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Originally posted by Existence
The advantage of Dothan-based sonoma PC latops over these "Power"Books.
Lets not use too much hyperbole.
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2MB L2 cache versus 512 KB L2 cache
For cache resident code, Pentium M systems will be faster by the clock rate difference and some additional 5 to 10% due to increased cache size.
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2.13 GHz versus 1.67 GHz with 1.4-2x better performance than the G4, per clock.
At best, the Pentium M performs about the same per clock as the G4. It (P-M) has 2 integer units and 1 FPU unit. The G4 has 4 integer units and 1 FPU unit. On the whole, the G4 should be a little better clock for clock than the Pentium-M per clock. Where the G4 loses is in not-as-mature compiler optimizations.
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90nm versus 130 nm technology.
True. But the G4 was up against 90 nm Dothan systems with 2 MB on-die cache and 400 FSB for about a year. The Sonoma improvements are incremental.
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Advanced realtime clock/voltage throlling versus very primitive step-down throlling on the G4 (it's so pathetic, people have to say "set CPU performance to max in the ES control panel" when doing benchmarks)
True. Apple could simply use more powerful batteries to increase usage times, but they are too cheap to do it.
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533 MHz system bus (effective) versus 167 MHz
This really translate to about a 5% improvement compared to the 400 MHz FSB Dothan systems. It won't be the performance ringer that the numbers suggests. Apple G4 systems need more FSB bandwidth certainly though.
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DDR2-5400 memory versus un-utilized DDR2700 memory
This hurts. Hurting for a long time now though.
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PCI Express graphics versus AGP graphics (Important for CoreImage/CoreVideo/DirectX9 shader applications, ie. using the GPU as a coprocessor)
Since Apple doesn't support GPU upgrades in their laptops, PCIe is fairly irrelevant. The current graphics chip selection won't stress the AGP architecture.
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Express card slots versus regular PCMCIA cardbus slots (slow!!!)
Slow for what? Unless your hooking a RAID or a graphics card into the cardbus slots, the PCMCIA cardbus slot will be fine for a while.
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I'm really amazed Apple even bothered updating the PowerBooks. They are beyond embarrassing.
At least they lowered the prices and updated the features at the same time.
