12-03-2005, 01:53 AM

whats the difference? ive been wondering because most macs, aside from the power macs, processor speeds are barely over 2ghz while alot of pc processors are 3 or 4 ghz. do the macs and pcs have different ratings for their processors or what.

thanx

12-03-2005, 01:58 AM

Yes they do - but from next year onwards they'll use the same chips as everyone else...

12-03-2005, 02:00 AM

so a 2ghz mac processor would be equivelent to what speed pc processor?

12-03-2005, 02:29 AM

Yes, due to the architecture used inside the chip, the actual performance may differ from a competing manufacturer's chip with the same clock speed.
This is why AMD stopped marketing based on these clock speeds. They are now referred to as 1000,2000, etc...

As for your question:

Originally Posted by j-swoll

so a 2ghz mac processor would be equivelent to what speed pc processor?

One would have to know what "pc" processor you're talking about. IBM makes Apple's processors (PowerPC), and are generally comparable to "faster" processors made by Intel. So, to humor your question I would say a 2Ghz PowerPC G5 would be comparable to an AMD Athlon64 4000, or an Intel Pentium 4 HT running at 2.7Ghz. I don't know much about these processors (which is why I'm on a MAC forum), but the stats are comparable.

Hope that answers your question. :mac:

12-03-2005, 07:28 AM

I'm sure a quick search will avail some great posts about this.

Please don't compare apples and oranges -- they don't have many similarities :flower:

Something I wrote a little while ago:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/sho...454#post164454

Vicky

12-03-2005, 08:57 AM

Actually Motorola Makes the G Proccessor. You can search on Yahoo.com for APPLE news, and you will read up on alot of different articles on it. I never knew Motorola made the processors, but i just learned it. Cool stuff!

12-03-2005, 09:35 AM

Well, Motorola made the m68k series for the original 68k Macintoshes, better the devil you know etc! e.g.:

Macintosh 128K/Plus etc: 68000
Macintosh II/LC etc: 68020
Macintosh IIfx/Colour Classic etc.: 68030
Macintosh Quadra/Centris series: 68040 (some were 68LC040 - sans FPU models)

No Mac used the 68060. In fact the only computer that used the 68060 that also used the 68k series was the Commodore Amiga. For a while (say till mid 1996) it was actually faster to have a 66MHz 68060 Amiga emulating a Macintosh than having a PPC Macintosh!! (I'm not kidding, the 68060 was superscalar and didn't have the overhead of emulating the 68k that PPC did).

Anyway...

Then came the Apple, Motorola and IBM alliance to produce the PowerPC. The result was the 601. This, with the 603(e), 604(e), G3 (750 series) and G4 (7400 series) was produced by Motorola.

In 1995/1996 an attempt was made to develop something calle the CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform), which was an attempt to standardise the PPC architecture, the main resulf of this was the Tanzania platform which many Mac clones used. However CHRP failed, meaning manufacturers such as PIOS and BeBox cancelled their hardware projects. CHRP wasn't just for Macs of course, it was intended for other platforms such as PPC Linux and even the venerable Amiga.

Motorola failed in producing its planned G5 which is when Apple handed the baton to IBM to develop it. The G5 is a bit different from the previous PowerPC chips and has its roots in the POWER-4 processor.

Motorola spun off its semiconductor division and is now called Freescale.

So the Mac has a history of using Motorola chips, one of the big three (potentially four) in the early days: Intel, MOS and Motorola and the 4th at a pinch being Zilog in terms of personal computer processors.

So there you go - some more history

12-03-2005, 10:20 AM

The average Turion/Pentium-M/Celeron-M only runs around 1.3Ghz-1.6Ghz, same clock speed range that that the mobile G4 processors are running.

Even the high end AMD processors barely run over 2Ghz.

I have never seen a 4ghz processor.

12-03-2005, 11:06 AM

In short, it's not the clock speed, it's what you do with it!

I'd rather have mmy two 2.3 Ghz PPCs than any other processor on the market right now, (with the exception of the faster and dual-core G5s) but that's just me.