New iMacs Get Good Compliments and Superior Rating From PC Magazine

[Jon Miller]

I was refering to Cloud9

Jon Miller

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Asher
Cloud9, don't patronize me. I know all about MHz.

It's stupid to assume MHz is speed, it's also stupid to assume it's not speed. It's a major factor in speed. CPU speed is determined by MHz * IPC (Instructions Per Clock), for the most part. Memory bandwidth and latency also plays a part, but the G4 doesn't compete there either (you can have 4.2GB/s on high end PCs, vs 1.0GB/s on Macs for bandwidth).

The Pentium 4's clockrate is abnormally high, and its IPC is lower than the G4s and Athlons, but MHz * IPC is still way, way higher than the G4 and also higher than the Athlon's.

The 2.4GHz P4 totally and completely dominates a Dual 1GHz G4 in every benchmark thrown at it (even Photoshop), so how badly do you think a single G4 700 or 800 will do?

Then explain to me why AMD's "slower" processors outperform Intel's "faster" processors.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Cloud9
Then explain to me why AMD's "slower" processors outperform Intel's "faster" processors.

Argh. I'm going to try this one more time.

There are two main factors in overall CPU performance.
MHz -- this is the clockrate, expressed in terms of millions of cycles per second.
IPC -- this is how many instructions the CPU can executed for every clock rate (every Hz)

The Pentium 4 has a lower IPC than the Athlon, which has a lower IPC than the G4.
The Pentium 4 has a higher MHz rating than the Athlon, which has a higher MHz than the G4.

Neither IPC nor MHz alone is the true indicator of performance. Apple will tell you IPC is, Intel Marketing will tell you MHz is.

Real performance is expressed in terms of IPC * MHz (instructions per clock times how many clockcycles).

The fastest Athlons do not outperform the fastest Pentium 4s, rather the fastest Pentium 4s are faster. Doing less IPC means you can turn up the MHz.

Now, an Athlon at 500MHz will outperform a Pentium 4 at 500MHz. A G4 at 500MHz will outperform a Pentium 4 at 500MHz and an Athlon at 500MHz. But they're not all normalized for that speed.

When you take into account IPC * MHz, the Pentium 4 is fastest, Athlon second fastest, and the G4 way behind somewhere.

[Asher]

For example, this program runs chess matches against other computers, and records how many Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) it scores through the process.

It doesn't have the latest CPUs available for PC or Mac, but they're all pretty modern: http://home.attbi.com/~tckerrigan/bench.html

P4 2.4GHz gets 2770 MIPS
Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8GHz) gets 2352 MIPS
G4 at 867MHz gets 1131.9 MIPS (slightly faster than a Pentium III 933MHz...)

-----

And this benchmark which renders a 3D world: http://calyxa.pandromeda.com/benchmark.html

Athlon at 1.6GHz (1900+) gets it done in 2:28.70
Pentium 4 at 2.2GHz gets it done in 2:29.55
Dual 1GHz G4 gets it done in 5:38.78

[Juggernaut]

Macs are for trendy, aesthetic people, not for general Apolytoners. That's why most people here will never get it.

[monolith94]

I am unique. I am special.

p.s. I have it on inside info that mleonard will be getting the new 17" imac. Quite good, makes me envious...

[monolith94]

"While the PowerBook's price seems high, the unit stacks up well against comparably equipped notebooks. The IBM ThinkPad T23 and T30, for example, have similar prices but smaller screens and less RAM."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,31749,00.asp

[Jon Miller]

the thinkpads are known to be outrageously expensive

Jon Miller

[Imran Siddiqui]

Mono: IBM is known for it's high prices in notebooks. A Dell would cost $500 cheaper than the Powerbook you linked.

[Asher]

How wonderful of PCMag to do their research.

The new PowerBooks are $3199US.
They have a G4 800MHz, 512MB PC133 SDRAM, 40GB HD, 15.2" screen capable of 1,280x854, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, and Radeon 7500 graphics.

A Dell Inspiron 2650 gives you a P4 1.6GHz, 512MB DDR266 SDRAM, 40GB HD, 15" screen capable of 1600x1200, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, and GeForce 2 Go (32MB) graphics. This is for $2,446.00.

Customize it on the Dell site yourself.

[monolith94]

Doesn't matter to me - I don't like laptops anyways.

[Asher]

Why did you link to the article?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Then why bring it up .

[monolith94]

You Southerners are all the same. Spend a few weeks in the heat and the blood's all a-boiling in your veins.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I think that the problem with Asher, Fez, Jon Miller and others is that their all pessimists, while I and some others on here quite optimistic. Wouldn't you agree monolith?