AppleInsider is reporting that Intel powered Macintosh computers, recently deployed to a select few developers, are noticeably faster than the current Motorola/IBM powered variety. The developers received an interesting set of hardware over what one would expect to see in a future Macintel. Kits included a single core Pentium 4 3.6 GHz processor mated to 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a proprietary Intel 900 series graphics chipset.
"It's fast," said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel's Pentium processors. "Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5." In addition to booting Windows XP at blazing speeds, the included version of Mac OS X for Intel takes "as little as 10 seconds" to boot to the Desktop from when the Apple logo first displays on screen.
Developers have also commented that web page rendering and browser load times are significantly improved. Macintels are expected to hit store shelves sometime around the middle of next year.
View: AppleInsider
"It's fast," said one developer source of Mac OS X running on Intel's Pentium processors. "Faster than [Mac OS X] on my Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5." In addition to booting Windows XP at blazing speeds, the included version of Mac OS X for Intel takes "as little as 10 seconds" to boot to the Desktop from when the Apple logo first displays on screen.
Developers have also commented that web page rendering and browser load times are significantly improved. Macintels are expected to hit store shelves sometime around the middle of next year.
Thanks to Radish™ for his Back Page News Submission

just a shame it takes 2 minites for the apple logo to appear. :-)
Something like, how fast it was able to encode MPEG4 or something would be more informative for me.
Of course, I also noticed this is still based on "appearance", so it may be just pseudo-speed.
yeah.. exactly... apple loves to bull**** with people... heh
i'll never believe then again
i'll never believe then again
and MS, and Intel, and Nvidia doesn't lie either?
ppl that believes, when a company says that their product is better than the one the competition has are really stupid or really young
There has never been a time when the top-of-the-line PowerPC Mac was faster than a comparably priced PC. Ever.
The apps in the benchmarks were very much memory and FSB bound.
@threedaysdown: You are wrong. In the G3/PII era, the Intel chips were behind on performance "and" clockspeed.
ppl that believes, when a company says that their product is better than the one the competition has are really stupid or really young
I agree, anyone can say there product is better than any body elses, just like the Tesco's supermarket online price check against asda and the likes
You're kidding, right? The PowerPC 970 is no match for even the P4/Xeon, let alone the Athlon 64/Opteron.
According to Apple? Sure.
According to anyone else? No.
For example: http://macspeedzone.com/archive/4.0/WinvsMacSPECint.html
The G3 and P2 were about neck-and-neck in SPEC benches, given an equal clock speed. However, P2 chips were available at higher clockspeeds than G3's of the same time period, and for a significantly lower price.
Can an editor change that to IBM. Yes Motorala (Freescale) does develop PowerPC chips but the current fastest PowerPC chips are made by IBM and that is what they are comparing to.
Thanks
Right?
I mean boot time was the only thing really specific there, oh and displaying a browser window. I mean “web page rendering and browser load times are significantly improved.” OMFG ditch those PowerPC’s right now cos your webpages load faster with the Mactel!!! Just maybe as Apple went from PPC > x86 they have been improving the code too? i.e. not all speed increases/like boot times are down to the single miricle Intel P4 CPU
No I just think that ill wait for some proper comparisons, with stuff to back it up.
BPN link
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=343930&st=0
What im saying is that i would prefer to see some actual comparisons, with benchmarks included. Not just "its faster" before i jump on the "OMFG MacTels are going to 0wn j00 bandwaggon"
Otherwise it would be extremely hard to believe that somehow code running on OSX, compiled in GCC 4.0 for Intel has suddenly opened up a lead where a single Pentium 4 is running quicker than a Dual G5. Every single benchmark in the last few years has indicated you need a Dual Opteron or Xeon to get close to the G5 PowerMacs. And that's usually in benchmark wars with Windows where the MS and Intel compiler is a lot more efficient than GCC.
Not my quote, from macrumours.com but i agree with this. I dont believe in Magic. ^_^
I guess you missed the part of Steve Jobs' keynote where he mentioned that OS X has always (from the start!) been running on both platforms. OS X is really an updated version of NeXTStep/OpenStep, which was running on X86 LONG before it was running on PowerPC.
I'm just askin', cuz, you know. Indignation is always fun.
Humble pie, anyone?
Here's an Apple developer, who I'm sure is used to working with Apples day in and day out, saying that the latest Apple out there feels slower than the Intel machine.
Someone on this thread is arguing that "feeling" doesn't count. They should have benchmarks and so forth. Actually, if this same experience is shared by users, that it feels faster, it'll mean more than any benchmark. In fact, Apple fanatics have argued that Aqua just "feels" better than Windows, even if they both get the same result.
The comparison between machines is not equal clockrates between machines or equeal memory speeds, etc. It's simply Hte bst Apple has to offer vs. the best Intel has to offer for Macs. Are they evenly matched? Of course not! That's why Apple "switched".
That reminds me. Someone should make one of those "Switched" commercial with Jobs.
but you spend all the £££ to buy a Mac and then you put XP on it, discusting.
very poor move by Apple. hardware's all they have. not that it's good hardware, but they sure have one hell of a marketing team. first convincing the masses that a single-button mouse is all you need, and then convincing them 64-bit is what makes their CPU DOUBLE the speed of the competition and also the fastest personal computer on Earth (and probably the Solar System, unless the folks on Pluto are running 128-bit CPUs). didn't they claim they invented 64-bit computing, or is their marketing campaign poisoning my brain?
i. hate. apple.
No need to bitch about them. if your gna post something, post something worth reading.
you get the point...
now i have a question:
could upgrade your CPU?, because that could be a good thing in regards of cut some expenses at the time of upgrading since normaly Mac users can upgrade everything except CPU right?
or will Apple have control over the processors too?
could upgrade your CPU?, because that could be a good thing in regards of cut some expenses at the time of upgrading since normaly Mac users can upgrade everything except CPU right?
or will Apple have control over the processors too?
if Apple are locking down OSX to certain hardware, then you may only be able to get that "certain hardware" from apple..
Also, MS fanboys, why would MS be switching to a PPC chip in the new XBOX if it were slower than an X86 chip.
(edited for clarity and accuracy be me, thx. for the clarification)
Last edited by 36080 on 15 Jul 2005 - 13:55
The VT supercomputer runs OS X, not Linux.
It's quite irrelevant, really. All you Mac kiddies that are throwing around the "fanboy" comments in regard to Intel, Microsoft...where will that get you? Exactly nowhere. You proclaiming your blind faith to an architecture that will be, for most intents and purposes, DEAD ON THE DESKTOP in two to three years only shows how truely sad you are.
You will buy new Apple computers, they will have Intel processors inside them, and neither the system nor you will be any more "special" than they were already. Unless you mean special as in "short bus".
2) Microsoft DID NOT get IBM to make the CPU for the XBox 360. Microsoft Licensed the technology from IBM and CREATED THEIR OWN Version with work from NEC and the Microsoft CPU Team created for the endeavor. IBM didn't MAKE this CPU, nor does IBM own it, that is Why Microsoft can have it made anywhere and even sell the rights to the CPU if they like for XBox 360 clones.
OS X *is* a really slow and clunky OS, from the technological point of view.
From the programmatical point of view, Apple compiles OS X apps with -Os instead of O/2/3 (4/5 with the Apple GCC fork, I believe). This makes OS X binaries optimised for size rather than speed. So they spent more effort in removing the bloat than optimizing "teh snappy feel™". However, some people will of course argue that compiling with -Os does some magic regarding inline/unrolling of functions hence, it boosts performance in some areas. (I do agree to a point -- compiling a linux kernel with -Os can lead to a measurable performance increase. By measurable, I mean around 5-7% i think that was the number, not the 0.05% you get from adding --funroll-loops, rebuilding your whole gentoo system and prelinking).
Second point... I am probably not making a breaking news statement here, but the Mach Microkernel blows. Microkernels are fun as student project, when there is no viable SMP stacks whatsoever, but in this day and age... urgh. (because, as you know, OS X is basically a glorified NeXTStep with BSD flavor at its core.)
I have been running Linux on my G3 iBook for a while (had to drop it though, crappy battery support, sleep would only seldom resume and it gave me a headache) and it was really blazing fast, to my surprise.
What I would like to see would be a *real* benchmark with, say, three gentoo systems, compiled in the most similar way.
x86 AMD against x86 intel against PPC G5.
Now *that* would be fair.
Don't associate old and slow, please. My folks' 350 beats the crap out of my neighbor's AthlonXP 2800+.
Two boxes, and you don't know which processor you are using. Then tell us which one "feels" faster.
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