OSX and a 1.4Ghz G4 processor with a gig of ram I am curious is comparable to what speed of processor running XP I know this is an odd way of looking at it but I am surprised the mac minis are 1.2 and 1.4 I figured they would have been 2Ghz at least. So yeah I'm just curious with the way the G4 handels things if it feels faster or what it would feel like on coming from the other side.
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1.4Ghz G4 vs. 1.4Ghz Intel or AMD
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Black Morty Rackham
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The G4 is definitely "fast enough" for standard desktop usage. 
For some things, a 1.4GHz G4 is about as fast as a 3.5GHz P4. For some things, it's slower than a crummy old Celeron. So the question is, what do you want to run?
For some things, a 1.4GHz G4 is about as fast as a 3.5GHz P4. For some things, it's slower than a crummy old Celeron. So the question is, what do you want to run?
Black Morty Rackham
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Glow said:
I saw some decryption benchmark where a single 1GHz G4 got 14 (million/thousand/whatever) keys/second. A 3.2GHz Northwood got about 5. Benchmarking is tricky stuff!
G4's kill P4s/AMDs clock for clock in everything. Except for maybe gaming.
I agree with the person who said a 1.4ghz G4 is about equal to a 2.4ghz P4 for desktop performance.
Gaming performance however, it's probably equal to a 1.8ghz P4 or so, not very good in the gaming department at all.
I agree with the person who said a 1.4ghz G4 is about equal to a 2.4ghz P4 for desktop performance.
Gaming performance however, it's probably equal to a 1.8ghz P4 or so, not very good in the gaming department at all.
If its coded for PPC, you won't notice much speed difference between say a 2.4P4 and a 1.4G4. My 1.2 feels like a 2.0 AthlonXP. Keep in mind though that apps for x86 usually take advantage of SSE type enhanced instruction sets (like Altivec on a G4). Something like VirtualPC that is emulating x86 is dog slow though (x86 isn't as efficient as PPC), on my 1.2, XP in VPC7 only says its 294MHz, ug.. (though not an exact speed comparison, but if feels like it).
Then again, this is all up to personal preference...
Then again, this is all up to personal preference...
Methodical
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Black Morty Rackham said:I saw some decryption benchmark where a single 1GHz G4 got 14 (million/thousand/whatever) keys/second. A 3.2GHz Northwood got about 5. Benchmarking is tricky stuff!
thats RC5 cracking at distributed.net
the PPC speeds are absolutely insane compared to x86 or any other architecture.
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Mojo said:
too bad an Opteron 140 would rape a 1.4GHz
G5's are not on par clock for clock with the recent cpu's. AMD's k8's are proving to be simply...better.
but a g4 is much better then a k7 or netburst at the same speed. those are the bottom bin crap cpu's made soley for the purpose of dell
Black Morty Rackham
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Oh yeah, that's it!Methodical said:
In quite a few of the benchies I've seen, the G5 is fairly equal, clock for clock, with the Opteron.
gigglebyte
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on the server side....just imagine a cluster of mini's...now that would be fun!
Yeah, (i haven't seen one in person but) the photos that i've seen on http://www.apple.com/ are pretty friggin' amazing.dariob said:
Does Mac OS X Server have all the stuff that's in the standard release? Is it any more efficient at any particular things than OS X 10.3 is? I'm just kinda curious about it in general.
University of Pittsburgh
Apple Technology Streamlines Computing
When Dr. Barmada first wrote his grant proposal to the NIH, he proposed a Linux cluster with 200 processors, 300GB of disk storage and installations services. What I got from Apple was 250 processors, 2 ½ terabytes of Xserve RAID disk space almost ten times the storage plus installation and configuration, which wasnt even in the original quote, he says.
Xserve cluser
Productivity Times Five
With the Xserve G5s and Xserve RAID, Dr. Barmada can support the day-to-day demands of more than 30 professors and research teams involved in more than 120 complex research projects.
With the Linux cluster we could run 48 jobs with 48 processors, he says. With the Xserve cluster we can get five times as much done. I was able to give the Apple cluster 750 jobs and run those for a day without any problems. And it can take a lot more work than were giving it.
Here's the full page
Video of Macs and Science
More there if you want to root around.
Apple Technology Streamlines Computing
When Dr. Barmada first wrote his grant proposal to the NIH, he proposed a Linux cluster with 200 processors, 300GB of disk storage and installations services. What I got from Apple was 250 processors, 2 ½ terabytes of Xserve RAID disk space almost ten times the storage plus installation and configuration, which wasnt even in the original quote, he says.
Xserve cluser
Productivity Times Five
With the Xserve G5s and Xserve RAID, Dr. Barmada can support the day-to-day demands of more than 30 professors and research teams involved in more than 120 complex research projects.
With the Linux cluster we could run 48 jobs with 48 processors, he says. With the Xserve cluster we can get five times as much done. I was able to give the Apple cluster 750 jobs and run those for a day without any problems. And it can take a lot more work than were giving it.
Here's the full page
Video of Macs and Science
More there if you want to root around.
when I briefly ran a 1.4ghz G4 upgrade CPU in my Sawtooth Mac (SDRAM PC100 memory, as opposed to the mini's faster DDR RAM) - the machine was just as fast in Photoshop as an Athlon XP Barton running at 2.4 ghz. It was maybe 1 second behind if that, in most of my testing results. So yes the CPu is definitely powerful enough. The one thign you want to be sure of doing if you buy a Mac mini is get at LEAST 512megs of ram.Glow said:
As some others have said, OSX Server is basically OSX with a bunch of server goodies.DatHak512 said:
It is not more efficient than user, nor is it worse than user.
I use server as my desktop, but I don't recommend it for a standard user. I don't recommend it because you have to deal with a lot more crap to get things working correctly. And if you mess something simple like DNS up, everything quickly goes to hell in a hand basket.
I play games (World of Warcraft, UT2k4 which plays like shit with a R9.6k, etc), but I also use the OpenDirectory services.
Also, today at work someone found a G4 xServe sitting in a closet (Not a networking closet, a storage closet... what the hell?) which I am going to get to play with
Hah, oh man that's awesome. As i've said before... that thing is simply awesome. (You should run folding at home on thatsigmend said:As some others have said, OSX Server is basically OSX with a bunch of server goodies.
It is not more efficient than user, nor is it worse than user.
I use server as my desktop, but I don't recommend it for a standard user. I don't recommend it because you have to deal with a lot more crap to get things working correctly. And if you mess something simple like DNS up, everything quickly goes to hell in a hand basket.
I play games (World of Warcraft, UT2k4 which plays like shit with a R9.6k, etc), but I also use the OpenDirectory services.
Also, today at work someone found a G4 xServe sitting in a closet (Not a networking closet, a storage closet... what the hell?) which I am going to get to play with
.) I gotcha, yeah i think i would run it only just because i'm curious how it works, not to really get any benifits from it. But it's not gonna happen, since i don't have the $. Thanks for the info, though.i dont think you have to deal with a lot of crap. i was in charge of turning a g5 into a web/streaming quicktime server with zero instruction. i had the thing up and running, from a fresh install in like 30 minutes. running dns, dhcp, nat, web, quicktime streaming, and other services. the only thing that gave me issues was the firewall, and that is ONLY cause i didnt bother reading the instructions NOR had i ever set up a firewall more complex than zone alarm. after doing a little reasearch, i was able to enable the firewall to pass the ports through for msn and the likes. yes, i had to make ports open for msn and other chat clients....dont ask. it was rather easy for a nobody like me. i agree though i wouldnt reccomend using it for a desktop, but if you got the urge, it wont be that bad.sigmend said:As some others have said, OSX Server is basically OSX with a bunch of server goodies.
It is not more efficient than user, nor is it worse than user.
I use server as my desktop, but I don't recommend it for a standard user. I don't recommend it because you have to deal with a lot more crap to get things working correctly. And if you mess something simple like DNS up, everything quickly goes to hell in a hand basket.
I play games (World of Warcraft, UT2k4 which plays like shit with a R9.6k, etc), but I also use the OpenDirectory services.
Also, today at work someone found a G4 xServe sitting in a closet (Not a networking closet, a storage closet... what the hell?) which I am going to get to play with
Murali said:
I pasted this list from a post @ Ars.
3132 processors - US Army's "MACH 5" used by the Army and NASA for hypersonic flight research
2200 processors - VA Tech's "System X" aka "Big Mac" used for academic research
1280 processors - U. of Illinois' "Turing Cluster" used for a range of academic research and replacing a Dell/HP Linux cluster
1344 processors - French CGG cluster for oil prospecting
512 processors - U. Maine's "Baby MACH 5" used for development MACH 5
322 processors - Glotzer group U. Mich soft matter simulation
256 processors - UCLA's "Dawson" used for plasma physics research
250 processors - U. Pitt's Human Genetics cluster
200 processors - GeoCenter cluster used for seismic data processing
86 processors - UNC's cluster used for proteomics research
76 processors - UC Davis's cluster used for Genome Center research
72 processors - UC Santa Cruz's cluster used for a range of academic research
66 processors - OSC-Springfield bioinformatics
52 processors - Univ Hamburg used for astrophysics research
48 processors - Louisiana State's "Nemeaux" with Xgrid, used for 3D animation, audio, and scientific computing
42 processors - Xblast TAMU bioinformatics
32 processors - Australian Defence Force's "Checkmate" used for command and control simulations
24 processors - Stanford/SLAC department: Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics
16 processors - Terrasoftsolutions running Linux, available online for testing
16 processors - Hamilton College biocluster
2200 processors - VA Tech's "System X" aka "Big Mac" used for academic research
1280 processors - U. of Illinois' "Turing Cluster" used for a range of academic research and replacing a Dell/HP Linux cluster
1344 processors - French CGG cluster for oil prospecting
512 processors - U. Maine's "Baby MACH 5" used for development MACH 5
322 processors - Glotzer group U. Mich soft matter simulation
256 processors - UCLA's "Dawson" used for plasma physics research
250 processors - U. Pitt's Human Genetics cluster
200 processors - GeoCenter cluster used for seismic data processing
86 processors - UNC's cluster used for proteomics research
76 processors - UC Davis's cluster used for Genome Center research
72 processors - UC Santa Cruz's cluster used for a range of academic research
66 processors - OSC-Springfield bioinformatics
52 processors - Univ Hamburg used for astrophysics research
48 processors - Louisiana State's "Nemeaux" with Xgrid, used for 3D animation, audio, and scientific computing
42 processors - Xblast TAMU bioinformatics
32 processors - Australian Defence Force's "Checkmate" used for command and control simulations
24 processors - Stanford/SLAC department: Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics
16 processors - Terrasoftsolutions running Linux, available online for testing
16 processors - Hamilton College biocluster
We just had an Xserve and XserveRAID installed in our school here in Moscow, it took over older dual 2.4ghz Xeon which was responsible for internet. Now it's running apache server and handling most of the data storage. Things couldn't be faster. Apple really needs some killer marketing e.g. ipod scale to bring up their professional applications.Murali said: