G3 vs. G4

S

severus

Registered
I am in the market for a new laptop, and am deciding between a 466 Mhz iBook and the new 400 Mhz G4 powerbook. My question is: how much of a performance difference will there be between these two machines under OS X, and in what areas? I take it some relevant sub-questions would be:

a) How much has OS X been optimized for the G4 as opposed to the G3?

b) How much does/will the aqua GUI make use of AltiVec?

c) Is OS X, by itself, FPU intensive?

Any reports of G3 vs. G4 comparisons on the beta would be greatly appreciated, though I understand that graphics acceleration hasn't been implemented on it, so current results might be irrelevant.

NB: I've tried the beta on a 366 Mhz iBook [192 MB Ram], and found screen redraws, window dragging etc. to be annoyingly slow.

Thanks!
 
Well I don't have a G3 but I can tell you that my G4 450MHz 256MB RAM machine is faster than i am right now. Whether thats the extra ram, the higher clock speed or the G4 I don't know.

peter
 
OS X is not FPU intensive. Probably the only thing in OS X you're likely to casually use which uses the FPU is mp3 players.

Aqua is merely a specification so I'll assume you meant Quartz.

Quartz will indeed be faster with AltiVec. I'm quite sure the video chip set will NOT assist in layer composition and adding. It only helps with OpenGL and double buffering.

Adding layers will definitely be accelerated. Anti-aliasing probably is. Bezier drawing I have no idea, probably is.
 
Hmm .... I don't know about the whole OSX thing, but I'd say get the news PowerBook G4 ... it's SO damn GOOD LOOKING OH MY GOD!!!! :D

That slot-loading DVD I think is the coolest thing I've ever seen on a laptop since the very first powerbook (that great big grey thing .... everyone remember those?) ... or that sexy Mac 1.0 that had a mouse and all. whoah.

;)

Nothing like the good old days, eh?
 
Yeah, it's beautiful thing, but now I have a performance excuse to buy one! (Though I may wait for the first speed bump...)

The consensus (on other sites too) is that a G4 will provide a significant speed boost in OS X, especially for Quartz. My thanks to those who posted replies.

Dan
 
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