[qnxde]

I currently own a rev a. TiBook 500 with 384mb ram. My boyfriend's main mac is a 7300/G3 which seems to like to crash a lot (no idea why, needs new ram I think). Anyway, cut a long story short, he wants a laptop now like mine, which I agree with however if we are going to buy something it should be able to run OS X well. The new iBook has a RADEON 16mb which I would presume allows it to take advantage of Quartz Extreme when OS 10.2 is released. How do you all speculate this system would perform in relation to my tibook 500? I really wanted the iBook's to have a G4 in them, but if the GUI was mainly offloaded to the GPU, do you think a G3/700 would be relatively "snappy" ?

any comments appreciated,

qnxde.

[phobos]

I think that the speed of OSX on the new ibooks will be quite faster.Apple says that the 512K cache is at full processor speed so this will definetely improve the speed and also let's not forget the radeon with 16MB of VRAM.So it will be quite better I think.Not to mention also the overall speed of 10.2.
Not what we have hoped for but it's a good tradeoff

[Arkham_c]

Apple claims the new hardware is "up to 35% faster". Take that to mean what you will. I suspect it's probably more like 20% faster for general use. Just barely fast enough to be noticable. Of course, Quartz Extreme may be able to take advantage of the Radeon and make it more like 25% faster, but we'll have to wait and see.

[Carl Norum]

Yes. Quartz Extreme works on a mobility radeon. A lot of people complain a lot that QE won't be supported by this video card, but it obviously is:

From Apple's web page:
<STRONG>nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance.</STRONG>

Since the new iBooks have an AGP Radeon card, that sentence would indicate that they are supported. You may not be able to do the "20 translucent terminal windows + 3 semitransparent 3D OpenGL objects + 1 semitransparent colour-shifting nVidia chameleon + slow-motion genie on DVD playback" stuff that the guys were doing at WWDC on their dual 1 GHz machines with GeForce 4 Titanium cards, but that's not really a useful test, when you get right down to it.

[edit - can't type properly]

[ 05-20-2002: Message edited by: Carl Norum ]

[SpeedRacer]

Originally posted by Carl Norum:
<STRONG>Yes. Quartz Extreme works on a mobility radeon. A lot of people complain a lot that QE won't be supported by this video card, but it obviously is:</STRONG>

And didn't Steve Jobs explicitly state at WWDC that 32MB Radeon was required? Seems to me that we have not heard a definitive yea or nea on this issue and that until we do it's rather immaterial to state undeniably that we know QE will work on these machines.

Not to mention that the G4/G3 delta in OS X performance is very, very noticeable. 512K or not, i don't see this 200mHz speed bump and marginal increase in HD size making that much of a difference for a machine is already the slowest OS X machine this side of Cupertino.

Unless Apple can shift all of the components currently being off-loaded to the G4 onto the graphics engine with QE on a card that is at best sub-optimal i don't see there being much of a difference in performance here. When you base an entire OS around the performance and features of the G4 i see little sense in maintaining it's 2-year-older predecessor in your consumer line.

Speed

[DoctorX]

10.2 performs even in a pre-release state very well on an iBook 500 comparing to what 10.1.4 does. So I think that the new 700Mhz iBooks will do very well...

And they will take advantage of QE because of the Radeon Card! Unfortunately my 500 iBook will not...

[Carl Norum]

Originally posted by SpeedRacer:
<STRONG>And didn't Steve Jobs explicitly state at WWDC that 32MB Radeon was required? Seems to me that we have not heard a definitive yea or nea on this issue and that until we do it's rather immaterial to state undeniably that we know QE will work on these machines. </STRONG>

I was *there*. He said "You need an AGP 2x video card and 32 MB of video RAM to run Quartz Extreme". However - Steve knows next to nothing about hardware engineering, and in a couple of the Quartz sessions at WWDC it was made very clear that QE would run on any machine with one of the supported cards.

[SpeedRacer]

Originally posted by DoctorX:
<STRONG>10.2 performs even in a pre-release state very well on an iBook 500 comparing to what 10.1.4 does. So I think that the new 700Mhz iBooks will do very well...</STRONG>

Sorry, but i totally disagree. Performance on the iBook/500/256 that i am using is pitifully slow in 10.2. Admittedly saying "slow" or "fast" is completely subjective, but in comparison to 10.1.4 i see little difference other than better multithreading and significant differences between any/all G4-based machines.

Perhaps sticking with a G3-based iBook is Apple's way of proving that it can actually get X running decently on something other than a G4 using hardware acceleration with a high video card requirement, but it's quite disappointing to see them incapable of producing a truly low-cost, g4-based consumer notebook. For many it's not an option to go to the Powerbook due to size, weight, and durability. Yet until we start seeing significant jumps in X-based performance on the iBook it will remain unsuitable for large organizational deployment on Apple's modern OS X foundation. So far, the only performance stats we have are Apple's generic "35% improvement" statement which, if it applies to OS X, is really not going to be enough IMHO.

Unfortunately, many of our Mac folks at our organization have already written off the G3 as a deadbeat for X (esp with every other Mac running G4s) and it will undoubtedly take nothing other than a G4 iBook to reverse that public perception.

Heck, we've got an entire lab of wireless iBook/500s we purchased less than 1 year ago and they're already looking at needing to replace them due to their anemic performance in OS X. Sooner or later Apple's got to provide a modern OS that can run on something other than the latest and greatest or else risk losing a significant portion of their user base.

I love the iBook design. It's just when you truly look at the specs that you start doubting its efficacy.

Speed

[hempcamp]

Originally posted by SpeedRacer:
<STRONG>Perhaps sticking with a G3-based iBook is Apple's way of proving that it can actually get X running decently on something other than a G4 using hardware acceleration with a high video card requirement, but it's quite disappointing to see them incapable of producing a truly low-cost, g4-based consumer notebook.</STRONG>

Maybe you shouldn't be blaming Apple, but Motorola. If you put a G4 in its current conception in an iBook, it would turn the polycarb into a gooey process-cheese-like substance (ok, so I exaggerate...). Not to mention you'd need a much heavier battery to get even close to competing with the battery life of most non-Mac notebooks yet keep up with the hungry G4.

I really think the IBM 750FX is a superior processor for ultra-compact notebooks than any current G4. We're talking about a notebook about the size of a sheet of paper; this thing wasn't meant to render the proverbial next Pixar film. As for the overall "stickyness," blame Aqua. Web browsing and scrolling seems just as "slow" to me on a DP Ghz as it does on a 400Mhz G4 tower or Blue & White G3.

In a school environment, wouldn't OS 9 do everything you need anyway, with a lot less hassle? OS 9 flies on a 500Mhz iBook, and there is currently a lot more educational software for Classic than X. Memory requirements, and thus price, would also be significantly reduced.

--Chris

[BTP]

I'll have to post my experience on this.

First, QE will run on the new iBooks. The optimal performace is achieved by 32MB of video, 16MB should allow you to do it as well. As for performance, the difference between the iBook 500 and iBook 600 are stark. I read complaints about 10.2b from iBook 500 owners and finally tested on one. I said before it must be due to the 66mhz bus, as the speed difference cannot just be 100mhz. That said, I think the new iBook will be faster, maybe even the 35% faster. I'll need to see for myself and my expectations rest on the larger L2 cache.

And FWIW, the performance of 10.2 is really nice, despite the lack of QE support. I can only say that I'll be curious to see 10.2 on a machine that supports it.

[sniffer]

Out of the line perhaps, but I find OS X (10.1.4) fast.. Sure the Aqua/Quartz is another story, but I don't find it fear to blame the whole os when the bottle neck is in the General User Interface in X.
Pleaze don't mix the terms..!

[Bernard Ducamp]

r.e.: iBook v.s. PowerBook.

I have a 500 MHz iBook with 384 MB DRAM. It runs OS X 10.1 just fine.

The iBook is a G3 machine. The G3 is a very good cpu. Its only shortcoming is not having Altivec support. The G3 is very low-power, so the iBook is a very quiet machine.

Putting a G4 in iBooks would blur the boundary between the product lines. Right now, there is a good boundary between iBooks and PowerBooks. Each has advantages. You eventually have to make a choice.

They are both excellent machines.

[Scooterboy]

Also, the IBM 750FX G3 will allow Apple to introduce faster iBooks without having to wait for slow as molasses Motorola to fab them. 750FX should scale to 1 Ghz by year's end, leaving Apple to decide when to introduce faster models and not their chip supplier.

[pat++]

Originally posted by DoctorX:
<STRONG>10.2 performs even in a pre-release state very well on an iBook 500 comparing to what 10.1.4 does. So I think that the new 700Mhz iBooks will do very well...

And they will take advantage of QE because of the Radeon Card! Unfortunately my 500 iBook will not...</STRONG>

I do NOT agree with your first statement. 10.2 is SLOWER than 10.1.4 on my 500Mhz iBook (speaking about the GUI here) although iDisk is significantly faster (but, we'll get this with 10.1.5 soon).

Now back on topic, my guess is that the new iBook will be *MUCH* faster than the previous one because of QE.

[ 05-24-2002: Message edited by: pat++ ]