[tomzo22]

At the moment i have an AMD 3000 2.0ghz processor. Am i right in thinking that a 1.67 powerpc processor is equivalent to this speed? Or can you directly compare the processor speeds?

[drpepper]

You can probably find benchmarks to say anything you want to hear. My personal observations and casual comparisons (not thorough tests) were that the G4s I had (667MHz and 1.33GHz) compared to what I'd expect from a P4 of about the same clock speed, maybe a little faster.

If the "3000" in the AMD name is that loose P4 scale they were using, a 3GHz P4 would be considerably faster than a 1.67GHz G4, so an AMD "3000" would be too.

[tinkered]

The AMD is newer and faster. That said I would suspect that difference isn't so over whelming that other factors in you computer may cause these to bench similarly on some tests.

[ghporter]

Because the AMD processor and the PPC processor work differently and different OSs run on them, you can't compare them directly. What you need is cross platform benchmarks, which are notably absent from most discussions. However, you can compare identical functions of equivalent products, such as Office:Mac and Office XP. One might open the same very large document on both platforms do the same search and replace and time the operation.

[peeb]

Yes, you can't directly compare the speeds. What do you want to do? Differences in usability account for a lot of the perception of speed and ease of use in everyday tasks too.

[mduell]

SystemShootouts, a generally pro-Mac site, says the Athlon 3000+ is about the same as a 3Ghz P4 and the 1.67Ghz G4 is about the same as a 2.2GHz P4, based on the average of a variety of benchmarks.

There are, of course, some outliers. I can think of a benchmark where a 1.67Ghz G4 would match a (theoretical) 9Ghz P4, and I'm sure there are some the other way around.

[bloodline]

When running logic pro, I found that my 2.0Ghz Athlon64 (3200+)... let's not question how I managed to run Logic Pro on an Athlon... I found it about as fast as a 2Ghz G5 iMac... My new MBP is MUCH faster than either machine.