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Mac OS X Intel Leaked?
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C'mon people, so he made a mistake about the superdrive. There's no need to obfuscate his whole story. He makes some valid points. It is of course under the assumption that you build the machine yourself and thus have no real brand name PC. Also the price of the OS has been forgotten. But I don't think anyone can disagree that a PC is cheaper than a mac and faster for everyday usage.
I think we're going to get the best of both worlds now. OS X that lets you be more productive, thus faster and premium Intel chips that put some real horsepower in a mac.
I am not saying that G5 is slow, but for things besides video editing and heavy altivec related processing, it is slower than the Pentiums and AMDs.
To cover myself from some potential flaming, no I don't have hard evidence for this. It is entirely subjective as it is how I feel they compare. And it is based on things I have read about the architectures on arstechnica and other such sites.
I think we're going to get the best of both worlds now. OS X that lets you be more productive, thus faster and premium Intel chips that put some real horsepower in a mac.
I am not saying that G5 is slow, but for things besides video editing and heavy altivec related processing, it is slower than the Pentiums and AMDs.
To cover myself from some potential flaming, no I don't have hard evidence for this. It is entirely subjective as it is how I feel they compare. And it is based on things I have read about the architectures on arstechnica and other such sites.
You're right, it's not like the average PC user needs 64-bit memory addressing, dual CPU capabilities, etc.GuyClinch said:
Though Apple has been cutting back on some of the file sharing and server capabilities built into Mac OS X -- imposing some limits on the number of concurrent users for the regular OS versus the unlimited user version of Server.
"$90 for what, Red Hat Linux or XP Pro? XP Home does not count - a fair comparison with OS X is XP Pro."
The only features that XP Pro has that XP Home doesn't are support for multiple CPUs and Active Directory integration. XP home does however support hyperthreading.
I'm so tired of zealots making the stupid XP Home isn't a real OS argument because it's just plain false.
The only features that XP Pro has that XP Home doesn't are support for multiple CPUs and Active Directory integration. XP home does however support hyperthreading.
I'm so tired of zealots making the stupid XP Home isn't a real OS argument because it's just plain false.
Netburst, equivalent PCs.
Netburst
Netburst is the code name for the architecture (design) of the Pentium 4. Most of the current mobile (laptop) Pentium chips do not use this architecture. Netburst based CPUs consume lots of power and run very very hot. The P6 based Pentium-M chips are very power efficient and are much faster than the Netburst CPUs when compared to chips running at the same clock speed (Mhz).
Equivalent PCs
SpecInt/SpecFP are useless benchmarks for general purpose computing.
A given CPU has a single SpecInt score, however in actual usage two CPUs with an identical SpecINT score can have vastly different performance at different applications. This is obvious to anyone who has ever looked at benchmarks comparing Athlons and Pentium 4s. For some things (specific games), the Athlon CPUs completely leave the Pentium 4s in the dust. For other things (certain media encoders), the Pentium 4s completely destroy the Athlon.
When comparing machines, it's generally given that you compare a single CPU system to a single CPU system and a dual to a dual. It should be noted that the Athlon 64 and the Pentium 4 are incapable of dual CPU configurations. The chips that are capable, Opterons and Xeons, are much much more expensive. The boards that allow dual processors are much more expensive. Likewise boards that come with 64 bit PCI/PCI-X are very expensive. Don't point me at some home user motherboard that doesn't even have 64 bit PCI for my U160 SCSI card, as a workstation board.
XP Home is a pile of crap. XP Pro has too many wizards for my taste, however it's a workable system (once I changed the UI from Fischer Price back to Windows 2000). The server OSes they offer are much better.
The G5 tower is a workstation, Dell makes workstations as well, but they also cost a great deal more than $1500.
The problem with the G5 is that to get optimal performance out of it you have to use a much more optimized compiler than GCC. Code compiled with XLC (like much of the stuff used in biotech) absolutely screams on the G5. Which is why Genentech, who needed the fastest workstations they could get, bought G5 towers. The problem is that XCode does not use XLC, it uses GCC. Supposedly Intel has/will be making their compiler available for use with XCode. Whether this materializes or not, it's still a known fact that GCC's x86 code is far more optimized than it's PPC code.
OSX gives me unix+M$ Office+Adobe apps, all native. OSX has a more polished UI than X11, and Wine does not cut it. Until I can get that on x86, it does not matter how cheap they are. I could also buy a Geo Metro (really cheap), however I spent more on a Saturn Luxury and it was well worth it. Likewise I have an '83 4wd diesel suburban that I like to play with/work on. It lacks the style, incredible AC, comfort, quietness, dependability (just blew a brake line), and better stereo system. However it's a completely different thing. You may as well tell all PC gamers to get a console, since they are cheaper!
Lastly, I'm not poor. I will buy what I enjoy using. I deserve certain luxuries that I have worked hard to get. I also have a fridge with ice in the door, so there
.
Note: I have a WinTendo that I built for entertainment, I get work done on the Mac. And yes the Mac is crappy as hell for games, but then again it's not a toy. And no I won't buy a console, I hate the controllers, lack of upgrade ability to games, etc.
Netburst
Netburst is the code name for the architecture (design) of the Pentium 4. Most of the current mobile (laptop) Pentium chips do not use this architecture. Netburst based CPUs consume lots of power and run very very hot. The P6 based Pentium-M chips are very power efficient and are much faster than the Netburst CPUs when compared to chips running at the same clock speed (Mhz).
Equivalent PCs
SpecInt/SpecFP are useless benchmarks for general purpose computing.
A given CPU has a single SpecInt score, however in actual usage two CPUs with an identical SpecINT score can have vastly different performance at different applications. This is obvious to anyone who has ever looked at benchmarks comparing Athlons and Pentium 4s. For some things (specific games), the Athlon CPUs completely leave the Pentium 4s in the dust. For other things (certain media encoders), the Pentium 4s completely destroy the Athlon.
When comparing machines, it's generally given that you compare a single CPU system to a single CPU system and a dual to a dual. It should be noted that the Athlon 64 and the Pentium 4 are incapable of dual CPU configurations. The chips that are capable, Opterons and Xeons, are much much more expensive. The boards that allow dual processors are much more expensive. Likewise boards that come with 64 bit PCI/PCI-X are very expensive. Don't point me at some home user motherboard that doesn't even have 64 bit PCI for my U160 SCSI card, as a workstation board.
XP Home is a pile of crap. XP Pro has too many wizards for my taste, however it's a workable system (once I changed the UI from Fischer Price back to Windows 2000). The server OSes they offer are much better.
The G5 tower is a workstation, Dell makes workstations as well, but they also cost a great deal more than $1500.
The problem with the G5 is that to get optimal performance out of it you have to use a much more optimized compiler than GCC. Code compiled with XLC (like much of the stuff used in biotech) absolutely screams on the G5. Which is why Genentech, who needed the fastest workstations they could get, bought G5 towers. The problem is that XCode does not use XLC, it uses GCC. Supposedly Intel has/will be making their compiler available for use with XCode. Whether this materializes or not, it's still a known fact that GCC's x86 code is far more optimized than it's PPC code.
OSX gives me unix+M$ Office+Adobe apps, all native. OSX has a more polished UI than X11, and Wine does not cut it. Until I can get that on x86, it does not matter how cheap they are. I could also buy a Geo Metro (really cheap), however I spent more on a Saturn Luxury and it was well worth it. Likewise I have an '83 4wd diesel suburban that I like to play with/work on. It lacks the style, incredible AC, comfort, quietness, dependability (just blew a brake line), and better stereo system. However it's a completely different thing. You may as well tell all PC gamers to get a console, since they are cheaper!
Lastly, I'm not poor. I will buy what I enjoy using. I deserve certain luxuries that I have worked hard to get. I also have a fridge with ice in the door, so there
.Note: I have a WinTendo that I built for entertainment, I get work done on the Mac. And yes the Mac is crappy as hell for games, but then again it's not a toy. And no I won't buy a console, I hate the controllers, lack of upgrade ability to games, etc.
im reminded of the time many years ago now, that i bought BeOS 4.5 for my p.c
it was cute and nice, but there werent many apps for it. so i lost interest very fast.
without apps on it, any os is just a "so what?" once you've got it up and running.
this was true when they released beos 5 for free.. all the geekier minded p.c users loaded it up, and promptly got bored.
it was cute and nice, but there werent many apps for it. so i lost interest very fast.
without apps on it, any os is just a "so what?" once you've got it up and running.
this was true when they released beos 5 for free.. all the geekier minded p.c users loaded it up, and promptly got bored.
iMeowbot said:
And hidden administrative shares, and complex file sharing and user permissions, and Remote Desktop (only Remote Assistance is available on Home), and dynamic disk support, and joining domains at all (even beyond the already mentioned AD non-availability), and roaming profiles, and multiple language support, and the IPSEC interface, and Novell client connectivity, and the sysprep tool.
All of these are useful for power users, with the possible exceptions of Novell Netware and sysprep. XP Home is not all it could be, and it's not a full featured OS in modern terms. XP Professional is the non-Apple analog for OS X, not XP Home Edition. Period.
Hector,
while I share some of your sentiments, don't be funny: Do not try to compare a dual Opteron on a Tyan 2885 to a mere Apple dual G5. The Opteron, especially on a board like that, blows _everything_ out of the water these days, except for a dual dual-core Opteron on a Tyan K8WE obviously - the top-of-the-line G5 Apple has to offer is no match for that system, and I doubt even the best Apple x86 offer in June next year will be faster (not even close, at least for memory-dependant stuff and heavy calculations)...
I just planned a new graphics workstation for a friend of mine, using a dual-core Athlon64 4400+ with 2GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 RAM, Tyan board, CoolerMaster case, Enermax PSU, 3 WD Raptor SATA HDDs, a Nvidia Quadro and stuff, it'll be $ 2200 - you don't really think Apple's dual G5 stands a chance against that 'value'-system?
A comparable white-box PC will always offer more bang for the buck, there's no need to argue about that. That doesn't mean a white-box system has to be cheap - my custom-built system was, like, $ 8.000? Is it fast? You bet it is! Is it stable? Absolutely! Is Windows laughable? Well, of course it is, but there are alternatives...
while I share some of your sentiments, don't be funny: Do not try to compare a dual Opteron on a Tyan 2885 to a mere Apple dual G5. The Opteron, especially on a board like that, blows _everything_ out of the water these days, except for a dual dual-core Opteron on a Tyan K8WE obviously - the top-of-the-line G5 Apple has to offer is no match for that system, and I doubt even the best Apple x86 offer in June next year will be faster (not even close, at least for memory-dependant stuff and heavy calculations)...
I just planned a new graphics workstation for a friend of mine, using a dual-core Athlon64 4400+ with 2GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 RAM, Tyan board, CoolerMaster case, Enermax PSU, 3 WD Raptor SATA HDDs, a Nvidia Quadro and stuff, it'll be $ 2200 - you don't really think Apple's dual G5 stands a chance against that 'value'-system?
A comparable white-box PC will always offer more bang for the buck, there's no need to argue about that. That doesn't mean a white-box system has to be cheap - my custom-built system was, like, $ 8.000? Is it fast? You bet it is! Is it stable? Absolutely! Is Windows laughable? Well, of course it is, but there are alternatives...
Because a given metric is not "perfect" that doesn't instantly make it useless. Yes the AMD64 beats a Pentium 4 - but about by 20% certainly not something that "blows away" it's competitor. And the SpecInt/SpecFP are doing reasonable things a computer might do and do generally reflect teh speed of the chip. Same thing in reverse for the 'media encoders" - something 20 - 30% faster isn't "completely destroying." They are benchmarks they give you a rough idea of how a chips in different architectures before on different kinds of task. They have been around for years and work fine. Why don't you tell the SPEC committee their benchmarks are "useless." I am sure they will be amazed by your understanding of computer science.
Newsflash - the year is 2005 and you can buy DUAL CORE cpu's. That means today's dual core pentium or Athlon compares quite well with the dual processor G5 of yesteryear. You might not like it - but there is nothing youc an do about it. The idea that ONLY expensive server boards compare with the G5 is just not accurate anymore.
Pete
GuyClinch said:
Good point!
Of course it can also be said that even the Single processor Intel and Amd cpu's have been giving the dual G5's a run for the money over the last year.
Willie Sippel said:
This would strongly depend on what you were using the machines for. I have heard from people in biotech that there is nothing that comes close to the speed of the G5s that doesn't cost orders of magnitude more... Likewise I understand that several fluid dynamics apps ported to it just scream. There's a reason why so many of the computers at the top of the TOP500 listing of world's fastest machines are based off of PPC 970 machines. The people building these clusters aren't stupid. If Opterons were faster at everything, then Opteron based cluster would own. BTW as you're looking at the list, all of the BlueGene machines are PPC 440 based. The P600 series IBM stuff is POWER5. Also note the number of CPUs in each cluster vs. how fast it is.
BTW had the Anandtech story truly wanted to compare the machines, they'd have put Linux on both machines, testing apps compiled with the Intel and IBM compilers.
The Altivec unit in the G5 is an amazing thing. It's late and I'm not going to bother pulling up the documentation on it, but it beats the hell out of SSE/SSE2/SSE3 for many things. I'd recommend reading some of what Hannibal has to say about them on ArsTechnica. The truth is that for many applications, especially in scientific fields, the PPC 970 excels beyond the Opteron. In many things the Opteron is faster. In a few things a Xeon will outrun both of the other CPUs. I'd bet that when Sun's Niagra chip hits the market it's going to stomp butt at database applications, but suck horribly at single threaded performance.
The bottom line is: there is no CPU that does everything faster than all others. They have strengths and weaknesses. This is what benchmarks are for (not the mostly useless synthetic ones like Spec or 3dmark, but actual application performance).
MagnusDredd said:
this add-in coprocessor for x86 would be good for fluid dynamics!
http://www.clearspeed.com/ (25 GFLOPS sustained)
my theory is that apple should make their x86 machines support that card/s
MagnusDredd,
why do you try to compare a dual Opteron (PC/ Workstation) to IBM's Blue Gene (supercomputer)? They're different animals. And only because IBM builds the Blue Gene _and_ G5 CPUs doesn't mean the systems have all that much in common (Blue Gene is a NUMA-enabled 65536 CPU cluster)... There's a Cray Red Storm Opteron cluster, currently on the 10th place - it's not nearly as fast as Blue Gene, but only uses 5000 CPUs:
http://top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=7605
http://top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=7596
http://www.cray.com/
Some of the greatest benefits of AMD's K8 architecture are not available from Intel, and I doubt they will anytime soon (NUMA and on-die MC, true dual-core design). That, and the fact that Apple will take a step backward and go 32bit again...
why do you try to compare a dual Opteron (PC/ Workstation) to IBM's Blue Gene (supercomputer)? They're different animals. And only because IBM builds the Blue Gene _and_ G5 CPUs doesn't mean the systems have all that much in common (Blue Gene is a NUMA-enabled 65536 CPU cluster)... There's a Cray Red Storm Opteron cluster, currently on the 10th place - it's not nearly as fast as Blue Gene, but only uses 5000 CPUs:
http://top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=7605
http://top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=7596
http://www.cray.com/
Some of the greatest benefits of AMD's K8 architecture are not available from Intel, and I doubt they will anytime soon (NUMA and on-die MC, true dual-core design). That, and the fact that Apple will take a step backward and go 32bit again...
Willie Sippel said:Hector,
while I share some of your sentiments, don't be funny: Do not try to compare a dual Opteron on a Tyan 2885 to a mere Apple dual G5. The Opteron, especially on a board like that, blows _everything_ out of the water these days, except for a dual dual-core Opteron on a Tyan K8WE obviously - the top-of-the-line G5 Apple has to offer is no match for that system, and I doubt even the best Apple x86 offer in June next year will be faster (not even close, at least for memory-dependant stuff and heavy calculations)...
I just planned a new graphics workstation for a friend of mine, using a dual-core Athlon64 4400+ with 2GB Corsair 2-2-2-5 RAM, Tyan board, CoolerMaster case, Enermax PSU, 3 WD Raptor SATA HDDs, a Nvidia Quadro and stuff, it'll be $ 2200 - you don't really think Apple's dual G5 stands a chance against that 'value'-system?
A comparable white-box PC will always offer more bang for the buck, there's no need to argue about that. That doesn't mean a white-box system has to be cheap - my custom-built system was, like, $ 8.000? Is it fast? You bet it is! Is it stable? Absolutely! Is Windows laughable? Well, of course it is, but there are alternatives...
how blind you are that you think opterons blow everything our of the water, they are about the same clock for clock against g5's in application benchmarks, (dont even try pulling game benchmarks they are solely to do with how much work it put into the port) if you look at any independent benchmark you will see
now a 4400+ is a dual 2.2GHz 1MB cache cpu right?, that'd comparable to a dual 2.3GHz G5 and with the ram the G5 will probably come out a little more, but not by much, and it's probably mostly down to the expensive aluminum case apple uses and the quality psu and the motherboard (8 ram slots), sure you can build a pc cheaper for the same speed, but if you match every expense in a G5 they come out pretty good, apple dose not do cheap.
now what i'm trying to demonstraight it that apple has not be owned over the last few years but the G5 is pretty competitive as a desktop CPU and is far better than most give it credit for.
if you compare a mac and pc even home brew spec for spec near identical to a G5 it comes out around the same, but of cource you can skimp on things for example buy a motherboard with only 4 ram slots, or not buy a dual DVI card, or buy a cheap case, or buy a average psu, the point in these comparisons is to isolate the cpu, and thats what these threads are about, apples choice of cpu, not weather they can cut corners.
(BTW a little advice, avoid coolermaster like the plauge, i help my schools IT department allot and the number of problems caused by coolermaster fans failing is rather worrying, they are not reliable at all, i'd get a no brand case i like the look of and buy my own fans for it (which is what i did with my pc))
My problem is not Apples pricing, it's Apples switch to x86 Intel. Whats that bull about: "AMD doesn't have the capacity". Wrong. Half the x86/ amd64 CPUs sold are, in fact, AMD chips. Intel is the largest chip maker, but that's not due to their dominance in the x86 market. So AMD has the capacity, and they have the superior product. Yeah, I know, Apple might use Yonah-based chips - who cares? They are dual-core, but that's old. They won't feature an on-die memory controller, they are not NUMA-enabled, they are most likely not even 64bit CPUs (doens't really matter, as OSX86 is only a 32bit OS, anyway).
Hector,
Nobody talks about game benchmarks here. If I look at pretty much every fair, independent benchmark, the Opteron comes out considerable faster - problem, most of the time, is that benchmarks are performed on a not NUMA-aware 32bit OS with 32bit software - not a fair comparations, don't you agree? I mean, OK, OSX is also not a real 64bit OS, but that's Apple's fault, not IBM's...
The Athlon64 X2 4400+ is a dual-core 2.2GHz CPU with 2x1MB L2 cache. The Enermax PSU is one of the best and most expensive PSUs available, and not a single budget/ no-name component is used for the system I described. You might want to check, a PNY Quadro FX card or Corsair XMS RAM is about as good as it gets, in no way lower quality compared to Apple hardware (quite the contrary).
BTW, CoolerMaster fans? I never used a CoolerMaster fan. Their cases are great - for fans I prefer Pabst...
Hector,
Nobody talks about game benchmarks here. If I look at pretty much every fair, independent benchmark, the Opteron comes out considerable faster - problem, most of the time, is that benchmarks are performed on a not NUMA-aware 32bit OS with 32bit software - not a fair comparations, don't you agree? I mean, OK, OSX is also not a real 64bit OS, but that's Apple's fault, not IBM's...
The Athlon64 X2 4400+ is a dual-core 2.2GHz CPU with 2x1MB L2 cache. The Enermax PSU is one of the best and most expensive PSUs available, and not a single budget/ no-name component is used for the system I described. You might want to check, a PNY Quadro FX card or Corsair XMS RAM is about as good as it gets, in no way lower quality compared to Apple hardware (quite the contrary).
BTW, CoolerMaster fans? I never used a CoolerMaster fan. Their cases are great - for fans I prefer Pabst...
To all speedjunkies
For a comprehensive performance comparison please all go to:
2005-03-11 Mac vs. PC IV
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=31238
2005-05-25 Mac vs. PC 5: Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32620
2005-05-31 Hard Core Dual Core: Dell Precision 380 Workstation
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32744
2005-06-13 Mac vs. PC VI: Boxx 7400 Dual Opteron 275 Workstation
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32951
Draw your own conclusions.
For a comprehensive performance comparison please all go to:
2005-03-11 Mac vs. PC IV
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=31238
2005-05-25 Mac vs. PC 5: Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32620
2005-05-31 Hard Core Dual Core: Dell Precision 380 Workstation
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32744
2005-06-13 Mac vs. PC VI: Boxx 7400 Dual Opteron 275 Workstation
http://www.animationartist.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=32951
Draw your own conclusions.
GuyClinch said:
If you're talking about a 20% higher framerate in a game, every gamer I know will completely disagree with you. If you're talking about LAMP performance, I know many web developers who'd disagree (this means 20% fewer machines required to get the job done or 20% more customers served and that's pretty significant).
GuyClinch said:
As far as I'm aware Spec is used to benchmark computer systems, not actual CPUs. Spec benchmarks take a number of tests which results in a single number. The tests that are aggregated can have widely ranging results. The reason Spec is crappy is because the breakdown is almost never quoted simply some composite number that gives no idea what the machine's performance at a given task may be. I could mathematically demonstrate that the single SpecFP and SpecINT numbers are not useful....
The point is that using the composite Spec numbers is generally useless in making purchase decisions. Example: Several years ago I was part of a crew who built a network, machines, servers, everything for an architectural firm. At the time Intel's fast CPUs were comparable, but not when running Auto-CAD. For the firm, a general benchmark is meaningless. They need to run Auto-CAD and fast. They didn't care if the Intel CPUs made up for it in audio encoding, because they don't encode audio. So they got a network of Athlon workstations and an Intel based server since the Intel CPUs were more temperature resistant and served SMB at roughly the same speed.
GuyClinch said:
*shrug* Whatever... I think that further discussing the adjectives I used to describe one CPU dominating another in a given task is not worth the effort. I'd hate to see how you'd react to sports commentators.
GuyClinch said:
You have an excellent point about the Dual core x86 CPUs, and one that honestly had slipped my mind. However once again, many workstation cards are PCI-X/64 bit PCI like my Adaptec SCSI card or my 3ware 8 port IDE RAID card. Supermicro makes some very nice workstation motherboards. The PDSG4 is about $300 or so, supports 8GB of RAM, and PCI-X. It's also got something the G5 doesn't, onboard SCSI. It's also a bit cheaper than a good dual chip board. The Tyan K8WE seems to be a very impressive board, though costs about $450. Fast dual core CPUs themselves run around $1000 per chip.
Also it should be noted that the better boards use better components, which add to a more stable system, as well as system lifetime. I don't have cheepo crap in my Macs or my PCs. I have added Mushkin RAM and Pioneer DVD burners to both my Mac and gaming rig. It has cost me a bit more, however the machines do their respective tasks and give me little to no trouble.
The point is that you buy a machine for a purpose. My Athlon's uses include video games, Linux installs, and a few specialized applications. It does this well. I use my Mac for development, general home user crap (web, email, IRC, documents, photos), and most other things I do at home, not including acting as a server. My servers are mostly Linux based, without GUI or monitor, and fairly low in clock speed. They do their job fairly well.
The likelihood is that AMD could not provide volume discounts, or guarantee volume of shipping CPUs, or provide CPUs that don't guzzle power. While it's not generally known, certain OEM's get CPUs from Intel at the same or cheaper prices than the equivalent Athlon would cost. This is a major factor in Dell's Intel only stance. Probably it was the power consumption issue that influenced Apple's decision the most. Some of AMD's supposedly mobile Athlon 64 chips have a maximum dissipation of 72W!!!! While Netburst is a horribly inefficient architecture both in terms of power and IPC, it's being phased out and will probably only appear in the Developer Edition machines. There is a trend that has been noted in recent years, that shows laptops overtaking desktops in percentage of machines sold. For laptops Intel was the better option. Furthermore, while I do follow the public roadmaps released by the chip vendors, there is a great deal more that is not published. This is for competitive reasons. I'd imagine that Jobs has seen Intel's long term roadmap, which he intimated at WWDC. Right now the Opteron/Athlon 64 is the more impressive x86 desktop CPU by a decent margin. 5 years ago, I wouldn't have been so sure that AMD could pull off what they have. In 5 years anything could happen, but then again I don't know what AMD or Intel's long term directions are. I'd say that it's a safe bet that no one posting here has either.
While I am a very big fan of the Athlon 64, and would rather have an Opteron based PowerMac than a Xeon one as things stand right now, that's apparently not an option. However once again, in 5 or 6 years Apple may have ditched the Intel-only stand and released one. Likewise I'd seriously prefer a Pentium-M based laptop, however AMD may figure out the dissipation issues in the next 3 years. At this point it's just rampant speculation.
Willie Sippel said:
The references to the TOP500 list are simply to demonstrate that IBM's tech is not second rate. They may not make a decent laptop CPU, but they certainly make competitive CPUs. It's simply an easy list to point to that shows that groups who have built clusters have generated better numbers using IBM chips.
Blue gene is a class of machines not a single machine, The PPC 440s it uses are very very low power CPUs that are specifically designed to be used in massive numbers. It's interesting, and perhaps counterintuitive, that to make the fastest machine on Earth you should use a singly insignificant CPU (they're about as fast as a slower P3), that is designed to be packed tighter than anything else ever devised.
I do agree with you about AMD's current desktop offerings being far superior (at least for my uses) to Intel's current ones. The opposite is true with regard to laptop CPUs, from my perspective. This is because for a laptop, I want battery life even at the expense of having a faster CPU. I want to use it all day long without having to plug it in. While close, this is not possible with Apple's current Powerbooks. Basically I found the 800Mhz Powerbook I was issued at one job better than the 1333Mhz one I was later issued. The 800 ran much longer, was very comfortable on the lap (not even that warm), and was acceptably fast. If I could get the same things in a faster laptop, I'd be greatly interested, however that's not what has happened with recent Powerbooks. At times the 1333 got hot enough that it was seriously uncomfortable to have it on my lap.
The first machines to make the transition will be machines that require low power CPUs (mini, iBook, Powerbook). In 2 1/2 years (completed transition?), who knows what AMD and Intel will have released.
for me, i want as fast a single core as i can get! emulation cant benefit from extra cpu's, due to very critical timings.
everyone send paypal, and ill do some tests with one of these
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/index.html
everyone send paypal, and ill do some tests with one of these
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/index.html
buggybear said:I am somewhat disappointed that my above post has gone by without any feedback
Just go and have a look at the speeds and the prices. Sometimes they differ in, well, astonishing ways ...
EOF
.
i couldnt get anything meaningful out of those links. just a bunch of badly written guff... and the 2nd page wouldnt load.
just tell us the prices and performance! summarize!
I just hope OS X stays stable and usable.
There are days when my G5 is running flat out and many days where it is not doing much other that look good. I generally am uneasy when my PC is running flat out. Just hoping it doesn't crater.
I also think Apple needs to slow down the adding of new features to the OS. Maintain or improve reliability is very important. I don't want to relearn the interface on each new version. This is too much like Microsoft.
There are days when my G5 is running flat out and many days where it is not doing much other that look good. I generally am uneasy when my PC is running flat out. Just hoping it doesn't crater.
I also think Apple needs to slow down the adding of new features to the OS. Maintain or improve reliability is very important. I don't want to relearn the interface on each new version. This is too much like Microsoft.