Intel Developer Macs Outperform G5s

bonch writes "Developers working with the new Intel-based, developer-only Macs are impressed with the performance. The machines take as little as 10 seconds to boot from Apple logo to desktop, and apparently run Windows XP at 'blazing speeds.' Rosetta tests demonstrate the PowerPC-native build of Firefox running just as fast as it does on a high-end G5."

Re:So the G5 were dog slow after all

[ResidntGeek]

Didn't you RTFA? It's not an "emulator", it's a dynamic binary translator. Duh...

Intel Graphics

[saterdaies]

Clearly the speed boost comes from the amazing graphics capabilities of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900. I mean, the 900 stands for 450 times better than their last integrated system which was numberd 2, right?

Re:Just like ASOT told us!

[shobadobs]

Couldn't they work hard to reduce that to five seconds? Think how many lives would be saved.

Re:The real question

[savagedome]

Performance is nice, but it isn't always everything

Will you explain that to my girlfriend please? Please?

Talk about a 180...

[Anonymous Coward]

So now that Apple is going to use Intel processors, Apple developers are allowed to note that Intel makes faster processors?

I should feel vindicated, I suppose.

What the...

[jav1231]

So...the development Mac's run XP faster than other vendor's boxen? This is getting weird.

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[Cecil]

There is something fishy about these numbers, I agree.

It also runs "Windows XP at blazing speeds"? Well, hm, that doesn't sound like a plain old P4 to me. :P

Intel Mac's poor hd performance

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with Intel Mac hard drive performance? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Intel Mac for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Safari will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even SubEthaEdit is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on my Intel Mac, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Intel Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Intel Mac's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Intel Mac is a superior machine.

Intel Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Intel Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

TEH SNAPPPY, finally!

[otis wildflower]

Took long enough, but it looks like OS X will finally be 'snappy' ;)

Re:The real question

[lightyear4]

Son, perhaps you should inflate her?

Re:Dual Boot

[fimbulvetr]

Oh, we're supposed to use the comments as a source for facts? Even the ones crawling with Apple fanbois?
I must be new here, maybe that has always been the case.

Re:Good news!

[ArbitraryConstant]

Yes, the MacOS port of Firefox is an embarrasment. The interface is responsive in the same way that steering a rocket by sending olfactory messages to slugs is responsive.

Re:Impressed

[poleshifter]

cherry os

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[klui]

Yeah, maybe those guys compared it to running Windows XP under VirtualPC.

Re:What the...

[Anonymous Coward]

So...the development Mac's run XP faster than other vendor's boxen? This is getting weird.

Actually, this is a really important discovery.

Previously, everyone assumed that that "the snappy" was conveyed by OS X upgrades. However, it is clear now that the logo on the box conveys some amount of the "the snappy," too.

A corollary to this is that OS X modified to run on non-Apple hardware will be less snappy on ptherwise equivalent non-native systems.

Bad news for Mac software

[Tim Browse]

This is going to be a real problem for Mac software, because most of it isn't frame limited, and isn't designed to run this fast. You'll be typing a sentence in a word processor, and before you know it, the cursor will have zoomed off and crashed into the right hand edge of the window.

Not good.

Transparency

[lullabud]

Well I think that by transparent they mean that you can see through it. I mean, metaphorically speaking, if Rosetta was a person and it was wearing the apps that ran using it, it would be frightening to see those apps walking around with no body. Very frightening indeed, like a ghost. 65 to 70 percent of normal speed is definitely frightening, so this must be exactly what they mean.

Re:Just like ASOT told us!

[That's Unpossible!]

Seven seconds. Trust me.

Seven chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea.

Or the corollary

[Colin Smith]

Get rid of the unnecessary crap installed on your system to help improve your boot times. Have you seen the junk FC4 installs and starts at boot by default?

Re:Integer vs. Altivec

[Lars T.]

Well The P4 has extensions just like Altivec, that's what SSE2 is.

And a transvestite is just like a real woman. Sorry, but SSE2 is still register-starved and has those stupid destructive two-operands ops.

Re:The real question

[PakProtector]

No, the real point is in relationships you want to avoid the 'boot' process.

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, im quite happy with the 20-30 seconds i get with windows xp.

So, are you happy with the 30-40 seconds you have to wait in between seeing your desktop and actually being able to do something with it?

Re:reports like this will impact sales

[Anonymous Coward]

I definitely won't be buying a PPC Mac. I'll wait for Intel Macs next year.
What overall effect will this have on Mac sales?

It will reduce total sales by one.

Wrong meaning of "Blazing"

[electrosoccertux]

Technically, since this is Windows XP we are talking about (thus 10% processor usage in idle), and its running on a Pentium 4, then it IS running at "blazing" speeds.

Better put out that fire.

Re:Good news!

[arhines]

TFA refers to running firefox under rosetta emulation. This feeds instructions translated from G3 architecture into something that x86 can handle. Sort of like running a playstation 2 game on an xbox 360 through a playstation 1 emulator.

I would say that running firefox that fast under emulation is a pretty big deal.

Re:Good news!

[Monkey Angst]

Yes, the MacOS port of Firefox is an embarrasment. The interface is responsive in the same way that steering a rocket by sending olfactory messages to slugs is responsive.

Your frame of reference makes me really wonder how the hell you spend your weekends!

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[Anonymous Coward]

But always remember what you do before you wake up the computer. I once Had some porn on my screen and I put my laptop to sleep and when I brought my laptop to work I turned it back on and man I was lucky no one was behind me.

What to do with those slug stickers...?

[kiddailey]

Damn. I've still got a stack of Intel Inside slug [theapplecollection.com] stickers ...

I guess I can't continue to stick them overtop all the Intel Inside plates I run across, so I need some creative ideas as to what I should do with them. Any ideas?

fishy numbers

[commodoresloat]

There is something fishy about these numbers, I agree.

Well, there is a one in three chance that this study is nonsense.

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[aug24]

"Although there's usually a few seconds between the machine powering up and the apple logo appearing. What's going on during that time?"

Memory test.

Nope, I'm damned if I can remember what it's doing for those few seconds. Now will you tell me the damn answer?

J.

Of course it is...

[BattleTroll]

What a silly article. Of course the newer macs are going to be faster than the older generation. Why would Apple switch to Intel if they couldn't provide a faster chip? Imagine the headlines:

"New Intel-based Macs not as fast as the G5"

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[MrBlackthorne]

Well, this is good, because I hate for my computer to be useful. Thanks for the tip. I'll refrain from installing software next time I build my system.

Re:Boot times disk/network bound

[killtherat]

Memory test.

Nope, I'm damned if I can remember what it's doing for those few seconds. Now will you tell me the damn answer?


Memory test.

I hope I didn't just write to a NULL pointer...