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power142 · Mar 31, 2006, 07:11 PM

I know this has been flogged to death, but even Apple's own software doesn't result in REAL performance gains of 4-5x...

Link to Final Cut Studio press release.

Rendering DV/HDV is only UP TO twice as fast on a 2.16GHz Core Duo compared with a 1.67GHz G4 machine, MPEG-2 encoding only up to 2.5x as fast.

Now if a dual-core G4 existed with a decent bus speed, THAT would be an interesting comparison

SEkker · Mar 31, 2006, 07:26 PM

The hard drive is the bottleneck, not the CPU, for FCP.

power142 · Mar 31, 2006, 07:34 PM

OK... if the hard drive is the bottleneck, why the 2-2.5x increase in performance? I don't believe that the SATA drive in the MacBook Pro is really that much faster than the parallel version in the PowerBook.

If the CPU/bus was the bottleneck with G4 machines, I could understand it. What would be interesting would be to see how it performs on a the Core Duo iMac with its faster drive (in the absence of a RAID array that plugs into the Express slot)...

mduell · Mar 31, 2006, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by power142

I know this has been flogged to death, but even Apple's own software doesn't result in REAL performance gains of 4-5x...

Link to Final Cut Studio press release.

Rendering DV/HDV is only UP TO twice as fast on a 2.16GHz Core Duo compared with a 1.67GHz G4 machine, MPEG-2 encoding only up to 2.5x as fast.

Now if a dual-core G4 existed with a decent bus speed, THAT would be an interesting comparison

Apple was forthcoming that the 4-5x claim was based on estimated SPEC scores. The Intel Core Duo page on the MBP site clearly says that Pages is 1.7x faster, FCP rendering is 2.1x faster, Cinebench is 3.1x faster, and Modo rendering is 4.1x faster. There are no surprises or changes in that press release.

If Freescale had a quad core G4 with a 1Ghz FSB... oh wait, they still don't have anything better than a sub-2Ghz G4 with 1MB cache and 200Mhz FSB.

Originally Posted by power142

OK... if the hard drive is the bottleneck, why the 2-2.5x increase in performance? I don't believe that the SATA drive in the MacBook Pro is really that much faster than the parallel version in the PowerBook.

If the CPU/bus was the bottleneck with G4 machines, I could understand it. What would be interesting would be to see how it performs on a the Core Duo iMac with its faster drive (in the absence of a RAID array that plugs into the Express slot)...

It could be that before the G4 or FSB was the bottleneck, and now the disk is the bottleneck. I'm not sure what SEkker was basing his statement on.

BWhaler · Mar 31, 2006, 09:15 PM

For the love of god. Apple never, ever said "EVERYTHING DO ON YOUR COMPUTER IS GOING TO BE 4X FASTER."

This is a borderline troll post.

mduell · Mar 31, 2006, 09:20 PM

Originally Posted by BWhaler

For the love of god. Apple never, ever said "EVERYTHING DO ON YOUR COMPUTER IS GOING TO BE 4X FASTER."

In fact, SJobs even said something along the lines of "now of course not everything is going to see that big of a speed bump; the disks and such aren't 4-5 times faster."

mintcake · Mar 31, 2006, 09:37 PM

You know, I don't really care how many times faster or not faster it is, what's important is the improvement that actually renders the machine more useful. I've just plugged the Macbook Pro into the telly and sat back to watch a couple of divx files streamed from a network drive using Front Row. Absolutely incredible. A total sea change from the experience I had with my old powerbook, when I'd have to copy the file to the local drive first, and even then it was choppy. The beautiful front end with Front Row is the icing on the cake. (And then the little cherry on the icing is the fact that I can do all this and still be grabbing a couple of torrents at the same time with no performance loss - and the sugar dusting on the cherry is that MBP is doing all this and I can't hear a fan - the powerbook would have been just about ready to take off into orbit.)

It's these real world experiences that bring home the fact that you've upgraded to a much, much more powerful machine.

SEkker · Mar 31, 2006, 09:44 PM

I thought I'd elaborate as my last post was done in haste:

For many applications, having 1-2 GB RAM means modern computers are often not limited by disk access speeds. That much RAM means the CPU can store most of the data it needs in RAM. For those uses, one will see major boosts in speed based on the new CPU.

However, for applications where the data has to be stored on the hard drive such as Final Cut Pro on everything except the shortest of short movie editing, one is regularly swapping data onto and off the hard drive. Most MBP hard drives are 5400 rpm models; even the 7200 rpm drives are going to be the bottleneck for FCP. If you want to run the test yourself, compare FCP performance on a G4 PB (Al15 or Al17) where the CPU is the common bottleneck, with an internal drive, an external FW400 drive, or a FW800 drive. Barefeats ran this very comparison a couple years ago when Apple released the first FW800-compatible machines. The FW800 drive scenario was notably faster than the FW400, and MUCH faster than the standard 5400 internal drive. A fast internal 7200 drive was about the same speed as an external FW400 7200 rpm desktop drive (the bottleneck is the FW400 I/O speed).

Somewhere someone will run a direct comparison of a stock MBP and a stock mactel iMac. The main difference in the performance of those machines editing FCP will be the hard drive. Will be instructive to see what the real-life speed difference is on rendering a 60+ min movie.

power142 · Mar 31, 2006, 11:02 PM

I wasn't quite trolling, but I did want to get a spread of opinions about this. Apple rates it as it's latest "Pro" portable machine, and as I didn't see the keynote, I'm left to rely on my own cynicism about SPEC numbers ie. I didn't believe the 4-5x for a second.

It's the real-world experiences I'm more interested in, my aging Powerbook is just about to come out of AppleCare, so I'm edging my bets on either a new iBook or waiting for Merom... and it'd be great to be able to do those pro-app things on the new machine (which isn't practical on my Powerbook)

b1NARY73 · Apr 1, 2006, 01:01 AM

Originally Posted by mintcake

You know, I don't really care how many times faster or not faster it is, what's important is the improvement that actually renders the machine more useful. I've just plugged the Macbook Pro into the telly and sat back to watch a couple of divx files streamed from a network drive using Front Row. Absolutely incredible. A total sea change from the experience I had with my old powerbook, when I'd have to copy the file to the local drive first, and even then it was choppy. The beautiful front end with Front Row is the icing on the cake. (And then the little cherry on the icing is the fact that I can do all this and still be grabbing a couple of torrents at the same time with no performance loss - and the sugar dusting on the cherry is that MBP is doing all this and I can't hear a fan - the powerbook would have been just about ready to take off into orbit.)

It's these real world experiences that bring home the fact that you've upgraded to a much, much more powerful machine.

Here, Here!

Yutuke · Apr 1, 2006, 01:37 AM

My car doesn't get the 36mpg that was advertised, I can't get 7 full days of Bounce freshness and I didn't loose 10lbs a week like Kirstie Alley did using Weight Watchers.

We all know that it's all advert-speaks. That's what marketing is all about right?

The transition to Intel chips definitely gave Apple's sagging laptop/desktop market a huge boost. Your Pro applications are definitely not going to run as fast on a portable versus a desktop with a huge RAID feeding it data. But it's definitely going to run things better than the older G4 Powerbooks.

christ · Apr 1, 2006, 02:00 AM

... "only" 2-2.5 x faster?

Isn't this an abuse of the word "only"?

(Speaking as one whose last upgrade was from .667 to 1.67 after a 3 year wait, and got nowhere near "2-2.5 x faster")

Super Mario · Apr 1, 2006, 03:32 AM

Raid configs are the only way to go for true high speed editing.

bloodline · Apr 1, 2006, 04:16 AM

When using Logic Pro my 2.0Ghz MacBook actually outperforms a 2.0Ghz Dual G5 Tower.

skyman · Apr 1, 2006, 10:57 AM

My MBP smokes my 1GHz Ti PB.

Even Entourage and PhotoShop are much faster. All the UB apps scream. I can't wait for a UB of Office and PhotoShop.

The UB of Firefox screams, it seems faster than Safari.

My MBP boots in 25 secs. Now that's fast!

power142 · Apr 1, 2006, 12:16 PM

Booting is of little consequence as I sleep my Powerbook, it only gets rebooted when there has been an OS or security update.

I understand all about the marketing, but I'm not in such a hurry to blow my cash on something that isn't significantly faster... I've yet to really impress myself in the local Apple store, but then they don't have much loaded on them

The longer term experiences are very useful, thanks.

skyman · Apr 1, 2006, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by power142

Booting is of little consequence as I sleep my Powerbook, it only gets rebooted when there has been an OS or security update.

I understand all about the marketing, but I'm not in such a hurry to blow my cash on something that isn't significantly faster... I've yet to really impress myself in the local Apple store, but then they don't have much loaded on them

The longer term experiences are very useful, thanks.

The boot time was simply a reference of performance. I too sleep my MBP.

I don't know what PB you currently own?

You state "my aging Powerbook is just about to come out of AppleCare" which leads me to believe you a not using your current Powerbook for processor intensive applications.

At any one time I have a dozen apps open that I use on daily basis and I need all the processor performance I can get. Again, my MBP smokes my 1GHz Ti. So for me it was well worth the investment.

The UB of Firefox renders most pages in less than 1 sec. Now that's impressive. You won't get that on any G4 Powerbook.

Feefer · 02:18 PM

Originally Posted by skyman

The UB of Firefox renders most pages in less than 1 sec. Now that's impressive. You won't get that on any G4 Powerbook.

But again, that's assuming the bottle-neck is the CPU, which in the case of surfing the Net usually is NOT the case for most users. It's usually the network connection speed.

I have a G4 1.5GHz Al, and use it with a Verizon Wireless broadband card. It's a fast connection, and a gigantic step-up from dial-up, but I was even more impressed with my PB performance when using a T1 wireless connection via Airport. I'd be surprised if the limitations of CPU is even a factor, or if most users on anything but T1 or the like would notice an improvement with a MBP vs. PB.

I have a Duo Core Mini, and was pretty impressed by what kind of performance improvement I got with Logic Pro 7.2 on it vs. a PB: suddenly the program blossomed. Same goes for DVD2OneX2 (which is optimized for Intel), where times to compress a full-length DVD dropped from an hour to 20 minutes. The limiting factor in the process at this point is no longer the compression processing time, but the time it takes to burn the file to DVD (due to a relatively slow burner on my Mac Mintel, which fortunately burns at a respectable 8x, although not quite the 16x that some PC users are getting).

@@@@

The Intel chip performance boost is no joke, but the buyer needs to be aware of where performance limitations are coming from as the bar is raised. That'll be different for every program, every system.

I'm itching to run Logic on a MBP, confident it'll allow more plug-ins and virtual instruments to run simultaneously, compared to my PB Al (which isn't too bad, but yes, I can easily hit the wall: the fan kicks on and it's quite a load on the CPU, and seems sluggish at times). Just waiting to see if we get ExpressCard/34 solutions for wireless connection, as well as a FW800 adapter before transitioning.

Chris

bloodline · Apr 2, 2006, 04:41 AM

Originally Posted by Feefer

I'm itching to run Logic on a MBP, confident it'll allow more plug-ins and virtual instruments to run simultaneously, compared to my PB Al (which isn't too bad, but yes, I can easily hit the wall: the fan kicks on and it's quite a load on the CPU, and seems sluggish at times).

I can confim that on the MBP you'll be running "Space Designers" on every track (maybe even several per track!), and use loads of sculpture synths for everything!!! :-D

memory-minus · Apr 2, 2006, 09:21 AM

Originally Posted by power142

MacBook Pro only 2-2.5x faster in practice

"only"

power142 · Apr 3, 2006, 08:47 PM

Originally Posted by skyman

I don't know what PB you currently own?

You state "my aging Powerbook is just about to come out of AppleCare" which leads me to believe you a not using your current Powerbook for processor intensive applications.

My Powerbook is a Rev. A 1GHz 17" Al, and I still use it a lot, only I have a dual 2.5 G5 which I use for serious computing... the G5 just isn't portable. To have something at least in the same ball park that is portable sounds attractive...

inkhead · Apr 4, 2006, 12:07 AM

The finder isn't much faster on the macbook pro (it's showing it's age, hopefully 10.5 brings rewritten finder & file sharing/afp/file networking) Other than that I'd say it's 4.5 times faster. I can't stand even browsing the web on my latest revision powerbook g4 1.67ghz fully loaded. Not to mention the gpu card screams. Doing anything with video, rocks on the macbook pros. Everything is finally snappy. Apps open, even fully loaded with lots of startup items. My powerbook even with a clean re-install feels much, much slower. It's so annoying that I won't use it for anything anymore. Doing anything that takes a little horsepower is better on the macbook pro, even unziping a 100mb file for instance. Not to mention i can fullly peg the CPU encoding video or doing some other crazy task that would make even my powerbook beachball to hell, and on my macbook pro that task can run in the background (thanks to dual cores). It's hella fast. And it's only gonna get better, I think 10.5 is really going to see the reworked multi-media finder. For me the macbook pro screams. Even in photoshop cs2 emulation i'd rather use my macbook pro (unless i'm applying a bunch of filters, which i never do because filter effects are just cheesy) instead of the powerbook, it feels snappier. I can open 300mb files with preview without any beachball something that might or might not lock up my powerbook g4.

I'm sorry buy unless you have a macbook pro, i wouldn't make comments on the speed. Apple CLEARLY posted the 4.5x faster as the SPEC test suite, and you can reproduce the EXACT same results for yourself.

I'd say day to day, my powerbook g4 1.67ghz has become a doorstop and my macbook pro is all i use. Especially with things like 10,000 mail messages, mail.app isn't always sluggish, and still keeps a nice pace.

My macbook pro feels like the first really fast mac that's come along in ages. I'd rather use it than my dual 2.5ghz g5 tower at work, which is fully loaded.

inkhead · Apr 4, 2006, 12:10 AM

and your "if a dual core g4 with a decent bus existed..." argument is stupid. IT DOESN'T EXIST and never will. WAKE up and smell the dead g4. Apple is moving on, (as you can see the quickly cancel their powerbook lines, and powerpc imacs), it's going to be funny in june when even faster intel chips come out.. and photoshop runs faster in emulation than the fastest g4 or g5 available. ;-)

SEkker · Apr 4, 2006, 12:14 AM

I know what you mean. I was thinking today that the only apps where you cannot feel this 'zip' on the MBP are the MS office suite and photoshop.

The only OS X apps I've run across that are unusable in Rosetta are a couple old pinball games - Loony Labyrinth and Crystal Caliburn. The new game from Little Wing (Monster Fair) works great, tho! LL and CC were originally pre OSX apps ported to OSX, while MF was written for OS X from the beginning. I'll keep an old G4 machine around just for a few apps like these cool games.

goMac · Apr 4, 2006, 12:28 AM

Originally Posted by power142

I know this has been flogged to death, but even Apple's own software doesn't result in REAL performance gains of 4-5x...

Link to Final Cut Studio press release.

Rendering DV/HDV is only UP TO twice as fast on a 2.16GHz Core Duo compared with a 1.67GHz G4 machine, MPEG-2 encoding only up to 2.5x as fast.

Now if a dual-core G4 existed with a decent bus speed, THAT would be an interesting comparison

Ha. Only 2-2.5x as fast.

jeffreyq_macmall · Apr 4, 2006, 12:40 AM

any ideas how I can get my shift key to work in illustrator Works normally! Sorry peeps, new to this forum thing but I need help - have g5

Super Mario · Apr 4, 2006, 07:17 AM

Originally Posted by red.ant

any ideas how I can get my shift key to work in illustrator Works normally! Sorry peeps, new to this forum thing but I need help - have g5

Go to the Art and Design forum.

zac4mac · Apr 4, 2006, 09:10 AM

I run BOINC on all my Macs - example - SETI and Einstein take about 3 hours per work unit per processor on my G5DP2.0 revA. On my new MBP2.0, they only take TWO hours. SPEC benchmarks that BOINC runs at startup are similarly higher on the MBP. It's FAST.

Z

Commodus · Apr 4, 2006, 11:08 AM

The topic has already been settled, I'd say, but using the word "only" is amusing all by itself. A Bugatti Veyron is "only" 25% faster than almost every supercar on the market!

In other words, a major gain in speed is still a major gain.

Troll · Apr 4, 2006, 05:14 PM

Originally Posted by b1NARY73

Here, Here!

It's "hear hear"! Sorry to be pissy but I see this misspelling so often.

power142 · Apr 5, 2006, 03:38 PM

"Only" wasn't emphasized by me... I emphasized "UP TO"... I'm not surprised that a machine with two processor cores, and even then each at a 30% higher clock speed, would be faster than a machine with a single G4. Just plain logic. Even then, 25% faster than every other supercar is irrelevant with a legal limit of 55mph.... depends on how faster is defined, and that's my point. Major speed gains in synthetic benchmarks are worthless, but saying (for example) that iPhoto opens its library 25% faster, or even 50 or 100% faster is tangible.

But all the comparisons with G5s, I'm kinda skeptical of, but then I guess it is nearly a *3* year old machine