PowerMac G5 Linux Performance

[Appleuser201]

I haven't seen a G5 be so fast on the internet before, is this video real? YouTube plays smoothly at 720p 60 frames per second using firefox 47. Is 16.04 ubuntu always this good on older G5's?

 

[Dronecatcher]

It's a Quad with a 2Gb VRAM GPU which I believe has hardware acceleration under Linux - that's where the extra video capability is coming from.

 

[z970]

Especially since Firefox 47 is not the fastest choice of browsers (hence the speed tweaks on the Wiki).

Judging from a distance, if he chose Arctic Fox .17, he could easily have streamed 1080p with that kind of power...

 

[Dronecatcher]

Especially since Firefox 47 is not the fastest choice of browsers (hence the speed tweaks on the Wiki).

Judging from a distance, if he chose Arctic Fox .17, he could easily have streamed 1080p with that kind of power...

He actually does 1080P if you look (and jittery 4K at one point)

 

[swamprock]

Hah! Sort of off-topic, but not... here's a video about Richard Benson, one of the creators of a video shown in the OP's video. Funny stuff-

 

[Appleuser201]

It's a Quad with a 2Gb VRAM GPU which I believe has hardware acceleration under Linux - that's where the extra video capability is coming from.

Does that mean the quad G5 has a little more power than todays lowest end intel processors (found on cheap chromebooks)?
YouTube struggles to play 720p 60fps in chrome on the dell chromebook. It can play 720p fine, but anything higher struggles.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Does that mean the quad G5 has a little more power than todays lowest end intel processors (found on cheap chromebooks)?
YouTube struggles to play 720p 60fps in chrome on the dell chromebook. It can play 720p fine, but anything higher struggles.

You'd have to reference the specs in question but generally, yes, a G5 Quad has more power than early C2D Intel CPUs - however, it's only half the story. No GPU under OSX ever had hardware acceleration for decoding video - unlike Chromebooks which do and have software specifcally written for it.
A Quad with the wrong software and a lack of understanding will be no better than a Chromebook but with the right setup it will.
The greatest obstacle to online performance for PPC is javascript - hence the necessity for blockers.

 

[Appleuser201]

You'd have to reference the specs in question but generally, yes, a G5 Quad has more power than early C2D Intel CPUs - however, it's only half the story. No GPU under OSX ever had hardware acceleration for decoding video - unlike Chromebooks which do and have software specifcally written for it.
A Quad with the wrong software and a lack of understanding will be no better than a Chromebook but with the right setup it will.
The greatest obstacle to online performance for PPC is javascript - hence the necessity for blockers.

The chromebook I am referring too is the Dell Chromebook 11 from summer of 2015, it has a dual core 2.18ghz Intel Celeron N2840. Early C2D's are faster than the chromebook from what I've used.

 

[z970]

The chromebook I am referring too is the Dell Chromebook 11 from summer of 2015, it has a dual core 2.18ghz Intel Celeron N2840. Early C2D's are faster than the chromebook from what I've used.

What's its other specs?

 

[Appleuser201]

What's its other specs?

I got the specs wrong, this is the one I use:
http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/dell-chromebook-11-review/specs/
It's actually from 2014, but I've used new chromebooks and they don't feel any faster. They all run the same Chrome OS and only use Chrome as the browser which is faster on YouTube than Firefox.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I got the specs wrong, this is the one I use:
http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/dell-chromebook-11-review/specs/
It's actually from 2014, but I've used new chromebooks and they don't feel any faster. They all run the same Chrome OS and only use Chrome as the browser which is faster on YouTube than Firefox.

It's no surprise you're getting less than stellar performance online with a 1.4Ghz CPU

 

[Amethyst1]

It's no surprise you're getting less than stellar performance online with a 1.4Ghz CPU

At least the 2955U is a proper (Haswell) CPU, not some ***** based on Atom. The low clock speed and lack of Turbo-Boost are problematic, though.

 

[Appleuser201]

At least the 2955U is a proper (Haswell) CPU, not some ***** based on Atom. The low clock speed and lack of Turbo-Boost are problematic, though.

Browsers are the main issue. The chrome book uses Chrome obviously, and chrome is fast but slows down very easily with more than a few tabs open due to being bad with ram. Firefox 47 was used in the Linux G5 video and performed better than most modern low end Intel CPU's. (From my own tests involving Windows 10s laptops and chrome books) Firefox quantum in my experience is faster than classic Firefox but YouTube and other google services are noticeably slower on any Firefox thanks to Google. Not only could this G5 perform better using the dog of a browser FF47 compared to faster chrome on brand new chips, if this G5 used a better lighter browser, I'm sure web browsing would feel nearly as fast as even a modern Mac.
And whenever people say PowerPC is useless and obselete, I show them this video.