Slashdot Mirror
Intel Developer Macs Outperform G5s
bonch writes "Developers working with the new Intel-based, developer-only Macs are impressed with the performance. The machines take as little as 10 seconds to boot from Apple logo to desktop, and apparently run Windows XP at 'blazing speeds.' Rosetta tests demonstrate the PowerPC-native build of Firefox running just as fast as it does on a high-end G5."
Didn't you RTFA? It's not an "emulator", it's a dynamic binary translator. Duh...
ResidntGeek
Clearly the speed boost comes from the amazing graphics capabilities of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900. I mean, the 900 stands for 450 times better than their last integrated system which was numberd 2, right?
Couldn't they work hard to reduce that to five seconds? Think how many lives would be saved.
Performance is nice, but it isn't always everything
Will you explain that to my girlfriend please? Please?
Free XBox, PS2
So now that Apple is going to use Intel processors, Apple developers are allowed to note that Intel makes faster processors?
I should feel vindicated, I suppose.
So...the development Mac's run XP faster than other vendor's boxen? This is getting weird.
There is something fishy about these numbers, I agree.
:P
It also runs "Windows XP at blazing speeds"? Well, hm, that doesn't sound like a plain old P4 to me.
Random and weird software I've written.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with Intel Mac hard drive performance? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Intel Mac for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Safari will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even SubEthaEdit is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on my Intel Mac, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Intel Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Intel Mac's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Intel Mac is a superior machine.
Intel Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Intel Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Took long enough, but it looks like OS X will finally be 'snappy' ;)
Son, perhaps you should inflate her?
Oh, we're supposed to use the comments as a source for facts? Even the ones crawling with Apple fanbois?
I must be new here, maybe that has always been the case.
Yes, the MacOS port of Firefox is an embarrasment. The interface is responsive in the same way that steering a rocket by sending olfactory messages to slugs is responsive.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
cherry os
Yeah, maybe those guys compared it to running Windows XP under VirtualPC.
This is going to be a real problem for Mac software, because most of it isn't frame limited, and isn't designed to run this fast. You'll be typing a sentence in a word processor, and before you know it, the cursor will have zoomed off and crashed into the right hand edge of the window.
Not good.
Well I think that by transparent they mean that you can see through it. I mean, metaphorically speaking, if Rosetta was a person and it was wearing the apps that ran using it, it would be frightening to see those apps walking around with no body. Very frightening indeed, like a ghost. 65 to 70 percent of normal speed is definitely frightening, so this must be exactly what they mean.
Seven seconds. Trust me.
Seven chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Get rid of the unnecessary crap installed on your system to help improve your boot times. Have you seen the junk FC4 installs and starts at boot by default?
Deleted
And a transvestite is just like a real woman. Sorry, but SSE2 is still register-starved and has those stupid destructive two-operands ops.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
No, the real point is in relationships you want to avoid the 'boot' process.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
In fact, im quite happy with the 20-30 seconds i get with windows xp.
So, are you happy with the 30-40 seconds you have to wait in between seeing your desktop and actually being able to do something with it?
I definitely won't be buying a PPC Mac. I'll wait for Intel Macs next year.
What overall effect will this have on Mac sales?
It will reduce total sales by one.
Technically, since this is Windows XP we are talking about (thus 10% processor usage in idle), and its running on a Pentium 4, then it IS running at "blazing" speeds.
Better put out that fire.
TFA refers to running firefox under rosetta emulation. This feeds instructions translated from G3 architecture into something that x86 can handle. Sort of like running a playstation 2 game on an xbox 360 through a playstation 1 emulator.
I would say that running firefox that fast under emulation is a pretty big deal.
Your frame of reference makes me really wonder how the hell you spend your weekends!
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
But always remember what you do before you wake up the computer. I once Had some porn on my screen and I put my laptop to sleep and when I brought my laptop to work I turned it back on and man I was lucky no one was behind me.
Damn. I've still got a stack of Intel Inside slug stickers
I guess I can't continue to stick them overtop all the Intel Inside plates I run across, so I need some creative ideas as to what I should do with them. Any ideas?
Well, there is a one in three chance that this study is nonsense.
Nope, I'm damned if I can remember what it's doing for those few seconds. Now will you tell me the damn answer?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
What a silly article. Of course the newer macs are going to be faster than the older generation. Why would Apple switch to Intel if they couldn't provide a faster chip? Imagine the headlines:
"New Intel-based Macs not as fast as the G5"
Well, this is good, because I hate for my computer to be useful. Thanks for the tip. I'll refrain from installing software next time I build my system.
Memory test.
Nope, I'm damned if I can remember what it's doing for those few seconds. Now will you tell me the damn answer?
Memory test.
I hope I didn't just write to a NULL pointer...