better than a 43 second startup, but you probably only do that a few times a day.

In the general operation of your PowerBook, is performance a problem for you? I'm not trying to be rhetorical, I'm truly curious.
 
Actually I have a ProTools recording studio with Media 100 video editing and Photographer. I have many hosted web site for my clients currently supported on Windows 2k. I end up not only producing musicians from end to end from CDs, CD Cover design, Photos (currently over 5000 photos on my system), Videos, Web Sites with Flash and Java JEE development. I’m looking into moving to a MAC Xserver as soon as possible but am finding it hard to find out from any using them how the OSX Server software performs and how easy it is to manage.

So yes, I need the speed. But more important to me is that Apple will stay competitive in the future so I don’t lose my investment in hardware and software. When I switched over from PC about two years ago I had to spend over 2k in software upgrades to run on the MAC and than MAC OSX and it bothers me that Apple does not have phone number to ask questions like, how can I best use their products, how can their server software help me in my business and so on.
 
t bothers me that Apple does not have phone number to ask questions like, how can I best use their products, how can their server software help me in my business and so on.
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well, now you've found macosx.com. ask away. :)
 
Originally posted by David Simmons
...
So yes, I need the speed. But more important to me is that Apple will stay competitive in the future so I don’t lose my investment in hardware and software. When I switched over from PC about two years ago I had to spend over 2k in software upgrades to run on the MAC and than MAC OSX and it bothers me that Apple does not have phone number to ask questions like, how can I best use their products, how can their server software help me in my business and so on.
Click to expand...

You bring up an excellent point. Like it or not, there is a MASSIVE amount of FUD out there concerning the Mac. Add to that many common misconceptions and many people are just down right "afraid" to purchase a Mac. This is another way that perception works against you. While the constant predictions that Apple is on the brink might amuse us, it also keeps a lot of potential customers from making the switch.
 
Speed IS important! But that's not the 1st thing that ANY user must have in mind for a computer!

Just to compare apples to apples and not apples to anything else, let me give you an example with the Dark Side:
1. P4/3GHz running Windows 98se
2. P4/3GHz running Windows XP Pro
3. P4/3GHz running Windows 2000 Server

Everything IS faster on 1.
The 2 offers speed AND stability.
But 3 offers everything else (stability, speed, tools, above 2 CPUs support, etc.)

Depending on users needs 1 or 2 or 3 could be better. Now, if we throw in the mix Athlon XP 3000+, vertical apps, different graphic cards, different RAM technologies & configurations, power supplies, boxes and all the other stuff this thing can get confusing TOO fast... Faster than one can spell out his/her name! :D

What I'm trying to say is that no matter what I or anyone else say here about speed, we are all lose the truth now and then: Speed is just a MINI factor of the whole BIG picture that computers are! No matter what I say about Wintels (we all know that I personally prefer Macs) the truth is that Macs pale in gaming comparison but the same can be said about Wintels about their performance running OS X ;)

As for if MHz/GHz matter... Even the mighty Intel seems to be confused about speed: Itanium1/2-Centrino VS P4 anyone? To me, AMD has its act together much better than Intel and Motorola. But compared to Big Blue? Hmmmm :rolleyes:

Ladies and Gentlemen: Wait and See! Just Wait and See! G970 is uppon us!? :D

BinaryDigit: Sega, if you still follow their steps, seems to be in total mess... And if you remember all the press and consumers kept supporting (and some still are) that if Sega would go software-only they would revitalize their economic status... So far, they were all wrong! :rolleyes: Do we want the same thing about Apple? I for one, no way! Also, about Beta and MiniDisc: It is the same with Macs: At their prime they were ahead of their competition but they were blind to see it in order to get advantage of that fact... Finally, about the cars comparison: I think people compare Macs to exotic cars simply to state their exotic nature as computers be it sometimes their design and price and sometimes their design, price and performance :D To me however, Macs are more like station wagons: Slower than exotic cars (although some station wagons aren't THAT slower) but transport more people and their stuff easy, sound and safe ;)

Lov ya al!!! Peace :D
 
Originally posted by MacMarshall
D Flett, I've got to admit, you make a great point. But I would like to ask you one thing - Does this speed difference matter in your work? I can see that a 9 second startup is way better than a 43 second startup, but you probably only do that a few times a day.

In the general operation of your PowerBook, is performance a problem for you? I'm not trying to be rhetorical, I'm truly curious.
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Ask me when I am developing and restarting JBoss every 10 minutes or so. Its not that the powerbook is too slow, but its a blast going back to the PC and developing Java on that. Ultimately it does not matter to much to me. If it took 2 minutes or more then it would be a pain, but under a minute is OK. It's just the AMD processor is so impressive at the same job which is basically why I posted. Others have made the valid point that there are other things that come into the equation: OS X itself is one, stability, productivity both nod in OS X's favour over XP/Intel. As I said, I bought the powerbook as a mobile platform and I am prepared to take a slight performance hit for higher build quality, better battery life, keyboard etc, etc. However, if I am in my office and I need to get stuff debugged quickly for a client the PC will get used. But at the moment it spends most of its time simply running Unreal 2003 :D

I can't help wondering what a fantastic software development platform apples would make if they could get on par with Intel/AMD. I accept that I do not have a dual processor powermac and that may well be my ideal platform but I simply don't have the room - see sig :p Maybe next year.

Already saving for a 970 powerbook!
 
Originally posted by dflett
I am a switcher (fulltime software developer (Java/C++) plus part time graphics/web person). I thought I'd share 'my' real world benchmark: starting a J2EE application server (webserver, servlet engine, database, etc, etc) - no graphics, just plain ol' number crunching, memory allocation and some disk access:

Athlon 2000*/Windows XP/512MB: 9 seconds
P3 500/Windows 2000/512MB: 43 seconds
Powerbook 867/OS X 10.2.4/640MB: 48 seconds
Celeron 1200/Debian/256MB: 63 seconds.
iMac DV 400 - I haven't even bothered.

* the Athlon 2000 is actually clocking at 1.7Ghz I believe.

I draw your attention to that fact the powerbook is slower in my day to day work than my 4 year old Dell laptop even though it has a faster bus and more memory! In case you were doubting - MHz MATTER! Plus the G4 seems to be able to do less per cycle than an Athlon or Pentium - do the maths.
The G4 CPU is *totally* embarassed by the 18 month old Athlon machine. I mean it is five times faster and cost me £400 to build whereas the Powerbook has just cost me £1300. The slowness of the G4 is exhibited across all my applications (dreamweaver, netbeans, photoshop). However - as a portable platform the powerbook rocks (albeit slowly :) and OS X wins in so many ways over XP. If only I could run OS X on the Athlon core.
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When you say a J2EE appserver, web server etc, are you talking the exact SAME servers in all configs or are we talking IIS/JRun/SQLServer vs Apache/Tomcat/Oracle?

Also, just from a pratical standpoint, your comparing a desktop machine with DDR memory, 7200rpm ATA66/100 drive, 1MB cache with a PowerBook? The hard drive performance alone makes a HUGE difference here. Have you tried a Dell laptop running at 1Ghz? It's patheticly slow, well relative to a 1ghz desktop. No one should draw any conslusions regarding Mac vs PC from that type of comparison. Yours is actually an excellent example of why MHZ doesn't mean everything.
 
BinaryDigit - my example was not chosen lightly. Exactly the same appserver spec: JBoss 3.2.4 on J2SE 1.4.1 with the same applications (mine) running on it. Yes there will be differences in the actual JVM code but as I said, the trend is echoed performing the same tasks with the same tools. As I said Dreamweaver, Photoshop, alot of Java... I picked the application server example deliberately because I know exactly what the code is doing on each platform - some disk access (IO is only 20% of the startup time) a lot of classloading, processing and memory allocation.
The memory in the PC and power book is the same: DDR 2100. I do not know the memory bus speed of the powerbook but yes I guess it is less than the VIA 266 chipset. The desktop is ATA100 - what is the powerbook? ATA100, ATA66? I suspect the powerbook's RPM is 6400 and not the 7200, laptops tend not to be 7200. Maybe you did not read the original post but in my tests, even my 4 year old Dell 500 beats the Powerbook's G4 and the Dell has a slower CPU, slower disk, slower memory and a slower bus.
The point is not that stated MHz mean anything but real world performance does to people like me and to be brutally honest when it comes to my real world performance the G4 is more than disappointing. It's of course down to the pure economies of scale of the PC processor marketplace. Given a number of peoples sigs, they are still using lower spec G3s so I guess I am in a minority demanding higher processor performance. I am not a hardware expert - I just use a lot of different machines for software development and tell it like I see it.

I am not pro or anti any particular OS since I have to use at least 5 every day but I do feel that Apple need faster CPUs (afterall the rest of the components are basically common across platforms - at least when it comes to laptops, no?) and that was the title of the thread.
 
Originally posted by dflett
Plus the G4 seems to be able to do less per cycle than an Athlon or Pentium - do the maths.
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FYI, the G4 actually does more than the Pentium 4 (and maybe the Athlon) per clock cycle because it has fewer steps to go through. For a detailed explanation, check out this architectural comparison. I'll include one part of it here, a good analogy for the two architectures:
It might help you to think about these two approaches in terms of a McDonald's analogy. At McDonald's, you can either walk in or drive through. If you walk in, there are five or six short lines that you can get in and wait to have your order processed by a single server in one, long step. If you choose to drive through, you'll wind up on a single, long line, but that line is geared to move faster because more servers process your order in more, quicker steps: a) you pull up to the speaker and tell them what you want; and b) you drive around and pick up your order. And since the drive-through approach splits the ordering process up into multiple, shorter stages, more customers can be waited on in a single line because there are more stages of the ordering process for different customers to find themselves in. So the G4e takes the multi-line, walk-in approach, while the P4 takes the single-line, drive-through approach.
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I was aware of the pipelining theory of the G4 versus the P4 but only from Apple's publicity. Thanks for the link. But I was talking from a real world perspective of starting a piece of software rather than the theory. That a four year old P3 @ 500Mhz on slower, older hardware can start my identical Java application slightly faster than an 867Mhz G4. Sorry for any confusion over my comment on the Pentium doing 'more' than the G4, it was technically inaccurate although if you naively divide work by processor cycles, something on the Dell is doing more work than the powerbook. I am assuming its the CPU.

But at the end of the day, I am writing this on the powerbook and the dell is in a cupboard!
 
Originally posted by MacMarshall
It's just that, for most desktop computing, a 500 MHz CPU is just as good as a 3 GHz CPU. Yes, video editing and games are exceptions, but that's about it.
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Every second I can shave off of the start up time of Photoshop and Illustrator is another second that goes into my productivity. Every ten seconds I can shave off of rendering filters on 100MB image files is a huge increase in the time I have to decide what those filters should be accomplishing. I spend a lot of time sitting and watching Flash processing certain requests. Or seemingly endless amounts of time while Suitcase loads up the previews of 300 fonts for me to look over.

I'm not saying I'd ever jump ship, nor do I think that the Man is inferior when taken as a whole, but I'll be first in line when Apple comes out with a machine running four 970s at 4GHz a piece... I may have to sell my car, but I'll be in that line, damnit!
 
Originally posted by dflett
I was aware of the pipelining theory of the G4 versus the P4 but only from Apple's publicity. Thanks for the link. But I was talking from a real world perspective of starting a piece of software rather than the theory. That a four year old P3 @ 500Mhz on slower, older hardware can start my identical Java application slightly faster than an 867Mhz G4. Sorry for any confusion over my comment on the Pentium doing 'more' than the G4, it was technically inaccurate although if you naively divide work by processor cycles, something on the Dell is doing more work than the powerbook. I am assuming its the CPU.

But at the end of the day, I am writing this on the powerbook and the dell is in a cupboard!
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This is why I made the comment about comparing portables to desktop machines. You just can't do it. Portables are designed to be energy efficient, not to sacrafice their souls to performance. The PB has a 4600 rpm drive (that's right 4600rpm, vs a 7200 in most desktops). Depending on the size of the drive, it probably has a higher transfer rate for a given interface due to higher data densities than the PB. Plus your only has PC133 memory and it doesn't have L3 cache, which makes a very large difference in performance.

Take a look at this:

MacWorld Speedmark scores
PowerMac 867 - 141
PB Titanium 867 - 124
PB 12" 867 - 114

That PowerMac is running with PC133 memory and is almost 2 years old now. It STILL beats the currently shipping PB's even though the PB 12" uses DDR. What's even more interesting is that the PB Ti only uses PC133 memory and it beats the PB 12".

So, again, you can't really look at a laptops performance to make any decisions on processor performance. NONE AT ALL. The design of a laptop is way too different than that of a desktop to do so. Once again, as a test, dig up a pc laptop and try the same thing. You'll see a similar trend, the laptop will lag CONSIDERABLY behind it's desktop counterpart. Now you see why trying to figure out anything just by looking at clock cycles of processors is soo misleading. This is the REAL mhz myth in action.

p.s. are you using IIS for your web server on the PC or Apache?
 
Originally posted by dflett
I am a switcher (fulltime software developer (Java/C++) plus part time graphics/web person). I thought I'd share 'my' real world benchmark: starting a J2EE application server (webserver, servlet engine, database, etc, etc) - no graphics, just plain ol' number crunching, memory allocation and some disk access:

Athlon 2000*/Windows XP/512MB: 9 seconds
P3 500/Windows 2000/512MB: 43 seconds
Powerbook 867/OS X 10.2.4/640MB: 48 seconds
Celeron 1200/Debian/256MB: 63 seconds.
iMac DV 400 - I haven't even bothered.

* the Athlon 2000 is actually clocking at 1.7Ghz I believe.

I draw your attention to that fact the powerbook is slower in my day to day work than my 4 year old Dell laptop even though it has a faster bus and more memory! In case you were doubting - MHz MATTER! Plus the G4 seems to be able to do less per cycle than an Athlon or Pentium - do the maths.
The G4 CPU is *totally* embarassed by the 18 month old Athlon machine. I mean it is five times faster and cost me £400 to build whereas the Powerbook has just cost me £1300. The slowness of the G4 is exhibited across all my applications (dreamweaver, netbeans, photoshop). However - as a portable platform the powerbook rocks (albeit slowly :) and OS X wins in so many ways over XP. If only I could run OS X on the Athlon core.
Click to expand...

If you want to compare G4/1GHz performance VS Athlon XP/2000+ that's fine with me:
-Go ahead and pick a PowerMac G4/1GHz and just do it! I think we all know around here that the TiBook G4/1GHz isn't up to par with a PowerMac G4/1GHz if not -20/-30% (in some cases it can be -50%) of PowerMac's performance...

As for prices, I think we have said it 2 many times:
-With the price that you pay for a PowerMac you get MANY stuff that you cannot easily find on a Wintel (FireWire2, AirPort Extreme, 4 Internal HDs, easy to access case for upgrades, original OS and apps ;) , quality, etc.)

I think that if your work is THAT important and pays you much go ahead and buy a Dual G4/1.4 or even an Athlon MP/2.6 :eek: Let's just say that you want dissapointed either way (then again I cannot guarantee you for the 2nd solution ;) )

However, TiBook G4/1GHz is ok for me until G970 will arrive :D

PS. One of the things that made me to switch for good from the Dark Side (and I hope that we the Mac users will not fall victims to that) is always the speed quest of the Dark Side:
-Lets try this RAM
-This HD
-This CPU
-This mainboard
-This OS
-This BIOS update
-This soundcard
-This software update
-This BIOS setting
-This graphics card
-This and that ALWAYS... Damn! All these things just to crash the systems faster AND still have not taste!? :rolleyes: ;)
 
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