[NeoMac]

According to these benchmarks at Bare Feats, OS X doubles FPS performance on the same hardware running OS 9. http://www.barefeats.com/quakeX.htm

(Low Quality Quake Setting)
OS 9+ Dual-G4 500Mhz + Radeon == 61.3 fps
OS X+ Dual-G4 500Mhz + Radeon == 133.3 fps

Several notes:

• this is not the dual-533 with the high throughput bus & RAM
• this is not the Altivec enhanced version of Quake
• all the other machines are running OS 9, even the 733
• the Radeon drivers obviously suck, since since the GeForce does better.
• This is Beta Quake on Beta OS X.

Could you imagine a dual 733 with the G4e? My God!

Conclusion?
1) I had no idea OS 9 sucked so bad
2) OS X + G4 is going to tear Wintel a new orrifice.

[This message has been edited by NeoMac (edited 02-06-2001).]

[dtriska]

I like how you put it before:

Originally posted by NeoMac:
Microsoft's official reaction to OS X?

(warning: graphic response)

They're going to bend over, grab their ankles and pray for mercy.

[NeoMac]

I think it is pretty funny, too.

[danbrew]

Without sounding like too much of a PC person...

yeah, like that's going to scare Microsoft?

Shopped for Mac software recently? And that, my friend, has very little to do with Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac owner and enjoy my Cube, and will likely go out and get a TiPB, but thinking that OS X is going to put MS out of business is just a huge joke.

[NeoMac]

No one said OS X will put M$ out of business.

Besides, he quoted me on something else from a different thread. It's misleading in the context of this thread.

I'm simply pointing out the FPS improvement OS X provides over the same system running OS 9.

[Norm1985]

You also have to remember, that since the Quake III for Mac OS X client/Mac OS X Server 2.0 is made for those operating systems, essentially carbon/cocoa, it automaticly has multiprocesser and AltiVec enhancments. Also, OpenGL, which is used in Quake III, is built into the OS. Due to that, and the fact Apple made way better OS X RADEON drivers for OS X than ATi did for OS 9, you'll have way better performance.

------------------
Mac OS for productivity.
UNIX for stability.
Palm OS for mobility.
Windows for solitaire.

[RDJL27]

You also have to note that Apple is cool, and so is OS X. But seriously OS X is a major improvement, it doesn't matter what the improvements in addition to them you have to note that the OS is clean, no extensions no problems all run on a new subsystem. OS X= Yay. Nothing much more to say, it's just a vast improvement.

[Norm1985]

GO DARWIN UNIX! GO AQUA INTERFACE! GO OPENGL! GO QUICKTIME! GO QUARTZ PDF! GO CARBON! GO COCOA! GO MAC OS X CLIENT! GO MAC OS X SERVER 2.0!

------------------
Mac OS for productivity.
UNIX for stability.
Palm OS for mobility.
Windows for solitaire.

[PeteL999]

Yay that means my iMac Rev. C Video Card doesn't suck anymore.

wait what am I saying......yea it does

[This message has been edited by PeteL999 (edited 02-07-2001).]

[Norm1985]

Dude, don't worry about it! Your graphics and speed should improve as well if you have 128 RAM and maybe even 256! :-D

------------------
Mac OS for productivity.
UNIX for stability.
Palm OS for mobility.
Windows for solitaire.

[danbrew]

Ah ha, sorry 'bout that.

:->

[John]

moving this topic to the games forum.

John

[austeros]

somehow, i fear that we are all subject to some sort of osX drunken stupor. please god, make me eat my words.

=)

[Brazuca]

Originally posted by RDJL27:
OS X= Yay. Nothing much more to say

This should be Apple's marketing gingle....

[SirCastor]

I think the fact of the matter is, PC Gamers won't have Frame Rates to gloat about any more, They'll be sitting in the dust wondering why they can't tweak their way to smooth, beautiful movement.
-Aaron

[Archangel]

Definitely lookin' good for Mac gamers. I'm really excited about OS-ex. I may actually buy it.

------------------
"Elvis has left the building!"

[blizzard]

Really? I'd say the fact of the matter tends to lie more in that they have 1.5 GHz processors right now, and we don't even have anything above 533 on the market right now. So, while recent developments have put us LESS further behind in the scheme of things, Apple is still playing a very serious game of catch-up. Just a thought, of course...everyone's entitled to their opinions.

Blizzard.

[Macfreak7]

Originally posted by blizzard:
.....So, while recent developments have put us LESS further behind in the scheme of things, Apple is still playing a very serious game of catch-up. Just a thought, of course...everyone's entitled to their opinions.

i just hate it when people say that. we all know that if applications are made to take advantage of g4 processors, they're going to kick any intel chip.
OS X does that. therefore the applications made for OS X automatically take adv. of the velocity engines as well.
Correct me if im wrong on that, someone. I dont think i am tho.

As of now, OS X runs slower than OS 9, obviously cause its just a beta version. I hope id software or whoever is making the carbonized version of q3, comes up with the final on the same day as OS X. That will be the day. Cant wait!

[blizzard]

Guys, we have to realize that Altivec-like extensions exist for the PC too, and they're being coded for as well. Combine that with the fact that the fastest PCs run almost three times faster than the fastest Macs, and it's clear that Apple is still running behind PCs. I agree that Mac OS X is the best possible thing to happen to Macs recently, but everyone in here is making it sound as though as soon as they install OS X final on their computers, or get a a G4, all of the sudden their G4/400 will be able to outrun a gigahertz PC in everything from Quake 3 to WinAMP. It's not going to happen that way! I read 'OS X will be faster than OS 9 at EVERYTHING! The Beta is only a beta, and word is that Apple has made OS X run faster on every computer in the lineup!'. Sorry, but I doubt that. Any OS with this much eye candy will never run faster than OS 9 on the same computer. Some things will be faster...OpenGL, networking, etc...but overall, it will surely be slower, even if by just a little. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to OS X just as much as everyone else here, and I can hardly wait for that 20-30 percent boost in game speed. But it's not going to be 3000 percent boost like a lot of people seem to think it will be.

And you want to know why I'm saying this? Let's look at recent trends; Apple releases a new technology that promises to be very good. It comes out, people start screaming about how finally their computers will be 'PC-killers' and be able to outperform PCs at everything. They buy it, and guess what? It works, but just barely. Why? Developers haven't been programming for it (Altivec)...the hardware doesn't fully support it yet (faster video cards)...some reason. And then those people get peeved off that they've been 'ripped off by Apple' or 'lied to by Apple' or some such thing. Wonderful negative press for the rest of us. And if this negative press is big enough for OS X, then it will keep other people from upgrading...and then bad things happen for Apple, because its survival really depends on the success of this OS.

Expectations are fine, but try to keep them reasonable...otherwise, you will be disappointed. And no, I'm not talking to anyone in particular here..I'm just going on some of the impressions I've gotten recently from people in this forum and others.

Thanks for the time.

Blizzard.

Altivec-like extensions exist for the PC too

Yes, but the altivec-like extensions on Pentiums are not as easy to write for. Motorola did one thing right with the G4: they have very good developer support for it and altivec. Their compilers are buggy, but that's another story (and they are fine for OS X).

I think that we are entering the golden age of Mac Gaming. With graphic arts apps like Photoshop, Apple is determined to be the fastest and they are...even the Pentium 4 cannot surpass the speed of a mac at photoshop. The issue with games is that until recently Apple didn't care about it--so they sucked at it. Now we have a clear committment from Apple to rock at games, and they will.

Those benchmarks at BareFeats left out a few innovations on the mac side that will blow the competition wide open:

--Altivec-enabled Quake III. According to Id's Graeme Devine, it safely puts Macs ahead of PCs.

--The new mobo and 7450 G4s, with write combining.

--The 7450 G4s enhanced Altivec unit, which can process twice as many instructions per clock cycle as the 7400's altivec unit.

--Nvidia's N20 GPU, which is being codeveloped for Mac and PC. For once, Mac's high end GPU will be the same as PC's high end GPU.

I think its safe to predict that Macs will be kickin' wintel ass at SOME games very soon. So far it's only Quake, but perhaps a few other developers will take notice once Id leads the way. It will be interesting to see what the hard core gamers do....will quake 3 fanatics all rush out and buy Powermacs to get the highest FPS possible? Probably not many, but at least the Mac will garner some positive attention in the gaming world. Currently, gaming is a reason not to buy a mac, and Apple is making excellent progress at changing this.

I cannot wait for OS X and altivec-enabled, cocoa Quake III...My G4 400 is going to get one hell of a speed boost, for only $129. I've never been this stoked about new software!



[This message has been edited by Phaedrus (edited 02-11-2001).]

[gorefan68]

NO NO NO NON NO!!!! Phadreus, you need to quit taking hits off the apple bong, pull your head outta your ass and use that noggin!

Graeme said it puts it AHEAD of the PC. Aka, it might be a better tuned version of quake, but that does NOT mean that its going to get more FPS. Hardly. I think we'll see a moderate frame boost, (which still wont come close to a PC), and a newer VERSION of Quake3 for macs (aka, 1.3 something, which is safely ahead of PCs...)

And dammit, you mention photoshop as anotehr example of how superior Altivec is... HA!

Yeah right. The only time that an apple is faster is when it is using a specific altivec enhanced plug-in. But guess what? When a P4 uses a p4-enhanced plug-in, IT IS FASTER. And if its not using either, hte PC IS FASTER

I'm sick of apple ******** . They're slower. Just ****ing accept that and realize that in everything BUT games, you do not need much more than a 300mhz processor.

Seriously Phaedreus, I'm not trying to be a downer, but you are just setting yourself up for dissapointment with all these ******** hopes and dreams of yours. QUIT SMOKING CRACK!

- Ca$h

NO NO NO NON NO!!!! Phadreus, you need to quit taking hits off the apple bong, pull your head outta your ass and use that noggin!

Pull my head outta my ass, heh?

Graeme said it puts it AHEAD of the PC. Aka, it might be a better tuned version of quake, but that does NOT mean that its going to get more FPS.

I interpreted it as meaning that he gets better framerates on the mac. I don't understand where you're coming from. Apparently "better tuned" to you means it gets worse framerates? Believe what you like.

Hardly. I think we'll see a moderate frame boost, (which still wont come close to a PC), and a newer VERSION of Quake3 for macs (aka, 1.3 something, which is safely ahead of PCs...)

So now you say there will be a new version for Mac that is safely ahead of PCs? Make up your mind, which do you think it will be? Or do you mean it will only be "better tuned" than the PC version? (lol)

And dammit, you mention photoshop as anotehr example of how superior Altivec is... HA!

Well no sh!t its a good example. If it puts a 733MHz G4 ahead of a pentium 4, I'd say that makes the G4 a superior chip for graphic arts. Oh, I'm sorry, Photoshop on the Mac isn't really faster, it's only better tuned!

Yeah right. The only time that an apple is faster is when it is using a specific altivec enhanced plug-in. But guess what? When a P4 uses a p4-enhanced plug-in, IT IS FASTER. And if its not using either, hte PC IS FASTER

Are the p4 optimizations completed now? I read that Adobe was working on them. If so then this is bad news indeed for the Mac...Jobs won't have any more bake-offs for a long time.

Seriously Phaedreus, I'm not trying to be a downer, but you are just setting yourself up for dissapointment with all these ******** hopes and dreams of yours. QUIT SMOKING CRACK!

So what about the fact that Graeme was basing his results on a 533MHz G4? That means it did not have the newer altivec, nor write combining, nor did it have OS X.

What all this means is that my 400MHz G4 is going to get a major boost in speed very soon. I'll be getting many extra fps in quake, for FREE, and for this I'm totally stoked! I'd get dissapointed if OS X wasn't released and Id didn't release an altivec enabled cocoa version of Quake, but I think these are pretty safe bets.

You've really got a lot of anger...maybe you should get off the computer once in awhile, go for a run or lift weights or something. You keep talking about smoking crack--is there something you'd like to share with us? Do you have an alcohol problem, perhaps? It's just that I've found that many people who crusade againts illegal drugs have problems with legal drugs. You're wild emotional swings suggest that something is awry. For no reason you insulted me several times in your reply, where do you think all this anger comes from? hmmmm?

[gorefan68]

Yes, there is a reason. I'm convinced apple pays you to come to these boards to spout pro apple ******** .

Grame said it will put it AHEAD of PCs. Please note he did NOT SAY It will put macs AHEAD in FPS of PCs, nor did he say It will put macintosh performance above PCs. He said it will put the macs "AHEAD" of PCs, take that as you like. Which of course you will, you will take it that your 400mhz G4 will be faster than 1000mhz P3 or something wtih DDR ram and a 64 meg video card and I hate to break it to you but IT JUST AINT GOING TO ****ING HAPPEN!!!!!!

>pant<

And what I was saying about 'tuned', is you can expect more performance from your system, but that doesn't mean that its going to defeat a vastly superior PC.... ex: Some photoshop plugins are tuned or 'altivec enhanced' which gives you a nice boost in performance. Does it put it ahead of the PCs? Sometimes. But not in games. Quit smoking crack. Believing this much with this much optimism is only setting yourself up for dissapointment.

Actually, tell you what. Would you be willing to make a small wager on who is right here? Me or you? Just curious. I'd be cool with it.

- Ca$h

[osiris]

I got news for all of ya - if OS X doesn't deliver the speed increases I'm reading about I'll make a coaster out of the OS X CD.

Really, you better expect ridiculous increases in game speed FPS. OpenGL is well integrated into the system.

Check out www.barefeats.com or www.xlr8yourmac.com for comparisons.

YEAH BABY!

[austeros]

what kind of crack are you on? sure you can expect some improvements, but to expect radical preformance increases is insane. You want better fps? you will need better drives, if you have an ati card, dont count on it chum.

believe me, i would like nothing more then to eat my words... but believe me, i am not going to turn osx into a coaster over it. osx will have long term benifits... think about next year... then you can see osX really be a powerhouse with games.

[austeros]

i apologise for that osiris, i just dont want to see osX being shot down because we set our hopes too high.

[osiris]

high in the sky apple pie hopes...

[clifhirtle]

Irregardless of the circular Wintel vs. Mac gaming argument, we've seen a company that 4-5 years ago ran the vast majority of its components using proprietary technologies move towards and standardize on best-of-class industry standards such as: USB, Firewire, Airport, IDE, AGP, OpenGL, PDF, FreeBSD, QuickTime and now (what most thought would never happen 1 year ago) standard nVidia graphics and CDRW drives.

While keeping the pressure on Apple for your hopes for the future, try not to forget how far we've come over the past couple years as well.

- C

[gorefan68]

Wow, you read the article by Sharky. Congrats.

>sigh<

-Ca$h

Originally posted by Phaedrus:
Yes, but the altivec-like extensions on Pentiums are not as easy to write for. Motorola did one thing right with the G4: they have very good developer support for it and altivec. Their compilers are buggy, but that's another story (and they are fine for OS X).

Actually, Metrowerks fixed the compiler some time ago. The problem seems to be actually getting the fix into the hands of the developers. There is something broken over there...

I think that we are entering the golden age of Mac Gaming. With graphic arts apps like Photoshop, Apple is determined to be the fastest and they are...even the Pentium 4 cannot surpass the speed of a mac at photoshop. The issue with games is that until recently Apple didn't care about it--so they sucked at it. Now we have a clear committment from Apple to rock at games, and they will.

Those benchmarks at BareFeats left out a few innovations on the mac side that will blow the competition wide open:

--Altivec-enabled Quake III. According to Id's Graeme Devine, it safely puts Macs ahead of PCs.

--The new mobo and 7450 G4s, with write combining.

--The 7450 G4s enhanced Altivec unit, which can process twice as many instructions per clock cycle as the 7400's altivec unit.

I think "twice as many" is a bit of an exaggeration here. They split up the VFPU/VCIU/VSIU into separate units, so where there were two vector units before, there are now four. However they do different things. You cant always manage to do a permute, floating point, simple integer and complex integer operation all at the same time. In addition, the completion queue can only clear 3 instructions out per cycle up from two before, so even if you managed to issue 4 instructions per cycle, you would quickly back up the 16 element completion queue and get shut down to 3. Perhaps "50% more" is a better estimate.

The new L2 rocks though.

--Nvidia's N20 GPU, which is being codeveloped for Mac and PC. For once, Mac's high end GPU will be the same as PC's high end GPU.

I think its safe to predict that Macs will be kickin' wintel ass at SOME games very soon. So far it's only Quake, but perhaps a few other developers will take notice once Id leads the way. It will be interesting to see what the hard core gamers do....will quake 3 fanatics all rush out and buy Powermacs to get the highest FPS possible?

I wonder when they will figure out that their display only runs at perhaps 75 fps and that anything above that doesn't matter because the screen wont show it. Anyone want to start a company that sells monitors that get higher frame rates? Maybe we could do the monitor equivalent of the old 33/66 trick from the old 486/68040 days. I can see it now:

"Our Quake-enabled monitors have circuitry that do an astounding internal 300 fps.*

*Internal circuitry frame rates are not a direct indication of actual CRT performance."

We'd make millions!

:-)

Ian Ollmann

We saw something similar with the OmniGroup version of OS X (which the id version derives from). At LOW RESOLUTIONS, OS X was and is better. As you get into higher resolutions, the differences will diminish. In the case of the Omni port, at high resolutions OS 9 was actually better. In the final versions, I'd bet that the OS X version will be faster around the board, but not even close to 2x as fast at resolutions that we, or at least I, would play at (1024x768 or higher, decent quality). Minimum resolution and min quality is a really crappy benchmark, unless you're playing on a laptop.

Oh, and for those people suggesting that this thing automagically gets AltiVec support on OS X, that's not true. OpenGL will have AltiVec optimizations, but it already does on OS 9 as well. People still have to write their apps to AltiVec specifically, and for the most part this simply isn't happening :-( Photoshop is great, but I don't use it... It's nice to see a game maker writing AltiVec extensions into their program... if the speed boost is drastic enough maybe others (Westlake *cough*) will follow with some more AltiVec games. I'd love to see AltiVec Unreal Tournament, too... then I'd need to get a G4 ;-)

Ollmann,

The average frame rate may very well be higher than the monitor refresh rate, but that doesn't mean the lowest framerate will be that high. There's a difference between minimum, maximum, and average fps. It's the minimum that's the problem. My G4 averages 45 fps, and that's fine except that during action (when I need smoothness the most), fps drops too low.

Now, for Ca$H,
"Yes, there is a reason. I'm convinced apple pays you to come to these boards to spout pro apple ******** ."

Don't I wish that I were paid by Apple! What purpose would this serve? Wouldn't it be cheaper for Apple to just send employees to post here, instead of paying ME to come post here? BTW, if anyone from Apple is reading this, I'll be happy to be your information slut for the right price!

"Grame said it will put it AHEAD of PCs. Please note he did NOT SAY It will put macs AHEAD in FPS of PCs, nor did he say It will put macintosh performance above PCs. He said it will put the macs "AHEAD" of PCs, take that as you like. Which of course you will, you will take it that your 400mhz G4 will be faster than 1000mhz P3 or something wtih DDR ram and a 64 meg video card and I hate to break it to you but IT JUST AINT GOING TO ****ING HAPPEN!!!!!!"

Well if it puts Macs ahead of PCs. then to me that means that Macs will get higher framerates. What else is there to optimize? What else would Graeme be talking about? He was on a 533MHZ G4, not even the 7450, so I'd say that's a pretty bold statement. To make specific comparisons between machines, I think benchmarks will be in order.

"And what I was saying about 'tuned', is you can expect more performance from your system, but that doesn't mean that its going to defeat a vastly superior PC.... ex: Some photoshop plugins are tuned or 'altivec enhanced' which gives you a nice boost in performance. Does it put it ahead of the PCs? Sometimes. But not in games."

Ok, so photoshop plug-ings don't put the mac ahead in games. Why would they? You said yourself that they put the mac ahead of PCs sometimes. So why wouldn't an altivec optimized game work similarly to an altivec optimized photoshop plug-in? Yes, the games are more video card dependent, but with the N20 coming soon, this wont be an issue.

"Quit smoking crack. Believing this much with this much optimism is only setting yourself up for dissapointment. "

What is it with you and crack? Why are you always telling everyone to "quit smokin' crack"? Wierdo.

"Actually, tell you what. Would you be willing to make a small wager on who is right here? Me or you? Just curious. I'd be cool with it. "

Sure....I'll wager you a half gram of crack that the new version of Quake optimized for altivec, dual processor, and OS X puts macs ahead of PCs. That means the top end, dual processor powermac gets higher average framerates than any PC you can buy to run Quake 3 on. And if I lose....I'll smoke a whole gram of crack!

[gorefan68]

TEH VERSION NUMBER YOU FREAKING IDIOT! THE MOTHER ****ING VERSION NUMBER! IF WE GET 1.8, WERE ****IGN AHEAD OF THE DAMN PCS! OK?>!

CHRIST!

- Ca$h

[blizzard]

Ha ha. You crazy kids.

To me, 'this puts Macs ahead of PCs' means that it puts a 533 Power Mac ahead of a 533 Pentium. This is still a big deal, as right now that 533 Pentium would most likely beat the Mac at games, if only by just a little. It's called 'having 95 percent of the market'. Things tend to get a little optimized when there's that much of a monopoly. So, having that Mac ahead of a PC would be good. But it's still depressing in a way. I mean, geez, who buys a 533 MHz processor these days? In anything other than a Mac, I mean. If you could find a good 533 Athlon (not even sure they exist), put it in a nice 133 mHz motheroard, slap in a a GeForce 2 Ultra or comparable card...I'm pretty sure that would still be a darn good gaming machine. Comparing a 533 Mac to a 533 PC doesn't seem fair....because 533 PCs are almost two years old at this point! Ah well, as long as we some speed up, I'll be happy. If the top of the line Power Mac G4 were to suddenly be able to trounce top of the line, 1.5 GHz Pentium 4s, I don't think I'd complain either....but you don't see me holding my breath.

Blizzard.

[gorefan68]

Fadreus is a *nice guy*. I didn't used to think so, but if he honestly believes that we'll get higher FPS than a PC, he's a *nice guy*. I offered to bet him something on it, but he chickened out, as I think he is secretly just a PC user coming in here, hyping OSX, then when it sucks he'll *observe nicely* bout it, otherwise it would make no sense. What a *nice guy*

= Ca$h

Note from the friendly neighborhood moderator: please try not to DIRECTLY insult the other members. And if you choose to anyways, please, for the love of god, be a little more subtle about it.

Thanks!

Blizzard.

[This message has been edited by blizzard (edited 02-19-2001).]

On a side note, "smoking crack" is kind of a generational slang phrase. I always used it as a kid and I use it now to babysit kids in these forums. "Are you smoking crack or something? Half-Life is NOT coming out for the Mac!"

[ddregs]

Just a sidenote:
I don't play games, so I can't speak about that topic.
But I usually work on PCs (70% of my time, mainly at work), and I enjoy workin' on my Mac at home.
So I read this speed topic hopin' to find what I always dreamt, and in part I found it. Dreamin' of a new OS comin' to the same machine I used for 3 years and makin' it faster is a wonderful thing that NEVER happened on the PCs I used at work.
When we had Windows 3.1 and migrated to Win95, the hardware had to be FULLY substituted.
Win95 is still present in 50% of every major company I work for as a consultant, and the hardware has been rebought at least two times to make applications work faster. READ: when they migrated from Office 95 to Office 97 they rebought the hardware, and they rebought it to migrate to WinNT (or Win2000 right now).
This is the common ground. Make your apps feel faster = buy new hardware.
This has always been the case on the Apple side: every time I upgraded my OS (from 6 to 7, from 7 to 7.1 to 8 to 8.1 to 8.5 to 8.6 to 9 to 9.0.4 to 9.1) I never gained speed. I gained a lot of functions (as with Microsoft), rarely speed tuning.
I believe the Mac OSX migration will make some things faster and other slower. But at least some things will be faster, because we'll go to a true multithreaded system. READ: when you click on a menu the system will continue to perform other tasks and not only those that play at interrupt time.
So the whole computer will feel faster, and the major news is we will have some SERVER applications running on our computer.
This will mean a WHOLE new market for Mac computers: SQL databases, WEB application servers, and other specific appls.
And maybe (Let's wait and see) I will have a new OS that performs better on the same machine.
Is it forbidden to dream? I had a lot of letdowns migrating OS on the PC world that I will never dream on that.
I believe with OS X 1.1 the situation will be clearer...

On a sidenote, I don't give a **** to benchmarks. I will ALWAYS feel faster using Office on a PC and I will ALWAYS feel faster using Photoshop on a Mac. The clock doesn't matter a thing.

------------------
Classic Van Halen - soon on your screen...