The G4- Gigaflop or Mega-Bite
Written: Oct 03 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, sexy, efficient
Cons: Poor graphics acceleration, slow in terms of MHz
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| Eimaj's Full Review: Apple Power Macintosh G4 Multimedia |
First things first- I would ask that all readers keep in mind that I am trying to take an objective point of view- I am an Apple loyalist, but I also feel that Apple could be doing some things much better than they currently are.
Let me introduce the G4 chip also, before I begin my substantial opinion, so that everyone will have a better idea of what I am talking about-
The G4 is Apple's newest chip (new being relative- the chip was introduced to the public last september at the Seybold developers conference). In addition to featuring an overall performance increase of about 40% from the G3, the G4 features something called an AltiVec unit, otherwise known as the Velocity Engine.
What AltiVec does is handle all sorts of different calculations, for example, applying textures or lighting, or rendering something in 3D, so that the processor is free to do other tasks. What makes the G4 so special is that AltiVec can processor up to 2 Gigaflops (2 billion floating point calculations per /second/- it can do these 2 billion floating point calculations before the light from the monitor touches your face.). Being as Supercomputers are classified as any computer which can processor a gigaflop or better of information, AltiVec qualifies the G4 as an honest-to-god (forgive the religious idiom here, but I couldn't think of much else to use) supercomputer.
Now that I have the actual details of the G4 down, let me talk more about the processor in general, and how it relates to other processors, specifically the K7 Athalon by AMD and the Pentium III by Intel.
I know this next statement may incite some flames- but keep in mind, I am trying to be objective, and as far as I know, and I have researched, this is completely true- Megahertz (MHz) for MHz, the G4 is faster than the K7 and the Pentium III. What this means is that a 500MHz G4 is faster than a 500MHz K7 or a 500MHz Pentium III.
Well, that's all very well and nice, but with today's PC processors pushing the Gigahertz (GHz) envelope, how does the G4 compare in real world tests?
Because the G4 has been "frozen" at 500MHz for a year now (I'll not get into that now- I could write an entire essay on Motorola, the damned company, and the choice Apple made when it went with a G4.. But I digress) , it has started to lag behind its competition.
However, considering that it is only half the speed in terms of MHz of both of it's opponents, the G4 still does perform well, especially in tasks which require Altivec to run. I'd like to now look more at how the G4 performs certain specific tasks compared to how its PC competitors perform them, and what factors are accountable for these differences.
Graphics Applications (Photoshop, ImageReady, AfterEffects, and other Adobe products) - Not suprisingly, the area in which the G4 stands out most is in the category which requires the most rendering and applications of textures and lighting- the graphics applications. In a certain test done in Adobe Photoshop on a 400MHz G4, a 800MHz Athalon 800, and a Dell Dual Pentium (III) 600MHz, the G4 finished in 20.8 seconds, the Athalon finished in 19.5 seconds, and the Dual Dell Pentium III finished in 16.5 seconds. Sure- the G4 is at the end of the line- but it's also half as fast in terms of MHz as the Athalon, and it doesn't sport the dual processors that the Pentium III has. Pretty impressive!
Games (Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament)- Both games at 1024x768 with high resolution on, in terms of frames displayed per second (fps):
Quake 3 Arena- G4 400MHz @ 35.8fps, Athalon 800MHz @ 36fps
Unreal Tournament - G4 400MHz @ 36.0fps, Athalon 800MHz @ 46.6fps
Why might the G4 have run so fast in Quake 3 compared to the athalon, but lagged behind by 10fps in Unreal Tournament? Quake 3 is optimized to make use of OpenGL, which in turn is optimized to make use of Altivec. Unreal Tournament, on the other hand, in addition to be very sloppily ported to the mac from the PC, Unreal Tournament makes much less utilization of OpenGL and altivec than Quake 3 does.
So, I've displayed the real life statistics out, now to make sense of them-is the G4 worth buying?
If you like macs, definately. If you stick a good graphics card inside a G4 (450MHz-500MHz, see my review of the ATI Radeon Mac Edition for a good graphics card ;) you're going to command respectable frame rates in games, as well as keeping pace in graphics applications.
However, if you have no preference, my best advice would be to go with a PC. The price to performance ratio is simply, at the moment, much better on the PC end than it is on the mac end.
So let me restate that- What would my best advice be? Wait a little while. Apple will come out with a faster G4, and the G4 is a great chip, as I have already shown, MHz for MHz faster than the Athalon or the PIII.
If you like PCs, maybe you want to give the G4 a spin at your local computer dealer.
Hey, you never know.
Oh, one more thing- my personal preference? I love my G4. I wouldn't trade it for anything... well, anything except a faster G4!
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 2800
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: 401-500
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
Eimaj
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Member: Jamie Bartels
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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