🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Glue (daveacg@interlog.com) wrote:
: Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:
[snipt]
: >BTW, there is no ideal way to test the performance of a machine as a 
: >general purpose system.  It just happens that the SPEC benchmarks are
: >the best we have right now.  But they show the PPC to be too slow and
: >the Pentium to be too fast for the Mac bigot's tastes, so let's screw them
: >and go back to side-by-side application tests performed with a carefully
: >chosen application set.

: I don't know about this Dan.

: What the Spec results may show is that certain apps, like Photoshop,
: are not coded that well for the Pentium, which may not surprise me
: considering the deragotry comments I've heard from Photostyler users
: after switching over.


There is also the issue of architecture. The P5 has 8 registers, whereas 
the PPC has 32.  If you ever crack a graphics text, you will see MANY 
algorithms that could be coded to take advantage of the extra registers 
in the PowerPC and thereby avoid hitting memory very often.

This gives such an advantage to the PowerPC version of certain graphics 
filters that it may well be that for some filters a 132mhz PowerMac will 
go 2x faster than a 133mhz P6 (or so the 4x faster PPC vs P5 benchmarks 
suggest).




: But most people buy machines to run apps, not benchmarks.  If the
: situation was reversed, and it was with the 040 vs. 486 benchmarks, PC
: users would be touting superior application speed.  And they were, and
: even comparisons in MacWorld at the time for "speed" of machines
: compared apps, and Windows won in many of them before the PPC arrived.

: Look at the apps.  If you MUST use Photoshop and Fractal Design
: painter, you probably want a Power Mac.  If you must use Word and
: Excel, you probably want a PC.  Application benchmarks, while being
: very innacurate at times, are THE most important "benchmarks" out
: there, because it's how we use a machine.  If the SpecMarc claims a
: Pentium is only 15% slower than a next-generation 604, but Photoshop
: is twice as fast- THAT'S what MATTERS to my business.


And it also depends on how time-critical each application is to your 
business. If Word on a PowerMac is "fast enough," then you have no 
incentive to switch architectures. Certainly you have no incentive to 
switch from P5/6 to PPC. OTOH, if WOrd is only a trivial part of your 
job, and video-editing is more important, even a P6 on WIndows NT running 
a 32-bit version of Word won't entice you to stay on the P6, if the 32-bit 
version of the PhotoShop filter that you use most of the day is still 1/2 the 
speed of the 604 version.


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