The need for >1ghz G4's?

arisaris
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
i can understand why someone using cad, or photoshop, or companies that need fast servers or compilers would want faster cpu's, but what about the average user?



All 2d, and 3d applications are soon to be moved completely off the CPU and onto the GPU. other than mabey voice recignition software (which doesnt really work yet) what do you need a cpu faster than 1ghz for?



personally i would be more than happy to have a dual 1ghz machine for the next 2 or 3 years as long as i had the following:



increased bus to around 200mhz (400mhz DDR)

8x AGP

Serial ATA HD support

USB 2

Firewire 2

802.11g

Bluetooth

Dual Gigabit Ethernet

5.1 dolby digital support



give me these things, along with a new vid card every year from either Nvidia(GF4 TI) or ATI(9700) and i will be a happy camper.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    jeremiah richjeremiah rich Posts: 853member
    Hmm. For the most part I agree.. Except, I would want at least 1.2-1.4... Then a few years down the line it would still be pretty fast.
  • Reply 2 of 19
    arisaris Posts: 65member
    ok so incrimental upgrades to cpu speeds like they have been doing.



    just as long as they keep all the extras like bus speeds up to date along with teh rest of the PC community.
  • Reply 3 of 19
    bluejekyllbluejekyll Posts: 103member
    I don't care about Mhz, or Ghz, what I care about is the MIPS. Millions of Instructions Per Second. That is an actual messure of how much power the processor has, but even that is not accurate to the performance of the computer.



    Obviously Bus Speed/Bandwidth, Memory Bandwidth and speed, Cache Size and speed, Disk speed, are all as important to the actual power of your machine.



    Apple claimed that there was a Mhz myth, but they never replaced that messurement with anything else. I mean why not just start talking about MIPS?



    Keep the Pipeline short, and the Bandwidth wide.
  • Reply 4 of 19
    xmogerxmoger Posts: 242member
    2-3 years is a while for software to change. So far software developers have been able to add features (or bloat) fast enough to use up all the resources. We seem to be in a bit of a lull right now though. Whenever we get voice recognition and synthesis, and all kinds of media flowing through the PC, we will need the speed again.



    To get perspective on what it might be like, I checked the web archive and 3 years ago apple sold a g4 450. This is acceptable for some people. Originally I checked 2 years ago and the flagship was a G4 733. So in 2 years speed has gone up 266Mhz, not exactly trending with moore's law. I don't see a reason to make excuses for motorola. If apple could sell a 1.5G g4/5 then the price on that dual gig you say is fine could fall out of the stratosphere.
  • Reply 5 of 19
    dartblazerdartblazer Posts: 149member
    well apple's pretty dumb. they're trying to target the home user. they should be targeting businesses, who are the people who need the high end hardware. which is kinda where they're going now with all of the high end video company acquisitions. but they're stretching themselves too thin. they have 5% market share but are trying to be competitive in the school home and professional and server market. what they need to do is get a few major companies to move over to macs. like have nike use all macintosh computers throughout their entire company. that would be major cash flow, and because people would be using the machines at work they'd also be more willing to use one at home. and then maybe the dumbass schools would realize that not all computers that the kids in the future will be wintel, and then they would also be more willing to switch to mac.



    but of course, apple is dumb and going for the niche markets. they need to help the companies out that make the business software to port it over to osx, heck give them free help with the rewriting. And give them incentive by showing them how much faster their hardware is than any AMD/Intel chip.



    oh and btw, voice recognition is just plain idiotic. totally insecure and do you really want people hearing what youre typing in the next cubicle. it just doesnt make sense to me.
  • Reply 6 of 19
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    [quote]Originally posted by Aris:

    <strong>All 2d, and 3d applications are soon to be moved completely off the CPU and onto the GPU.</strong><hr></blockquote>

    Unless you have an extraordinarily expensive graphics card (read: not a consumer card, beyond Radeons and GeForces), graphic artists will still be using the CPU for rendering 3D scenes. Yes, you can use OpenGL to preview your scene or work with the meshes when modeling, but when it comes to the actual raytracing for proofs, you need raw CPU power.



    That's one reason why Apple **needs** more CPU power.
  • Reply 7 of 19
    macaddledmacaddled Posts: 8member
    Well I'm here late at work because I've been waiting for video to render. Looks like I'm having dinner at work again.



    No, we don't need faster Macs.
  • Reply 8 of 19
    arisaris Posts: 65member
    [quote]Originally posted by Brad:

    <strong>

    Unless you have an extraordinarily expensive graphics card (read: not a consumer card, beyond Radeons and GeForces), graphic artists will still be using the CPU for rendering 3D scenes. Yes, you can use OpenGL to preview your scene or work with the meshes when modeling, but when it comes to the actual raytracing for proofs, you need raw CPU power.



    That's one reason why Apple **needs** more CPU power.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    i did say the "average user". i would consider myself the average user and i will never be rendering 3d scenes.. keep it in context please
  • Reply 9 of 19
    cobracobra Posts: 253member
    Really, most people do not need 1+ GHZ G4's.



    Just the people at AI.
  • Reply 10 of 19
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    To me. Do I need anything faster? One word. YES
  • Reply 11 of 19
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Even consumers need Ghz+ G4's and too pretend otherwise is very optimistic. [QE aside] OS responsiveness, streaming media, video/music compression, assorted plug-ins, launch times, etc... this is all consumer stuff, and OS plus app developments will eat any hardware gains rather quickly. If you want a machine that still runs new software comfortably in two years time, then you need something faster than what Apple currently offers. Sure Apple is working on the software side, but new features will seep more power from your system. Software designers are not magicians, if you want more features/abilities, you're going to need beefier hardware to keep up. We're not talking about complex renderings, when something as trivial as iTunes visuals bogs down and sputters, you've got some problems. Scrolled through iPhoto lately? Or applied a simple effect/transition in iMovie? Consumers especially need more power than Apple currently has on offer.
  • Reply 12 of 19
    arisaris Posts: 65member
    [quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

    <strong>Even consumers need Ghz+ G4's and too pretend otherwise is very optimistic. [QE aside] OS responsiveness, streaming media, video/music compression, assorted plug-ins, launch times, etc... this is all consumer stuff, and OS plus app developments will eat any hardware gains rather quickly. If you want a machine that still runs new software comfortably in two years time, then you need something faster than what Apple currently offers. Sure Apple is working on the software side, but new features will seep more power from your system. Software designers are not magicians, if you want more features/abilities, you're going to need beefier hardware to keep up. We're not talking about complex renderings, when something as trivial as iTunes visuals bogs down and sputters, you've got some problems. Scrolled through iPhoto lately? Or applied a simple effect/transition in iMovie? Consumers especially need more power than Apple currently has on offer.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    visual things like iphoto and imovie are going to soon be the sole responsibility of the GPU. not the CPU. and when your talking about the responsivness of the interface, that too will be the GPU in the next year or so.
  • Reply 13 of 19
    junkyard dawgjunkyard dawg Posts: 2,801member
    Why 1 GHz? I think most people would do fine with 500 MHz G4s. I do fine with a 400 Mhz G4.



    Of course using this reasoning, none of us really need computers at all. Why do we need to do ANYTHING faster? Human society did fine without computers.
  • Reply 14 of 19
    browncowbrowncow Posts: 50member
    [quote]Originally posted by Aris:

    <strong>i can understand why someone using cad, or photoshop, or companies that need fast servers or compilers would want faster cpu's, but what about the average user? </strong><hr></blockquote>



    The average user doesn't need anything more than what was produced a few years ago. I always laugh at execs who have a cinema display and a 1GHZ QS on their desk to check e-mail and write reports. What a waste of good processor power.



    I definitely want faster computers. I don't care how they squeeze out the speed, but I want it. Have you ever tried rendering out just one 2K film frame with several fractal effects in after effects. After you get your coffee and come back 10 minutes later, you will understand why some people still need faster machines and UNIX, and all that fun stuff.
  • Reply 15 of 19
    ubertweekubertweek Posts: 16member
    [quote]Originally posted by BlueJekyll:

    <strong>I don't care about Mhz, or Ghz, what I care about is the MIPS. Millions of Instructions Per Second. That is an actual messure of how much power the processor has, but even that is not accurate to the performance of the computer.



    Obviously Bus Speed/Bandwidth, Memory Bandwidth and speed, Cache Size and speed, Disk speed, are all as important to the actual power of your machine.



    Apple claimed that there was a Mhz myth, but they never replaced that messurement with anything else. I mean why not just start talking about MIPS?



    Keep the Pipeline short, and the Bandwidth wide.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    MIPS is actually a questionable way to measure performance... It's due to the fact that MIPS depends on the type of instructions you're executing... For example, I'm sure Abobe Photoshop uses more sophisticated instructions than say, Calculator.app <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> More sophisticated instructions take more cycles..



    MIPS rating = number_of_instructions / (CPU_Time * 10^6) , which is:



    clock_rate / (CPI * 10^6 )



    where CPI = num_of_clock_cycles / num_of_instructions



    Thus the CPI varies not from just machine to machine, but program to program.



    Example: 1000MHz chip...



    Say CPI of program 1 = 1.57

    Say CPI of program 2 = 3.47



    MIPS 1 ~ 630

    MIPS 2 ~ 290



    So Apple could say that Calculator.app does 630 MIPS, when real world day-to-day programs would have a much lesser MIPS rating..



    But hey, there's always SPEC

  • Reply 16 of 19
    anakin1992anakin1992 Posts: 283member
    [quote]Originally posted by BlueJekyll:

    <strong>I don't care about Mhz, or Ghz, what I care about is the MIPS. Millions of Instructions Per Second. That is an actual messure of how much power the processor has, but even that is not accurate to the performance of the computer.



    Obviously Bus Speed/Bandwidth, Memory Bandwidth and speed, Cache Size and speed, Disk speed, are all as important to the actual power of your machine.



    Apple claimed that there was a Mhz myth, but they never replaced that messurement with anything else. I mean why not just start talking about MIPS?



    Keep the Pipeline short, and the Bandwidth wide.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    as much as improvements that could be made on memory bus and peripheral bus, the easiest way still is the clock. faster bus means less waiting cycle for cpu, while faster clock and deep pipe could also improve cpu utilization, though there is limit on it.



    on software side, compiler needs to be optimized. by optimizing compiler as well as optimizing application itself could get better usage on cpu. but the effort to get 10-15$ juice out of compiler could easily be beaten by the effort on cpu clock.



    in either way, it is necessary to increase mhz. from this perspective, it is kinda murky on apple's claim on mhz myth. apple does point out a good arguement, but unfortunately, apple can not take it as an execuse for not improving its hardware. if so, it is pretty lame.
  • Reply 17 of 19
    anakin1992anakin1992 Posts: 283member
    [quote]Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg:

    <strong>Why 1 GHz? I think most people would do fine with 500 MHz G4s. I do fine with a 400 Mhz G4.



    Of course using this reasoning, none of us really need computers at all. Why do we need to do ANYTHING faster? Human society did fine without computers.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    think it from economic point of view, the same money, you could get the latest hardware on pc then you are antsy to get the same thing on mac.



    i will scream if you are telling me that i have to pay the same price for a lower speed system, even though it still works if i only use email or broswer. but, there are many applications that are cpu sucker.



    eventually, economy works this way: the faster and cheaper, the more likely the company could survive.



    everything lese i guess will be the second. if apple stil stays with motorola 68k cpu, it would have been going out of business for quite a while.



    anyway, just my $0.02...
  • Reply 18 of 19
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,458member
    [quote]Originally posted by ubertweek:

    <strong>



    MIPS is actually a questionable way to measure performance... It's due to the fact that MIPS depends on the type of instructions you're executing... For example, I'm sure Abobe Photoshop uses more sophisticated instructions than say, Calculator.app <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> More sophisticated instructions take more cycles..



    MIPS rating = number_of_instructions / (CPU_Time * 10^6) , which is:



    clock_rate / (CPI * 10^6 )



    where CPI = num_of_clock_cycles / num_of_instructions



    Thus the CPI varies not from just machine to machine, but program to program.



    Example: 1000MHz chip...



    Say CPI of program 1 = 1.57

    Say CPI of program 2 = 3.47



    MIPS 1 ~ 630

    MIPS 2 ~ 290



    So Apple could say that Calculator.app does 630 MIPS, when real world day-to-day programs would have a much lesser MIPS rating..



    But hey, there's always SPEC

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    MIPS becomes even more meaningless when you take memory bandwidth into account. Consider that in Apple's current top-of-the-line machines the processor can do 30-40 instructions in the time it takes to do one memory fetch. If your application is constantly fetching data from memory, but it only needs to do a couple of instructions per fetch then you could put a 100 GHz processor in the same machine and your software would run no faster! Caches help... but only if the application uses the same piece of data more than once before more data is dragged through the cache than the cache can contain (roughly speaking).



    Faster clock rates are not what the consumer needs... instead faster systems are. Part of the equation is clock rate, part is memory bandwidth, part is execution units, part is the number of processors, part is the GPU and how it is used, part is the efficiency of the software, etc etc etc. There are many many factors. This is the crux of the MHz myth, which is true... but Apple has fallen behind in too many areas and it needs an update to become competitive again.



    As for why the consumer needs a faster system... well not everybody does, really. But the more people that have them, the more likely some software guru will build something that will use this performance in a compelling way. When that happens people who don't have the faster machines may suddenly want them. In the meantime the people with the faster machines will just benefit from all the intangibles that just happen that little bit faster.
  • Reply 19 of 19
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    [quote]Originally posted by Programmer:

    <strong>



    Faster clock rates are not what the consumer needs... instead faster systems are.



    </strong><hr></blockquote>





    Well said!





    Dobby
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