Why relatively slow on Apple G4?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg25479] Why relatively slow on Apple G4?
- From: Tom Burton <tburton at cts.com>
- Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 22:26:57 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Brahea Consulting
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
I'm a long-time but not-entirely-satisfied PC user. For several years, I glanced occasionally at "Karl's Mathematica Page", currently http://fampm201.tu-graz.ac.at/karl/mma.html and noted that the Power Macintosh was nearly as fast as or faster than the fastest PC. But the Mac OS kept me away. With the public beta of Mac OSX looking good so far, I am fixing to switch from PC to Mac. But now I see on Karl's page and others, accessible from http://smc.vnet.net/mathbench.html that the G4/500, the fastest available Power Mac, is way down the list. Indeed, it appears that the Mac is slower than the 1000MHz PC by approximately the ratio of the nominal clock speeds (1000/450). In other words, the advantage of Mac/Motorola's RISC architecture seems to have disappeared. What happened? Or is Mac's past speed superiority a figment of my imagination? Tom