I've had 2 Quads in the past and apart from video transcoding I've never felt any massive difference between them and my dual core - I can only assume there's some special sauce with the GPU choice?
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PowerFox Web Browser - A brand new browser for PowerPC (Beta)
- Thread starter Jazzzny
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The GPU should not matter that much, as long as it supports acceleration in PowerFox (check about:support). Hardware decoding doesn't exist at all on 10.5, we are only able to take advantage of the GPU to paint the video frames 30 times a second, which takes load off from the CPU to work on decoding the actual video. I've seen PowerFox use up to 280% CPU (keep in mind, the Quad is 2.5GHz), while decoding 1080p, which means that slower dual-core or single-core systems with a lower clock speed will probably struggle with 1080p.
One more screenshot for good measure:
One more screenshot for good measure:
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I installed and used this on my mid 2005 iBook G4 1.33ghz with 1.5gb of ram and ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 graphics.
Overall this browser is way faster than Aquafox. But it’s slow in other ways. It loads YouTube, I got a video to play fairly smoothly, but many elements on the page were missing and the video controls weren’t showing up.
When loading YouTube I got a script warning that came up a few times. I just clicked continue.
This browser seems really promising!
Overall this browser is way faster than Aquafox. But it’s slow in other ways. It loads YouTube, I got a video to play fairly smoothly, but many elements on the page were missing and the video controls weren’t showing up.
When loading YouTube I got a script warning that came up a few times. I just clicked continue.
This browser seems really promising!
With multithreading the Quad will have an edge I guess. I can't come up with any reasonable answer (my Powerbook is equally incapable of decent results) but as I say, it's a godsend for my early intel Macs.
Most likely because of it's current lack of JIT for Javascript causing the missing elements/script warnings. There will be extremely slow websites that may not even work at all because of it, but it's still impressive at what it's currently able to do. Hopefully JIT will eventually be implemented as this is a beta version, but very impressive results even in it's early form.
I'm going to tentatively say that 1080p video playback on PowerPC desktop YouTube will require a 2.3 GHz or faster Dual Core/CPU G5 paired with a graphics card that supports QECI.
In all honesty, I'm still surprised that any of these 20+ year old machines can play 1080p on the desktop YouTube site at all. Anything slower doesn't run fast enough to provide enough CPU cycles to actually decode the video.
In all honesty, I'm still surprised that any of these 20+ year old machines can play 1080p on the desktop YouTube site at all. Anything slower doesn't run fast enough to provide enough CPU cycles to actually decode the video.
It really wouldn't surprise me if some of the differences between similarly-specc'd machines come down to the early nature of the app or peculiarities to the OS install on the specific device.
Just as a quick anecdote on YouTube: my 1.5GHz 12" PBG4 running stock 10.5.8 can run 480p with no issue, but 720p is right out. My 1.67GHz 17" running a fresh Sorbet install struggled to even do that much - BUT after doing the customary permissions fix (which I forgot after first boot) it's better than the 12". My DC 2.3 G5 can run 1080p in stock 10.5.8 but barely runs 480p in 10.6.8a.
All this is to say, please keep at it! 🙂
Just as a quick anecdote on YouTube: my 1.5GHz 12" PBG4 running stock 10.5.8 can run 480p with no issue, but 720p is right out. My 1.67GHz 17" running a fresh Sorbet install struggled to even do that much - BUT after doing the customary permissions fix (which I forgot after first boot) it's better than the 12". My DC 2.3 G5 can run 1080p in stock 10.5.8 but barely runs 480p in 10.6.8a.
All this is to say, please keep at it! 🙂
With exactly the same Powerbook and OSX, I have to wait 3 minutes for the page to load and settle then get around 1FPS at 100% CPU for 480P.
Does your Powerbook have a SSD - though it shouldn't make a difference?
Some issues I noticed (beside the known hangs and few crashes which is the nature of beta):
it scrolls always one page when clicking the scrollbar-arrows - it simply ignores them and scrolls one page instead (may be that is because it comes from Basilisk which runs on Lion which has no arrows in the scrollbar).
About shows still 26.2.0 instead 26.2.1.
The german language pack makes the browser not work anymore at all. All I get is this
after setting the general.useragent.locale to de-DE ... it works perfectly fine on PowerFox 32 Bit in Snow Leopard x86.
it scrolls always one page when clicking the scrollbar-arrows - it simply ignores them and scrolls one page instead (may be that is because it comes from Basilisk which runs on Lion which has no arrows in the scrollbar).
About shows still 26.2.0 instead 26.2.1.
The german language pack makes the browser not work anymore at all. All I get is this
XML:
XML-Verarbeitungsfehler: Nicht definierte Entität
Adresse: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Zeile Nr. 1320, Spalte 7: <toolbarbutton id="panelMenu_manageContainers"
------^
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This is because I didn't release a new language pack release with 26.2. Please update your language packs:
Release 26.2.1 · Jazzzny/powerfox-languagepacks
Language Packs for the PowerFox Browser. Contribute to Jazzzny/powerfox-languagepacks development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
The new release is pretty stable. On a top end G5 this is very usable.
I'm super excited for the future development of PowerFox and optimizing JS for it. It will especially help G4 machines stay in the race. I'd wager a majority of PowerPC users on OS X use a G4 machine.
I'm super excited for the future development of PowerFox and optimizing JS for it. It will especially help G4 machines stay in the race. I'd wager a majority of PowerPC users on OS X use a G4 machine.
I retract my statement regarding 720p YouTube on the desktop site; I tried once again and for whatever reason it was much choppier the second time and couldn't reliably play smoothly.
But here's a short recording of PowerFox chewing through a 720p video on Invidious, which won't even load on WebKit or TenFourFox, let alone play:
The delay in resuming and reduced FPS in playback are both artificial consequences of video compression and the system recording the display while simultaneously streaming HD video. Since Invidious does not have a proper stats feature, you're going to have to take my word that it and other 720p streams will normally play at full speed on a 2 GHz DC G5 equipped with a 7800 GT. It can also nearly manage 1080p under ideal conditions, but just falls short I suspect due to being insufficient a few hundred extra MHz to comfortably pull the weight--or at least for the current state the browser is in.
That aside, here's BBC fully loaded and never crashed. Once rendered, scrolling performance is predominantly responsive with only moderate stuttering despite the ocean of content:
Here's SoundCloud, which had no trouble loading and then playing audio:
Bandcamp, also playing songs without a hitch:
Twitter, which I was even able to log into, albeit with a rendering glitch on some images. The pictured video furthermore played smoothly:
And Amazon, which I was also able to log into without trouble:
Hell, here's iCloud. The pictured animation plays smoothly with no lag:
Not pictured was also eBay and WordPress, both of which I was able to log into and equally rendered fine. Meanwhile 8 out of 9 of these examples WebKit either won't render properly or load at all. Obviously, this doesn't change the fact that both it and TenFourFox--alongside all of its community forks--were hugely influential pieces of software and remain legendary examples of what fundamentally well-built and thoroughly-optimized browsers should look like (unlike most contemporary equivalents). And Aquafox will likely remain king of the hill for either anything running Tiger or configurations that don't support Core Image.
But given the above preliminary tests and others posted, PowerFox PPC is an objective game changer for at least the higher-end systems and there is simply no other way to express it. Yes, these are early days and as such there are going to be a collection of issues to iron out (such as the browser crashing when speakers are plugged in while media is already playing), but it's entirely feasible that within another year's time, most of those will already be ironed out and its performance optimized much further.
Pardon my excitement and enthusiasm earlier, but that potential is why this is such a significant event. In regards to web browsing, we've been working within the confines of a small box for all of these years, intimately learning every measurement and dimension while the room outside of it continually gets ever larger. But since the modern UXP codebase has now established a supply line to PPC 10.5, the dimensions of that box have just grown dramatically and many doors have been opened that previously didn't exist, greatly changing the practical usability of these systems for different use cases. Thus, the roadmap ahead for the first time in a long time is no longer trending downward. Such a sudden turn of events is momentous and should be celebrated, not shot down.
Lastly, its PPC and Intel versions cannot be compared at this time in good faith as the former is in a significantly earlier stage of development and for that matter the first of its kind for its respective platform. Under the given circumstances, it is doing very, very well and by most accounts so far is the seemingly categorical opposite of "not happening".
But here's a short recording of PowerFox chewing through a 720p video on Invidious, which won't even load on WebKit or TenFourFox, let alone play:
The delay in resuming and reduced FPS in playback are both artificial consequences of video compression and the system recording the display while simultaneously streaming HD video. Since Invidious does not have a proper stats feature, you're going to have to take my word that it and other 720p streams will normally play at full speed on a 2 GHz DC G5 equipped with a 7800 GT. It can also nearly manage 1080p under ideal conditions, but just falls short I suspect due to being insufficient a few hundred extra MHz to comfortably pull the weight--or at least for the current state the browser is in.
That aside, here's BBC fully loaded and never crashed. Once rendered, scrolling performance is predominantly responsive with only moderate stuttering despite the ocean of content:
Here's SoundCloud, which had no trouble loading and then playing audio:
Bandcamp, also playing songs without a hitch:
Twitter, which I was even able to log into, albeit with a rendering glitch on some images. The pictured video furthermore played smoothly:
And Amazon, which I was also able to log into without trouble:
Hell, here's iCloud. The pictured animation plays smoothly with no lag:
Not pictured was also eBay and WordPress, both of which I was able to log into and equally rendered fine. Meanwhile 8 out of 9 of these examples WebKit either won't render properly or load at all. Obviously, this doesn't change the fact that both it and TenFourFox--alongside all of its community forks--were hugely influential pieces of software and remain legendary examples of what fundamentally well-built and thoroughly-optimized browsers should look like (unlike most contemporary equivalents). And Aquafox will likely remain king of the hill for either anything running Tiger or configurations that don't support Core Image.
But given the above preliminary tests and others posted, PowerFox PPC is an objective game changer for at least the higher-end systems and there is simply no other way to express it. Yes, these are early days and as such there are going to be a collection of issues to iron out (such as the browser crashing when speakers are plugged in while media is already playing), but it's entirely feasible that within another year's time, most of those will already be ironed out and its performance optimized much further.
Pardon my excitement and enthusiasm earlier, but that potential is why this is such a significant event. In regards to web browsing, we've been working within the confines of a small box for all of these years, intimately learning every measurement and dimension while the room outside of it continually gets ever larger. But since the modern UXP codebase has now established a supply line to PPC 10.5, the dimensions of that box have just grown dramatically and many doors have been opened that previously didn't exist, greatly changing the practical usability of these systems for different use cases. Thus, the roadmap ahead for the first time in a long time is no longer trending downward. Such a sudden turn of events is momentous and should be celebrated, not shot down.
Lastly, its PPC and Intel versions cannot be compared at this time in good faith as the former is in a significantly earlier stage of development and for that matter the first of its kind for its respective platform. Under the given circumstances, it is doing very, very well and by most accounts so far is the seemingly categorical opposite of "not happening".
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I uninstalled then reinstalled PowerFox to flush anything out that might’ve been hindering performance.
Second time around, Bandcamp played as long as I didn’t scroll around too much - most interactions result in 100% CPU.
I couldn’t try X again as it wouldn’t let me login due to “suspicious activity” - which means I’ve been trying to login too many times with different user agents.
Soundcloud was same as before, would play after a long wait (nearly 2 minutes) but then would freeze if there was any interaction.
Only change with Youtube was after a 2 minute wait to actually start playing, the 720P video stopped dropping frames at the halfway mark.
BBC News this time loaded after 2 minutes and didn’t crash but was hard work to navigate around - note I don’t go to bbc.com - any attempt redirects to bbc.co.uk/news, which judging by the screenshots of bbc.com is a heavier site.
Invidious was a joy to use - 720P played instantly and smoothly, interface responsive with zero lag and after a short buffer 1080P played with no drops. The difference from the lack of garbage scrip is huge.
Apart from Invidious, the performance of every site pushes the G5 into the territory of not really useable - a stark contrast to the CD iMac which PowerFox has resuscitated back into online use.
Second time around, Bandcamp played as long as I didn’t scroll around too much - most interactions result in 100% CPU.
I couldn’t try X again as it wouldn’t let me login due to “suspicious activity” - which means I’ve been trying to login too many times with different user agents.
Soundcloud was same as before, would play after a long wait (nearly 2 minutes) but then would freeze if there was any interaction.
Only change with Youtube was after a 2 minute wait to actually start playing, the 720P video stopped dropping frames at the halfway mark.
BBC News this time loaded after 2 minutes and didn’t crash but was hard work to navigate around - note I don’t go to bbc.com - any attempt redirects to bbc.co.uk/news, which judging by the screenshots of bbc.com is a heavier site.
Invidious was a joy to use - 720P played instantly and smoothly, interface responsive with zero lag and after a short buffer 1080P played with no drops. The difference from the lack of garbage scrip is huge.
Apart from Invidious, the performance of every site pushes the G5 into the territory of not really useable - a stark contrast to the CD iMac which PowerFox has resuscitated back into online use.
Really great work, this is super exciting to have a new browser to play around with!
I got 360p YouTube to play on my Powerbook G4 15" 1.67 smoothly, albeit after the page loaded but still really cool stuff. I've only ever been able to do this in browser in leopard webkit.
Is there a benefit to using this browser on the 10.6 beta rather than 10.5?
I got 360p YouTube to play on my Powerbook G4 15" 1.67 smoothly, albeit after the page loaded but still really cool stuff. I've only ever been able to do this in browser in leopard webkit.
Is there a benefit to using this browser on the 10.6 beta rather than 10.5?
There’s absolutely no point in giving feedback on a project if you’re going to lie through your teeth just to appear positive.
I’ve heaped praise on the intel version of PowerFox and promoted it elsewhere online because I’ve found it be a lifeline for Snow Leopard Macs - I hoped to be of the same opinion for the PPC version but on my hardware it’s unusable, so that’s what I’m reporting.
It’s immaterial if this is the beta - it’s what we have to work with - you can’t review something based on where you think it will go in the future.
Amazingly, it can smoothly stream 1080p after all using the embedded player from the Yahoo videos page, bypassing the rest of the slower YouTube site entirely:
This one kept buffering at first, but was able to play without issue soon afterward:
I've never seen anything like this before, I am thoroughly impressed. We'll find ways to bring CPU use and loading times down over time, but what matters most is that it's even possible at all--still without a JIT engine.
I wonder if an equivalent-spec Pentium 4 would be able to match it...
This one kept buffering at first, but was able to play without issue soon afterward:
I've never seen anything like this before, I am thoroughly impressed. We'll find ways to bring CPU use and loading times down over time, but what matters most is that it's even possible at all--still without a JIT engine.
I wonder if an equivalent-spec Pentium 4 would be able to match it...
PowerFox isn't even my project. Regardless, Soundcloud would not freeze for me on any interaction; the page finishes loading in a little over 20 seconds, I can begin a song, it starts playing in under 10 seconds, and I can freely manipulate its progress without freezing. Scrolling across the page presents no difference in playback. Sure, there's visual stuttering but nothing I would deem unusable, at least by my standards.
Bandcamp finished loading in under 20 seconds. I can start a song and it begins playing almost instantly, I can skip ahead instantly, and I can fly around the page with no interruption to the stream.
BBC News (bbc.com for me) finished loading in about 1 minute 5 seconds. I would not call navigating its page hard work by any means, I don't know what else to tell you.
Granted, I am not measuring CPU usage because I don't consider that an important factor at this stage, similarly to how you have different standards of what you would consider immediately usable. However, it is clear that many variables could be giving us different outcomes in performance, such as nuances in internet service providers, LAN configuration, operating system modifications, content delivery network speeds and server proximity, region-specific ad / tracking networks, etc.
That's why I'm not using measured performance as a benchmark but bare capability instead, and the current consensus from others that the browser generally performs quickly. Hence, specific loading times were always a poor measurement of overall performance in my opinion because they can differ for everyone thanks to these variables, but there does seem to be a general trend present in spite of that.
Likewise, I have no personal incentive to be dishonest in order to appear positive (what kind of a goal is that?); this is a fun side interest for me, not a commercial enterprise. And just because I don't care to record every single interaction to back up any observation reported doesn't validate that sentiment either. Throwing accusations at people because their conclusions don't align with your experiences isn't constructive or civilized, to say the least.
well ... on my iMac G5 1.8 GHz -now running Leopard- it feels less powerful than on my PowerBook G4 15" HiRes 1.67. May be it's the graphics (FX 5200 in the G5 ... oh wait it's the same as in the PowerBook G4 12" 1.5 GHz ... vs. ATY,RV360M11 in the G4 15" HiRes) or the memory (768 MB in the iMac vs. 2 GB in the PowerBook). I doubt that the base model G5 with 1.8 GHz is less powerful than the top-of-the-line G4 1.67 GHz.
Did they update the Forums? Icons all around here now look blocky ("Like", "Quote", "Replay", Messages, Alerts), but I'm sure it did not look this way this morning/afternoon.
Did they update the Forums? Icons all around here now look blocky ("Like", "Quote", "Replay", Messages, Alerts), but I'm sure it did not look this way this morning/afternoon.
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I haven't thrown a single accusation at anyone - maybe try reading my comment again?
The person who shouldn't be lying is me - I'm reporting what I'm finding, which appears to be very different to everyone else for some reason?
And at what point did I infer it's your project?
My main concern is not starting yet another bickering match but wondering why my Powerbook and Power Mac are behaving different to everone elses machines regarding this browser.
Powerfox to Youtube produced this error window:
Powerfox to Duckduckgo produced this error window:
Duckduckgo just froze up for a good minute while trying to spit out that error message. Clicking stop script did make ddg usable after that point. I was also ultimately able to get YT to play a video after clicking stop script but it was slow getting there with pretty big waits with black vid screen of what I assume were buffering times. Once rolling however the video quality was very nice for a PPC machine.
Conversely, Invidious is working very well - very snappy and quick to play, no jitter or annoying delay.
Test machine is: a1047 dual cpu 2Ghz, 4GB pc3200 ddr, 120gb SSD Sorbet 1.5v boot drive, 128mb Radeon 9600 Powermac G5
Gotta get back at it but will play with this more.
Powerfox to Duckduckgo produced this error window:
Duckduckgo just froze up for a good minute while trying to spit out that error message. Clicking stop script did make ddg usable after that point. I was also ultimately able to get YT to play a video after clicking stop script but it was slow getting there with pretty big waits with black vid screen of what I assume were buffering times. Once rolling however the video quality was very nice for a PPC machine.
Conversely, Invidious is working very well - very snappy and quick to play, no jitter or annoying delay.
Test machine is: a1047 dual cpu 2Ghz, 4GB pc3200 ddr, 120gb SSD Sorbet 1.5v boot drive, 128mb Radeon 9600 Powermac G5
Gotta get back at it but will play with this more.
I think the biggest advantage you're getting with PowerFox on PPC is compatibility, not speed (at least not yet). It's impressive that it exists at all. As z970 shows, half of the modern internet was broken on AquaFox and that's no longer the case on PowerFox. Who cares about how fast AquaFox is if it can't even load the page to begin with?
This isn't to say AquaFox is "bad", they're just in completely separate categories. One is a legacy browser with a native JIT, hamstrung by a legacy JS subset and poor compatibility. The other is a modern web browser with a modern JS subset, currently bottlenecked by the lack of a native JIT. The JS interpreter in PowerFox and White Star is very, very slow. In my benchmark performance it is about 5x slower than Aquafox. But that's not the point.
The reason people are assessing this development on future potential as well as current progress is because having a modern UXP-based platform working on PPC to iterate on was half of the battle - there is now a clear pathway to fixing the `osx-ppc` JIT that powers TenFourFox/AquaFox - which will bring browser performance inline with AquaFox, likely better.
If you're underwhelmed by the performance of PowerFox then it's a good idea to temper your expectations and use a different browser until the day when (if) the `osx-ppc` JIT gets ported. In the meantime, it's a massive step forward for the community and enables me to do a wide range of things I previously couldn't on this device. I'm still blown away this is even a thing.
This isn't to say AquaFox is "bad", they're just in completely separate categories. One is a legacy browser with a native JIT, hamstrung by a legacy JS subset and poor compatibility. The other is a modern web browser with a modern JS subset, currently bottlenecked by the lack of a native JIT. The JS interpreter in PowerFox and White Star is very, very slow. In my benchmark performance it is about 5x slower than Aquafox. But that's not the point.
The reason people are assessing this development on future potential as well as current progress is because having a modern UXP-based platform working on PPC to iterate on was half of the battle - there is now a clear pathway to fixing the `osx-ppc` JIT that powers TenFourFox/AquaFox - which will bring browser performance inline with AquaFox, likely better.
If you're underwhelmed by the performance of PowerFox then it's a good idea to temper your expectations and use a different browser until the day when (if) the `osx-ppc` JIT gets ported. In the meantime, it's a massive step forward for the community and enables me to do a wide range of things I previously couldn't on this device. I'm still blown away this is even a thing.
It's not a case of being underwhelmed - I'm reporting my experience. The reported expectation was for a 1GHz G4 to play Youtube - my experience is a 1.5Ghz G4 can't - maybe some might say waiting 3 minutes for the video to start, then stutters throughout whilst hitting the CPU at 100% is a success - I don't.
@z970 reported his G5 is now as good as a 2006 C2D under PowerFox, whilst my G5 is absolutely trounced by my 2006 CD - and I listed why.
I seems like only favourable reports are tolerated on this thread.
What machine are you using - and GPU as this seems super relevant?