800Mhz iMac vs 1.7Ghz Sony Vaio

[n0cmonkey]

Popular Science article. Looks interresting

 

[BD231]

Dose the Mac still use SDRam? Outside of modem's, network, sound, and video components, I'm really confused on what kind of parts go into a mac. I always see Apple add's showing off dual 1ghz+ machines, but never any side info, like what the FSB clock is, or what the ram clock is. Have any idea where I can find these specs in good detail?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

current ones use pc100 sdram, IIRC. ones before that used pc66.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< current ones use pc100 sdram, IIRC. ones before that used pc66. >>



133 now, 100 before, 66 right before that. Sounds kinda familiar huh?

Previous revisions of the iBook were 66mhz bus. This helped battery life.

As far as other components go:
standard ide hard drives
fairly standard ram (you can buy it at crucial)

 

[BD231]

How do apples compete with such a limited mem bandwith?, is the bus optimized in some way? 133mhz SDRAM will get you at the most 900mb's a second. If you compare this to DDR or RDRam, SDRam simply gets blown away.

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< How do apples compete with such a limited mem bandwith?, is the bus optimized in some way? 133mhz SDRAM will get you at the most 900mb's a second. If you compare this to DDR or RDRam, SDRam simply gets blown away. >>



Im sure they are working on DDR or RD. Apple has been notorious for introduing "new" technology later than other companies.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

<< How do apples compete with such a limited mem bandwith?, is the bus optimized in some way? 133mhz SDRAM will get you at the most 900mb's a second. If you compare this to DDR or RDRam, SDRam simply gets blown away. >>


sure, the raw bandwidth of ddr is 2x, but that is highly dependent on how memory bandwidth dependant the processor is. if you take an athlon and put it on sdram, then on ddr, it will perform a bit better on ddr. if you take a p4 and put it on sdr, then ddr, it will be a more drastic increase in performance when going to ddr.

that said, i dont know how memory hungry G4's are. probably wouldnt hurt apple to go to ddr, not really that expensive (like they arent already), plus it uses less power which is something their hippie users seem to like

when you get down to it though, apples have never been about raw performance, tweaking, or anything like that. it's about using a computer to get the job done, and having something pretty to look at at the same time. my only beef with them is that they're expensive.

 

[Duvie]

Seems about right.....Macs have always had top notch connection other devices...they design them themselves where as Sony is dealing with others technology and you can see the kinks...

The mhz to mhz comparison is no shock...benn like that for ages...the altivec optimised coding of mac programs allow the processor to do more in each clock cycle....

The very sad thing is the poor dvd playback...that is sad since my p3 600 sony plays dvds flawlessly with no scan lines...even plays my rather high bitrate divx movies...

Remember the p4 1.7 is running sdram as well....not ddr....and this is likely holding the p4 back quite a bit ni some of those editing features that tend to be memory intensive

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< The very sad thing is the poor dvd playback...that is sad since my p3 600 sony plays dvds flawlessly with no scan lines...even plays my rather high bitrate divx movies... >>



The writer must have screwed something up. I have *NO* problems playing DVDs on my iBook which is only a 500mhz g3 witha 66mhz bus.

 

[Duvie]

Ok....I thought that sounded strange...likely some software issue there...

I have a sony VAIO p3 600, and to say the least I am not that impressed....sure usbs and firewire at the time was industry leading but a p3 600 susks when it comes to editing dv files I have downloaded from dv camcorder...Also chalk full of crap programs that are virtually impossible to remove...BLOATWARE!!!!

 

[Eug]

It's kind of a stupid comparison, since the Vaio costs $1600 more than the iMac. That's almost twice as much. Total ripoff.

By the way, I watch DVD on the train off battery power with an iBook G3 600. Dunno what the hell he's talking about.

As for DVD authoring, I've been told that DVDit! LE is pretty useless, so much so, that when I ordered my Panasonic DVD-RAM/DVD-R drive I just got the bare OEM drive without DVDit. OTOH, while iDVD is supposed to be pretty good, I can't use it on my iBook because it won't accept external DVD-R drives.