[Ivan]

I've always been told that the G3 is faster than the P3 and Athlon. I was wondering what my speed of my iMac 400mhz is compared to a
1.)Pentium II ,III, and IV
2.)Athlon
3.)Celeron
Is a iMac 400mhz compare to a P3 550mhz??

Just very curious....As PC friends who don't even know Macs kinda laugh when I tell them it is 400mhz. I want to know how mine compares to PC speeds in Graphic and word processing and mostly just overall everyday task. Thanks

[bradoesch]

Well, accoding to Apple in some processor tests, a 400MHz G3 processor (in an iMac) scored 11 or something, and a 550MHz P3 got a 5.5. These numbers aren't exact, but I remember the iMac got almost double the P3. This is according to tests done by Apple, so...
And abviously, a G3 is much faster than anything x86, since it's a different design (CISC for x86 and RISC for PPC chips). And if your friends laugh at your 400MHz, then they really don't know much about computers if they can't understand this.

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Why 1984, won't be
like "1984"

[JLannoo]

Originally posted by Ivan:
I've always been told that the G3 is faster than the P3 and Athlon. I was wondering what my speed of my iMac 400mhz is compared to a
1.)Pentium II ,III, and IV
2.)Athlon
3.)Celeron
Is a iMac 400mhz compare to a P3 550mhz??

Just very curious....As PC friends who don't even know Macs kinda laugh when I tell them it is 400mhz. I want to know how mine compares to PC speeds in Graphic and word processing and mostly just overall everyday task. Thanks

The best advice I can give is simply to worry less what "Others" think
If you like it thats what matters...It should be said though there are plenty of x86 systems that are faster then any G3 and G4 in everyday use. Not to mention that the Windows OS has a faster feeling GUI that further exaggerates this.



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-JLannoo
TiVo Zealot

G4 Cube 450
448MB RAGE 128 Pro

Athlon ThunderBird 800
256MB GeForce 2 GTS

[Ivan]

Well, I do know that my iMac 400 feels alot faster than my brothers PIII 550mhz. What about a T-bird....is it as fast as say a 600mhz Athlon?
BTW: I've never once complained about the speed of my iMac. It feels very zippy and I do graphic work abit on it too(photoshop, freehand, Painter) and feel it is very quick, I've never really had to set around and wait on it for anything

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-08-2001).]

[austeros]

the athlon is probably a little bit faster. amd makes nice stuff, which if better then intel's pos chips.

it would be close between the imac and athalon, but then again athalons are cheap, so you could prolly get a good one cheap

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-rok

I have both an iMac and a self built P.C. Clone the iMac is a DV 400 G3 and the P.C. is an intel P3 at 700Mhz.

In my experience sorry to say the P.C. out performs the iMac in most of the heavy duty program I run i.e. Premire, Pagemaker, Final Cut Pro, etc. But this its not to say that I dont like the iMac it's just a different machine with different strenths and weakness.

At the end of the day I can only compare my two machines and as 'jlannoo' said it depends on what you use the machine for.

Kali

[Kozmik]

Uh, how could a Mac be outperformed by a PC in Final Cut Pro? Final Cut Pro is Mac-only, dumbass.

[This message has been edited by Kozmik (edited 05-08-2001).]

[Nimisys]

a G3 will get killed by an athlon. plain and simple. first off ALL x86 cpu's are RISC internally, but are fed CISC commands because of legacy hardware support. secondly the K7 (t-bird) is soo much closer to the G4 than it is to the P3. a P4 will also own your G3. in the same price range catagory the P3 should also defeat the G3. Celery would get owned, but the Duron (small cache t-bird) should be be able to deafet the G3 as well.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by Kozmik:
Uh, how could a Mac be outperformed by a PC in Final Cut Pro? Final Cut Pro is Mac-only, dumbass.

[This message has been edited by Kozmik (edited 05-08-2001).]

Easy dude... I'm sure Kali just made an honest mistake.

Sorry y'all, but Nimisys is pretty accurate - your 400MHz G3 iMac gets the hell kicked outta it by a T-Bird. I don't think the Pentium chips are RISC though - they're CISC, but the AMD's are RISC.

The G4 and the T-Bird are close, but still, the T-Bird may win - against non-altivec processes anyway.

But, who cares?
The G4 kicks ass at anything that NEEDS to be fast, ie. FCP and Photoshop etc, and anyway, x86 doesn't run OS9 does it?

End of story.

Cipher13

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AIM: Cipher1387
ICQ: 48111606
mail: [email protected]

[This message has been edited by Cipher13 (edited 05-09-2001).]

[sKP]

I disagree...
for one, AMD isn't a RISC chip, it's a CISC chip... and it has to be because Windows only does CISC operations. They would have to completely re-code Windows to make it run with RISC chips if they wanted a RISC chip to drive windows... so AMD chips are definately CISC...

also, I'd say that a 600mhz iMac would out-perform a 700mhz PC... unless you've put a better graphics card into your PC... G3 and G4 processors are virtually the same except for the velocity engine, and they run at aproximately twice the speed of similar mhz PC's, so for photoshop, adobe premiere, bryce... non 3d accellerated tasks, I think you'd find that a 400 or 600mhz mac would out-perform a 700mhz PC...

[sKP]

oh also... the Pentium 4 is actually faster than the AMD chips... just not in floating point tasks... but yeah, the Pentium 4 has deeper pipeline, and is definately faster...
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q1/p4-vs-athlon/

[Ivan]

Rrrrr, now I'm really confused....I think I'm gonna go buy a T-bird. It seems I now have old technology that don't even compare to AMD (which is cheap compared to Apple). I'm dissappointed. I've been brainwashed , that even though my G3 is only 400mhz, it was still faster than other PCs running 600 and 700mhz. I guess that was just a bunch of crap. I paid $1299 ( and still paying) for this now slow compared to AMD technology. For $1299, I can get a T-Bird @ 1 Ghz with a Raedeon and loaded with other cool crap!!! I don't like Win OS though, but could learn to like it I guess. Win XP may be cool!? :^/

[mikithecrackhead]

depends on what you are running... one good example is : my 33mghz pda is faster than this 300mghz dell celeron I am using at skoole!!!

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when all else fails, read the instructions.

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by sKP:
I disagree...
for one, AMD isn't a RISC chip, it's a CISC chip... and it has to be because Windows only does CISC operations. They would have to completely re-code Windows to make it run with RISC chips if they wanted a RISC chip to drive windows... so AMD chips are definately CISC...

also, I'd say that a 600mhz iMac would out-perform a 700mhz PC... unless you've put a better graphics card into your PC... G3 and G4 processors are virtually the same except for the velocity engine, and they run at aproximately twice the speed of similar mhz PC's, so for photoshop, adobe premiere, bryce... non 3d accellerated tasks, I think you'd find that a 400 or 600mhz mac would out-perform a 700mhz PC...

time to crank out some 0wn4g3....

the K7 (Athlon:T-Bird/Classic/Duron)is RISC internally, however it gets fed CISC commands from software and older hardware. thats why its front end is so huge, it TRANSLATES that CISC into RISC for the Core. IF the K7 were to run in natve RISC (no translation) it would even beat out your G4+ clock for clock, but having to translate costs performace an so it is about 5% (based off of linux benchs) slower per clock on average. The P3 is also Risc internally, but its internals are inferior to that of the G4/K7, since it still uses the PPro microtechure. all CPUS post Pentium Pro (P2,3,xeon,celery,K6,k6-x) have bneen internally risc. i beleive the Pentium 233 MMX (non-Pro) was the last true x86 chip. all other afterwards have been x87 and RISC. My guess is once those pre x87 chips have been completely filtered out (WinME would run on a P150) then you'l see the software side turn more towards RISC and you'll see the x87 do even better, even though it is already being replaced by AMD's x87-64 and Intels Itanium series.

don't believe me? read this and put you ass in the know: http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/1q00/.../g4vsk7-1.html

also try this one on for size: http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/...isc/rvc-1.html

heres the kicker part of it:

For most of the aforementioned post-RISC transgressions, the guilty parties include such "RISC" stalwarts as the MIPS, PPC, and UltraSPARC architectures. Just as importantly, the list also includes so-called "CISC" chips like AMD's Athlon and Intel's P6 [Pentium Pro].

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by sKP:
oh also... the Pentium 4 is actually faster than the AMD chips... just not in floating point tasks... but yeah, the Pentium 4 has deeper pipeline, and is definately faster...
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q1/p4-vs-athlon/

read the article again buddy boy, since you obviously missed the conclusion and real world app tests. the only one the P4 was better in was Q3, and with the release of the 1.33g t-bird even that is no more. since this article (which is hella old now) Intel released a 1.7 that manges to take back many wins BARELY, at a price way above the T-Bird, assuming you cna find a 1.7g P4, since most suppliers can't. Reality is that the 1.33ghz T-Bird is still the best thng out there. As for P4 getting better with optimized apps, its been 6 months and where are they? i'll take the one that is faster today not tomorrow

[Ivan]

Where is the best place to buy a T-bird at a good price?
But I think they all (t-birds) are at a good price.
BTW: I can at least say my G3 is faster than the "Celery" stuff...right?

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-10-2001).]

[Nimisys]

Originally posted by Ivan:
Where is the best place to buy a T-bird at a good price?
But I think they all (t-birds) are at a good price.
BTW: I can at least say my G3 is faster than the "Celery" stuff...right?

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-10-2001).]

pricewatch for your buying needs

and i feel it would be safe to say your G3 is faster than a simularly clocked celeron

[lee vieira]

Yep, a G3 will generally beat a Celery.

And a G4 running operations that take advantage of its Altivec unit will beat a T-bird or a P4. The newer 7450-series G4s even have TWO Altivec units (as compared to one on the older 7400-series, which was what was compared in the ArsTechnica article).

But for non-Altivec operations, yeah, the higher MHz tilts things in the T-bird's or P4's favor. The G4 (and heck, even the G3 in a lot of operations) is stronger clock-for-clock, but when you're being out MHz'd by 2 to 1, that's hard to overcome.

But you want to look at the most processor-intensive operations closely, since they are the biggest load... and some of them are already Altivec-enhanced...DVD encoding and many Photoshop filters, for example. If you're a graphics professional, you're probably going with a G4.

For game-playing (framerates), Athlon and P4 are faster, since there are no Altivec games (that I'm aware of...someone's working on an Altivec Quake 3 though).

For general use (web surfing, email, word processing, spreadsheets), I'd have to say that speed doesn't matter too much...modern cpus of any stripe pretty much muscle through any common task with ease.

It's when you get into difficult tasks like video editing and 3D that it really matters. Consider what you actually do with your computer and go from there.

--lee

[Danoir]

lee vieira,

Actually, the MPC7450 has for AltiVec units (Simple, complex, floating and premute) which can perform four 128-bit vector operations simultaneously. Pretty hot.

D

[gumby5647]

you can't just compare mhz to mhz........there are numerous other factors that must be accounted for. Such as, L2 cache, bus speed, etc.

I disagree with the people that said a G3 would get killed by a PIII and such. My Rev A. iMac ruled my friends 600Mhz Dell tower in SETI.

iMac
233Mhz
96MB RAM
512k L2 Cache
66Mhz Bus
29 hours

Dell
600Mhz PIII
cache???
100Mhz bus
40 hours

my new iMac DV +
450Mhz
128MB
512k L2 Cache
100mhz Bus
17 hours

all three using SETI 3.0.3

The new iMac's come with a smaller cache, but it is on-chip cache running at full processor speed. It will be interesting to see how this effects performance.

the moral of this story is......you can't just compare Mhz to Mhz, you have to take into account the other factors like bus speed, L2, L3 cache, AltiVec, etc, etc, etc.....


------------------
AIM: gumby5647
ICQ:41746288
[email protected] http://homepage.mac.com/gumby5647
iMac DV +, Indigo, 128MB, 20GB

[This message has been edited by gumby5647 (edited 05-10-2001).]

I have a 1.5 Gig Pentium 4 which is blazing compared to the ibook. I have the second newest ibook and it's slow compared to the Pentium 4. I like both Macs and PCs because they can be used better for different things.

[gumby5647]

I have a 1.5 Gig Pentium 4 which is blazing compared to the ibook. I have the second newest ibook and it's slow compared to the Pentium 4. I like both Macs and PCs because they can be used better for different things.

and how fast of a bus does that P4 have? And how much L2 cache?

and how fast of a bus does the iBook have? and how much L2 cache?

well of course the ibook is going to seem slow.......thats because its a consumer machine....

------------------
AIM: gumby5647
ICQ:41746288
[email protected]
http://homepage.mac.com/gumby5647
iMac DV +, Indigo, 128MB, 20GB

[Nimisys]

and P4/Athlon/Duron availabe for around from 1000 and up (even though the systems are un-balanced) , yet they aren't consumer machines?

funny i thought they would be at that price.

Comparing speed between Motorola chips and Intel chips is fairly difficult. Especially considering you're comparing different operating systems and different chip architectures. The MPPC line of chips does very well in terms of operations per cycle and IIRC tops out at 4 ops per cycle (thats theoretical). In some tests (especially ones based on Adobe products) the tests are weighed heavily in favor of not only MacOS but PPC chips. Pound for pound though your iMac will get toasted by anyone with a PentiumIII or Athlon chip over 550 Mhz. The P2 and the G3 were very similar in terms on ops per cycle, had the same bus speed, and had the same L2 cache set-up.

[Ivan]

Rrrrr, I've been lied to my whole "Mac" career. :^/

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iMac DV 400 (Lime)
1.5 mb/ sec aDsL
OS 9.1 & OS X
Powerbook 1400cs/G3 333mhz (overclocked cache @ 222.1mhz)

[Nimisys]

sorry to hear that.

all i got to say is shoot the marketers... remember nVidia and thier Gf2 launch... Pixar owned them in a hurry for that one.

[Ivan]

Add OS X to the G3 400mhz and you have the slowest computer in the world today that cost $1299. :^/

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iMac DV 400 (Lime)
1.5 mb/ sec aDsL
OS 9.1 & OS X
Powerbook 1400cs/G3 333mhz (overclocked cache @ 222.1mhz)

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-14-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-14-2001)

[This message has been edited by Ivan (edited 05-14-2001).]

[lee vieira]

Easy for you to say. You don't have to work every day with a putty-colored Dell tower that hums 24-7 almost as loud as I talk, or with an NT OS that freezes up and crashes pretty often even though its supposed to be 'never reboot again'.

If they'd let me use an iMac at work, trust me, I would =[

Btw, the Dell tower is a P2-333MHz, and it still runs kinda slow sometimes. They say NT is a RAM pig, and that could be part of the problem, but I've got 128MB already and IT isn't going to give me any more unless I make a federal case out of it.

--lee

[Ivan]

But you know, I think we will be in for a nice suprise come the next MacWorld. I think the new iMacs will be very nice, and OS X will get better on speed with some more updates.

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iMac DV 400 (Lime)
1.5 mb/ sec aDsL
OS 9.1 & OS X
Powerbook 1400cs/G3 333mhz (overclocked cache @ 222.1mhz)