Hi I am planning on buying a new PowerMac this fall for school(Hopefully dual 970). Any way although I can't stand Windows there are a few little programs that I will need (namely Blubster) that are Windows only. I plan on having VPC so I can run those programs however I am worried about performance. I understand that its not going to be fast but I am hoping its quick enough to tolerate. I talked to a rep at CompUSA but he wasn't really sure about VPC but he said he thought it would emulate equal to a 2.0 P4 on a 1.42G4. This sounds a bit high to me. Does any one know a rough speed equivalence I could expect? Does any one have VPC 6 on a 1.42G4? If so what kind of performance are you gettting? Thanx for all your help.
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VPC 6 Performance ???
- Thread starter cocopelli
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I got VP6, Win2K SP3 running on a Dual 1.25 (FW800), with 1 GB RAM. Windows gets to use 256 MB.
The speed is VERY difficult to compare with a "real" PC, and it really depends on what you're doing with it. The grfx performance (yes, 2D also), is bad due to the fact that it uses system-RAM for grfx, and not the much faster VRAM of the grfx card.
The Windows System Information thinks it's a 666 MHz x86 family6 CPU.....
And I tend to agree with the 666 MHz performance of a P3.
So my VPC on a Dual 1.25 compares roughly to a 666 MHz P3 with an awfull grfx card.
I think a Dual 1.42 running VPC would deliver the performance of a P3 733 Mhz, also with that crap grfx card.
For office purposes it's gr8! For the small non-graphical intense Windows-only apps it's the perfect solution, but don't try to play games on it, or use Photoshop on Windows. (by the way don't do that anyway
)
The speed is VERY difficult to compare with a "real" PC, and it really depends on what you're doing with it. The grfx performance (yes, 2D also), is bad due to the fact that it uses system-RAM for grfx, and not the much faster VRAM of the grfx card.
The Windows System Information thinks it's a 666 MHz x86 family6 CPU.....
And I tend to agree with the 666 MHz performance of a P3.
So my VPC on a Dual 1.25 compares roughly to a 666 MHz P3 with an awfull grfx card.
I think a Dual 1.42 running VPC would deliver the performance of a P3 733 Mhz, also with that crap grfx card.
For office purposes it's gr8! For the small non-graphical intense Windows-only apps it's the perfect solution, but don't try to play games on it, or use Photoshop on Windows. (by the way don't do that anyway
)Thats more the performance I had thought too. P4 2.0 sounded way to high and I was like no way I wouldnt even need a PC for games. Oh well. Um one more question you mentioned the graphics card emulation was really bad. Is it possible that you could install a windows graphics card in one of your pci slots that could be used by VPC?? Thanx again for your response.
Not any more.... VPC 2 (3 also?, can't remeber) supported 3Dfx Voodoo 2 -add on PCI grfx cards. That meant that 3dfx PC games were pretty playable in thos days....
But, unfortunately, not anymore. I have even tried a Voodoo 3 PCI grfx card in a G4, but there was no way this piece of hardware was supported. Pitty. Would have been a nice option, wouldn't it: a 2nd monitor attached to the Voodoo used as a "Virtual" PC monitor.
I'm using it on a dual 800 quicksilver, like some of the earlier posts it's hard to quantify because it depends on what you are doing. However, subjectively, it is not quite as responsive as my wife's PII-366 laptop. It's not unusable, but certainly no 2.0ghz P4 either. I suspect on any dual you can buy today or in the future it would be just fine.
For curiosity's sake, I just did ran PCMark 2002, it got 1279/905/760 for CPU/Mem/HD which places it about 450mhz PII area based on browsing the online results. Not too bad. For way of comparison with newer CPUs, my PIII 1ghz laptop does 3155/2074/431 and my P4 2.26 does 5489/6032/667.
For curiosity's sake, I just did ran PCMark 2002, it got 1279/905/760 for CPU/Mem/HD which places it about 450mhz PII area based on browsing the online results. Not too bad. For way of comparison with newer CPUs, my PIII 1ghz laptop does 3155/2074/431 and my P4 2.26 does 5489/6032/667.