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Preliminary OS X & PPC 970 Benchmarks
Dixie_Flatline writes "Macbidouille.com is reporting that they have
preliminary benchmarks involving PPC970 hardware. The results are seriously impressive. We're looking at a single processor PPC 970 1.4GHz machine quite strikingly outperforming a dual G4 1.42GHz machine. Don't worry, there's an English translation embedded in the page so you don't have to try to muddle through the French." Update: 05/05 19:58 GMT by T : Thanks to Eric from macbidouille.com, above link updated to a static page; hopefully you'll get better response this way.
It seems the benchmarks they ran all favour SIMD FPU performance. I'd be much more interested in integer (and integer-SIMD) performance, as this is used much more in mainstream video and audio compression work.
Well, we can be sure of one thing, it'll be faster than PCs at rendering something in Photoshop.
Remember that MacBidouille has a history of inaccurate rumors... remember their AMD rumor earlier this year. Check out their rating at www.macrumors.com
Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !
cause it makes the whole article sound silly. I've been a Mac user since 1989, but I really, really, really, really wish people would find something more interesting to argue over than which platform/OS you use.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
It's in the article.
Test 1: Cinema 4D-XL
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 33 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 30 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 29 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 18 seconds
Test 2: Photoshop Actions
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 73 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 58 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 50 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 24 seconds
Test 3: Bryce 5
PPC G4 Dual 1.42 GHz 21 seconds
Pentium IV 3.0GHz 16 seconds
PPC 970 1.4 GHz 16 seconds
PPC 970 Dual 1.8 GHz 7 seconds
While I truly believe Apple will use the 970, and I'm sure it will be much faster that their current offerings, I still have to remain skeptical of this. Call me naive, but how am I to believe they not only have alpha releases of panther (very possible, since they are probably developer seeds), but they also somehow obtained unreleased hardware as well? "...were done on the same computers that will be sold." I can't imagine Apple is so loose to let out alpha/beta harware.
Then again, never underestimate the marketing power of 'hype'. Whether it's true or not, I hope the release is sooner than later.... I miss OS X.
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
Maybe this should have been posted to the Apple section. I had to actually click on the /. logo to see this post! My home page is the apple section, to filter only what i really want to see ;-)
Perhaps you should read the educational tale of the Osbourne to learn exactly how your reaction is exactly why Apple keeps this kind of thing secret:
-- From this site.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Mac fans, our wait will be rewarded. The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world !
I didn't know the former Iraqi Information Minister works at Apple now.
Trolling is a art,
They're not running in 64-bit mode.
The 970 runs 32-bit PPC code and 64-bit PPC code. Only the kernel has to support the 64-bit mode and switching back and forth for the individual applications.
However, these benchmarks still might be fake. It's hard to tell since I can't even download the article.
Hmm...I mean that's a great idea and all...but what the hell are you doing HERE???
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
> IBM may have been willing to enter Steve Jobs' reality
> distortion field this time, and have been misleading us
> all this time - but personally I find that unlikely
I've a couple of uncles who recently retired from IBM. And today's IBM isn't the "Big Blue" of the '80s. Things have changed.
For starters, the engineers, at least, don't wear suits anymore!
But that's not the important bit. The important bit is that ever since bill gates fucked them over, back in the early '90s, in the OS/2 incident, IBM has had an institutional hatred of microsoft the likes of which mere mortals can barely comprehend. They're nowhere near as rabidly vocal about it as the likes of Ellison, McNealy, or a big segment of the Linux community, of course. But, then, IBM has always been rathar understated. They don't bluster. But they *DO* remember!
Catch an IBM'er and have a frank discussion sometime. And you'll find that the prevailing attitude towards microsoft there is: "One day, maybe not soon, but one day... we WILL bend gates and his minions over a barrel and assrape them HARD. And as they say: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'".
It wouldn't be suprising at all if the RDF had nothing to do do with it; and IBM sped up production, and got prototypes to Apple early, JUST to spite gates.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I don't trust this information at all. There are a lot of apple people that would like to see a processor that is significantly faster than intel's offering (I am one). Unfortunately there are people that will publish rumors that apple is going to do this soon without proof because they wish it were so now. The only apple rumor site that I would trust is Think Secret. Other than think secret or an announcement from apple, I refuse to believe that any of this information is true. This is merely wishful thinking.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Of they G4, they write,
Now, maybe I'm reading too much into a rough translation, but it sounds like they were witholding benchmarks that showed how the single P4 3.0 spanked the dual 1.4 G4. That doesn't seem very forthright.Meanwhile, comparing *today's* Intel product against *tomorrow's* PPC must also be done with caution; by the time you can buy that PPC 970, Intel and AMD will have something else, too.
Apparently the French server surrendered to our requests ... like that's a surprise.
IBMs vecotor processer is Altivec compatible. Apple calls it velocity engine. I think they just called it altivec since some people wouldn't know that Altivec is just Motorolla's name for their vector processor. When these things are in Macs, apple will probably call them G5s with velocity engine, even though they will be fourth generation(or second if you count how long they've been 64-bit) chip and not the exact same thing that was velocity engine.
All this seems very nice.
Lets get it out now.
The thing to remember is that the PowerPC is originally based on the IBM POWER chip -- a native 64 bit chip that can do 32 bit programs as well.
IBM tends to undersestimate and overproduce. They arent just making it for Apple, they will put the 970 in their own Linux blade servers and NetVista boxes for financial stuff. Also, the 970 is a variant of the POWER4 dualcore Risc monster processor in IBMs big server iron.
IBM doesnt screw around. Motorola is becoming irrelevant.
Heres another key reason why this chip might actually be as fast as MacBidoulle claims:
The system bus runs at 900 MHZ. The current mac system bus runs at 167 mhz. Think about it. A 900 lane highway vs a 167 lane highway? This chip will have monstrous bandwith. And the power consumption will be reduced a big deal as well..
Look at this official IBM presentation from last october
and this ArsTechnica review as well
The 970, being a 64 bit chip, allows more memory than 4GB, the current 32 bit limit. Servers need more than 4 gigs, especially IBM's monster iron.
10 years ago my Mac used 32 MB's of ram. Now its up to 768 megs. Sooner or later, it will go past 4 gigs. Better to get this transition done now than later.
The current PPCs (The g4s) are wide, but shallow. The much faster Pentium 4s are deep but narrow.
This is a guess, and if any cpu engineer wants to help out, id appreciate it.
The P4 stuffs all execution data down the pipe as fast as it can. If there's a break in the chain of execution instructions, the whole chain must be shoved down the pipe again.
The G4 spreads it all out over multiple pipes, but the pipes arent deep. The main work is figuring out which pipe is free to shove stuff into.
This is a gross simplification, so please bear with me.
The 970, on the other hand, has more pipes than the G4 and the Pentium 4, but the pipes are deeper than the P4. So it can stuff a whole ton of stuff down and be very efficient. Wide and deep. Theres a bit of a tradeoff, but the chip is just engineered much better.
I read the Ars technica article a long time ago and the IBM PDF file a while ago too. I would not be suprised if the data on Mac Bidoulle is accurate.
I am waiting for apple to stuff a 970 into a PowerBook, preferably the 15 inch one. I am waiting on that for my next computer. I do not want the G4. The Mobo on the G4 just doesnt have a wide enough bus to suck up massive amounts of data. The 970 mobo will.
The 970 mobo will be 900 Mhz. Intel has the 533 mhz mobo and soon will have the 800 mhz mobo.
Motorola and Apple were fighting about how to make the data path on the mobo. Motorola had the chips, they were just being strange. Motorola's problems stunted apple with the g4 for a long time. Apple had to overclock the g4 so much that the g4 tower got obscenely loud.
I welcome the 970 and want it in a Mac ASAP. I think that WWCD was delayed to show the developers the chip and a version of Panther that will have it. Bring it on! Lets see IBM take on Intel in the chipmaking business.
My bets are on IBM
We've had some discussion of these in the Ars Mac forum, and the consensus is that they're bogus. I'm currently wrapping up part II of my 970 article, and I'm pretty certain that these numbers are made up.
Here's how it will break down clock-for-clock:
Floating-point: the 970 will spank the G4e
Integer: The G4e will spank the 970
Vector: it's a tie, even though the 970's Altivec hardware is inferior to that of the G4e. What gives the 970 a boost is Dual-channel DDR400 and a real FSB. If you were to put the G4e in a similar system, it would out perform the 970 clock-for-clock pretty handily.
Anyway, I could elaborate more, but I'd rather work on my article.
Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
I think they mean that these benchmarks are really for PC users. If you are about to buy a new P4 and do MS Windows all over again then they are saying to you "wait a tick and see how the G5 looks first". There is a widespread feeling in the Mac community that the G5 will be something special because it will be from top-to-bottom all New Apple (post NeXT purchase). There won't be anything at all left from the pre-1997 Mac, basically, that hasn't been completely rebuilt (OS, form factors) or replaced (ADB with USB, A/V with FireWire, CRT with LCD). Also, there is a feeling that IBM made the PowerPC 970 just for Steve and Avi and John, so whatever they wrap around it will take really good advantage of it, and basically blow the doors off Wintel for all you guys who are still stuck with 1990's-era computer systems. The idea is that if you bristled reading the previous sentence they hope to show you that it is really true, with 64-bits and system design that goes from the tiniest hardware element all the way to single pixels on the 3D alpha-composited display.
If you are a Mac user you probably don't care about bar graph benchmarks. I am one and I don't. I just buy a new Mac every three years when my AppleCare is up and sell the old one for half what I paid for it originally and just laugh and laugh.
Mac users are more interested in feature lists like Rendezvous (zero conf networking), FireWire (hook up lots of disks and cameras real fast and easy), CoreAudio (flexibly utilize pro audio interfaces, applications, effects, and instruments simultaneously in real-time), CoreMIDI (route MIDI performance data between applications in real-time), SuperDrive (read and write CD and DVD), Unicode typography throughout, one-crash-per-year stability, etc. And of course I want it in an enclosure that is 50% of the volume of the last one, too.
Bar graphs of a particular render or a particular step or action are fairly useless in creative work. You get a better idea by just using the machine you plan to purchase for 20 minutes at an Apple Store or similar dealer. As long as it has all the necessary features (some noted above) and it feels good then you are set. Apple's Photoshop shoot-outs are not so bad because they run numerous day-long scripts on Photoshop on both platforms. These are scripts that it literally takes an artist all day to record in Photoshop, and you can play them back as fast as the machine can manage, so if you play back 20 scripts on both machines and one is consistently faster then that might be interesting. Not enough to make me ignore how much I don't want to run Windows, though. It's not worth if for so many reasons, not the least of which is the dearth of good creative software on MS Windows.
The Panther builds are not on the B build train yet, so this article is wrong. There is no such thing as Panther 7B6.
This ''benchmark'' is really bullsh*t.
When you do serious benchmarks, you post details about the hardware and the used OS.
Well, they gave a few details about the Mac they claim to have. But what about the P4-PC?
What kind of RAM did they use? 100MHz? 800MHz? Something in between?
Which Windows version did they use? Was Hyper Threading enabled?
The list could be a lot longer, but you get the point.
Also: Wasn't the PPC970 meant to be a competitor to Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron CPUs rather that just the plain P4 (by price and aimed market)? (I'm not sure about this one.)
Why didn't they benchmark these as well? (They could at least get a Xeon, an Opteron is harder to get.)
The last sentence (''The fight is over and Apple will soon rule the world!'') gives me an indication why they didn't do this: They seem not to be interested in an objective comparison.