question about PowerMac processors

[iamroot 0]

I'm thinking of getting an iBook and there's this question that's bugging me. I see that all PowerPC processors don't exceed 1.25 Ghz. How does a 1.25 Ghz PowerPC equate to a 1.25 Ghz Pentium? Is it faster? Cos if the 1.25 Ghz PowerPC is the same as a 1.25 Ghz Pentium then i dont wanna get an iBook anymore cos most laptops come with 3 Ghz Pentium processors now.

[Edited by iamroot on 2004-08-24 06:30:38]

 

[Dapper Dan 0]

Hi iamroot,

 

I'm jealous! A geek buddy of mine just got an I-64 E book laptop and that thing is slick as a button! I really am just completely dumbfounded why Windows owns the consumer OS world when Mac is making such stellar, intuitive, stable and downright fun products. I was so impressed, I've thought about buying one myself!

I don't know how fast the processor is, but his seemed to have to noticeable lag. It seemed very speedy to me.

What a supremely wonderful piece of computing!

[egorgry 0]

That's a great question. I too have been tempted by the iBook, more so now that it has the g4. I've read so many benchmark articles comparing the P4 with the G4 and they are so wacked I can't trust any of them. I've come to conclude that they both do well in certain areas. I've been going back and forth with a G4 iBook and a 1.7 Pentium M. The Pentium M has larger cache (much like the G4) which helps performance a good deal. I've seen that a pentium M 1.7 is about the eqiuvilant of a 2.8 P4.

 

Also, I've worked on the iBooks and I noticed no problems with speed or lag in any application.

[martouf 0]

you may find this article interesting.

 

my personal experience is if the SPEC numbers aren't 2x or 4x different,

then it usually isn't readily apparent to the eyeball there's a difference.

 

don't flame, please! 8)

 

I'm writing about everyday low system demand activity on a system not suffering

from RAM starvation - not doing big jobs like kernel compilation.

 

so don't slam your wallet closed just because one SPEC result is a few points

different than another.

 

iamroot: in any case, you can't really make a clockrate comparison between

PowerPC (RISC) and Pentium (CISC). Apples and, umm, Oranges.

 

 

 

 

 

[iamroot 0]

Cos the price of a 1 Ghz iBook is about the same as a Pentium 4 M laptop, I just wanna know how the two will compare when i use it daily. Say for work and gaming.

[martouf 0]

ok, keeping in mind the source of this document, skip down to the end

of Page 9.

 

for competitive reasons, you'll rarely see any direct comparison between the

Intel line of processors and the Motorola line.

 

The chart shows an 'everyday' test (except for the fact the image file

is a 300MB monster!).

 

Take notice of the relative measure of the 1.7GHz Pentium M and the 1.33GHz G4.

Both systems had 1GB RAM.

 

My interpretation is the results show a dead heat. A small difference in

disk I/O rates could well explain any difference.

 

so by this simplified measure, a 1.25GHz G4 is about the same diff

as a 1.6GHz Pentium M (by scaling linearly).

 

if you take into account the relative cost of the add-on software you have in mind

and the cost of any I/O interfaces you may need to add to suit your needs,

then you'll have a better idea of the relative merits of one product over

the other. CPU speed is rarely a sole criterion - unless you're image processing

your way to a completed scientific paper.