whats up with the G4 chips?

From all the reviews, articles etc. I have read about the G4 and the benchmarks provided by the reviewers. If you use Software that takes advantage of the G4's AltiVec engine (currently Adobe Photoshop 5.x and possibly other Adobe programs as well are to my knowledge the only programs that do), the G4 will effectively wipe the floor with an Athlon or P4. Other than that, the G4 has about the same performance as the G3 (the G4+ obviously has better performance because of the increased FSB and memory speed), which I believe apple used to compare against the Pentium II. The CPU isn't that great in terms or real world performance - if all the software made for the Mac took advantage of the G4's engine, it probably would be better than a P4 system. Anybody notice that while the PS2 runs at something around 292 MHz, it can compete with GHz PCs with Geforce 2 and 3s, which is because it is dedicated to games, now since software developers can basically specialize their programs for the mac since there are very few different options available, it would be a nice system. I think all the Mac people are basing their claims on synthetic and not real world benchmarks (except Photoshop).

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Originally posted by Mr.Squish:
Macs are a flaming pile. this so called "stability" is only because you cant change anything if you wanted to. The machine is very limited in what you can do with it. And what about upgrades?? you can forget it... I would say more, but previous posters covered it nicely. no need to repeat whats already been said. =p

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Since the BW G3s Macs have been way easier to upgrade than any PC - plus you don't have to worry about compatibility issues - you are guaranteed to not have any problems, for a PC you have to buy the most expensive components to be able to get GUARANTEED stability, which puts the price up near where the Macs are.

Ironically, Apple's new G3 based iBook is about as fast as the G4 based Titanium Powerbook https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/.../2005/06/5.gif

Anyone know haw Photoshop 6 with SSE 2 enhancements compares to a G4+ based Mac?

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Stoo

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Originally posted by stoo:
Ironically, Apple's new G3 based iBook is about as fast as the G4 based Titanium Powerbook https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/.../2005/06/5.gif

Anyone know haw Photoshop 6 with SSE 2 enhancements compares to a G4+ based Mac?

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SSE2 should not make a significant performance increase over SSE. The Fundamental difference between SSE and SSE2 is that SSE2 now supports IEEE compliant double precision FP operation. This is something not present in Altivec, 3Dnow or SSE. It is also something that shouldn't effect performance in PhotoShop.

Apple tends to avoid comparisons between the G4 using Altivec and SIMD units of the Athlon or P4. Instead they prefer to compare Altivec to X87 throughput. This is how they make the claim of the G4 being vastly more powerful then X86 on a clock for clock basis. If you compare SIMD to SIMD the X86 chips still have a slight theoretical edge overall (though Altivec is apparently easier to use). If you compare their traditional FPU the G4 is somewhere between an Athlon and a PIII clock for clock, but well behind overall.



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Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.

Dis Macs all you like; It's fine with me. I think Mac OS is a terrible pain in the arse. Just don't tangle with Motorola. The G4e (aka G4+) really is a nice processor.

For an interesting article about the basic architectual philosophies of the G4e and the P4, visit Ars Technica

BTW, it's an article for non-engineers and stupid people(like me).

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Athlon 1.4ghz, Epox 8K7A+, 512mb Crucial PC2100, Elsa Gladiac 920, Hercules Game Theatre XP, Maxtor 40gb, Creative Encore 12x, HP 9310i 10x4x32, 3com & Netgear NICs

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Originally posted by Hateslife:
Dis Macs all you like; It's fine with me. I think Mac OS is a terrible pain in the arse. Just don't tangle with Motorola. The G4e (aka G4+) really is a nice processor.

For an interesting article about the basic architectual philosophies of the G4e and the P4, visit Ars Technica

BTW, it's an article for non-engineers and stupid people(like me).

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The G4 and G4+ are nice processors, but they still lack the raw power of today's X86 processors. OTOH is Apple and Motorola can hang on to this concept long enough there could be a big payoff for them. Computers are getting big, power hungry and noisy. This isn't something most users want in their living room sitting on their desk.

I think you will eventually see a backlash against 100W chips that don't offer noticeable improvement in their applications. A chip as efficient (performance per watt) as the G4 should be well positioned to take advantage of this.



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Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.

I think part of the problem is that Mac people believe that their machines are the fastest because they paid so much for them, and the fake benchmarks show it, etc.
My friend uses Mac's and when he got his cable modem I brought my P166 MMX laptop w/32mb of RAM over to see whose computer was faster. His Mac was the newest iMac, with the memory maxed out and all the options. It was funny to watch my old laptop beat it on page after page, even on complex Java pages.
I have also gotten to sit my PIII 667 next to a G4+ running Bryce4 on both, again my computer was faster, and now that I have my Athlon 1.13 it makes the macs look like a joke.
Anyway, it does not really matter, I have a PC, and I will never have to worry about having someone on a Mac take me down in Counter-Strike, or just about any other good game, because they are not available on Macs. :P

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Originally posted by bobgod007:
I'm at a loss how the G4's front end works, so if someone could clue me in, that would help me understand some of the more basic differences between the x86 chips and the PPC chips. It almost seems as if the PPC relies on a robust back end and advanced decoder units and busses over the balenced, clock speed happy x86.

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There is no decoder, there are no microops. PPC's, like Alphas, are risc designs: each intruction is the same length. Think of it as running straight raw micro-ops, and hence no decoder is neccessary.



[This message has been edited by MSP (edited July 14, 2001).]

Yes, there is a decode phase in all risc designs. It is essential to identifying the operation in order to dispatch it to the execution resources. It just needn't be as complex as a variable length front end found on the x86.



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