Developer Jean-Baptiste Queru wrote a short editorial regarding the SPEC benchmarks and how modern CPUs are competing these days based on the specific benchmarks. JBQ talks about the Pentium4, AthlonXPs, Itanium and especially about the G4. Update: JBQ just wrote a redux article.
On the Subject of CPU Benchmarks
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I want to thank JBQ for addressing my skepticism about spec benchmarking. Now here’s the deal. As someone mentioned before, if computers were so fast we wouldn’t need benchmarks. We need benchmarks for those things that still take too long on desktops-not Minesweeper or screensavers. When I want real world benchmarks I look at the cpu intensive benchmarks of apps that I like to use such as games, video etc. Since SPEC doesn’t really address these things then why should I be interested?
As for people who use Windows because they actually like it…I am amazed. I use Windows because all the apps I have require Windows. Have to, not want to. It’s not fun at all.
Funny how Eugenia bashes MacRumors.com for publishing articles that generates hits when she does exactly the same.
The difference is MacRumors published rumours with no or little prove behind it.
But you are right, Eugenia have been kind of childish lately with all the Apple bashing.
LOL, all Eugenia said that PPC is slow, and OS X need something faster. Kinda warranted, if you ask me.
I have 5 computers at home, 4 x86’s with different linux/bsd distros, 1 xp box for my wife and 1 G3 500mhz imac with OS X 10.1.5
So you have 6 systems, not 5. 4 (x86 Linux/BSD) + 1 (XP) + 1 (G3) = 6.
One thing with Motorola though, it seems that their processor families have very large performance improvements, where Intel always had many more small incremental releases. Hopefully, the G5(?) will help Apple regain some hardware performance.
I don’t know. For example, I remember reading a benchmark between dual-800mhz and dual-733mhz or dual-700mhz (i can’t remember), and the difference was so small, the guy in ther article said it isn’t worth it.
Also they are makings lots of things very costly, .mac, the hardware itself, upgrade to the jaguar and so on. You pay more and you get less.
I think .mac’s price is warranted, just like how Yahoo! and MSN is charging for certain services. I think Jaguar’s price is warranted – just look at the changes. No, not on the advertisement (http://www.apple.com/macosx/), but just check out the difference with Darwin. Just Darwin alone is a big different. Then there is QE…
Since Intel C++ optimising compiler and ms visual studio .net (see the speed improvement up to intel when they added the autovectorisation) are the most common compilers for pc. gcc cannot autovectorise .. however it can use extended instruction sets.
It doesn’t autovectorise? I’m not sure, but benchmarks shows the difference between ICC and GCC is getting smaller and smaller with each GCC release.
Mac Ui cannot be used by just the keyboard or just the mouse.. you have to use both a lot (since its only got 1 button) and the UI cannot be access fully from either one (but windows can)
Haha! You could buy a 10 button mouse for the Mac, and you could configure your keyboard to bring out certain commands.
It should be pretty clear to many people by now that if you really want to see speed on a Mac, you need to vectorize. The good news is that if you do, the Mac is very competitive and usually scores much better than the other platforms.
But then if you vectorize on x86, especially for optimizations for SSE2, the speed difference doesn’t matter.
While GCC will compile AltiVec code if you turn the -faltivec flag on….
IIRC, that’s for GCC 3, not 2.9x Mac OS X is currently using, As soon as it becomes a stable release (not beta), perhaps then the Mac would get better results…. but by only 5%.
Sadly, our author reveals his bias by categorically refusing to vectorize.
It’s called portable code.
I am in agreement with you here 🙂
You? Agreeing with Gleen? Why does that feel so strange?
>>”I am in agreement with you here :-)”
You? Agreeing with Gleen? Why does that feel so strange?<<
It’s definitely a rarity with Glenn and I, but his last point was more in general than anything else, so I have to agree I guess… !@#$%^&*?
You’ve been really punching uup the bites here lately… how’s life your way?