🚀 go-pugleaf

Ellen S. Johnson (ejohnso2@swarthmore.edu) wrote:

> PPC 603e @ 117 Mhz-              Pentium @ 75 Mhz-

> SPECint92:  greater than 120     SPECint92:  approximately 75
> SPECfp92:   greater than 120     SPECfp92:   approximately 60

Look kids, I'm a MacGeek, but I've just got to say that quoting these 
SPECmarks is just plain misleading.  The new PowerPC notebooks aren't all 
that fast compared either to their 040 brethren or the Pentium 
competition.

> Desktop:

> PPC 604 @ 132 Mhz-               Pentium @ 133 Mhz-

> SPECint92:  approximately 200    SPECint92:  approximately 133
> SPECfp92:   approximately 200    SPECfp92:   approximately 105

It is the case with both the 603 and 604 that these SPECmarks come to 
reality only in the case of code optimized *for those chips*.  Both the 
604 and 603 have certain characteristics that allow faster processing 
only if the code running it is optimized to take advantage of those 
aforementioned characteristics.

Without said optimization, those SPECmarks won't represent reality.

But then again, when do SPECmarks represent reality?  They only hint at 
it.  This whole SPEC thing is idiotic.  No offense intended: it's just a 
poor way of measuring real-world performance.

I'd much rather see what's been discussed elsewhere: a Mac vs. PC
challenge.  Rent a hall, set up two head-to-head tables, get your PC to
run Descent (or whatever game is the latest-and-greatest), your Mac to run
Marathon II, and let the users decide.

> If that's not "a commanding speed advantage", what is?

For certain applications, yeah, Apple creams.  But until Copland, 
system-level performance is going to be a patchwork.  That's not bad -- 
Win95 is far worse a patchwork then Apple could ever purposefully design 
-- it's just not the decisive advantage Apple needs to toss happily in 
the face of win bigots.

As is generally agreed, System 7 is far far behind Apple's hardware.  
It's Apple's #1 priority to fix that.

See, it's all software.

--
  newquist@maxwell.ucdavis.edu         http://maxwell.ucdavis.edu/~newquist
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