Article View: comp.sys.powerpc
Article #2772Re: Debate: PowerMac "trounces" Pentium....???
From: David E. Konerding
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 08:29
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 08:29
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2976 bytes
On Fri, 12 Jan 1996 20:25:38 -0500, Damir Smitlener <damir@mindspring.com> wrote: > William Taylor wrote: > > > > In article <davis-0901961913020001@pppsb24.itg.ti.com> Tom L. Davis, > > davis@adrs1.dseg.ti.com writes: > > > Nobody argues that the PPC is faster in floating point. However for most > > > users, 99% of the time is spent in integer functions. Integer benchmarks > > > show that there is very little diffeence between the 2 processors (and > > > at least the x86 camp has a Pentium Pro to upgrade to today). > > Can you say "realtime 3D"? It is coming quickly, and Intel PC's are > > going to be way behind the curve. A 604 is 1/6 the price of a P6/200 > > yet offers comparable FPU speed. > > Pentium's are even farther behind. > Pshaw. This is meaningless for at least 2 reasons. First, 604 computers > do not have any price advantage over Pentium Pro computers. Second, > nobody in their right minds would do 3d without hardware acceleration, > and the options for that will be fairly equal on both platforms with > maybe a small price advantage on the PC side. > > It's the accelerators that made SGI such a hot item, not "its" CPUs. > Correct. I ported an OpenGL application which does real-time molecular modelling to a PC from the SGI/DEC/HP platforms. Frankly, no matter how fast a Pentium Pro you get, the interactive performance of my port will be lower than that of the SGI because of the hardware acceleration. It's a shame, too, because a PPro would probably compare to a midrange SGI favorably except for that. I hear that Matrox is coming out with a (or already has) graphics card that has 3d hardware acceleration. An 8MB Millenium or some such. When that comes out, I hope to acquire a PPro with that card and benchmark it against the SGIs I use (Indigo^2s). Since this an advocacy group, I might mention- the program I ported would not work on NT, 95, or MacOS in a million years. Fortunately, Linus wrote Linux, MetroLink ported OpenGL, and I ported a $10,000 molecular modelling package in less than two weeks. > > -- > > Damir Smitlener > damir@mindspring.com -- -- David Konerding -- dek@cgl.ucsf.edu http://picasso.ucsf.edu/~dek/
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu!rafael From: rafael@arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu (David E. Konerding) Newsgroups: comp.sys.powerpc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.amiga.advocacy,comp.sys.intel,alt.2600 Subject: Re: Debate: PowerMac "trounces" Pentium....??? Date: 14 Jan 1996 08:29:22 GMT Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz Message-ID: <4daet2$1p4@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> References: <nelsoni.821198530@rintintin.Colorado.EDU> <4d4omk$otj@steel.interlog.com> <Pine.SOL.3.91.960111201039.20821C-100000@howard> <4d61cs$k9s@ixnews5.ix.netcom.com> <30F70A12.8FFA6F0@mindspring.com> Reply-To: dek@cgl.ucsf.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: arapaho.cse.ucsc.edu X-Newsreader: slrn (0.7.5.0)