On Sep 7, 2006, at 11:06 AM, Sylwester Pietrzyk wrote: >> They're all very significantly faster than their older G4/G5 >> equivalents. > Actually Apple's benches on their site are worth nothing. If we would > take in consideration the same count and clock speed of G5 and Intel > processors - then there would be very little difference in real world > speed. Dual core G5 2 GHz is about as fast as dual core Intel 2 GHz. > Quad core G5 2.5GHz is only slightly slower than Quad Xeon 2.66 GHz: > http://www.geekpatrol.ca/blog/135
Yes. The PowerPC chip set was always a better overall performer than the Intel equivalent. The problem that Apple is responding to with the move to Intel was lack of commitment on the part of the chip vendors (Motorola and IBM) to develop the PowerPC line in such a way as to pose a business advantage to Apple, not any lack in the current/ recent PowerPC offerings themselves. Even a PowerMac G5 2.0Ghz DP system is a stunningly capable, powerful system. Remember that I worked at Apple and was the Technology Manager for Development Tools. I was involved in this chip transition as far back as 1999 when it was a deep deep black project that I couldn't even tell my boss and his boss about, as it was being handled through the Hardware and OS/development tools groups exclusively until about 2003. > If Apple wouldn't go Intel way, we would just see next generation of > PowerMacs G5 as fast as Xeon based Macs Pro . The unfortunate truth is that getting a faster G5 was likely not going to happen in any reasonable time frame, where getting faster, better, improved Xeons/equivalents will likely happen sooner due to the amount of development dollars being dumped in that direction. That said, all of the last generation of chips (G5 post 2Ghz, Xeon, etc) have been disappointing compared to the original specification projection. It seems there is a threshold being approached at which it takes a lot more subtle and complex development work to go beyond the perceptible performance of this class of system. I'm sure we'll pass beyond this threshold sometime soon, but my bets are on the chip vendors who dump lots of money and time in that direction. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
