Analysis: x86 Vs PPC

Gentu writes "Nicholas Blachford (engineer of the PPC-based PEGASOS Platform) wrote a long and detailed article, comparing the PPC and the x86 architectures on a number of levels: performance, Vector processing and Power Consumption differences, architectural differences, RISC Vs CISC and more. The article is up-to-date and so it takes the G5 into account too."

Comments

A good OS...

[svenjob]

...makes all the difference. The thing that made me switch to PPC was, without an effing doubt, MacOS X. I went from an Athlon 2400+ with 768MB RAM to a home-made PowerMac 800 with 512MB RAM. I cut my processor by a 3rd and lowered my RAM. What did I gain? An amazing OS. If RISC processors continue to get more and more into the same processing spectrum as x86's, I think that OS X will help draw in the masses. Another thing that would help would be increased yields. That would lower prices and increase market share. Anyways, if x86 had OS X, I probably would have stayed with x86. But since it doesn't, I didn't.

Re:These arguments are so tired

[Hard_Code]

Did you even read the article? It is not about how PPC is faster than x86. It's about how PPC is more *efficient* than x86 which leads in the long term to lower power usage, whereas x86 gets diminishing returns on ramping up their clockspeed and playing games shuffling registers, etc. He specifically mentions that CPU speed is not really as critical as the companies make it out to seem because there are diminishing returns due to other system components. He mentions that x86 is up against a thermal wall by 2004 although I don't know where he got that data (it may be in a footnote but I not going to go back just to check). Speaking as a gamer who runs a pretty loud machine that overheats in summer, I am VERY interested in chips becoming cooler, moreso than them getting faster (the hard work is typically shoved off onto a graphics card).