Simplest case should just be dual-core 970 with a large shared L2 cache (2 MB?) using the elastic processor bus. Provides minimal changes, like drop-in replacement, for Apple's architecture. I'm expecting Antares to be like this.
If it is dual-core with on-die memory controller, Apple will have to come up with a brand new Macintosh architecture with new core logic chipsets. That's a lot of work.
I really hope Apple proves they are not afraid of a lot of hard work. Steve jobs thanks them at every keynote on how hard they work. Because the second portion of what you said sounds like the best possible option for them, and us. (I base this solely on Opteron Performance vs. Everything else)
I was just reading about DOOM3 on the Mac, and it appears Apple is still struggling with OpenGL.
I don't see why they don't start re-designing, and re-vamping with performance in mind all across the board.
The thing I've noticed is their old reputation for Innovation is moving away from hardware, and into designing "artware". I think that is one of the main reasons their products (other than the iPod) just are not appealing as they used to be to legacy Mac users, and new ones alike. They do still have appeal, but it's nothing like it used to be. Not for me anyway.
THT, from what you said was the "simplest case", in that scenario what kind of performance gains could we expect to see?
I was just reading about DOOM3 on the Mac, and it appears Apple is still struggling with OpenGL. I don't see why they don't start re-designing, and re-vamping with performance in mind all across the board.
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands. Its in the Graphic Card Manufacturers, the software Developers and Apple's.
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands. Its in the Graphic Card Manufacturers, the software Developers and Apple's.
THen you didn't read what Aspire wrote did you? What I'm referring to is in apples hands.
[EDIT] Actually that's my bad. To benchmark they used the fastest ATI available on the Mac probably for affordability, and not for speed. If the would have used the Nvidia 6800 Ultra it would have been an entirely different perspective because Apple writes the Mac driver from the original source code from Nvidia. I'm not sure if Apple has anything to with ATI's drivers, but their (ATI's) OpenGL drivers could be questioned.
Although no matter what card you use they say performance will be 20% lower vs. a comparable PC.
Quote:
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands.
It doesn't really matter who's hands you put it in. blaming everyone isn't going to make it 20% faster.
Always fear Intel though. They will be moving to multiple processor buses (FSBs) in later generations. Centrino dual-core chips will likely have an on-die memory controller, so all their bases are covered.
Intel is to be feared only as long as they are well managed. There is a reasonable question as to that being the case anymore. They still (after a couple of years) have not responded to AMD's challenge.
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Simplest case should just be dual-core 970 with a large shared L2 cache (2 MB?) using the elastic processor bus. Provides minimal changes, like drop-in replacement, for Apple's architecture. I'm expecting Antares to be like this.
Yep that would be simple. But I do wonder what the cores will be in Antares. I do suspect though that Apple would prefer a more standard bus structure on the future processors they purchase from IBM. I could be completely wrong here, but elastic bus just doesn't impress me as something that a manufacture would want to support across all of its lines.
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If it is dual-core with on-die memory controller, Apple will have to come up with a brand new Macintosh architecture with new core logic chipsets. That's a lot of work.
Well not exactly. They could still keep e-bus and simply handle memory transfers over the other bus. This owuld require modest changes to the north bridge. Better yet have memmory hanging off both buses with the block managed by the controller (northbridge) kept as share memory for the second processor module.
There are huge possibilities here, some more work than others. I just don't see the memory being so far from the processor as being a good thing at all for Apple. Especially when the get trounced by implementations that take care of that issue.
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Hey, I suggested that 6 years ago. Also, Apple should have started an in-house fabless chip design group to design their processors and chipsets as well. As it was and is now, they can't even get IBM and Moto to do the little things to improve performance like more L2 cache or better FSB. They could have supported PC4000 or PC4400 DDR SDRAM for their 2+ GHz G5 systems too, but haven't, so they themselves have been laggards.
Well I'm not sure what is up with the PPC design capabilties. It is pretty obvious that Freescale when part of Motorola screwed up badly by not being customer oriented. I'm not sure if the same attitude is in place at Freescale now, they certainly could deliver a processor with the integration Apple could use. The question is will Apple ask for such a processor.
IBM and its 970 series is another joke all together. It is basically an OK processor that Apple can't use in half its hardware. Not exaclty inspiring. Further one could make the argument that for some machines like the iMac the 970 was shoe horned in and might not be the best of choices. So the question is can IBM deliver what Apple and the rest fo the industry needs. I think in Cell we can see the possibilites for future Apple processors. Hopefully soon we will see if IBM can transform the technology in Cell into hardware with broad appeal.
As to Apple doing its own in house design, well one only has to mention SUN. For processors to be viable they have to have broad apppeal plus a bit of committed marketing muscle. I'm not sure that that would be a good long term stradege. IBM did well with the 60x series but we have seen less take up with the 970 outside of Apple. This lack of take up appears to be the result of the processor being to specific to Apples needs. Or maybe IBM simply isn't marketing it effectively due to a possible short life span.
A G5 equipped with a radeon X800XT beats a PC with a radeon X850 on quake 3 (which is, I think, the best game for a fair comparison).
Maybe it's because aspyr didn't port the game.
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A G5 equipped with a radeon X800XT beats a PC with a radeon X850 on quake 3 (which is, I think, the best game for a fair comparison)
No the best way to compare would be to look at the G5 with the GFU, and the Opteron, with the GFU. But you'll never get 1/4th of the frames in DOOM 3 that you will with quake 3.
They only get 18.4 FPS at 1200x1600 with full 4x AA on in DOOM 3. Not that great. Not really playable really. Athlon with the GFU gets 45 FPS that more than duble the performance, and an Athlon with SLI gets 78 FPS that's 4.2 x the performance.
Don't be knocking aspire. They do great work. Remember that DOOM 3 wont take advantage of any dual CPU's either. But you can see it will take advantage of Dual GPU. HERE IS YOUR LINK
The thing I've noticed is their old reputation for Innovation is moving away from hardware, and into designing "artware". I think that is one of the main reasons their products (other than the iPod) just are not appealing as they used to be to legacy Mac users, and new ones alike. They do still have appeal, but it's nothing like it used to be. Not for me anyway.
Performance-wise, they never were that great since the pre-486, 68030 days. They had a chance during the PPC 604 days, but the OS was lagging, IBM/Moto weren't exactly committed to the platform and Intel closed the window really fast with the P6 architecture CPUs.
I actually think the combination of OS X and dual CPU systems is the most innovative of their hardware compared to the past. So these days are pretty good for Apple.
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THT, from what you said was the "simplest case", in that scenario what kind of performance gains could we expect to see?
As long as the memory performance is boosted similarly, Apple should see the typical 1.5x to 1.7x performance increase for multiple processors, with less scaling efficiency as they add more processors. Ie, 2 processors or cores at 1 GHz would be something like a 1.7 GHz single processor. 4 cores or processors at 1 GHz would be something like a 3 GHz single processor.
All for code that can take advantage of multiple processors of course. Code that is scalar won't see much improvement at all. The system will be very smooth and responsive though.
[B]No the best way to compare would be to look at the G5 with the GFU, and the Opteron, with the GFU. But you'll never get 1/4th of the frames in DOOM 3 that you will with quake 3.
They only get 18.4 FPS at 1200x1600 with full 4x AA on in DOOM 3. Not that great. Not really playable really. Athlon with the GFU gets 45 FPS that more than duble the performance, and an Athlon with SLI gets 78 FPS that's 4.2 x the performance.
Don't be knocking aspire. They do great work. Remember that DOOM 3 wont take advantage of any dual CPU's either. But you can see it will take advantage of Dual GPU. HERE IS YOUR LINK
Thanks but I still don't see why you say the poor performance is apple fault. Nothing proves this so far. And where is the "20 % lower framerate no matter what card you use" you were refering to ?
In the link you asked for. Didn't you read the article after you asked to see it?
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One way or the other, Mac frame rates seem off by 20 percent or more in many cases in the comparisons we've seen posted online.
To sum it up.
That sentence was basically them saying this is typical, and it's not the game, or aspyres coding that doesn't perform on a Mac. It's essentially everything throughout the article is about the extent they went to to get this game running as fast as possible. They also say They will continue to try, and make the make the game perform better, and Apples periodic driver updates should hep as well.
Intel is to be feared only as long as they are well managed. There is a reasonable question as to that being the case anymore. They still (after a couple of years) have not responded to AMD's challenge.
Intel's fab capability is very forgiving to management and design mistakes. I don't see that going away. AMD better be scared because fab capability will win the dual-core wars, and Intel is going all dual-core from server to laptop afterall.
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I could be completely wrong here, but elastic bus just doesn't impress me as something that a manufacture would want to support across all of its lines.
Bah. This is Apple we're talking about. They design hardware based on considerations more important to them than hardware performance. Laptop G5? Sure, Apple just needs to make it 1.5" thick. Cheap desktop G5? Use 1.6 970 CPUs with 1/3 FSB. They didn't even do the little effort to support PC4000 DDR SDRAM or better for the 2nd gen Power Mac G5s. That could have squeezed in another 5% performance improvement, maybe more for FPU.
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Well not exactly. They could still keep e-bus and simply handle memory transfers over the other bus. This owuld require modest changes to the north bridge. Better yet have memmory hanging off both buses with the block managed by the controller (northbridge) kept as share memory for the second processor module.
I think this is too much of a kluge. If they are going to implement a non-uniform memory architecture they should at least arbitrate inter-processor traffic with a switched fabric. I think that is a major change in core logic and board design. On top of that, not quite sure how much of a performance improvement that would be compared to what they have now.
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I just don't see the memory being so far from the processor as being a good thing at all for Apple. Especially when the get trounced by implementations that take care of that issue.
Memory architecture is about choices, and I don't see the 970 architecture as limiting. If latency is hurting 970 performance, IBM can increase L2 to 1 or 2 MB and add a backside L3. It did wonders for Power5. Also, the elastic bus is what allows Apple to place the memory so far from the processor. On bandwidth, the elastic bus does extremely well. Double its width to 64 bit would give it even more bandwidth.
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IBM and its 970 series is another joke all together. It is basically an OK processor that Apple can't use in half its hardware. Not exaclty inspiring. Further one could make the argument that for some machines like the iMac the 970 was shoe horned in and might not be the best of choices. So the question is can IBM deliver what Apple and the rest fo the industry needs.
The 970 holds its own. It's about equivalent to the Athlon 64 on a per MHz basis. Where it is hurting is integer performance and memory performance. If they can give it more integer resources, more L2 cache, a backside L3, more main memory performance and dual-core, it will be fine for the next year.
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I think in Cell we can see the possibilites for future Apple processors. Hopefully soon we will see if IBM can transform the technology in Cell into hardware with broad appeal.
Not going to comment on Cell until more info is out.
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As to Apple doing its own in house design, well one only has to mention SUN. For processors to be viable they have to have broad apppeal plus a bit of committed marketing muscle. I'm not sure that that would be a good long term stradege. IBM did well with the 60x series but we have seen less take up with the 970 outside of Apple. This lack of take up appears to be the result of the processor being to specific to Apples needs. Or maybe IBM simply isn't marketing it effectively due to a possible short life span.
Being fabless means you can take your design and go to different manufacturers. Apple already does it for its core logic chips, the CPU isn't that big of a difference to me. Ie, if IBM doesn't meet their needs, they can go to Intel, UMC, TSMC, TI or whoever has the best process. Freescale is out of the picture for high performance processors because that are about a year behind in fab technology. IBM and Intel have been shipping 90nm chips for about a year now and Freescale is yet to ship. They will only fall farther behind.
They didn't even do the little effort to support PC4000 DDR SDRAM or better for the 2nd gen Power Mac G5s. That could have squeezed in another 5% performance improvement, maybe more for FPU.
5%... don't you think that's a little high??
I have yet to see even DDR2-PC24300 have that much of a performance increase over PC3200... the theory is there, but I haven't seen the actual realworld performance... have any benches or anything? For them to move to PC4000 there would to have been a slight motherboard redesign. I personally don't think it's worth it... the performance difference between PC4000 and PC3200 is so tiny that the extra money going into R&D and testing would have been a waste. The only purpose I see in doing this is bragging rights.
I have yet to see even DDR2-PC24300 have that much of a performance increase over PC3200... the theory is there, but I haven't seen the actual realworld performance... have any benches or anything?
DDR-II is effectively quad pumped SDRAM. So DDR-II, PC2-4000 memory is 125 MHz SDRAM that can transfer 32 bytes/cycle (64 bits * 4/cycle) for a data rate of 4 GByte/s. DDR-I is double pumped SDRAM. DDR-I, PC4000 memory is 250 MHz SDRAM that can transfer 16 bytes/cycle (64 bits * 2/cycle) for a data rate of 4 GByte/s.
The reason, I believe, is obvious. DDR-II takes a latency hit due to its low clock rate at equivalent bandwidths to DDR-I, and therefore does not perform the same. The situation is no different from when DDR-I, PC1600 came on the scene and it didn't perform better than PC133 SDRAM memory. So, DDR-II won't have better overall performance than PC3200 until it has enough bandwidth and reduced latencies to make up for the lower clock. Maybe PC2-5400 will have better performance for all benches?
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For them to move to PC4000 there would to have been a slight motherboard redesign. I personally don't think it's worth it... the performance difference between PC4000 and PC3200 is so tiny that the extra money going into R&D and testing would have been a waste. The only purpose I see in doing this is bragging rights.
The 970 seems quite memory performance sensitive. PC4000 will produce real gains in performance.
In the link you asked for. Didn't you read the article after you asked to see it?
To sum it up.
That sentence was basically them saying this is typical, and it's not the game, or aspyres coding that doesn't perform on a Mac. It's essentially everything throughout the article is about the extent they went to to get this game running as fast as possible. They also say They will continue to try, and make the make the game perform better, and Apples periodic driver updates should hep as well.
I don't agree. All modern games are ported, not written for OS X. Also, most of them are directX. If OS X didn't allow to compete with PCs on games, then how a G5 could beat a PC with a better graphic card on quake 3 ? My conclusion is that quake 3 is the only well optimised game for OS X.
And looking at PC benchmarks, I would say that aspyr did a very bad job. I noticed framerates up to 3 times (!!) higher on high-end PCs with radeon X800XT, no matter what resolution and quality they used. I really don't think that OS X alone is responsible for that, because results are much closer between G5s and PCs on other games like halo and UT2004.
I don't agree. All modern games are ported, not written for OS X. Also, most of them are directX. If OS X didn't allow to compete with PCs on games, then how a G5 could beat a PC with a better graphic card on quake 3 ? My conclusion is that quake 3 is the only well optimised game for OS X.
And looking at PC benchmarks, I would say that aspyr did a very bad job. I noticed framerates up to 3 times (!!) higher on high-end PCs with radeon X800XT, no matter what resolution and quality they used. I really don't think that OS X alone is responsible for that, because results are much closer between G5s and PCs on other games like halo and UT2004.
Doom 3 is an OpenGL game not a Direct X game no matter what platform. And you can't make a comparison of two systems using different cards. You need to use the same card. Apple has an OpenGL driver problem that they can't seem to get together. Quake 3 was never written ground up for OS X either. It still uses legacy CFM code. It's hardly gong to be the staple for comparison in anything for OS X. So unless I'm mistaken about that your conclusions are wrong.
Quake 3 was never written ground up for OS X either. It still uses legacy CFM code. It's hardly gong to be the staple for comparison in anything for OS X. So unless I'm mistaken about that your conclusions are wrong.
Well, Quake 3 was at least developed in-house by id Software where Graeme Devine kept the Mac version up to date with the Windows version. In later versions, he even added lots of PowerPC Assembly optimizations and built in some Altivec support.
With Doom 3 being developed outside of id software, I would assume that it can't get quite as much attention to detail as quake 3 was given.
Well, Quake 3 was at least developed in-house by id Software where Graeme Devine kept the Mac version up to date with the Windows version. In later versions, he even added lots of PowerPC Assembly optimizations and built in some Altivec support.
With Doom 3 being developed outside of id software, I would assume that it can't get quite as much attention to detail as quake 3 was given.
It is also one of the rare games that has SMP support, which is a definite benefit on a platform with quite a few dual processor machines.
Comments
Originally posted by THT
[B]
Simplest case should just be dual-core 970 with a large shared L2 cache (2 MB?) using the elastic processor bus. Provides minimal changes, like drop-in replacement, for Apple's architecture. I'm expecting Antares to be like this.
If it is dual-core with on-die memory controller, Apple will have to come up with a brand new Macintosh architecture with new core logic chipsets. That's a lot of work.
I really hope Apple proves they are not afraid of a lot of hard work. Steve jobs thanks them at every keynote on how hard they work. Because the second portion of what you said sounds like the best possible option for them, and us. (I base this solely on Opteron Performance vs. Everything else)
I was just reading about DOOM3 on the Mac, and it appears Apple is still struggling with OpenGL.
I don't see why they don't start re-designing, and re-vamping with performance in mind all across the board.
The thing I've noticed is their old reputation for Innovation is moving away from hardware, and into designing "artware". I think that is one of the main reasons their products (other than the iPod) just are not appealing as they used to be to legacy Mac users, and new ones alike. They do still have appeal, but it's nothing like it used to be. Not for me anyway.
THT, from what you said was the "simplest case", in that scenario what kind of performance gains could we expect to see?
Originally posted by onlooker
I was just reading about DOOM3 on the Mac, and it appears Apple is still struggling with OpenGL. I don't see why they don't start re-designing, and re-vamping with performance in mind all across the board.
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands. Its in the Graphic Card Manufacturers, the software Developers and Apple's.
Originally posted by emig647
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands. Its in the Graphic Card Manufacturers, the software Developers and Apple's.
THen you didn't read what Aspire wrote did you? What I'm referring to is in apples hands.
[EDIT] Actually that's my bad. To benchmark they used the fastest ATI available on the Mac probably for affordability, and not for speed. If the would have used the Nvidia 6800 Ultra it would have been an entirely different perspective because Apple writes the Mac driver from the original source code from Nvidia. I'm not sure if Apple has anything to with ATI's drivers, but their (ATI's) OpenGL drivers could be questioned.
Although no matter what card you use they say performance will be 20% lower vs. a comparable PC.
We've been through this before, Its not just in apple's hands.
It doesn't really matter who's hands you put it in. blaming everyone isn't going to make it 20% faster.
Originally posted by THT
Always fear Intel though. They will be moving to multiple processor buses (FSBs) in later generations. Centrino dual-core chips will likely have an on-die memory controller, so all their bases are covered.
Intel is to be feared only as long as they are well managed. There is a reasonable question as to that being the case anymore. They still (after a couple of years) have not responded to AMD's challenge.
Simplest case should just be dual-core 970 with a large shared L2 cache (2 MB?) using the elastic processor bus. Provides minimal changes, like drop-in replacement, for Apple's architecture. I'm expecting Antares to be like this.
Yep that would be simple. But I do wonder what the cores will be in Antares. I do suspect though that Apple would prefer a more standard bus structure on the future processors they purchase from IBM. I could be completely wrong here, but elastic bus just doesn't impress me as something that a manufacture would want to support across all of its lines.
If it is dual-core with on-die memory controller, Apple will have to come up with a brand new Macintosh architecture with new core logic chipsets. That's a lot of work.
Well not exactly. They could still keep e-bus and simply handle memory transfers over the other bus. This owuld require modest changes to the north bridge. Better yet have memmory hanging off both buses with the block managed by the controller (northbridge) kept as share memory for the second processor module.
There are huge possibilities here, some more work than others. I just don't see the memory being so far from the processor as being a good thing at all for Apple. Especially when the get trounced by implementations that take care of that issue.
Hey, I suggested that 6 years ago.
Well I'm not sure what is up with the PPC design capabilties. It is pretty obvious that Freescale when part of Motorola screwed up badly by not being customer oriented. I'm not sure if the same attitude is in place at Freescale now, they certainly could deliver a processor with the integration Apple could use. The question is will Apple ask for such a processor.
IBM and its 970 series is another joke all together. It is basically an OK processor that Apple can't use in half its hardware. Not exaclty inspiring. Further one could make the argument that for some machines like the iMac the 970 was shoe horned in and might not be the best of choices. So the question is can IBM deliver what Apple and the rest fo the industry needs. I think in Cell we can see the possibilites for future Apple processors. Hopefully soon we will see if IBM can transform the technology in Cell into hardware with broad appeal.
As to Apple doing its own in house design, well one only has to mention SUN. For processors to be viable they have to have broad apppeal plus a bit of committed marketing muscle. I'm not sure that that would be a good long term stradege. IBM did well with the 60x series but we have seen less take up with the 970 outside of Apple. This lack of take up appears to be the result of the processor being to specific to Apples needs. Or maybe IBM simply isn't marketing it effectively due to a possible short life span.
Dave
Originally posted by onlooker
[B]THen you didn't read what Aspire wrote did you? What I'm referring to is in apples hands.
...
Although no matter what card you use they say performance will be 20% lower vs. a comparable PC.
Do you have a link for their comment ?
A G5 equipped with a radeon X800XT beats a PC with a radeon X850 on quake 3 (which is, I think, the best game for a fair comparison).
Maybe it's because aspyr didn't port the game.
Originally posted by french macuser
Do you have a link for their comment ?
A G5 equipped with a radeon X800XT beats a PC with a radeon X850 on quake 3 (which is, I think, the best game for a fair comparison).
Maybe it's because aspyr didn't port the game.
A G5 equipped with a radeon X800XT beats a PC with a radeon X850 on quake 3 (which is, I think, the best game for a fair comparison)
No the best way to compare would be to look at the G5 with the GFU, and the Opteron, with the GFU. But you'll never get 1/4th of the frames in DOOM 3 that you will with quake 3.
They only get 18.4 FPS at 1200x1600 with full 4x AA on in DOOM 3. Not that great. Not really playable really. Athlon with the GFU gets 45 FPS that more than duble the performance, and an Athlon with SLI gets 78 FPS that's 4.2 x the performance.
Don't be knocking aspire.
Originally posted by onlooker
The thing I've noticed is their old reputation for Innovation is moving away from hardware, and into designing "artware". I think that is one of the main reasons their products (other than the iPod) just are not appealing as they used to be to legacy Mac users, and new ones alike. They do still have appeal, but it's nothing like it used to be. Not for me anyway.
Performance-wise, they never were that great since the pre-486, 68030 days. They had a chance during the PPC 604 days, but the OS was lagging, IBM/Moto weren't exactly committed to the platform and Intel closed the window really fast with the P6 architecture CPUs.
I actually think the combination of OS X and dual CPU systems is the most innovative of their hardware compared to the past. So these days are pretty good for Apple.
THT, from what you said was the "simplest case", in that scenario what kind of performance gains could we expect to see?
As long as the memory performance is boosted similarly, Apple should see the typical 1.5x to 1.7x performance increase for multiple processors, with less scaling efficiency as they add more processors. Ie, 2 processors or cores at 1 GHz would be something like a 1.7 GHz single processor. 4 cores or processors at 1 GHz would be something like a 3 GHz single processor.
All for code that can take advantage of multiple processors of course. Code that is scalar won't see much improvement at all. The system will be very smooth and responsive though.
Originally posted by onlooker
[B]No the best way to compare would be to look at the G5 with the GFU, and the Opteron, with the GFU. But you'll never get 1/4th of the frames in DOOM 3 that you will with quake 3.
They only get 18.4 FPS at 1200x1600 with full 4x AA on in DOOM 3. Not that great. Not really playable really. Athlon with the GFU gets 45 FPS that more than duble the performance, and an Athlon with SLI gets 78 FPS that's 4.2 x the performance.
Don't be knocking aspire.
Thanks
One way or the other, Mac frame rates seem off by 20 percent or more in many cases in the comparisons we've seen posted online.
To sum it up.
That sentence was basically them saying this is typical, and it's not the game, or aspyres coding that doesn't perform on a Mac. It's essentially everything throughout the article is about the extent they went to to get this game running as fast as possible. They also say They will continue to try, and make the make the game perform better, and Apples periodic driver updates should hep as well.
Originally posted by wizard69
Intel is to be feared only as long as they are well managed. There is a reasonable question as to that being the case anymore. They still (after a couple of years) have not responded to AMD's challenge.
Intel's fab capability is very forgiving to management and design mistakes. I don't see that going away. AMD better be scared because fab capability will win the dual-core wars, and Intel is going all dual-core from server to laptop afterall.
I could be completely wrong here, but elastic bus just doesn't impress me as something that a manufacture would want to support across all of its lines.
Bah. This is Apple we're talking about. They design hardware based on considerations more important to them than hardware performance. Laptop G5? Sure, Apple just needs to make it 1.5" thick. Cheap desktop G5? Use 1.6 970 CPUs with 1/3 FSB. They didn't even do the little effort to support PC4000 DDR SDRAM or better for the 2nd gen Power Mac G5s. That could have squeezed in another 5% performance improvement, maybe more for FPU.
Well not exactly. They could still keep e-bus and simply handle memory transfers over the other bus. This owuld require modest changes to the north bridge. Better yet have memmory hanging off both buses with the block managed by the controller (northbridge) kept as share memory for the second processor module.
I think this is too much of a kluge. If they are going to implement a non-uniform memory architecture they should at least arbitrate inter-processor traffic with a switched fabric. I think that is a major change in core logic and board design. On top of that, not quite sure how much of a performance improvement that would be compared to what they have now.
I just don't see the memory being so far from the processor as being a good thing at all for Apple. Especially when the get trounced by implementations that take care of that issue.
Memory architecture is about choices, and I don't see the 970 architecture as limiting. If latency is hurting 970 performance, IBM can increase L2 to 1 or 2 MB and add a backside L3. It did wonders for Power5. Also, the elastic bus is what allows Apple to place the memory so far from the processor.
IBM and its 970 series is another joke all together. It is basically an OK processor that Apple can't use in half its hardware. Not exaclty inspiring. Further one could make the argument that for some machines like the iMac the 970 was shoe horned in and might not be the best of choices. So the question is can IBM deliver what Apple and the rest fo the industry needs.
The 970 holds its own. It's about equivalent to the Athlon 64 on a per MHz basis. Where it is hurting is integer performance and memory performance. If they can give it more integer resources, more L2 cache, a backside L3, more main memory performance and dual-core, it will be fine for the next year.
I think in Cell we can see the possibilites for future Apple processors. Hopefully soon we will see if IBM can transform the technology in Cell into hardware with broad appeal.
Not going to comment on Cell until more info is out.
As to Apple doing its own in house design, well one only has to mention SUN. For processors to be viable they have to have broad apppeal plus a bit of committed marketing muscle. I'm not sure that that would be a good long term stradege. IBM did well with the 60x series but we have seen less take up with the 970 outside of Apple. This lack of take up appears to be the result of the processor being to specific to Apples needs. Or maybe IBM simply isn't marketing it effectively due to a possible short life span.
Being fabless means you can take your design and go to different manufacturers. Apple already does it for its core logic chips, the CPU isn't that big of a difference to me. Ie, if IBM doesn't meet their needs, they can go to Intel, UMC, TSMC, TI or whoever has the best process. Freescale is out of the picture for high performance processors because that are about a year behind in fab technology. IBM and Intel have been shipping 90nm chips for about a year now and Freescale is yet to ship. They will only fall farther behind.
Originally posted by THT
They didn't even do the little effort to support PC4000 DDR SDRAM or better for the 2nd gen Power Mac G5s. That could have squeezed in another 5% performance improvement, maybe more for FPU.
5%... don't you think that's a little high??
I have yet to see even DDR2-PC24300 have that much of a performance increase over PC3200... the theory is there, but I haven't seen the actual realworld performance... have any benches or anything? For them to move to PC4000 there would to have been a slight motherboard redesign. I personally don't think it's worth it... the performance difference between PC4000 and PC3200 is so tiny that the extra money going into R&D and testing would have been a waste. The only purpose I see in doing this is bragging rights.
Otherwise I agreed with your WHOLE statement.
Originally posted by THT
They didn't even do the little effort to support PC4000 DDR SDRAM or better for the 2nd gen Power Mac G5s.
Since when is PC4000 a JEDEC standard?
Originally posted by smalM
Since when is PC4000 a JEDEC standard?
Does Apple have to use JEDEC approved memory? I wonder if JEDEC will approve XDR SDRAM?
Originally posted by emig647
5%... don't you think that's a little high??
No. Just look at the benches:
This Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 Memory Review shows quite a bit of improvement for the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64. Anandtech would likewise say the same.
I have yet to see even DDR2-PC24300 have that much of a performance increase over PC3200... the theory is there, but I haven't seen the actual realworld performance... have any benches or anything?
DDR-II is effectively quad pumped SDRAM. So DDR-II, PC2-4000 memory is 125 MHz SDRAM that can transfer 32 bytes/cycle (64 bits * 4/cycle) for a data rate of 4 GByte/s. DDR-I is double pumped SDRAM. DDR-I, PC4000 memory is 250 MHz SDRAM that can transfer 16 bytes/cycle (64 bits * 2/cycle) for a data rate of 4 GByte/s.
The reason, I believe, is obvious. DDR-II takes a latency hit due to its low clock rate at equivalent bandwidths to DDR-I, and therefore does not perform the same. The situation is no different from when DDR-I, PC1600 came on the scene and it didn't perform better than PC133 SDRAM memory. So, DDR-II won't have better overall performance than PC3200 until it has enough bandwidth and reduced latencies to make up for the lower clock. Maybe PC2-5400 will have better performance for all benches?
For them to move to PC4000 there would to have been a slight motherboard redesign. I personally don't think it's worth it... the performance difference between PC4000 and PC3200 is so tiny that the extra money going into R&D and testing would have been a waste. The only purpose I see in doing this is bragging rights.
The 970 seems quite memory performance sensitive. PC4000 will produce real gains in performance.
Originally posted by onlooker
In the link you asked for. Didn't you read the article after you asked to see it?
To sum it up.
That sentence was basically them saying this is typical, and it's not the game, or aspyres coding that doesn't perform on a Mac. It's essentially everything throughout the article is about the extent they went to to get this game running as fast as possible. They also say They will continue to try, and make the make the game perform better, and Apples periodic driver updates should hep as well.
I don't agree. All modern games are ported, not written for OS X. Also, most of them are directX. If OS X didn't allow to compete with PCs on games, then how a G5 could beat a PC with a better graphic card on quake 3 ? My conclusion is that quake 3 is the only well optimised game for OS X.
And looking at PC benchmarks, I would say that aspyr did a very bad job. I noticed framerates up to 3 times (!!) higher on high-end PCs with radeon X800XT, no matter what resolution and quality they used. I really don't think that OS X alone is responsible for that, because results are much closer between G5s and PCs on other games like halo and UT2004.
Originally posted by french macuser
I don't agree. All modern games are ported, not written for OS X. Also, most of them are directX. If OS X didn't allow to compete with PCs on games, then how a G5 could beat a PC with a better graphic card on quake 3 ? My conclusion is that quake 3 is the only well optimised game for OS X.
And looking at PC benchmarks, I would say that aspyr did a very bad job. I noticed framerates up to 3 times (!!) higher on high-end PCs with radeon X800XT, no matter what resolution and quality they used. I really don't think that OS X alone is responsible for that, because results are much closer between G5s and PCs on other games like halo and UT2004.
Doom 3 is an OpenGL game not a Direct X game no matter what platform. And you can't make a comparison of two systems using different cards. You need to use the same card. Apple has an OpenGL driver problem that they can't seem to get together. Quake 3 was never written ground up for OS X either. It still uses legacy CFM code. It's hardly gong to be the staple for comparison in anything for OS X. So unless I'm mistaken about that your conclusions are wrong.
Originally posted by onlooker
Quake 3 was never written ground up for OS X either. It still uses legacy CFM code. It's hardly gong to be the staple for comparison in anything for OS X. So unless I'm mistaken about that your conclusions are wrong.
Well, Quake 3 was at least developed in-house by id Software where Graeme Devine kept the Mac version up to date with the Windows version. In later versions, he even added lots of PowerPC Assembly optimizations and built in some Altivec support.
With Doom 3 being developed outside of id software, I would assume that it can't get quite as much attention to detail as quake 3 was given.
Originally posted by rogue27
Well, Quake 3 was at least developed in-house by id Software where Graeme Devine kept the Mac version up to date with the Windows version. In later versions, he even added lots of PowerPC Assembly optimizations and built in some Altivec support.
With Doom 3 being developed outside of id software, I would assume that it can't get quite as much attention to detail as quake 3 was given.
It is also one of the rare games that has SMP support, which is a definite benefit on a platform with quite a few dual processor machines.
Product: PowerMac
Last Release: June 09, 2004
Days Since Update: 272 (Average = 176)
Saturday will be 100 days past the average due update. And I think they are using the SP 1.8 GHz downgrade as an update cycle.
Originally posted by onlooker
Saturday will be 100 days past the average due update. And I think they are using the SP 1.8 GHz downgrade as an update cycle.
Just as some considered the addition of the dual 1.8 to replace the single 1.8 in the original g5 lineup as an upgrade cycle... retarded.