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B_2 · Mar 16, 2003, 05:37 AM

Intel and AMD processors are in direct competition, but both seem quite happy talking about future processors, an example is the INTEL CENTRINO mobile processor which most people have known about for a good 6-12 months.

Apple (Motorola) on the other hand have no direct competition and continue to disclose nothing. Is this because they have nothing major lined up and if they were to say for arguments sake that the G4 will continue well beyond 2003 more people would jump ship to INTEL or AMD?

I wont buy any one saying if APPLE were to state new PROCESSORS current models would not sell, as INTEL/AMD dont use this argument.

Cipher13 · Mar 16, 2003, 06:29 AM

This has been gone over a billion times. Apple are in a different position to PC vendors.

hmurchison2001 · Mar 16, 2003, 01:59 PM

Doesn't really matter in either way.

With Intel you have a ballpark idea about what's coming. With Apple there's always the element of suprise.

Centrino is merely Intel catching up with Apple and the iBook. Guess they might want to get that out in the open quickly.

bradoesch · Mar 16, 2003, 05:01 PM

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
Centrino is merely Intel catching up with Apple and the iBook.

As far as battery life goes, isn't the Centrino supposed to blow away the iBook?

gumby5647 · Mar 16, 2003, 05:29 PM

Motorola was/is pretty terrible about saying a lot about upcoming CPU's. I think their roadmap is like 2 years outdated or something.

Now IBM on the other hand....seems to be a little bit better. Like we knew about the 750cx(e) and 750Fx a long time before they were released. Heck, I can remember a big debate about whether Apple should use the 750cxe instead of the G4 in the next Powerbook.

Look at all the information we have about the 970. Granted, it was slow to surface, but it's out none the less....

*shrug*

Superchicken · Mar 17, 2003, 09:42 AM

AMD and Intel both need to hype their next chip to keep people buying em. AMD needs to make it sound like they're better than intel's offerings. Intel needs to make people think they're faster than AMD.

Motorola is simply crap for processors plain and simple.

IBM does announce new chips, we don't neccicarly hear what'll be in the next power macs but we hear what's comming down the pipe and what could be used. IBM has said tons about the PPC 970, Apple just doesn't like to tell anyone that in a year they'll be using it or something. It just wouldn't be a good move.
The problem is you hear more about intel because more people care about Intel, nobody cares about the PPC generally aside from people who have a use for the PPC.

Anyway as far as the Centrino, IBM's big notebook that does so well with it has a HUGE battery, it might get better life than a G3, but not by much... besides 42 bucks says when the low power PPC 970s come out they'll floor the Centrinos.

Eug · Mar 17, 2003, 10:27 AM

Originally posted by Superchic[k]en:
besides 42 bucks says when the low power PPC 970s come out they'll floor the Centrinos.

That's like saying that the hyperthreaded Xeons will blow away a Centrino. Yeah, they do, but they are in completely different markets.

I'd be VERY surprised to see any PPC 970s in any Mac laptops any time soon. I predict they will be exclusive to the desktops/servers for quite some time.

So, the comparison is basically irrevelant for the short term.

freakboy2 · Mar 17, 2003, 11:18 AM

for all you geniuses out there:

the point of the whole "centrino" thing is that it's a whole chipset and wi-fi integrated system designed for battery life.

I think it's a huge leap in terms of power/battery life for mobile computing. The Ibook comes close or on par in terms of battery life, but it's a joke compated to performance.

The centrino might run at 1.5, but it's more like a 2.4 p4.

So a lot of the power savings on the centrino thing are due to the fact that the whole chipset/motherboard is designed from the ground up to save power.

I don't think even the ibooks have that. (read: airport has zero power saving features)

Fb

PS I might be wrong about the Ibook's power saving features regarding airport. Maybe someone knows better

Cadaver · Mar 17, 2003, 04:37 PM

The Pentium-M processor that the Centrino systems use contains 1MB of L2 cache, on die, running at full processor speed.
This is how a 1.6GHz processor manages to keep up with a 2.4+GHz desktop processor. It will also not throttle back to half speed ("SpeedStep") when running on battery power like the previous generation of Intel mobile processors.

Battery life sounds like it will be on par with a G3 iBook (4-5 hours under ideal situation). Still better than the Pentium 4-M that gets about 2 hours of battery run time at 50% clock speed.

I just bought my sister a Dell Inspiron 600m Centrino laptop at 1.4GHz. I'll let you know how it does when it comes in. Couldn't get her to stick with Apple (upgrading a blue & white G3/350).

sideus · Mar 17, 2003, 08:16 PM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
I just bought my sister a Dell Inspiron 600m Centrino laptop at 1.4GHz. I'll let you know how it does when it comes in. Couldn't get her to stick with Apple (upgrading a blue & white G3/350).

NOOOOOOOO!

mbryda · Mar 17, 2003, 08:52 PM

Originally posted by freakboy2:
The Ibook comes close or on par in terms of battery life, but it's a joke compated to performance.

The iBook holds is own WRT PC laptops. roughly ~ to a 1.2-1.6Ghz P4...

I don't think even the ibooks have that. (read: airport has zero power saving features)

That's more a function of 802.11b than AirPort....

mbryda · Mar 17, 2003, 08:55 PM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
I just bought my sister a Dell Inspiron 600m Centrino laptop at 1.4GHz. I'll let you know how it does when it comes in. Couldn't get her to stick with Apple (upgrading a blue & white G3/350).

I'm sorry. Dell has to be one of the worst companies out there. I've been doing the PC for 10 years, and I cringe every time I have to fix a Dell. But, that's besides the point. They are poorly rated in laptop satisfaction on the PC side. You/she might want to cancel the order and look at the IBM Centrino or the Toshiba, either of which would be a much better choice than that Dell.

Eug · Mar 17, 2003, 11:48 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:

The iBook holds is own WRT PC laptops. roughly ~ to a 1.2-1.6Ghz P4...[/b]

Sorry, but in real-life raw performance, a 1.6 GHz P4 blows away an iBook 800.

Things would be closer if the iBook had a G4, but alas, it doesn't.

hmurchison2001 · Mar 18, 2003, 12:05 AM

The iBook won't catch up in the speed dept until next year when the .13um G4 7457s are available. Apple should be able to plug them into the ibook. I'd love to see G4 iBooks by 2H 2004 and PPC 970 1.1volt in Powerbooks by then.

Simon · Mar 18, 2003, 04:57 AM

Originally posted by Eug:
Sorry, but in real-life raw performance, a 1.6 GHz P4 blows away an iBook 800.

Not true.

I have a desktop P4 1.6GHz (Fujitsu Siemens Scenic) right in front of me, actually I'm writing this on it now. It is not running XP, but RedHat, so it's being as about as efficient as it can. When it comes to Mozilla, Ghostview , GNUplot or LaTeX my brother-in-law's iBook 800 blows the socks off this machine.

There may be apps where it actually can be faster, but in these everyday tasks it is clearly slower than the iBook.

And I don't care if the 1.6GHz P4 has a higher SPECint than the iBook - users care about how a machine feels, not about benchmarks. This P4 definitely feels slower than the iBook.

CubeBoy · Mar 18, 2003, 07:37 AM

Centrino isn't based on P4 architecture, it has a much shorter pipeline, ten stages I think. On a performance/mhz basis, it will probably beat any desktop/laptop chip to date. It scales to 1.6 ghz, as previously mentioned, has a 400 mhz system bus, and 1 mb of L2 cache. No hyperthreading was included however. Performance wise, the 1.6 ghz Centrino is the equivalent of a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4, which is quite impressive for a laptop processor. Again, the Centrino is not based on the P4.

Eug · Mar 18, 2003, 08:32 AM

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
Centrino isn't based on P4 architecture, it has a much shorter pipeline, ten stages I think. On a performance/mhz basis, it will probably beat any desktop/laptop chip to date. It scales to 1.6 ghz, as previously mentioned, has a 400 mhz system bus, and 1 mb of L2 cache. No hyperthreading was included however. Performance wise, the 1.6 ghz Centrino is the equivalent of a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4, which is quite impressive for a laptop processor. Again, the Centrino is not based on the P4.

The number of pipelines for Banias has not been published AFAIK, but it's rumoured to be longer than 10 stages, which is what the PIII has.

In Eug-understandable uber-simplistic terms, it shares some PIII-like features, with a longer pipeline but a shorter pipeline than the P4, and much better branch prediction than the PIII. And it of course has a bazillion other features we haven't talked about.

As for not being based on the P4, well maybe, but it has the same bus design and it can use standard P4 chipsets.

But yes, this is a VERY cool chip (pun intended). I applaud Intel for their efforts. This indeed is the "Year of the Laptop".

mbryda · Mar 18, 2003, 10:29 AM

Originally posted by Eug:
Sorry, but in real-life raw performance, a 1.6 GHz P4 blows away an iBook 800.

Things would be closer if the iBook had a G4, but alas, it doesn't.

Not really. It doesn't. The larger full-speed cache of the G3 in the iBok more than makes up for it. Only in AltiVec things will the G3 start to fall off, and even then, in every day use it's hardly noticeable. Trust me - I came from the PC side of things - the G3 at 800 Mhz compares quite favorably to a 1.6Ghz P4.

Eug · Mar 18, 2003, 10:47 AM

Originally posted by mbryda:
Not really. It doesn't. The larger full-speed cache of the G3 in the iBok more than makes up for it. Only in AltiVec things will the G3 start to fall off, and even then, in every day use it's hardly noticeable. Trust me - I came from the PC side of things - the G3 at 800 Mhz compares quite favorably to a 1.6Ghz P4.

I guess it depends on what you do. For video encoding the G3 800 is painfully slow. The only thing that saves Macs for video encoding is Altivec.

Also, if you're talking OS X iBook 800 vs. Windows XP P4 1.6, again the Windows machine will be much more responsive.

You might want to take a look at this thread, too. The iBook 800 gets its arse kicked even by the (L3 cacheless) 12" AluBook. It's a biased test obviously, but nonetheless it tests many apps joe-consumers use.

freakboy2 · Mar 18, 2003, 12:38 PM

don't get me wrong. I love ibooks. I think they are great. Unfortunately, windows laptops just took a huge leap. It's possible that the ibook 800 compares favorably with a 1.6 p4 with 256k cache. however it would get smoked by a 1.4p4 with 512k cache.

I think the ibook is probably the best designed laptop i've ever seen. The fact that you can get it for so cheap always amazes me.

Unfortunately, I think windows laptops now have a good chance of beat the ibook at its own game, battery life, low power, decent performance.

FB

CubeBoy · 09:05 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
The number of pipelines for Banias has not been published AFAIK, but it's rumoured to be longer than 10 stages, which is what the PIII has.

In Eug-understandable uber-simplistic terms, it shares some PIII-like features, with a longer pipeline but a shorter pipeline than the P4, and much better branch prediction than the PIII. And it of course has a bazillion other features we haven't talked about.

As for not being based on the P4, well maybe, but it has the same bus design and it can use standard P4 chipsets.

But yes, this is a VERY cool chip (pun intended). I applaud Intel for their efforts. This indeed is the "Year of the Laptop".

Hmm, thats interesting, despite having a longer pipeline than the Pentium 3, the Banias still maintains a significantly higher IPC than the Pentium 3. I suppose this is because of the better branch prediction and other stuff but I never believed that small tweaks like that would affect performance more than a few percent. Can anyone provide details on this?

And yes, the Bania's uses original P4's system bus, it's also probably electrically compatible with the P4 bus which is why it can use standard P4 chipsets. This is however, the only thing the Banias took off of the P4, Pentium 4 architecture simply takes too much power to be effectively used in laptop without a major drop in performance.

So, yes Banias does take a few things from the P4 namely the system bus technology, I suppose you can call it a hybrid PIII/P4 even though clock for clock, it is superior to a PIII. However because of this, I wouldn't compare it to a 1.6 ghz P4, benchmark-wise as I've mentioned before it's about the equivalent of a P4 2.4 ghz.

CubeBoy · Mar 18, 2003, 09:24 PM

Another interesting point to be noted is that mhz to mhz the Centrino is very similer to the PowerPC 970. PPC970 achieves roughly
155% (2.8/1.8) Pentium 4 performance mhz to mhz whereas Centrino achieves 150% (2.4/1.6) Pentium 4 performance mhz to mhz. It is estimated that the Centrino will top out at between 2-2.2 ghz with .13 micron process so it will certainly be interesting.

hmurchison2001 · Mar 18, 2003, 09:28 PM

Originally posted by CubeBoy:
Another interesting point to be noted is that mhz to mhz the Centrino is very similer to the PowerPC 970. PPC970 achieves roughly
155% (2.8/1.8) Pentium 4 performance mhz to mhz whereas Centrino achieves 150% (2.4/1.6) Pentium 4 performance mhz to mhz. It is estimated that the Centrino will top out at between 2-2.2 ghz with .13 micron process so it will certainly be interesting.

Incorrecto. The Centrino is faster the the Pentium 4 "Mobile" chips but not the Desktop Pentium 4. If Apple was to use the 1.1Volt 970 in a Powerbook i'm pretty sure Centrino would get it's ass handed back.

Simon · Mar 19, 2003, 02:31 AM

Originally posted by Eug:
Also, if you're talking OS X iBook 800 vs. Windows XP P4 1.6, again the Windows machine will be much more responsive.

Wrong again.

See my above post. Even running Linux this P4 1.6GHz doesn't feel faster than an 800MHz iBook, actually it's more laggy and less responsive.

CubeBoy · Mar 19, 2003, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by hmurchison2001:
Incorrecto. The Centrino is faster the the Pentium 4 "Mobile" chips but not the Desktop Pentium 4. If Apple was to use the 1.1Volt 970 in a Powerbook i'm pretty sure Centrino would get it's ass handed back.

Correcto, I wasn't comparing it to the Pentium 4-M chips, I was comparing Centrino equipped notebooks to a 2.4 ghz desktop P4 and the results prove quite favorable for the Centrino.

zac4mac · Mar 19, 2003, 08:11 AM

I expect the iBook to continue with even faster G3s and the PBook will wind up with a 970 soon(both made by IBM). Moto's internal timelines for desktop chips currently goes to 2005 or 2006, but their timeline for portables stops next year. So I'm told, ymmv.

Eug · 08:28 AM

The reason I find this P4 chipset compatibility interesting is not because I want a PC laptop. I much prefer my TiBook.

However, it would make an excellent QuietPC. I'm currently running a cool Celeron 1.4 QuietPC, but a Celeron 1.4 is only about 1.7ish P4 speed. If they can release a say 0.90 micron process tweaked Banias, for the desktop, I consider buying one despite the extra cost.

Also, I wonder what this means for the embedded market - faster than the G4 7457 1.3 GHz, with competitive heat characteristics.

GetSome681 · Mar 23, 2003, 12:11 AM

Originally posted by Simon:
Wrong again.

See my above post. Even running Linux this P4 1.6GHz doesn't feel faster than an 800MHz iBook, actually it's more laggy and less responsive.

well then you have something wrong...

I had a 800 ibook for a while, and god it was soooo slow. pc100 compared to ddr w/ the 1.6 p4? I had the ibook ram maxed out, and it's no where near the speed of a 1.6 p4 running windows xp. Web browsing?...no way.

I don't know what kind of "work" you guys do...but when I have a million things open, and I click on a window...I like that window to come to the front immediately...not 5-10 seconds later as it was on the ibook.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but this just is plain false.

chrisutley · Mar 23, 2003, 01:13 AM

We knew in advance about PPC. I don't think Apple knew for sure what was next until the last 6-months.

Simon · Mar 23, 2003, 02:44 AM

Originally posted by GetSome681:
well then you have something wrong...

No, buddy. You've got something wrong there. If your iBook needs 5-10 secs to open a window your machine or your system is fubar.

OreoCookie · Mar 23, 2003, 03:32 AM

Originally posted by bradoesch:
As far as battery life goes, isn't the Centrino supposed to blow away the iBook?

Yes and no. Most PC notebooks weigh far more than the iBook/PowerBook. Even than the 17" PowerBook. If you have 1 kg more weight, you can put a larger battery in. The small-size notebooks (1.6 kg, without Combo-Drive) have ?slow' CPUs (mobile PIII@1.x GHz)).

Cipher13 · Mar 23, 2003, 05:40 AM

Originally posted by mbryda:
I'm sorry. Dell has to be one of the worst companies out there. I've been doing the PC for 10 years, and I cringe every time I have to fix a Dell. But, that's besides the point. They are poorly rated in laptop satisfaction on the PC side. You/she might want to cancel the order and look at the IBM Centrino or the Toshiba, either of which would be a much better choice than that Dell.

Dell laptops are among the best.

---

Performance? The iBook will get killed by a 2.4GHz P4, sorry.

If you're saying otherwise... that your iBook 800 is faster... you must have like 32MB or RAM in the P4 or something...

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 10:03 AM

Originally posted by GetSome681:
well then you have something wrong...

I had a 800 ibook for a while, and god it was soooo slow. pc100 compared to ddr w/ the 1.6 p4? I had the ibook ram maxed out, and it's no where near the speed of a 1.6 p4 running windows xp. Web browsing?...no way.

I don't know what kind of "work" you guys do...but when I have a million things open, and I click on a window...I like that window to come to the front immediately...not 5-10 seconds later as it was on the ibook.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, but this just is plain false.

Then you have a bum 'book. PC100 --> DDR is only good for at most 10-15% increase in performance (PC side), which you will never notice.

You may have only had the stock 128MB RAM? That is way too little for X or XP, so no wonder why it was slow. I'm one of those people too - have tons of stuff open at once. The iBook is fine with enough RAM. The only slowdown I had was when I had iTines visualizing, Notes, Mozilla, Dnet client, and Word editing. And even then it wasn't that bad.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Dell laptops are among the best.

Hardly. Every survey of reliability and such puts them at #3 or 4. Dell is not a good company to buy a computer from. Period. Having seen many come in for repair over the years, they are not well built or good computers.

Performance? The iBook will get killed by a 2.4GHz P4, sorry.

If you're saying otherwise... that your iBook 800 is faster... you must have like 32MB or RAM in the P4 or something...

Never said a 2.4 P4. Did say 1.2-1.6Ghz P4. Sure, the P4 is going to be marginally faster. But it won't be able to last around 4 hours on a charge and be as small and portable as the iBook. Which is the reason I use a laptop.

GetSome681 · Mar 24, 2003, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by mbryda:

Hardly. Every survey of reliability and such puts them at #3 or 4. Dell is not a good company to buy a computer from. Period. Having seen many come in for repair over the years, they are not well built or good computers.

Never said a 2.4 P4. Did say 1.2-1.6Ghz P4. Sure, the P4 is going to be marginally faster. But it won't be able to last around 4 hours on a charge and be as small and portable as the iBook. Which is the reason I use a laptop. [/B]

NO...the person who started the comparison to the p4 1.6 did NOT have a mobile version of the processor...he was referring to a DESKTOP p4. Go back and re-read. An 800 ibook gets crushed by a desktop p4 1.6, there's not "but's" or "ifs" to it. A mobile version...I'm not so sure..but I'm willing to bet the performance is still better...although battery life will most certainly not be.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by GetSome681:
NO...the person who started the comparison to the p4 1.6 did NOT have a mobile version of the processor...he was referring to a DESKTOP p4. Go back and re-read. An 800 ibook gets crushed by a desktop p4 1.6, there's not "but's" or "ifs" to it. A mobile version...I'm not so sure..but I'm willing to bet the performance is still better...although battery life will most certainly not be.

Please define "crushed". Remembering that anything less than 10-15% difference is statistically insignificant and is often due to sample variations.

Eug · Mar 24, 2003, 12:23 PM

dp

Eug · Mar 24, 2003, 12:25 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:
Please define "crushed". Remembering that anything less than 10-15% difference is statistically insignificant and is often due to sample variations.

I can't believe people are still arguing about this.

For web surfing it won't be a big difference, but for most REAL number crunching (like video encoding) a P4 1.6 will crush an iBook 800. And no not 15% faster. MUCH MUCH faster.

That is not to say the iBook 800 is a bad computer. No indeed it is actually quite a nice one, and the battery life is quite good too. But to say it's quite fast compared to current fast PCs is simply ludicrous.

By the way, I use a P4 1.6 GHz desktop (with SDR), a Celeron (PIII-type) 1.4 GHz desktop (with SDR) and a G4 1 GHz laptop (with SDR). My G4 is my favourite computer, but it certainly isn't blistering fast. Fast enough for the time being, but I want more speed.

Dell laptops are among the best.

Dells have poor build quality IMO. Fortunately for Dell owners, they have relative good service.

Simon · Mar 24, 2003, 01:47 PM

Originally posted by GetSome681:
An 800 ibook gets crushed by a desktop p4 1.6, there's not "but's" or "ifs" to it.

No, sorry, but that's bullshit. It's simply wrong and obviously you don't know what you are talking about.

I HAVE BOTH of those machines on my desk. A Fujitsu Siemens P4 1.6GHz (RedHat Linux, 512MB RAM) and an iBook 800MHz (10.2.4). I haven't compared the two in serious number-crunching, but in everyday tasks the iBook is much more responsive.

You can say what you want, but until you have tested those two machines thoroughly by yourself (like I have) you aren't credible.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 02:10 PM

Originally posted by Eug:

Dells have poor build quality IMO. Fortunately for Dell owners, they have relative good service.

The service is pi$$ poor as well. Just do some looking at the problems - crap computers, crap service. You can get a much better IBM PC from anyone else other than Dell (and have a better performing machine as well.)

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 02:12 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
difference, but for most REAL number crunching (like video encoding) a P4 1.6 will crush an iBook 800. And no not 15% faster. MUCH MUCH faster.

Put a number to it. How much faster?

Eug · Mar 24, 2003, 02:33 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:
Put a number to it. How much faster?

Hard to say, because the software isn't the same and it's been a while since I've tested it (since I generally use my G4 TiBook for this stuff), but I'd say roughly 2-3X as fast for the Celeron 1.4 vs. my old iBook 600. So maybe a little less than twice as fast vs the iBook 800. Unfortunately for the G3 owners, much of the video encoding software for the Mac is G4 optimized, and completely sucks on any G3. It's no surprise that Apple refuses to allow it's iDVD (and now DVD Studio Pro) to even run on a G3.

You may also want to check out my Macworld laptop benchmark thread for some reference numbers.

The service is pi$$ poor as well. Just do some looking at the problems - crap computers, crap service. You can get a much better IBM PC from anyone else other than Dell (and have a better performing machine as well.)

Well, the part my colleagues liked was the 30-day no-hassle guarantee, and the courteous phone support. I agree the laptop hardware isn't very good though. I wouldn't buy one that's for sure.

Cipher13 · Mar 24, 2003, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:

Hardly. Every survey of reliability and such puts them at #3 or 4. Dell is not a good company to buy a computer from. Period. Having seen many come in for repair over the years, they are not well built or good computers.

Never said a 2.4 P4. Did say 1.2-1.6Ghz P4. Sure, the P4 is going to be marginally faster. But it won't be able to last around 4 hours on a charge and be as small and portable as the iBook. Which is the reason I use a laptop. [/B]

I couldn't care less what "every survey" has to say, when I've owned two myself, and my workplace has several. I've never had a problem with any of them. They're all great machines. That, to me, means more than any random, baseless "survey", but whatever.

Okay, 1.6 P4 then. Still kill an iBook.

Battery life wasn't the issue - performance was. Battery wise, the iBook will win out, easily.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 05:07 PM

Just did some math:

WRT iBook VS P4 1.6 - I went over to www.barefeats.com and did some Excel work.

All I could find is a 2Ghz P4 and the older G3/700 iBook. Now, I know that introduces some variances, as the P4 is based on the new A core, and the 1.6 is based on the older, slower P4 core. But, this is what I came up with:

Photoshop SP - G3/700 (177), P4 (90), P4 is 50.85% faster
Photoshop MP - G3/700 (127), P4 (73), P4 is 57.48% faster
Bryce Render - G3/700 (34), P4 (9), P4 is 73.53% faster
Cinema 4D - G3/700 (104), P4 (57), P4 is 54.81% faster

So, you have a 35% CPU based on a MUCH faster core and it scores, on average 59.17% faster.

Considering the iBook 800 is faster than the 700, the numbers should be a little better for the 'book...

Now, getting to the 1.6 P4 - that's based on the original P4 core, which is known by all to be a dog when it comes to performance. It would be fair to say that both machines are in roughly the same camp. This goes the same with all Celerons as, IIRC they all use the older P4 core.

==================

As far as Dell - they still are POS computers. Their 30 day money back guarantee is pretty much worthless as there have been numerous documented cases of them stalling you to prevent having to take the machine back. Check out some consumer sites - they all say the same thing about Dell - their support sucks .

Their computers arn't much better - they consistently score below the competition in the same CPU class. Even when confgured with EXACTLY the same parts as the others. That's pretty bad when you are making commmodity boxes. Check it out, read the benhmarks if you don't beleive me.

Eug · Mar 24, 2003, 06:06 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:
Just did some math:

WRT iBook VS P4 1.6 - I went over to www.barefeats.com and did some Excel work.

All I could find is a 2Ghz P4 and the older G3/700 iBook. Now, I know that introduces some variances, as the P4 is based on the new A core, and the 1.6 is based on the older, slower P4 core. But, this is what I came up with:

Photoshop SP - G3/700 (177), P4 (90), P4 is 50.85% faster

Photoshop MP - G3/700 (127), P4 (73), P4 is 57.48% faster

Bryce Render - G3/700 (34), P4 (9), P4 is 73.53% faster

Cinema 4D - G3/700 (104), P4 (57), P4 is 54.81% faster

So, you have a 35% CPU based on a MUCH faster core and it scores, on average 59.17% faster.

Considering the iBook 800 is faster than the 700, the numbers should be a little better for the 'book...

Now, getting to the 1.6 P4 - that's based on the original P4 core, which is known by all to be a dog when it comes to performance. It would be fair to say that both machines are in roughly the same camp. This goes the same with all Celerons as, IIRC they all use the older P4 core.

My Celeron 1.4 is based on the PIII core, with pre-fetch and a 256 KB L2 cache. ie. It essentially is the exact same design as the PIII 1 GHz Coppermine, but with a 40% higher clock speed and an additional small boost from pre-fetch. On average it's about as fast as the P4 1.6-1.8 range.

Even if we go by your numbers (which may not be representative for MPEG-2 encoding), that means my computer is in the range of about 50% faster than an iBook 800. So that's not quite as fast as the "a little less than twice as fast vs the iBook 800" I said, but obviously it still crushes the iBook 800.

When it's the difference between a 2 hour encode and a 3 hour encode, that's pretty significant.

The bottom line is that while the iBook 800 is a nice computer for what it's meant for, it's not accurate to call it anywhere near as fast as a P4 1.6.

holygoat · Mar 24, 2003, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
Dell laptops are among the best.

Indeed... if you're taking 'best' to mean 'heaviest, most ugly, and most shoddily-built'.
That said, I have encountered one well-built Dell (a Latitude), and they do have great screens and pretty good keyboards. But overall I have to disagree - I'd go for a Toshiba or an IBM in the PC world.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 07:19 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
My Celeron 1.4 is based on the PIII core, with pre-fetch and a 256 KB L2 cache. ie. It essentially is the exact same design as the PIII 1 GHz Coppermine, but with a 40% higher clock speed and an additional small boost from pre-fetch. On average it's about as fast as the P4 1.6-1.8 range.

Even if we go by your numbers (which may not be representative for MPEG-2 encoding), that means my computer is in the range of about 50% faster than an iBook 800. So that's not quite as fast as the "a little less than twice as fast vs the iBook 800" I said, but obviously it still crushes the iBook 800.

Now I know you're smoking something....

From Intel's Celeron specs you'll see that the Celeron 1.4 features a nice 100Mhz bus speed, same as the iBook. That alone sets it well apart from the P4's...

Now head over to
Tom's Hardware MPEG2 testing for some MPEG2 fun.

You'll see quite a few processors there with MPEG2 encoding. Note that while he doesn't test the 1.4Ghz De-Celeron, he does list the 1.3...

Celeron 1.3 - 715.3 seconds
Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz - 714.6 seconds
Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz - 602.7 seconds

With these #'s, I doubt you're in the "P4 1.6-1.8 Range", esp. when the P4 1.8 is a good 1.8 MINUTES faster than a CPU that's 100 Mhz slower than yours.

If you truly wanted a fast MPEG2 encoder on a budget, the Duron 1.3 would have made a nice chip, at 661.4 seconds...

The bottom line is that while the iBook 800 is a nice computer for what it's meant for, it's not accurate to call it anywhere near as fast as a P4 1.6.

Yes it is. On average, it is...

CubeBoy · Mar 24, 2003, 08:04 PM

Umm exactly why we are comparing a P4 1.6 ghz to a G3 800 mhz in the first place?

Also a 1.6 ghz P4 desktop would be a lot faster than a G3 800 Ibook on most apps, if any of you remember a long time ago G3 was THE PROCESSOR for image manipulation and floating point operation so I wouldn't be surprised that a 2 ghz P4 doesn't slaughter the G3 in photoshop even though Barefeats has some pretty questionable numbers.
However for other things, namely games, office and content creation, the margins would be quite a larger.

Also Eug's 1.4 ghz celeron should actually have comparable performance to a P4 1.7 ghz in most general usage applications and some games. Encoding, audio, and video apps are very optimized for P4 architecture which explains the big gap. The celeron has half the pipeline stages of a P4 so mhz to mhz, it is superior.

mbryda · Mar 24, 2003, 08:59 PM

You're forgetting the role that full-speed on die cache makes. The recent G3's in the iBook have 512k, which runs at full speed. That helps quite a bit. That's why the G3 can be competitive at non-Altivec stuff.

Let's roll with some more P4/Celeron Benchamrks, again from Tom's Hardware:

WinRAR compression:
Celeron 1.3 - 106 seconds
P4/1.5 - 97 seconds
P4/1.8 - 88 seconds
P4/2.0A - 83 seconds

SysMark 2002 Overall(higher = better):
Celeron 1.3 - 113
P4/1.8 - 178
P4/1.5 - 155
P4/2.0A - 209

Games fare even worse for the Celeron, having it ~ to a 1.0 Ghz P3.

Please, don't think that Celeron is about the same as a 1.5-1.8 Ghz. I used to live and breathe PC benchmarks, and the Celeron is not a stellar performer by any stretch.

Eug · 10:33 PM

Originally posted by mbryda:
You'll see quite a few processors there with MPEG2 encoding. Note that while he doesn't test the 1.4Ghz De-Celeron, he does list the 1.3...

Celeron 1.3 - 715.3 seconds
Pentium 4 1.5 Ghz - 714.6 seconds
Pentium 4 1.8 Ghz - 602.7 seconds

With these #'s, I doubt you're in the "P4 1.6-1.8 Range", esp. when the P4 1.8 is a good 1.8 MINUTES faster than a CPU that's 100 Mhz slower than yours.

If you truly wanted a fast MPEG2 encoder on a budget, the Duron 1.3 would have made a nice chip, at 661.4 seconds...

Huh? Some basic math... extrapolating:

Celeron 1.3 --> 1.4 = 664 seconds (which is comparable to a Duron 1.3)
Pentium 1.5 --> 1.6 = 670 seconds

Thus, according to your own numbers, a Celeron 1.4 would be faster than a P4 1.6. I will point out again I said P4 1.6-1.8 range.

In truth, with certain things a P4 1.7 will be significantly faster than a Celeron 1.4, while in other areas they will be comparable.

And the only reason I got a Celeron 1.4 was because it works on my 4 year old motherboard. It was an ultra cheap (albeit low-end) upgrade to my aging system. A Duron would have required an entirely new motherboard. If I were to do that I may as well have just gotten a P4 2.4.

Anyways, that was not the original point. My point was that the iBook 800 is not fast for MPEG-2 encoding.

ie. Let's say my numbers are WAY off (which they aren't as per above), and that the Celeron 1.4 is not 50% faster than the iBook 800, and that it is "only" 30% faster.

That would mean that my ultra-low-end CPU is still 1/3rd faster than the iBook. (And this is giving your own numbers the benefit of the doubt.)

Umm exactly why we are comparing a P4 1.6 ghz to a G3 800 mhz in the first place?

Because somebody claimed that a G3 800 is as fast as a P4 1.6.