I was wondering if the new G4 500 is
really faster than the Athlon Processor? Specifically the 700-800 MHz
Athlons.
I have read where the G4 is a 128-bit processor instead of 32 or 64
like Intel and AMD. Based on true speed MHz for MHz, which rates faster?
And by how much of a percent over the other? And what machine layouts were
used to test for speed?
Direct cross-platform tests pitting a
G4-500MHz against an Athlon-800MHz are
difficult to find at this time, given the newness of both these
processors. However, some useful results showing the differences between
various G4's and some G3's, Pentiums,
and Athlons--along with the test system
configurations--can be found at MacSpeedZone as linked to
our Benchmarks page. The G4 scores
listed at our CPU Comparator are based, in
part, on these tests.
The CPU Comparator shows that, in
general, the G4-500 performs similarly to an Athlon-700.
At 800MHz, AMD's Athlon is roughly 10%
faster.
Regarding the 32-/64-/128-bit question, technically the G4
uses all three data sizes. Integer calculations are conducted in 32-bit
"words", floating-point operations use 64-bit registers, and the
AltiVec (Velocity Engine) multimedia component eats 128-bit data chunks. A
good discussion of this issue can be found at the MacKiDo
site.
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