Performance of Intel-Macs

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xarcom

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I just read an article on appleinsider that state that the Intel Mac that Steve demoed on was a quad CPU 3.6 P4.... Thats alot of machine to run OSX on.... I wonder if its any indication of how well (or bad) performance will be on these yet to be released macs...
 
The P4 isn't an MP chip, is it? That's what the Xeon is for, unless I'm very much mistaken (which is possible, since naturally I wasn't all that interested in the Intel scene before yesterday). I assume that system had one single processor.

But it's not like we saw enough of the system to judge speed, anyway. No Photoshop bakeoffs (obviously) or anything like that.

AFAIK, the G5 and G4 are perfectly capable of going quad. Apple's just never done it, possibly because of supply issues (just about every new PPC release has short supply for months, so going quad would really strain things). Maybe Intel can supply enough for such systems, but...I don't think there are any quad-processor PCs out there, and there's probably a reason for that, right?

I remember the days when there were quad-processor Macs. I forget what company made them, but they crammed 4 200MHz 604e processors into one system, and advertised it as 800MHz. :( Too bad there were virtually no programs that could make use of even a second processor back then, let alone a third of fourth.....
 
When Steve pulled up the About this Mac window, it showed a Pentium 4 3.6 GHZ IIRC. (Can someone grab a screen cap of that window from the keynote, my connection is too slow right now).

There was no indication that it was a dual processor.

I was not particularly impressed with the speed. My dual G5 2.7 was faster than most of his demos or at least as fast as all of them. Having said that, all of the non-Apple software demos were through Rosetta, which is going to be a performance hit initially (until they get ported).

That is my only issue with this transition, is that we'll go through another awkward phase where not all apps are native, though this time around it should be less painful and more consistent.
 
Then again, why _would_ he. He was emphasizing that devs should create Universal Binaries, not talking about the inside of the p4 devkit, which isn't a "product" for consumers, anyway. It really doesn't matter that much.
 
I guess this is the end of dual PowerMacs as Intel forbids the use of P4 in a dual configuration. That's reserved for Xeons. So it's back to single CPU, dual core perhaps, but both sharing the same sorry front side bus.
 
never, did jobs say pentium. he breezed over the fact that his had a pentium, other than to prove it was "intel inside", and to show what was in the dev kit. he always stressed intel, not pentium. it's going to be x86, but a new, different version is what i see, that or xeons. the rivals to the G5 pmacs have always been dual xeons, so in the high end video editing and design market macs, xeons are going to be the way to go
 
@brianleahy
You still have leading edge hardware, it's just end of life. Unless they can actually manage another speed bump without a melt down.
 
Xeons and the upcoming dual-core D's are both rather powerful, and both run on the x86 IA-32 spec. There can be quite a bit of power, although I personally feel that Steve hasn't been giving the full picture. The transition starts in 2006, but won't be complete until the end of 2007. This combined with Apple starting on the low-end for the transition tells me that we should be expecting to see x86-64 chips in the pro line towards the end of the transition, with 10.5 coming out at about the same time with x86-64 support.

This is just my guess, although if someone wants to take a 5$ wager... :p
 
brianleahy said:
Whatever actual processor they use, it will use the x86 instruction set.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/universal_binary/universal_binary.pdf

...talks about (among other things) the x86 equivalents of the AltiVec operations.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link. Very much appreciated. Equivalents of AltiVec is really being rather generous. If you looked at that table, you'll see loads of altivec operations where there is no equal on x86. Page 73 onwards. Look at all the - in the x86 column. Also take note of how contorted the naming scheme of the functions are. :(
 
With the switch to x86 and the PPC systems losing their appeal to potential buyers, Apple should lower prices now to move some of these systems.
 
Oscar Castillo said:
With the switch to x86 and the PPC systems losing their appeal to potential buyers, Apple should lower prices now to move some of these systems.
Click to expand...

That would be sweet as I'm planning on buying a Mac Mini in a month or so (I really can't wait until the new Intel based Macs are with us).
 
Does anyone here think there will be a chance that the new high end intel based machines will have dual cores, like the ps3? After the announcement that ps3, xbox 2, and the new nintendo where going to use ibm based processors I did start to wonder their commitments to apple...
 
I find it hard to understand how none of these processors are unsuitable for the desktop as some claim. And no mention from jobs as why not Cell or Xenon instead of x86 which I'm sure was on everyone's mind.
 
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