[luau] Re: PPC vs. x86

[Eric Jeschke]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2002 Jimen Ching <jching at flex.com> wrote:

| Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 18:32:20 -1000 (HST)
| From: Jimen Ching <jching at flex.com>
| Subject: Re: [luau] Re: PPC vs. X86
| ...
| You must mean the benchmarks found here:
| 
| 	http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/apple.html

Actually, the article I read is linked off of the site you listed
(thanks for the tip):

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/11_nov/reviews/cw_macvspciii.htm

It's a digital video editing site that pitted a dual 1.25GHz PPC against
a 3GHz P4 single-CPU system.  The tests are not comprehensive, but
specific to the multimedia tasks of compression/decompression,
encoding/decoding, compositing, filters, etc.  To be sure, there are
probably some other architectural issues that impact the results, but
these are processor intensive tasks.

| ...
| Can you elaborate on your experience?  The problem with personal
| experience is that everyone has their own.  So one has to understand how
| similar the usage patterns are before making conclusions about
| experience.

I can't tell you much more than I have.  Don't get me wrong: I think the
PPC is a great architecture, and definitely superior to the P4
architecture.   For a laptop, it made sense.  If you have to run Mac
software it makes sense.  If you need a Mac desktop it makes sense.
I just don't think it makes sense if you want to run Linux (desktop or
server) and get the best performance, price and flexibility.  The P4 and
AMD chips are better in this regard on all counts.

I have to say that, like Warren, I'm very excited to see Opteron and
Athlon 64 coming along.  AMD had a great ride with the Athlons and if
they play their cards right again Intel will have a real competitor.