PowerPC g4 compared to intel/amd

[pahn]

I'm looking for a basic second computer for internet/email ... I am looking at my first mac but I don't know how the g4 processors compare with the intel/amd chips of that time period.

I am talking 01/02 which I believe would be right around the time P4 was making its debut and the amd thunderbird 1.4 ghz was the best out correct? or maybe less. However I am looking at a 466 mhz g4 ... what would be about the pc chip equivalent in terms of speed?

thanks.

 

[chcarnage]

Barefeats made some PC/Mac comparisions back then, but some of them are offline now.

http://www.barefeats.com/D533.htm
http://www.barefeats.com/D533b.htm
http://www.barefeats.com/pm02.html#more

The PhotoShop benchmark isn't that representative but the Quake 3 Benchmarks indicate that the performance of G4 CPUs is similar to equally clocked P3/P4 processors.

Maybe somebody else knows some more details...

Make sure to get a system with enough RAM (I'd say 512 MB) and every G4 >=500 Mhz will be a perfecty fine OS X mailing and web machine.

 

[shabby]

According to apple when they were using the powerpc chips, they were all faster then anything intel/amd had. Now that they switched to intel, the intel chips are faster then the powerpc ones...

 

[Ken90630]

One thing to be aware of is that the Mac G4s were noisy. I mean really noisy. The noise comes from the PSU fan, BTW. If you're going to have the computer in a quiet room and want a reasonably quiet computer, look elsewhere (like towards a used G5, for instance).

Otherwise, yeah, the CPU speed would be fine for basic Web surfing & e-mail. Can't tell you how it would compare to the AMD & Intel chips of the time since '01 is before my entry into the technical aspects of the wacky world of computers. 😛 (Well, I'd been using them since the mid-90's but didn't know much about the inner workings.) It really doesn't matter though for just a basic Web surfing & e-mail rig. My mom's first machine in 1998 was a Gateway PC with a Celeron 333MHz CPU :Q, and it was fine once she got broadband. Surfing the Web and doing e-mail are not very CPU-intensive -- just make sure you've got enough RAM and you're good to go. 🙂

 

[sjandrewbsme]

Originally posted by: shabby
According to apple when they were using the powerpc chips, they were all faster then anything intel/amd had. Now that they switched to intel, the intel chips are faster then the powerpc ones...

Indeed - funny how that works.