Compare a 1.67 gHz PB to...

[tyoelin]

I'm very confused at this point. To me, 1.67 gHz sounds VERY underpowered for the price, but I'm being told that the gHz numbers between PCs and Macs are different... can someone explain why? Or more importantly, what is this 1.67gHz most comparable to (PC wise)?

Thanks!!

 

[mad jew]

It's really hard to say and it depends on so many different things that a single equivocal figure is yet to be found (and probably never will be).

Nevertheless, maybe have a read through this. It might help.

 

[Lacero]

what is this 1.67gHz most comparable to (PC wise)?

About a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 I would gander.

 

[zach]

being the user of a 1.67 GHz 15", I can say that with enough ram in the machine, you'll see performance at the level of a 2.0 to 2.2 GHz Pentium M or so in "everyday" work.

but it really all depends on what you're doing, the processors are better at different tasks. for instance, running photoshop filters on a 3.0 GHz Pentium in, say, a Dell XPS laptop, will feel like molasses compared to a 1.67 PowerBook, simply due to the G4 and AltiVec's like for vector operations.

but remeber, most of all, you're on Mac OS X. everything will "feel" different compared to a PC laptop running windows or linux, and that's all you really need to know.

 

[mad jew]

What are you planning to do with the PowerBook? There are definite benefits associated with getting a PC over a Mac and vice versa. Speed-wise, I'm betting that a PowerBook will struggle to keep up with the raw power of many PC laptops but that's not to say it'll be slow plus there are many other reasons to get one. Have you used an OSX Mac before?

 

[GFLPraxis]

I'm very confused at this point. To me, 1.67 gHz sounds VERY underpowered for the price, but I'm being told that the gHz numbers between PCs and Macs are different... can someone explain why? Or more importantly, what is this 1.67gHz most comparable to (PC wise)?

Thanks!!

Hz is not a measurement of speed. It's a measurement of clock cycles per second.

Different types of processors do more calculations per clock cycle, and there are many other aspects of processor architecture that affect the speed, such as cache, bus speed, pipeline stages, etc.

Most Pentium 4's have the same cache and bus speed (the EE has more cache, the very old P4's had a slower bus), and they all have the same architecture, so it's accurate to compare a 2 GHz and a 3 GHz Pentium...but not with other types of processors.

For example. An Athlon 64 FX-53 (a normal PC processor) at 2.4 GHz is MUCH faster than a 3 GHz Pentium 4.


So when comparing processors of different architectures (Pentium, Athlon, G4, etc), clock speed (Hz) is not an accurate comparison of speed.

 

[tyoelin]

What are you planning to do with the PowerBook? There are definite benefits associated with getting a PC over a Mac and vice versa. Speed-wise, I'm betting that a PowerBook will struggle to keep up with the raw power of many PC laptops but that's not to say it'll be slow plus there are many other reasons to get one. Have you used an OSX Mac before?

I'm at a school for professional photography and the entire campus is hooked up with apple computers.. dual g5 towers i think, about 20 of em. and i have a pc at home that is struggling for compatibility. Plus it would be nice to have a laptop so I can take it to the labs. I'll be running Photoshop CS and variants of imaging software, possibly video software as well.

I have plenty of OS X experience at my current school and at my high school, I feel totally comfortable on them. I'm one of those rare hardcore PC users that also knows how to use OS X and likes it

 

[tyoelin]

It's really hard to say and it depends on so many different things that a single equivocal figure is yet to be found (and probably never will be).

Nevertheless, maybe have a read through this. It might help.

thank you for that!

 

[mad jew]

thank you for that!

No problems. I'd say a PowerBook should cope as well as the next laptop with most of what you'll be doing.

 

[witness]

My 1.67ghz PowerBook feels like a 1.8-2.0 Centrino, but I wouldn't trade it for a Windows laptop even if the windows laptop was twice the speed. My PowerBook is thin, light, good looking, reliable, I never have to wait for it to boot, etc...

 

[BGil]

being the user of a 1.67 GHz 15", I can say that with enough ram in the machine, you'll see performance at the level of a 2.0 to 2.2 GHz Pentium M or so in "everyday" work.

but it really all depends on what you're doing, the processors are better at different tasks. for instance, running photoshop filters on a 3.0 GHz Pentium in, say, a Dell XPS laptop, will feel like molasses compared to a 1.67 PowerBook, simply due to the G4 and AltiVec's like for vector operations.

but remeber, most of all, you're on Mac OS X. everything will "feel" different compared to a PC laptop running windows or linux, and that's all you really need to know.

According to the benchmarks
http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/121008259631/p/1
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/5790920455/p/21
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/121008259631/p/1
http://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cbsingle.php

Pentium M's are much faster in everything but PS7bench. Although that's just the normalized scores, PC's almost always win the unnormalized scores.

A Celeron M or first gen Penitum M @ 1.3ghz is faster than a 1.67 G4 is just about every bench out there. It's faster in Cinebench, AE, Lightwave, PS (unnormalized) etc.

A 1.67 G4 seems to be about a 2.4ghz P4 at best. A64's and P4's with HT tend to kill G4's (and G5's).

Under no circumstances does a G4 match a 2.13 Alviso Pentium M. For instance, In Cinebench a 2.13ghz Pentium M is as fast or faster than a 2.5ghz G5.

So 1.67 G4 is about the same as an Athlon XP 2500+, P4 2.4ghz, or 1.3ghz Celeron M.

 

[witness]

According to the benchmarks
http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/121008259631/p/1
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/5790920455/p/21
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/48409524/m/121008259631/p/1
http://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cbsingle.php

Pentium M's are much faster in everything but PS7bench. Although that's just the normalized scores, PC's almost always win the unnormalized scores.

A Celeron M or first gen Penitum M @ 1.3ghz is faster than a 1.67 G4 is just about every bench out there. It's faster in Cinebench, AE, Lightwave, PS (unnormalized) etc.

A 1.67 G4 seems to be about a 2.4ghz P4 at best. A64's and P4's with HT tend to kill G4's (and G5's).

Under no circumstances does a G4 match a 2.13 Alviso Pentium M. For instance, In Cinebench a 2.13ghz Pentium M is as fast or faster than a 2.5ghz G5.

So 1.67 G4 is about the same as an Athlon XP 2500+, P4 2.4ghz, or 1.3ghz Celeron M.

But benchmarks mean very little in the real world especially when the OS is not comparable, sure put OS X on a Centrino and it will be faster, but until next year you can't run OS X on a Centrino, only Windows, Linux, etc...

In my experience windows is fast until you install software and use it for a couple of months; benchmarks are nearly always done on clean installs.