How Will Virtual PC run on a dual 3 GHZ Power Mac G5?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I've been saving for the next powermac update. I'm a little worried. It will be my only computer, so I will need the new VPC to run XP at at least around 1.1ghz PC. I'm probably going to use VPC fairly often for certain programs. I was wondering if anyone had a reasonable guesstimate of how fast VPC would work on a dual 3 ghz G5 from their previous experiences with VPC.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SwitchingSoon

    I've been saving for the next powermac update. I'm a little worried. It will be my only computer, so I will need the new VPC to run XP at at least around 1.1ghz PC. I'm probably going to use VPC fairly often for certain programs. I was wondering if anyone had a reasonable guesstimate of how fast VPC would work on a dual 3 ghz G5 from their previous experiences with VPC.



    umm, no one knows since none of them are even out yet.

    \
  • Reply 2 of 14
    Uhh...that's why I said guesstimate based on previous experiences with VPC......
  • Reply 3 of 14
    no one really has experience to estimate that, as no one has been able to test how well VPC could perform on a g5, outside of microsoft, at least. The current version does not support the G5.
  • Reply 4 of 14
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    they are probably trying to bug/slow it down before release after how surprised they were with its performance on a G5
  • Reply 5 of 14
    msanttimsantti Posts: 1,377member
    I think VPC will still run like ass.



    Maybe something equivalent to a 800 MHZ PIII?
  • Reply 6 of 14
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by msantti

    I think VPC will still run like ass.



    Ass can run pretty damned fast, especially when ass is trying to save itself.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by shetline

    Ass can run pretty damned fast, especially when ass is trying to save itself.



  • Reply 8 of 14
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SwitchingSoon

    I was wondering if anyone had a reasonable guesstimate of how fast VPC would work on a dual 3 ghz G5 from their previous experiences with VPC.



    Well, considering a Dual 3Ghz would be faster than any other consumer processor out there (including Intel), I should hope it would run fairly fast. Use some common sense.



    Edit: I take back my last comment: Microsoft has shitty programmers.
  • Reply 9 of 14
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    How Will Virtual PC run on a dual 3 GHZ Power Mac G5?



    Slow compared to a 500MHz PC.

    What do you expect from an emulator?
  • Reply 10 of 14
    Quote:

    Originally posted by SwitchingSoon

    I've been saving for the next powermac update. I'm a little worried. It will be my only computer, so I will need the new VPC to run XP at at least around 1.1ghz PC.



    Surely you'd be better with a single processer G5 and use the saving to buy a $500 PC? It will run faster than Virtual PC by far...
  • Reply 11 of 14
    you're probably right

    Damnit. I really wanted top-o-the-line....... IT will have to last me the next 2-4 years.
  • Reply 12 of 14
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    yup get a cheap PC and a nice mid range G5 and a KVM. A KVM stands for Keyboard/Video/Mouse. So you can share the monitor and keyboard/mouse between the G5 and the PC. That setup should be sweet. I'm thinking of doing that when I finally get a Mac desktop in a few years.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    beigeuserbeigeuser Posts: 371member
    If the only thing Microsoft does is to change the code to make it G5 compatible, VPC will run like shit. I remember reading something like X86 and PPC uses a different system for its calculations: little vs. big endian or something.



    The G3/G4 was able to automatically make that conversion in hardware which accelerated VPC. The G5 no longer has that feature which is why it's incompatible with the current version. VPC 7 will have to do those calculations in software. Which will make it run much slower when compared to the G4.



    My dual 1.25 G4 runs equivalent to a 650MHz processor (I'm not sure if it's referring to Celeron or P4) according Windows benchmarks. Although it feels a lot more slower because the screen redraws are done by the G4, not the GPU.



    Now let me try to estimate the dual 3 gig G5 VPC performance.

    Judging from other Mac apps, the G5s seems to scale fairly linearly from the G4s. The only difference being that the G5s can reach higher clockspeeds due to its wide-bandwidth. So if a dual 1.25 G4 runs like a 650MHz CPU with no graphics acceleration(To be on the safe side, let's say Celeron), the dual 3.0 G5 should run like a 1.5GHz Celeron. But since the big/little endian thing is gone, let's say the G5 will be about a 1.1-1.2 GHz Celeron with no graphics acceleration.



    If that's not fast enough, you will have to keep praying. There is some hope. Currently, the velocity engine and dual-processor setup are underutilized. The GPU of the mac is completely unused. If Microsoft was to make any improvements in these areas, you will see at least some performance increases.



    Personally, I would do what Aquatic says. I tried using VPC to do some homework recently, but VPC wasn't compatible with my USB Flash device. So I had to use e-mail to transfer my files from school to my home. It was a major annoyance. The USB Flash device is Windows compatible and Mac compatible but it didn't work in VPC because Mac would unmount the device everytime VPC boots up.
  • Reply 14 of 14
    That's probably good enough for me. I just checked ebay, and if I want a faster PC it will only cost around $200. I think I'll just get a $200 pc (i have the monitor and everything else).
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