New Apple Power Macs

[paralazarguer]

PCs definitely still much better!!!

I honestly don't know which is better overall. I know that the mac is a better plaform in terms of noise and asthetics. Some of them don't even have a single (not 1) fan. I also know that there's some reason that Graphics artists, video, and audio professionals shell out the big bucks for macs. Every audio studio I've worked at in this city (5) has used macs exclusively. That says something. There's a reason they're doing it. I don't know what it is, but it's there. The G4 is might efficient. I know that SSE2 is still not as sofisicated as Altivec in the G4 and if the Athlons 12 stage pipeline is that much faster than the P4's 20 stage, how much faster is the G4's 4 stage pipeline? I don't know...

 

[paralazarguer]

There's a really interesting article here which comares the K7 to the G4. Very interesting read.

 

[paralazarguer]

A comparison of the vector processing capabilities of the K7 and the MPC7400 is worthy of an article in and of itself, and in fact we have such an article in the pipe here. This being the case, I won't say too much here about the subject. I will say, however, that the K7's SIMD skillz look pretty weak when compared to the MPC7400's. The 7400 has a dedicated vector processing unit called Altivec (aka. the Velocity Engine), which can grind out 128 bits worth of vector-calculating goodness per cycle. This vector hardware is fed by thirty-two, 128-bit registers.

32 128 bit registerS! holy cow! JEEZ! Isn't that more registers than the P4 has in TOTAL?! Isn't that more than the hammer has?

 

[paralazarguer]

Every audio studio I've worked at in this city (5) has used macs exclusively

Actually, I just found out that Jason uses a PC with Cubase for midi but he uses a mac for everything else.

 

[paralazarguer]

Sweet! I just found an article which compares the architecture of the P4 to a modern G4 here

 

[paralazarguer]

A good article to read before the one I linked above. here

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Why are you comparing a Dual G4 to a Single P4 processor? A more accuarate and FAIR comparison would be with dual Xeons and a system that would equal the $5000 that the Mac costs. Then you'll see how far the Mac gets left behind, sure it can beat a SINGLE P4 2.53 in maybe some tests, but it would be eclipsed compared to dual Xeons. The fact that the P4 can compete at a superior price should make it the best option for starving graphics artists, but according to 7752623653434 that is not the case. Maybe that's why they are starving, cuz they bought a Mac?

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

7764234234 check out the other Mac thread where i posted benchmarks, the top of the line Dual 1GHZ G4's were smoked in almost every single 3d rendering and visual/audio app. I posted several benchmarks in that thread. So, you are incorrect, the Dual 1GHZ G4's were not really close at all to the P4 2.53 ghz. And were not even factoring in the fact that this was DUAL G4's, which should be compared to DUAL P4's.

 

[sharkeeper]

Believe me, ram isn't the issue. There is always at least 100megs of physical memory free and resampling (2 hours!) is entirely CPU based. Processor usage is sitting at 100% all the time.

How much physical ram do you have? Sound Forge itself doesn't use much ram for the program, however it relies heavily on Windows disk cache. The more ram you have the better off you are. I work with the same kind of files although I rarely resample actual audio data. I've found that large files take much longer on a machine with less physical memory than the file size. This is with creation of undo data and not the processing itself. Also, I find that Sound Forge 6.0 handles these processes better than 5.0.

A dual machine does little to actually speed the process, HOWEVER you can still work like nothing is running since you have the other processor! Perhaps Apple has finally seen the light (and need) for the second CPU!

I can't wait for 64bit platforms and (finally) not being limited to 4GB of memory without breaking the bank!

Cheers!

 

[paralazarguer]

Those benchmarks were with older (first gen 7 stage) g4s (g4e?) with PC133 and weren't comparable to a modern P4 system. You have to compare modern G4s. There are some benchmarks above which compare FAIRLY a g4 and p4 where they have the same ram, hard drive, video card. Take a look at them. Take a look at the three articles above. They'll tell you alot about the different approaches in the two processors. You might learn something. I'm not saying the G4 is faster. I've said again and again that I don't know so I'm not sure why you're arguing with someone who's not standing behind one side but for the sake of fairness read the articles and benches above.

 

[paralazarguer]

A dual machine does little to actually speed the process, HOWEVER you can still work like nothing is running since you have the other processor! Perhaps Apple has finally seen the light (and need) for the second CPU!

Apple has had dual CPUs since the G4-450 some two years ago.

 

[sharkeeper]

Apple has had dual CPUs since the G4-450 some two years ago.

Yes and a PP OS to support them. :Q

Things haven't been going so well for Apple.

Cheers!

 

[Pariah]

"Why are you comparing a Dual G4 to a Single P4 processor?"

Because that's what Apple chose to do and that was the price comparison we were asked to make. When you can buy a single CPU system that is cheaper and faster why bother with anything more? For the $5000 Mac you could build a ridiculous dual Xeon system that would completely embarrass the Mac, or even put together a quad Xeon which would just make it even uglier for the Mac.

SMP hardware is nothing without SMP optimized software.

 

[ViRGE]

I believe that Jaguar also supports the use of the 3d accelerator to draw the OS.

That's correct, Jaguar(or if you're my co-worker, Shaguar) supports using OpenGL to draw the GUI. Apple calls it "Quartz Extreme", as the non-OpenGL drawing layer was called "Quartz". Supposedly, QE is heavily tweeked for not only 3D rendering, but G4s and SMP. We'll have to wait until it comes out, but from what I'm hearing, it's really fast compared to X.1, and I wouldn't be suprised if it did well against Windows too. On a side note, Apple has at least 2 years on MS here(MS's 3D powered GUI will appear in Longhorn), which I have to admit impresses me.:Q

 

[paralazarguer]

Things haven't been going so well for Apple.

Yeah, that's great. I don't really see what that has to do with the new power macs being good or not good computers except that you just feel like flaming. In case you haven't noticed, all of the industry hasn't been doing well. Apple is still profitable though so they're doing fine.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

it's not hard to profit when your making next to nothing.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
it's not hard to profit when your making next to nothing.

Like HP/Compaq.

Or hell, even Microsoft! They make their money on something that you cant really hold...

 

[paralazarguer]

it's not hard to profit when your making next to nothing.

I'm not really sure how the phrase: It's not hard to profit when you're making next to nothing. (corrected for spelling) makes any sense whatsoever. It's even harder to understand why you're still crapping on this thread.

 

[McCarthy]

Anandtech should review one

By all means.

L3 isn't even on-chip, what a waste. Notice how it doesn't even hit 200 FPS in Q3A 1024x768 Normal with a GF4Ti4600! A P4 or an AXP would SLAUGHTER that thing by at least 100fps.

Oh, the Q3 litmus test. I think we can all agree PC's are the better gaming machine at this point. Though my first game of Oregon Trail was on an Apple... Aside from gaming, what are PC's faster at, more stable for, more productive at at this time?

Supposedly, QE is heavily tweeked for not only 3D rendering, but G4s and SMP. We'll have to wait until it comes out, but from what I'm hearing, it's really fast compared to X.1, and I wouldn't be suprised if it did well against Windows too. On a side note, Apple has at least 2 years on MS here(MS's 3D powered GUI will appear in Longhorn), which I have to admit impresses me.

2 years, wow. Any Linux distributions working on this yet?

Aside from Q3 it looks like a darn nice machine. Standing by itself it's nice and still is after comparison. And she's got huge...er, it's got a huge heatsink!

--Mc

 

[paralazarguer]

HA HA HA! Nice. Yes, there are seveal distros of linux that run on power pc. OS X comes to mind. It's BSD. Yellowdog linux also comes to mind. Quartz extreme will only work in Jaguar though I believe.
sharkeeper, I believe you recommended that I upgrade to SF 6 to increase speed. Incidentally, I just install sound forge 4.5 as well as 5 and 4.5 is MUCH faster than 5. I don't get it. I did it as properly as possible. Reboot between each test etc. I used a smaller 800meg wav file for each test. The first test was just opening it with default settings (temp file) the second test was resampling it to 22, 050 from 44,100 with interpolation accuracy 2 and applying Anti Aliasing. I have no idea why 4 beats 5 so badly! I can't wait to try 6! If I was actually doing some real work and upsampling instead of downsampling I can save a half hour every day using 4.5! This is crazy!
SF5 Open 3minutes19seconds
SF4 Open 2Minutes13seconds
SF5Downsample9minutes28seconds
SF4Downsample8minutes20seconds
So just by opening the file I saved two minutes and 14 seconds! That's insane! What could be causing this slowdown? Any idea?

 

[paralazarguer]

Aside from Q3 it looks like a darn nice machine. Standing by itself it's nice and still is after comparison. And she's got huge...er, it's got a huge heatsink!

Yeah I hate the dredded "but it's not as fast as a PC for gaming" thing. It's not really meant for that at all. It's a workstation. It's meant for rendering and working with audio. It's not a replacement for your frag box. Those articles I linked to clearly explain how the G4 is intentionally bad at raw FPU performance for games but Altivec or the Velocity engine makes a P4 or K7 look downright silly and that's what it's designed to do. Creativity, not as an entertainment box like most PCs. It's not which is better but what do you need to do with your computer. I'm extatic at just sqeezing huge performance gains out of my PC just by installing an older version of SF on my system but I'm still going to be doing at least 2 hours of just waiting each day that could be spent actually working with the audio. If a Mac can decrease this time, I'm completely open to one.

 

[sharkeeper]

Sound Forge 5.0 was slower than 4.5 especially the earlier builds of 5.0.

6.0 is much better overall. Going from 4.5 to 6.0 is like going from NT 4.0 to Win XP Pro.

Cheers!

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by: 7757524

it's not hard to profit when your making next to nothing.

I'm not really sure how the phrase: It's not hard to profit when you're making next to nothing. (corrected for spelling) makes any sense whatsoever. It's even harder to understand why you're still crapping on this thread.

ignore him, he craps in any and all mac threads.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Well, what's so wrong with my statement. Apple has an incredibly small 5 % of the marketshare, and in comparison to other PC makers makes very little, hence, "next to nothing". Considering that company has been on the verge of bankruptcy many times

 

[paralazarguer]

Yeah, and they just happen to be one of the most profitable PC companies right now. While some OEMs are losing money they're turning a profit. Not that it matters. Once again, what does apple's profit margin have to do with whether or not this computer is good?!

You know the thing that I like most about Mac? It's UNIX and I can do things like this:

/Sudheer%20Anne/thread/crap/ignore/permanent