About Apples and PC's and other such fruit... (Mac question)

[PureEvil]

Okay, I know a whole lot of not much when it comes to Macs, so I'm wondering if any Mac knowledgable people around here could answer me a question...

As I've come to understand, processor wise, Macs and PCs aren't speaking the same language.

That is... Let's take one I'm looking at right now, for example, a PowerPC G3 at 700Mhz isn't the same as a Pentium 3 or whatever at an equal 700Mhz.

Processors and processor speeds aren't at the same scale (Or maybe I'm wrong... I'm just going off of what I know, which isn't a whole lot).

So, I was wondering if some sort of Mac-loving GameTavernian could kindly explain to me what a PowerPC G3 at 700Mhz (Just as an example of something I'm currently viewing in my browser) or some other Mac-dealy would be equal to in PC-processor terms.

[Null]

im not sure is actaully differnt in that way.

i mean a MHZ is a MHZ no matter who makes it. its a unit of speed / measurement or whatnot.


I think the differnence comes at how well come computer Uses the MHZ it has.

like windows takes more power to run certain thigns.

while Mac runs things a bit more efficiantly, and uses Less.

Dunno tho. Talk to gekko. hehehe

[Professor S]

I think the make of the components of a CPU affect speed also. At least thats what all the Gamecube fans tell me.

[Jason1]

Yea talk to gekko, he should know. Im pretty sure that a 700mhz apple is just as fast as a 1.1 ghz PC processor, maybe even more.

[Old Skool]

Well its hard to say really on paper the 700MHz G3 should be able to out do a 1.3GHz Intel no problem but in real life it fulls a little short of the mark.

[gekko]

It's not a set in stone ratio. The way the chips are designed, you don't need nearly the mhz for Mac programs. I mean, if you look at Apple's favorite demo, Photoshop. You run Photoshop on a Dual 1ghz G4 and you'll get speeds that won't be seen on the PC side until well into the 3ghz chips. But that's Photoshop.

If you're looking for things like games, PCs have always been able to run them faster (prolly thanks to ****ty ports, but let's not go there).

Running a program on a 1ghz G4 Mac is not equal to running a program on a 1ghz P3. If you want own a Dual 1ghz G4, you have the fastest computer Apple offers. It's not as slow as if you were running a dual 1ghz P3 setup. But it's not a set in stone thing like 1 Apple mhz = 5 Intel mhz.

From an article trying to explain why the 1.8ghz P4 is only 12% faster than a 1ghz P3:

Intel likes to sell the clock speed of its chips, since it's something consumers think they understand. That speed is measured in cycles per second - actually in megahertz, or millions of cycles per second (MHz) and gigahertz (billions of cycles per second). The problem is that different processors do different amounts of work in each clock cycle. That's why it's hard to compare the true speed of chips from different manufacturers based on their specifications alone.

Apple has had this problem for years. The Motorola-built G4 processor in Apple's high-end Macintoshes is often faster than Intel's P4 in real life. But because it processes instructions differently (and more efficiently in some cases), the G4's official clock speed is far lower. AMD's Athlon chips, which compete directly with Intel in the PC market, are comparable to the P4 in performance but also operate at slower clock speeds.

As it turns out, the P4 - released in November 2000 - was designed to run at a higher clock speed than its predecessor. But it does less work with each clock cycle than the old PIII.

[thatmariolover]

http://www.apple.com/uk/g4/myth/

The video on this webpage is great for those trying to understand some of the reasons that Megahertz don't matter. It used to be hosted on Apple's US website as well, but now that the G5 is out, I could only find it on their UK servers.

[gekko]

Wow, someone's a year late

[thatmariolover]

Originally Posted by gekko

Wow, someone's a year late

What do you mean? I saw this a year ago, I just posted it now so that he would understand. When I looked on Apple's US server they had taken it off, but thanks to the slacking on the UK side, we can still watch the video.

[Null]

that is pretty good. lol. almost a year to the day after the threat was first posted.

[thatmariolover]

Originally Posted by Null

that is pretty good. lol. almost a year to the day after the threat was first posted.

Err... Something happened with the forums... This thread was listed as new and at the top of the thread list...

I didn't dig up an old topic. It WAS at the top...

[gekko]

It was probably at the top of the similar thread list.