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Re:Competitive clock speed???? Did I miss somethin by CoreyG · 2001-02-23 08:50 · Score: 2 · on GeForce 3 Demoed - Running DOOM 3

Can you contrast your comments

The 733 G4 was not as fast as my 1 ghz PIII in any of the trouble areas. Apple is doing a lot of good work, but the CPU's just aren't as fast as the x86 ones. AltiVec can compensate in some cases, because it is way, way easier to program for than SSE, but it takes a very simple batched, computation intensive task for it to pay off in any noticable way. Amdahls law and all that. We did a couple functions with AltiVec, but they didn't make much difference. Video encoding and large image processing are two areas that it can pay off, because you may be spending 90%+ of your time in one page of code. Even then, it takes a special balance to let a G4 come out ahead, because it has less memory bandwidthd than a high end x86 system.

With those of graeme devine as posted on insidemacgames.

I finally got around to programming in Altivec support for Quake3 1.27h. If you have a G4 you'll certainly want to flex that velocity engine! I think this safely puts the G4 ahead of the PC. I'll probably post this tomorrow. We have in the office a G4/533 with a GeForce2 card. It's a very very nice setup. Graeme.

It would seem the two of you are at odds over this little issue.

Re:Price-Performance of "iCubes" and other Macs by Doktor+Memory · 2000-10-24 00:27 · Score: 4 · on X On OSX Now Free

even though PPC clock speeds are slower, programs run faster because the processor can do more per clock cycle.

That is true. (It's also true of sparc, alpha, MIPS and pretty much any non-x86 architecture.)

I've been told to expect twice the performance from a G3 than a similarly clocked PIII.

That is unadorned horseshit. But don't take my word for it: go to www.spec.org and check out the numbers yourself. 20-30% is more the average gain, and that's cold comfort when you can buy 1.2GHz Athlon chips for less than $500 a pop.

The "twice as fast as Wintel" claim is based on a small number of Adobe Photoshop operation benchmarks; usually filters that have been painstakingly optimized for the G4's "Altivec" vector processing unit. This isn't necessarily "cheating", since Photoshop is still one of the primary reasons to buy a mac, but if you are not a graphics professional, you are simply never ever going to see that kind of speed benefit using a Mac.

In "regular use" applications, the scenario at the moment is even worse than you might guess based on the SPEC numbers: MacOS 9 is such a turgid, inefficient piece of crap, and the device drivers for 3rd-party Mac hardware so shoddily implemented, that MacOS applications will often run significantly slower than their Windows counterparts on similar hardware: just ask anybody if they're getting the same kind of Quake III framerates out of a G4/500 with a Radeon card as they would from a PIII/800 with the same graphics card.

You just don't buy Macs for world-beating performance (Photoshop being the exception). You buy them for nice industrial design, an OS that for all of its architectural ugliness still offers a more compelling user experience than Windows, and more often than not just to maintain an existing investment in MacOS software.

I think this is being blown out of proportion... by interactive_civilian · 2000-09-21 01:34 · Score: 4 · on Microsoft Unhappy With Bungie's Use Of Linux

Wow! This story actually made /. front page news, eh?

I think a lot of people, including IMG are over-reacting to Mr. Soell's comments. His original forum post at Rampancy.net only indicated that a few people made some "snarfy comments." It is not like Microsoft in general is in a state of discontent because Bungie Studios is using Linux to power their Bungie.net servers.

Honestly, I doubt Microsoft in general really cares, as long as the product works and makes them money. Granted they don't make much if anything off of Bungie.net, but the people who use it are the same people who are going to buy Halo when it is released.

So, I guess the point is: there is no need to over-react because a couple of OS fanatics made a few remarks...people here do it all of the time...

In fact, OS X RULES AND ALL OTHER OSs STINK!!

btw, that was sarcasm.

out.

Re:This is a rumor based on steve's infamous rep by Kesh · 2000-07-19 22:12 · Score: 1 · on Apple Punishes ATI For Leaking The Cube?

It seems that in this brave new world of instantaneous and sensationalist "news" that we pay too much attention to those stories that seem most exciting. This story might be true, it might not be true

According to this news report on Inside Mac Games, ATI employees are claiming that's exactly what happened. ATI announced the new products and Steve got ticked and yanked them from the show floor. It's not clear that Apple actually planned on having Radeons built into the new Macs, but ATI's press release implied it, and I think that's part of what got Jobs so angry.
______________________
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Re:This is a rumor based on steve's infamous rep by Kesh · 2000-07-19 22:12 · Score: 1 · on Apple Punishes ATI For Leaking The Cube?

It seems that in this brave new world of instantaneous and sensationalist "news" that we pay too much attention to those stories that seem most exciting. This story might be true, it might not be true

According to this news report on Inside Mac Games, ATI employees are claiming that's exactly what happened. ATI announced the new products and Steve got ticked and yanked them from the show floor. It's not clear that Apple actually planned on having Radeons built into the new Macs, but ATI's press release implied it, and I think that's part of what got Jobs so angry.
______________________
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it!"

Yes, Apple is using the Radeon cards by Anonymous Coward · 2000-07-18 02:50 · Score: 2 · on ATI Radeon Released

InsideMacGames broke the story yesterday. Of course now Jobs will probably *not* use them, just cause his surprise was spoiled. ;) They also have a story on the FSAA on the Radeon, which was 3dfx's biggest feature for the Voodoo5. Should be a fun MacWorld...

Link to ATI Surprise Announcement
Link to FSAA Story

Yes, Apple is using the Radeon cards by Anonymous Coward · 2000-07-18 02:50 · Score: 2 · on ATI Radeon Released

InsideMacGames broke the story yesterday. Of course now Jobs will probably *not* use them, just cause his surprise was spoiled. ;) They also have a story on the FSAA on the Radeon, which was 3dfx's biggest feature for the Voodoo5. Should be a fun MacWorld...

Link to ATI Surprise Announcement
Link to FSAA Story

The Mac version is out by Geert-Jan · 2000-06-18 20:38 · Score: 2 · on Terminus Demo Released

The mac version is out, though the main page at Inside Mac Games doesn't show it yet. You can get it over here, or at A Talent For War (direct link).

3D hardware for the Mac market... by Guppy · 2000-04-24 20:51 · Score: 2 · on ATI Radeon 256

Mac video hardware has definitely fallen behind the PC, with the dual-processor Rage Maxx being unable to run properly in the current Macs due to motherboard issues. So what else is out there?

Right now, 3dfx has Mac drivers and a bios flash that will allow your standard PCI V3 for the PC to work with a Mac. The drivers are beta, but the card is cheap (since you don't have to pay the Mac hardware premium), and test show it blowing away ATI's cards (In 3D, 2D is so-so). Only problem is that the V3 wasn't designed with Mac support in mind, so there are a few hardware issues that may never go away.

The V5, on the other hand, was designed to support the Mac from the beginning. The Mac version has already been demoed (Rumor has it the Mac version was ready before the PC one). Here's an article from InsideMacGames. 3dfx is coming out with PCI only at first, AGP may come later.

nVidia has announced that they intend to bring out a Mac card sometime later this year, possibly the NV15 or a varient thereof. They've released little info on this--but they did hire some director or manager guy away from Apple a few months ago.

Permanent URL for article by jesser · 2000-04-19 08:11 · Score: 1 · on Hasbro And Game-Design Lawsuits

http://www.insidema cgames.com/news/archive/00/04/04_19_00.shtml (won't work until tomrrow)

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slashdot friendly html by xtype · 2000-03-02 06:17 · Score: 4 · on Parsec Demo For Linux Released

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Mirrors by Nicodemus · 2000-03-02 05:54 · Score: 3 · on Parsec Demo For Linux Released

Mirrors by Nicodemus · 2000-03-02 05:54 · Score: 3 · on Parsec Demo For Linux Released

Mirrors - kill /. effect early by sethdelackner · 2000-03-02 05:50 · Score: 2 · on Parsec Demo For Linux Released

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Re:G4 vs Athlon by Anonymous Coward · 1999-12-26 22:00 · Score: 0 · on Multiprocessor G4s @MacWorld

Oh ok :-) I spent quite a while looking for performance benchmarks of G4's compared to other cpu's. Not that they are slow by any means, and they are definately the fastest cpu's for Photoshop(given that the cpu was designed with Photoshop performance as a primary goal, or so Jobs said). It is kind of funny though that Jobs claims it's two to three times as fast as the fastest Intel cpu, and everyone goes for it. And then you have the relatively unbiased John Carmack, who is definately pro-apple as a gaming platform, say right out to insidemacgames.com that Apples claims are nuts.

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