Apple Confirms NO G5 PowerBooks anytime soon - Page 3

I use both wintel and Apple Laptops and let me tell you one thing, my new PB 1.5 ghz is the fastest laptop i have ever had and use a pentium m at 1.6 ghz and it is not even close in performance or speed.

You may have some system problem then. The Pentium-M 1.6 GHz should be noticeably faster than the new 1.5 GHz G4. Could you do me a favor and go to this thread and run the CPU benchmark described therein? I would like to see the results for both Pentium-M 1.6 GHz and G4 1.5 GHz.

You are aware that this test is a very narrowly defined fp task and not in any way indicative of overall cpu performance?

lol yeah seriously~ :P

Actually the Pentium m 1.6 ghz is not superiori technologically or physically because the g4 used in the 1.5 ghz powerbook is a totally redesigned processor like the pentium m but is using a dual core design setup (altivec on top) rather than a single core pentium m, that should basically answer your question because the pentium m really is not more powerful and it has been known for a while that macs run at faster speeds when clocked at the same mhz as their pentium counterparts.
Matt
It really would not be an accurate benchmark and the only real way to test the machines is to use digital photography utilies and editing utilities such as final cut and photoshop but final cut is a mac only solution
Matt

No it's not, by any reasonable definition it's single core.
Also Altivec is a SIMD FPU, just like SSE2 as found
on the Pentium M, it's not some secret Apple voodoo.

FWIW the 1.6 GHz Pentium M has a better SPECint 2000
base score (1206) than the 2.0 GHz PPC 970. You may
not believe it but the Pentium M, and Dothan in particular,
is an excellent CPU. An on-die 2MB L2 cache and a 400 MHz
FSB, compared to the anemic G4 should make that blindingly
obvious to all but the most partisan. Intel's not planning
on using Pentium M follow-ons for their future desktop
CPUs just for the hell of it.


Absolute rubbish, Coppermine PIII had an excellent IPC.
In fact the whole range of Intel processors with the P6
microarchitecture delivered good to great performance
per cycle.

Posting the kind of things you did gives the rest of us
Mac owners a bad name. Macs are great but can the BS.

That's all meaningless.

Especially the benchmarking stuff.

To an extent, so is the CPU, the OS, the app...

The only thing that matters is the integration.

Put Photoshop on the PB up against Photoshop on a PC. Select a series of actions, see which does better. Select more actions, repeat.

The timed test is the only thing that counts.

Furthermore, it shouldn't even be time test to app, but timed test to task.

If an App exists on one platform and not on another, a good test is the best available on each against the best of the other.

That's how you compare systems.

So,

propose 2d, 3d, video, audio, coding, etc etc suite tests

set up the two "platforms"

and test away.

it's the only meaningful answer to the question of which is faster, and by how much.

EVERYTHING factors in, CPU, GPU, RAM, disk speed, OS, application choice. It is utterly pointless to seperate any of it.

The only denominator is price, period. What do you get for what price.

Add it up, line up it up, time it = test.

The rest equals spec whore bullshit.

Spot on Matsu! I wish bare feats (or another web site) might do more of this type of testing.

I would like to see how a PB 1.5 stacks up against a Centrino 1.6/1.7 on like you said a set of tasks on various types of apps, with price the common denominator.

Not just a few cpu and gaming fps comparisons?. At least then well know for sure if we need to be more spec whores or not.

PS. If the PB doesnt do well against the 1.6 Pentium M, then its not gong to look good for Apple when we start seeing the Dothan 2G models start shipping soon.

Actually, the Centrino or Pentium M is a single core with SSM, but the G4 processor was designed and constructed on a two core process and broken down into two aspects the g4 Microprocessor and Altivec, Altivec is not code program like MMX or SSE2, it is actually a piece of hardware that runs on top of the g4 processor and is not some sort of mysterious apple voodoo, and actually specint 2000 are very inaccurate in benchmarking machines, especially because the powerpc 970 is a more powerful processor than the centrino and it is funny that IBM power4 chips have consistently beat centrino chips in performance, i wont speak about dothan because not enough performance reviews have been posted anywhere. I will agree that the bus on the g4 1.5 ghz leaves something to be desired, but lets not forget that the powerpc 970 which is based on the ibm power4 core which definetely beats the pentium m processor(which by the way is a mobile processor, not even capable of achieving the same bandwidth/performance and Specint despite the fact that it is a bad benchmark and that no true benchmark exists between pc's and mac's, measures laptop processors different than Desktop processors, taking into account that regardless of supposed performance, desktop processors are more powerful especially when being compared to lower powered, lower speed pentium m chips, now it may feel good for you to say that wow the pentium m chip is something special therefore it is better than apple processors, but i will say that 1) Despite the facts hindering bus speed, the G4 processor that runs at 1.5 ghz is equal to or superior to a Pentium M processor(dothan) at 1.6 ghz and at comparable speeds as well(1.5 ghz), the bus gives bandwidth superiority to the pentium, but the performance of the g4 microprocessor itself gives favor to the g4 itself. 2) Never analyze or bite more than you can support, in no registered or valid cases has any mobile processor, intel, ibm or motorola beaten a desktop processor at equal or greater speeds in benchmarks or whatnot because the comparable technology between a mobile and a desktop is completely different. 3) Never compare 32 bit and 64 bit, they are completely different, a 64 bit processor chews data in 64 bit chunks while a 32 does 32, bit by bit speed vs speed, a 64 bit processor can handle more computations per second than a 32 bit processor when running native 64 bit software. 4) THe Powerpc 970 is a superior processor to most or all Intel 32 bit processors and is based on a Scaled Down Dual Core IBM Power 4 processor which is a Enterprise level processor that sells for 2000-3000 for one processor alone with no computer, it is scaled down, but not greatly 5) despite all Intel's industry clout, IBM has more advanced fabrication technology and the factory in NY used to make the Power4 and Power5 Cores and thus the Powerpc 970 is the newest and most advanced fabrication plant used by the big three (amd, intel and ibm) and has chartered new territories with 65 nm, 90 nm and 130nm processes that churn out a processor that is superior to that of the larger process, 190, 230 nm still at use by intel. 6) Benchmarks are inaccurate, in no case has a accurate benchmark for performance been found to accurately correlate performance of a mac versus that of a pc and therefore any actual benchmarks will show no actual performance examples
7) Think before you write: I have been involved in the research and study field of processor technology for the past seven years and have done several projects(non major) that have constructed and tested the core performance of major processors, mainly amd vs intel, but have recently begin studying ibm processes and while the technological leaps have been great, i am a realist and i believe that accuracy must be maintained in presentation and the fact is that your statement saying that the Pentium M shows significant performance scores against G4 Mobile and especially the Powerpc 970 is absolutely invalid and based not on fact, but on opinion and represents the opinion and data supporting the opinion of you, and not fact, benchmarks are not an accurate survey and people know the performance of their machines, i have machines in both worlds i have several PC machines running from the original AMD athlon(love it to death), to the Pentium 4 and Pentium M at 1.6 ghz by the way, i also have a DP G5 at 2ghz and an Apple PB at 1.5 ghz and on these machines i have done extensive testing and in all cases i have seen better performance by my Apple machines, not only do they not crash, they take zero time to load up, zero install time and zero processing time, i get done what i want when i want, but when using my pc's i face processing times, crashes and stability issues with major programs that i find to be essential especially photoshop, spss and avid which the same or competiting versions work better on mac

in a few weeks i'll have the 1.33 PB (768MB RAM) to test against a thinkpad with a 1.6 pentium M (but less RAM). i might be able to do some testing there to see which is a better, but i'll need to find some common applications between the two and i won't have adobe photoshop, premier, etc or any games...

by late august i should be able to test the same PB 1.33 against a different thinkpad with equal ram and 1.6 Pentium M. there, i should have a bunch of adobe programs and possibly a game or two. if i'm still interested maybe i'll test them out

uh huh. :/

That might have been the most horribly formatted thing I've seen in quite a while here.


While the stability I have no dispute with, taking zero time to do anything seems a bit excessive, don't you think?

Also, while a 1.5 GHz G4 may be comparable to a 1.6 GHz Dothan, I'm not so sure that it would be that comparable to a 2.0 GHz Dothan.


Are you kidding me? You're telling me that a 1.6 GHz Pentium M wouldn't beat a 1.8 GHz desktop P4?

http://anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800&p=13

I think what some have been trying to say here,maybe not successfully,is that altivec is an independant unit whereas mmx/sse are wound up with the fpu pipelines.Same idea,much better implimentation on the ativec side.And by the way,these simd units handle integer as well as floating point code.

As for the p6 core having a high ipc,well it all depends what you compare it to.Certainly it has compared to the p4.

The rest of your post highlights just how much bs misinformation and downright paranoia there is in the mac community regarding x86 processors and their performance.
Let me make this as clear as possible-Spec is a highly suspect benchmark as it is but the scores intel reports useing their trick compiler are a joke.It's a public secret that intels compiler is tweaked to get unreal spec scores-why do you think AMD uses it to perform their own posted scores? They are not in any way related to real world performance.Let me quote from a cnet article out last year:

"Peter Glaskowsky, editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report, said a company could get better benchmark results using a Dell machine with Intel and Microsoft compilers than with a Linux machine and GCC compiler. However, he also noted that Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests. "

But lets play a game of reductio ad absurdum.Lets assume these scores are correct and actually mean something.Apple reported a score of 800 in specint.Intel claims a score of 1206.Thats over 50% faster for a chip that is only 80% the clock rate.Ok,at this point I'm LMAO so hard I can barely type,a chore for me at the best of times.You do see what I mean? This is as rediculous as if they claimed it was made of moon cheese!

So what is it that is supposed to make this uberchip (modified pIII actually) so damn fast.Well,its not the L2 cache.Check out places like tomshardware.com.They benchmark the new dothan chips and found little to no increase in performance from the doubled L2 cache.Actually only a couple of tests benefited and that was only a 5% increase over
the clock increase.If you look at comparisons between amd64 chips with 512k and 1m of cache the difference is about the same.So L2 cache cant cut it.I want everyone to look at those benchmark comparison I just mentioned because I have seen more than one poster here with eyes bugged out over the new 2m L2 cache in the centrino.Dont fall for it,it doesnt make the difference you think.

What about the bus? This is pointless to discuss.Centrino has a 100 mghz (that 400 mghz in intel market speak) bus vs. a 500 mghz (1 ghz in apple market speak) bus with independent read/write traffic for the G5.The G5 beats the centrino here so bad that it is obviously not this that accounts for the insane and unbelievable difference.

That leaves the core itself and its interesting that they share some features in common.G5 has a 16 stage alu and while the length of the banias pipelines have not been published,it is something above the 12 stages of the p6 core it was based on,so similar to the G5.Both have duel pipelines,though g5 also has a special unit for handeling internal "book keeping" instructions.Banias has a micro op fusion feature that sounds similar in principal to the group formation of the G5.Both have advanced branch prediction,though the G5 has a massivly larger bht,three actually.What really kills the x86 architecture is the dearth of registers-only 8 vs. the 32 of ppc.There is nothing here that could make it that much faster.

So whats causing all this? Magical fairy dust? Or maybe its just that intel cant be trusted? Yes I think it might be.

Ok,I'm getting tired now,so lets get to the punchline.If those spec scores represent the actual real world performance of these two processors,then IBM must be the most inept and worthless cpu designer in history.I mean,come on.How can you bring this intel propoganda here and then accuse someone else of giving mac users a bad name?

I really shouldn't have bothered posting here. That said:

At least Matsu had a point about doing fair
tests of systems as a whole.

mpopkin: While Altivec is perhaps overall better than
SSE2, calling it dual core flies so far from standard
practice in computer architecture I hardly know where to
begin.

SPECint 2000 is the best of a bad bunch for cross-platform
benchmarks. Be definition if you wish to compare different
platforms you need to use cross-platform benchmarks.

Power4 beats Centrino on tasks which are sensitive to
cache (Power 4 systems have huge caches) and I/O but
I'd bet a 2.0 GHz Dothan could beat a Power4 on quite a
few smaller benchmarks. SP FP might be one.

1. Your saying the G4 is faster than Dothan?
Looking at STREAM results a Pentium III is close to a G4,
Centrino's bus is 3 times faster. On top of that it has a larger
cache, much higher clock, a whole bunch of tricks on top,
reported performance comparable to many high-end desktop
chips. If a G4 was a fast as Dothan a G5 would be the fastest
chip in the world, and yet where we can compare the two,
G5 to Dothan, Dothan wins. :/ STREAM is a benchmark
useful for estimating sustained floating point performance
and Dr. McCalpin works on POWER development, so don't
call it biased.

2. Go read some Dothan reviews, it kicks the butt of all
other x86 from Intel at the same clock.

3. Your 64/32 bit comparison is funny. The only case where
a 64 bit chip would outperform a 32 bit chip is where all your
data is 64 bit integers, and even then it would equal out due
to cache pressure and memory bandwidth. 64 bit processors
have never shown substantial performance advantages due
to their register size. If you used packed data, it'll have no real
advantage at all. I suppose if you do crypto all day it'd be worth
it though...

4. It's cut down a fair bit, but the Power4 isn't that great anyhow,
it's getting replaced by IBM now. Power4 performs well because
of the large L3 caches and I/O in the MCM, both absent from PPC 970.
It's great as a server processor but was designed from the outset
to be packaged 4 chip/8 processors at a time. Stand alone it's
competitive but not class leading.

5. So wrong it's not funny. You claim that Intel is using 190 and 230 nm,
never have but I guess those were typos for 180 and 250. FWIW
the vast majority of Intel's production is 130 nm, with 90nm ramping
up now. Both Prescott and Dothan are 90 nm. The majority of Intel's
production will be 90 nm by the second half of this year.

6. Cross-platform benchmarking is difficult but SPECmark and STREAM
are as fair as such benchmarks come.

7. For someone who claims to be involved in research of processor
technology you made a lot of errors, IMHO. FWIW I have no crash
problems with my computers (Mac or PC).

I stand by what I wrote, I like Macs, I'm posting from an iBook right now,
but I don't hate PCs, and I recognise that Centrino (Banias and now
Dothan) is an excellent processor for laptops. It's turning out so
well that we'll see derivatives on the desktop next year. Some of
the performance projections I've seen suggest that those of us who
want a fast but relatively cool and quiet PC will be very happy with
the desktop variants. YMMV.

Performa636CD: If you do some benchmarks it would be good
if you'd post them here.

cuneglasus:

I'd agree that everyone tries to win SPEC benchmarks, but it's still
the best indicator out there, and in many cases things that are good
for SPEC benchmarks also benefit real applications. AMD has submitted
results using other compilers recently, gcc and Pathscale.

Your point about clock-rate against performance seems rather ironic on
a Mac forum. FWIW Itanium2 delivers the best floating point performance,
better than even the P4 at 3.4 GHz, yet runs at 1.5 GHz. Clock is a poor
indicator.

5% for a doubling of cache is about right, cache miss rates generally halve
with doublings, so if the rate was 90% with 1 MB you'd hope for 95%
with 2 MB, 97.5% with 4 MB, 98.75% with 8 MB, and so on. In simple
terms you get diminishing returns as you invest in more cache. 5% going
from 1 MB to 2 MB is quite good IMHO.

There's a difference between physical and architectural registers, the
Centrino may have 8 architectural registers, but the physical number
is greater. IIRC it was 32, might be higher.

To summarise: The G4 is long in the tooth, has a slow FSB, and the
performance is not as high as contemporary mobile x86 processors.
Worse still for Apple (at the moment) is that Dothan is competitive with
current PowerPC desktop processors. This will likely change though
as 970fx ramps up, 975 and 750vx are releases, and the new
e600 and so on arrive.

When the new processor for Apple laptops arrives, Mac 'group-think'
will change and people will admit that the G4 was past its prime.

1) There are almost no reviews on the major review sites for the Pentium M Dothan, so your information there is invalid
2) Dothan vs Powerpc 970 who wins, powerpc totally, not only is it bit by bit a faster, more stable processor, it is faster and next generation, you need to remember that benchmarks are different for both mobile and desktops, i will also say that owning a pentium m the only advantage i like about it is its battery life
3) Despite all premonitions, 64 bit is next generation and has shown significant performance differences even when dealign with 32 bit operations except in the case of the itanium from intel, why would Intel be changing and cancelling all its processor lines for the next year to focus on the development of a 32/64 bit processor x86-64 format which it will follow Amd's lead for a change?
4) i am not denying that dothan or any other version of the pentium m processor are bad, but clock vs clock the g4(mpc7447a processor is a redesigned processor and tweaked core, right now we are looking at the last generation of mpc74xx series g4 processors and they are definetely at their highest end and as i am typing off a pb 1.5 right now, i have been nothing short of impressed with its performance in gaming, final cut pro, photoshop cs and dvd studio, applications which require and support dual processor support and are getting great performance from my SP g4 and there is no doubt that the speed performance between this and my older, but not old pb 1.25 is much greater than stated
5) benchmarks are still not accurate and nothing can change that when comparing pc to mac
6) if there are few or no dothan reviews, how can you say it is the leader in the processor world
7) Intel is not going to be implementing centrino tech in desktops, it is switching over to larger bus speeds and a 32/64 bit processors, due out late next year
8) yep, you aare right, power4 is on its way out, but lets not forget that the next generation of g5 is not going to be power4 based, but power5 and speculation has that old steve jobs might toss it up to g6, but that is a whole different battlefront
9) IBM will be at 65nm by years end, where did you say intel will be? 90nm
big difference
10) no disagreements, i would love to have a g5 powerbook and i will have one when it releases and the g4 is a long lived processor no doubt about it, but lets not forget that every processor has new generations, the g4 has several and intel does as well the pentium m has banias and dothan and probably another 2 or 3 down the road.

Finally: G4 is superior clock vs clock in performance, but not as a necessarily mobile processor, the dothan will kicks its butt in the category that matters, battery life and that is important believe it or not, it will also win on heat, FSB, it will lose in performance, cache, and altivec(believe it or not, altivec is a superior hardware enhancement that because it is implemented is what makes it special, while INtel in its most recent Press Release announced that its going the way of the Dual Core processor to minimize heat/power consumption, so who is the follower now?

My final post FWIW. We could undoubtably keep this up
all day and never change one anothers mind.
I will read any reply you post though.

1. http://www.x86-secret.com/popups/art...dow.php?id=104

This review is very interesing as it shows how Dothan at 2.0 GHz
is already very competivive with P4C, P4EE and Athlon 64.

Check out the performance when it's overclocked to 2.4 GHz, a
speed that we will likely see desktop variants.

2. Disagree.

3. Disagree. Intel is doing both IA64 and AMD64. Intel recently
showed first silicon from Montecito the next generation Itanium.
The per-core performance is predicted to be twice that of todays
1.5 GHz 6MB L4 Itanium2. Some facts and figures:

1.7 billion transistors.
~ 600 mm^2 IIRC.
24 MB L3 cache. Yes twenty-four megabytes ON CHIP.
Dual core.
SMT.
3 x the bus bandwidth of today ( ~ 20 GB/s).
90 nm IIRC.
Due in 2005.
Virtually guaranteed to be the winner of every significant benchmark.

4. Your opinion, which I will not dispute.

5. It's difficult but not impossible, and the best benchmark
is the end-user's work load.

6. I never said it was the leader in the PC world, just that it
thrashes the G4 and is similar in perfomance to the PPC970, faster
in some areas and slower in others.

7. Two different issues, the team in Israel who developed
Banias and Dothan are working on desktop variants for 2005. Those processors
will probably be AMD64 compatible like Prescott. 64bitness is quite any
easy thing to add, AMD said it only accounted for 5% of the logic in the
Opteron.

8. The major difference of Power5 to Power4 is the inclusion of SMT, just
like Intel has SMT in the P4, and future Itaniums. FWIW IBM seem to have
done a good job, but it's likely to add perhaps at most 30% on latency
sensitive apps, and more like 10% in general. Applications that can speed
up dramatically also tend to be very I/O sensitive. That said it will be
sold as NEW MAGIC SUPER DUPER THREADING.

9. That remains to be seen. FWIW IBM like Intel have had big trouble moving
to 90nm. Cheap 90nm over problematic 65nm will make Intel $$$ whilst IBM
continue to lose $$$ running their fabs.

Finally: Disagree. Dothan is an excellent processor and the follow on will
likely be competitive with any mobile or desktop processors. Above that
IBM will find the Itanium a very formiddable foe.

Here is perhaps the first review of the new Dothans. If you don't know french, you can go directly to the benchmarks and architecture comparisons. It is clear that Dothan performs like an Athlon64 but for much less power consumption.


This is much discussed lately. There are many indications that Intel indeed plans to introduce a desktop Pentium-M based chip:

Intel to reunite notebook, desktop chip architectures

Dothan-based P4 appears on Intel roadmap

Intel to Cancel NetBurst, Pentium 4, Xeon Evolution

To me, the ease of use advantage that Mac OS X enjoys over Windows has kept me away from Intel (and AMD) chipsets. So I know very little about Intel's chipsets, because it doesn't matter to me how well they work. But as much as I enjoy learning about Intel's new mobile chipset(s), can we please get back on topic?

IMO, G5 PowerBooks are not as far off as it might sound. After all, the 90 nm G5-based Xserve is now shipping. And because a G5 in a PowerBook would presumably be clocked lower than its equivalent in a desktop PowerMac, and could be clocked down further for mobile use, I don't think power consumption or heat are insurmountable issues. I seriously don't think we'll wait for a PowerBook G5 as long as we waited for the Titanium PowerBook G4 to arrive. But, until Apple actually ships a PowerBook G5, who knows?

Escher

Nice little post Matsu. Unfortunately only relavant to that handfull of people that run photoshop exclusively.

In any event it is a bit of retro defense like back when the G4 towers where all Apple had for the desktop. The G4 portables are being left behind for the same reasons a lack of significant clock rate increases. There is also the upcoming issue of a failure to shrink the process fast enough to stay a head on the basis of power usage.

Now maybe this is not as dark as the dark days of the G4 tower but it isn't getting any brighter. The problem is denying how far Apple is behind the curve does not make it any better. A couple of weeks ago I thought a 2GHz G4 or G5 in a laptop would be competitive, now I'm of the impression that Apple needs even more than that.

Dave

I've always said that benchmarks are meaningless. YOu use the system, the speed (or lack thereof) that you may experience is on that level only -- how long does it take to do said task -- and so that is the only relevant test.

CPU benchmarks may give some indication of speed differences on a common platform, but even that is less than ideal. If I have a system with a "faster" CPU against a system with a better disk system, more/faster RAM, a better GPU etc etc (both wintels!) and the slower CPU actually runs a system that gets things done faster, then you can't argue that X machine is faster than Y machine just becasue it has a faster CPU.

Nowhere did I say that Macs were as fast/faster, only that there's no way to establish that based on benchmarks.

You gotta line-up and test 'em out.

Which gets us to the question of mobile platforms. There are other factors that slow down a laptop besides the CPU. This isn't relevant just to photo shoppers, but any user. Get the relevant software in your chosen disciplines and run a timed test.

The results give a far better indication of which system is faster.

Funny, I was using my 2" thick Wallstreet today at the library desk, and a lady came up and asked if it was a new G5 PowerBook or an iBook that I had. I told her no, it's an older PowerBook G3, and that there weren't any PowerBooks with G5s in them yet. She seemed surprised since this was a design she had apparently never seen before.

I love this little thing! Well, BIG thing. Same footprint as a 14" iBook, and 2" thick. Never been asked if it was a G5 though.

Funny, someone asked if my power adapter was some kind of modem a few days ago. Nothing like a genuine Apple-designed machine to turn people's heads!

Totally agree that this post could go on forever
but last details are important

I know from experience with dealing with Intel development that they are switching over to dual core and amd64 bit designs. Here is the difference that you need to understand, we are dealing with the G4 and the Pentium M dothan, you brought in the powerpc 970 which in all cases beats the pentium m dothan in performance, speed and ability. No doubt there and nothing you can say will change that
There is no disputing that the dothan is a good chip and i have already outlined where its advantages are in powermanangement and battery life, but not performance, bit by bit it is still based on the same series of cores that make up the current generation of 32 bit intel processors. It is powerful and i have no doubt that the 2ghz dothan is probably faster than the g4 at 1.5 ghz, however the g4 processor 3 years ago had a 600 mhz equivalency factor with intel processors and now has a 100-200 mhz factor, this factor is basically the g4 runs at 800 mhz it is the equivalent of x mhz in pentium 4/m/III processors and amd as well, it has shrunk to almost non existence, but when i am reviewing a processor's performance do not forget that the 1.5 ghz g4 and the dothan m processor are both brand new and speed for speed running at equal clock, the g4(mpc7447a) will run faster and perform better, but burn more power and run hotter than the dothan, these are tradeoffs to me
3) DO not forget that the AMD64 and IA64 are totally different architectures, the AMD 64 is x-86-64, which gives native 32 bit as well as 64 bit processes, IA64 is strictly 64 bit and will never be seen in a consumer desktop because of price and cost difficulties
4) The Power5 is a significant jump in performance from the power4 core and has been completely redesigned, very much the way that the itanium 2 has been redesigned from the itanium 1, which has been around for a while
5) Do not forget that Intel does not have a large market for the Itanium because, whoa, Ibm is the market leader in Servers, Enterprise ready solutions and Business Servers and has named Linux and 64 Power5 processors as its next generation and primary processor that powers it. The powerpc 980 which is yet to be released is goign to be based on the power5 core, do not forget that the power4 and power5 are Dual Core processors that are significantly more expensive and more powerful than even the itanium 2,
6) Ibm is suffering losses at its fab in NY, because it is NEW and has yet been pumped to full volume, when you open a new fab it takes between 2-5 years for it to begin producing at full capacity with minimal failures/defects and this particular factory has only been open approx 2 years and is working at very diminished capacity.

Both processors are good, but clock vs clock the G5 crushes the dothan and the g4 beats it in some categories and loses in others, but the g5 loses in none to the dothan.

Sorry but you didnt address any of the concearns I posted about.Spec scores are not valid real world performance indicators and intel "cooking the books" make it a joke.Your claim that these tricks they use to get high scores are useful in the real world is hollow.They use tags that allow the processor to make branch predictions that would be invalid in real software.Absolutely useless in the real world.Did you not read the cnet article snip? What exactly do you think "disproportionate" means.Let me help.It means it doesnt look like the real world.The industry is not fooled by this,so why are you? Why by the way did you change the discussion from the G5 to the G4? That was not the claim of yours I was addressing.I was pointing out how completely unreal intels spec scores are in the face of real architectural details.So I take it you believe the 1.6 centrino is faster than a duel 2 ghz G5 tower? You must because if those scores mean anything that conclusion is unescapeable.These score are rediculous and you know it.

Your bit about cache and performance is right but irrelevent.I dont know why you even posted that.My point was that in your first post you claim the level 2 cache and fsb were responsible for its insane performance on spec and I mearly pointed out that that claim doest stand up,especially compared to the ppc970.All you did was concede the point to me.Thanks.

You are being a bit catty about the registers as well.Yes the x86 has rename registers but so does ppc.That doesnt enter into the picture though.The drop in performance comes when you run out of architectural registers.X86 Compilers can pretend to have more but must generate a lot of extra code to move values around to keep up the "pretence".This gives a pretty fair performance hit.Why do you think amd has added registers to the amd64 (16 in 64 bit mode)?

Bottom line-many performance claims that come out of the x86 world and of course from its fanboys are nothing but fluff.

This has gotten way off track.So I want to ask one question.Intel claims a spec int score of 1206 for a 1.6 ghz centrino.Apple claims a score of 800 for the 2 ghz G5.Do you think these figures represent anywhere near to a fair and accurate indication of the relative performance of these two processors?

This is so full of BS I just had to respond.



I seriously doubt this but won't say for sure until real hard data comes out. At this point it does appear that Dothan will beat the 970 in the variants now on the market.

This is possibly the biggest mistake or bit of mis informaiton seen in a long time. Dothan and the other Centrino processor are not based on intels current P4 cores. Almost everybody in the world knows this. You could argue that they are somewhat derived from the P3 family, but certianly not intels current 32 bit cores.

You will have to rephrase the above into something I can parse.

Or IA64 is a is a piece of junk that only meets the needs of a select few users. On the other hand some of those few users that can make use of the IA64 line have done so on the desktop.

The evidence we have at the moment does not support that. It appears that Power5 was expanded enough to support SMT and its ability to pass data around. The processor is otherwise rahter similar to the Power4

Ok I suppose you have all the details to support the idea that dothan never wins agianst the 970. Mind you I'm a big fan of the PPC family and I don't see how anybody could make such a statement at this time. At a given clock rate dothan will perform better than a P4 with some code bases plus it is going to scale clock rate wise. There is just ot much evidence to say without qualification that the 970 will beat Dothan in every matter.

Dave

I disagree that we are off topic!, the point of the thread is can the Powerbook remain competitive with PC notebooks with Centrino 1.7's and the now announced Dothan 2GHz without a G5?.

Or can Moto get the G4 beyond the current clock rate, whilst updating FSB, namely the rumoured 7460 out in time?.

I think ultimately the answer will come down to price/power dissapation. If Moto/freescale gets its 7460 out to 2GHz THIS year then we may only be 6 months behind. That said, a 970FX @ 2G would undoubtably be competitive with the Dothan.

My guess, Apple go G5 in the PB at MWSF 05, whilst the ibook/eMac remain G4.

PB, if you're going to use FFT to compare performance, do it right--compare every major implementation with different compilers on every platform.

Fortunately, this laborious task has been done. Although the G4 gets its ass handed to it, the G5 kicks everyone's ass. Altivec helps a lot, but even without it, the G5 beats P4s and Opterons on double precision tests.

For example, G5 versus 2.8GHz P4 Xeon versus G4 733MHz

Someone should start a new thread about this as the G5 results are relatively new.

So stupid i had to reply, The Dothan even close to the g5 are you kidding me, i dont need to have a brain cell to have known that to be bullshit and you know it. Not only is the g5 a DUal Processor system, you know what two processors are. The g5 powerpc 970 is signnificantly more powerful single processor than the dothan in any of its variants, as stated throughout this thread and all other logistics, benchmarks are useless, but then common sense strikes, desktop vs laptop, Server Procssor vs Intel laptop processor, even as a next generation processor, the dothan is not as powerful

Well we can only hope! Better yet would be that oe of Apples suppliers comes up with a high performance laptop specific chip.

From c't



Dothan 2GHz
i855GME
FIC MD02

Pentium4 3Ghz
i865PE
Asus L5800GM

Mobile Athlon64 3000+
VIA K8T800
Yakumo Q8D

When it comes to synthetic benchmarks HINT would be my choice.
One bench fits all

Comparing dothan to the G5 is really rather pointless, as long as XP is the only available OS now, and for the next 3 years.

XP is falling so far behind X it really makes no difference what processor is behind it.

Way to poke at the G5 ... the P4 performed horribly when it first came out, and although it's performance is still quite underwhelming, it has improved by quite a bit.

mpopkin, im interested in the apps you are using on both machines. IMO, real computer use is far more important than some cpu benchmarks, although, im a little suprised by the "not even close" comment.

This should put to rest some of the unguided attempts to label the Dothan series as a poor processor. While I'm not abotu to compare this to a G5, as it seems to be pretty useles on this board, I will say that this type of hardware would make an excellent laptop. It would be fair to say that the majority of the people using portables would be very pleased with Dothan in their machine.

Thanks
dave

AltiVec is why G4/G5 is better than the P3 derived centrino in real world tasks. Who cares if it takes an extra .5 seconds for me to open Word? or the system takes 40 seconds to boot on my 1GHz G4 powerbook vs. 20 on the centrino or dothan(I don't remember the last time i had to restart my system). When you do stuff that actually takes a lot of processor power like video encoding or photoshop filters or basically anything related to multimedia, a properly coded mac application will leave the windows equivalent in the dust.

Battery life of the pentium m is slightly overstated also. It may be better than the G4, but when they claim 8 hours, it really gets like 5 doing word proccessing/web browsing, and 3 when watching a dvd or playing a FPS game. A lot of that power savings comes from the fact that the chip scales down when running off batteries, and also the integrated wireless saves some power.

That said, we wont see a G5(in its current form) in a powerbook. Architectural revisions await 'fore 97X sees' portables

hi, im thinking of getting a PowerBook but i have a couple of questions that i would like to ask first, and if you guys could help me that would be great

Really how good are the G4? I mean like should i wait for the G5 to come out on PowerBook (ive got a PC in the meantime) or is it not worth the wait? I do network admin for a living and am very interested in the macs for audio prduction as a hobby, wat sorta pc is comparable?
the second question is will the price rise when they come out? i know its a hard question but they are pretty cheap atm is all...

thank heaps, VHproject

This really shouldnt be happening with APPLES latest and greatest laptop hardware.
Hell, Im running competitive with this stuff on cheap two year old hardware.

BTW, Ive read a lot of your posts and you are well read and opinionated, but dont sound as technical as the guys over at Ace Hardware or ARS Technica. Me thinks youre winging it.
__________________________________________________ _______________________________________

Posted taken from:
http://www.macaddict.com/phpBB2/view...50560&start=50

CINEBENCH 2003 v1
************************************************** **

Tester : Ron

Processor : 17" PB G4
MHz : 1500
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : 10.3.3

Graphics Card : 128 Radeon 9700
Resolution : 1440x900
Color Depth : millions

************************************************** **

Rendering (Single CPU): 138 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 164 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 428 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 748 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 4.56

************************************************** **

I blame the crappy bus speed (166).
__________________________________________________ _

Two year old, $534.00 cheap, plastic laptop, out performing the 1.5GHz MIGHTY POWERBOOK . So much for the great G4 Architectural Superiority.


CINEBENCH 2003 v1
************************************************** **

Tester : JPD

Processor : HP ze4101 Laptop Athlon XP
MHz : 1.33 (XP 1500+)
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : XP Home

Graphics Card : ATI 320m (Onboard Graphics)
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bit

************************************************** **

Rendering (Single CPU): 161 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (CINEMA 4D) : 171 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting) : 426 CB-GFX
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting) : 250 CB-GFX

OpenGL Speedup: 2.51

************************************************** **
Mercy, mercy look-a-here
http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html

AltiVec is only of use if the application you are interested in can be coded for it. It is otherwise wasted transistors.

There are whole ranges of applications that "takes a lot of processor power" and will never make use of AltiVec. Then there is the issue of how many PowerMac applications are properly coded to take advantage of this power in the first place. I'm not denying that Apples vector unit works well but it certainly can be out performed when runned up agianst better hardware. No matter how you look at it the current G4's are looking a little poor in the portable segment. Apple and Motorola may have something up their sleeves for the next rev of the G4 and Powerbook, but by the time it comes out Dothan will have likely moved ahead several hundred MHz.

There is more to performance than just Photoshop. For some of us Linux users these applications neve come into play.

Well maybe maybe not, this parameter is very much impacted by the user just as it is on the Apple hardware. Apple does very well here but the competition has made significant strides.

That is why I think that we are very likely to see something from Motorola and Apple to deal with this issue. If Motorola can deliver to Apple a SOC processor that has an improved G4 core running at 2 to 2.5 GHz then we are talking competitive Powerbooks again. Assuming of course that the SOC takes care of the I/O bus issues. To have this work out well Motorola would have to invest in either Hypertransport or PCI-Express, niether of which seem to be on Motorolas road map. A 2.5GHz SOC running a PCI-Express interface to a GPU in a laptop would really rock. If they can get there in the next revision that would be world shaking.

Dave

Motorola will probably go with RapidIO as the replacement for the MPX bus on the G4. Which brings up the question: will Apple be willing to go with a G4 with RapidIO when they're already using the Elastic Bus with the G5? It would mean that they would have two different chipsets for laptops & desktops, which is something Apple has been trying to avoid since they went to the G3. I think Apple may just decide to wait until they can get a real low power 970 derivative for the Powerbooks, instead of supporting two different interconnect architectures for desktops & laptops.

That may be the way the Motorola goes but to be honest I don't see enough industry up take to justify it.

On the otherhand if they are really serious about mix and matching components to fabricate SOC's seems to me that they would have to offer options. On of those options would be Hypertransport.

Currently I don't see e-bus making it to any laptop. Ideally you would have a SOC with memory and HT support built in possibly with a lot more. That would be a nice approach for the next revs.

Thanks
Dave

Right, but remember one of the rumors about why Apple went with IBM for the G5 was because they wanted Motorola to adopt HT, and Moto scoffed at the idea. Now, it could be that Freescale's management is more open to the idea, but who knows what will happen.


Yeah, it would. The next 12 months or so will be interesting-- who knows when a Powerbook will show up with a new processor?

Every chip maker will leap frog each other from time to time. B ut as long as Apple has a game plan for it's laptops to remain relatively competitive (performance and pricing) with PC notebooks, I'm cool.
I really hope they do have one though.

As someone earlier pointed out, a few seconds here and there don't matter a whole lot to me either. What does is functionality. Meaning a robust hardware system that can handle the software and a display that matches it (xbrite?)

However, I am curious about all these PC comparisons. I'd be interested to know if those here making them, have actually spent real world experience on them. Although this is a pro-Apple forum, it would be great to know that comments are not just hearsay and spec based...but hands on user based.

This was just posted at macrumors


There will be no PowerBook, there will however, be an XBook.

-15 and 17 only.
-Aluminum enclosure, all of which resembles the speaker grill on the current PBs.
-1 and 2 iPod hard drives, totalling 160 GBs, for pro apps where multiple drives come in handy.
-2.2 and 3.0 GHz G5 processor with 1.2 GHz and 1.8 GHz system bus.
-2 and 4 GB PC4000 RAM
-16X AGP Pro GPU with 512 MB VRAM
-3 USB, 2 FW400, 2 FW800, ADC (XBook must be plugged in) and DVI (full size)
-Swap Bay- A second optical drive, or a second battery.
-Built in mini WiFi
-Longer lived battery, yielding a claimed 8 hrs.

This will be sold alongside the existing portable options. Prices rumored to start at $3,499 and $4,099

This is real people!