Report: Intel Macs Significantly Slower

By Ed Oswald | Published June 8, 2005, 12:50 PM

Developers at the 2005 Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco have submitted benchmark reports of programs running under Rosetta -- the emulation layer that will help smooth the transition between PowerPC and Intel -- and early results show that quite a bit of work is still needed to bring the software up to speed.

At his keynote Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs demoed Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop running under Rosetta. To make it work, the program converts PowerPC to Intel code as needed in the background. Jobs says on faster systems, the user will barely notice a difference in performance.

With Xbench, the systems score a 65 or 70, according to Think Secret. This is significantly lower than the 200 the fastest PowerMac G5's score. In thread tests, a dual-2.5 GHz G5 scored much higher than the Intel, a 225 compared to an 82. However, in a computational thread test, the Intel faired much better -- scoring a 110 compared to the PowerPC's 140.

With memory, the Intel actually bested the G5 with a score of 351 to 319, however overall again the Intel Mac faired poorly, scoring a 214 to the G5's 378.

One area where the Intel Mac did fair better were in graphics tests, where the Intel-based Mac either match or bested the G5 in all tests. However, it was unknown as to what graphics card was powering the Intel version.

While the Intel-based Macs are slow now, Apple and Transitive -- the company behind Rosetta -- have a year to iron out any bugs and work on performance issues. It is also expected that most major software developers, such as Microsoft and Adobe, will have universal binaries with native Intel code available by the time the first Intel Macs roll off production lines.

All Intel Macs tested were running Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B1025.

Comments

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"How about reading the whole piece beyond the headline."

How about you read my whole post? It's only a few lines. I mention, IN MY POST, that the piece mentions two different system conditions. The problem with 'writers' like this is that they give people the wrong opinion really easily, intentionally or unintentionally.

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Unless you plan to revolutionize the entire journalism industry, your words are falling on deaf ears. Everyone knows that you have to use a headline that will catch attention in order to get people to read the article. In all actuality, the headline sums up the article extremely well.

It's only the ignorant retards that don't read on that will be mis-informed because they won't know there's more to the story. That is not the writer's fault. So read the whole article (like you did), and stop whining.

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My INtel 3.6 chip(with windows XP SP2) walks all over the highest powered Apple(OS 10.3). PC cost $2000 Apple $3500.
A 8hour video compiled on PC took about 16hrs. Apple took 24hrs. My PC was cheaper and faster

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Now that OSx is using pentiums, imagine it being faster than 16 hours with better software :-)

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That is only half true. Apples will be cheaper, but I still find Windows XP to be far better the OS X. OSX looks like a fisherprice toy. At least I can take off my fisher price style with XP.

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Apple says directly in their Universal Binary Programming Guidelines PDF available on their developer site: "Applications that run translated will never run as fast as they run as a native
binary."

Code running emulated on a different architecture on which the original architecture is difficult to emulate (ask the countless commercial vendors who have failed to deliver a PPC emulator, or the PearPC team) runs slower than on the original architecture, especially when you compare dual processors to a single processor. News at 11.

(Unless you're Apple and you're moving from 68k to PPC, in which case some emulated apps could run *faster* ... so maybe this will improve, but it's a difficult task. Besides, the point is to run NATIVE code on these processors. They didn't switch so vendors would keep churning out PPC-only code for these new Macs...)

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I don't see how we can benchmark anything at this point. There is no proof showing that Apple is gonna drop in a normal intel chip in the machines. It's very likely Apple will request specific features. Multicore would be a obvious selection not to mention Apples love for duel chips. So lets not benchmark anything till we see a system on the shelves.

And let's think of something more important. Once we have Apple and Windows pc's with the same or similar hardware it will be interesting to see which OS is more powerfull. We all know it will be APPLE. But this make be the kick in the a** of the redmond giant. This may be Apple's revenge. Years ago the lost the big game to Gates. Maybe now the truth will send Gates packing.

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well, one problem with this thing is the fact that MacOSX intel will only work on Mac machines, they've made it very clear that they are not going to allow OSX to run on clones / non-Mac machines.

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Not only that, you are comparing a Single 32 bit Pentium 3.6Ghz Processor to a DUAL 64bit 2.5Ghz Processor. SO, half that score, and you have a closer and more real idea how fast it is. And if they were running on OSX x86 version, im sure its still in beta form meaning its not quiet ready. And im sure after Apple does a final release of osx x86 it will have a major speed increase because Apple tries to get every little ounce of speed it can all the time out of its OS.

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Right. I think we'll see a lot more even scores when the 64bit and dual-core Intel processors are used and the software is more fine-tuned to those processors.

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This maybe a stupid comment but given Apples love of dual processors. Wouldn't it just be insane if the used dual dual core processors. I doubt that would happen though because not only would they have to make Mac OS run on dual intels but also dual cores. The intel would have to make a special chipset. All that would probly drive up the price of Mac computers.

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I do not doubt intel will be makinga special chipset for them anyway, so this shouldn't be an issue...and one way to make the baseline Mac faster than the baseline dell.

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Intel doesn't have any multi cpu chipsets on the market today?

*snicker*

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OK let me clarify. I meant a proprietary chipset (so quit your snickering idiot). They may do it but I highly doubt Apple will use pure x86.

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awww did I hurt your feelings?

idiot? I'm not the one pretending to be a leet hacker from an 80s movie. :-P

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"Report: Intel Macs Significantly Slower"

Sensational reporting? In your own cut and paste piece you mention that they are comparing apples to oranges.

Good journalism: Rosetta Significantly Slower
Bad journalism: this.

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How about reading the whole piece beyond the headline. This specifically states it's talking about Rosetta. And numerous applications will run under Rosetta when the platform launches - that's why it's being used in the first place. The piece also points out there's still time:

"Early results show that quite a bit of work is still needed to bring the software up to speed...While the Intel-based Macs are slow now, Apple and Transitive -- the company behind Rosetta -- have a year to iron out any bugs and work on performance issues."

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Haters are just annoying. Don't like it? Go some place else.

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Agreed (but I'd have probably toned it down abit). Whilst it wasn't a bad article, the title was a bit misleading.

Other than that, the only thing i think is wrong with this is that it doesn't give a comparison of a universal binary. Because in the end, the whole idea of this year's extra development period is to allow a user of the new intel macs to only run the software on rosetta that they _have_ to.

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Benchmarking an emulation, lovely...

This is like benchmarking Photoshop using a Mac, then comparing it to that same Mac running VirtalPC with Windows XP installed running Photoshop and saying how the Windows XP Photoshop is slower than the Mac.

These same people probobly complained that PearPC was too slow compared to a real Mac.

If only everybody understood how much a feat Rosetta, XCode, and PearPC are and that its practically a miracle they work to begin with.

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Geniuses, all of them. Thanks for telling us that a program written for native PPC performs faster on that then on top of an emulation layer for a completely different processor.

Next breaking news story?.... Earth is Round !!!!

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Boy you're not kidding grassy. What the heck.

Uh.........Yeah......OK.

Any retard could have told them that. Wonder why they had to do benchmarks to figure it out? Freaking paper pushing suits.

**Eyes Rolling**
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The point is, the benchmarks show exactly how much slower it is. I don't think anyone is surprised by this info, but it's nice to have the specs for a point of reference.

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It is not slower, they ran native PPC programs, (Word 2004) that are NOT complided for the x86 yet. The fact that Apple has a emulation program that is so transparent in the first place is already extremly advanced. You can by no means call thoes scores bad for emulation, have you ever tried PearPC? Rosetta is a huge step forward. Thoes machines are for developers and the reason they don't want people posting benchmarks is for morons like the person that wrote this article. Rest assured once people start re compiling there programs for the x86 chips the mac is going to scream. Did anyone notice on the WWDC how fast things were opening like finder and mail with the P4? I'm sorry but I have alwaysl beleived the Mac to be fast, but it used to lack that quick response from my AMD/Intel boxes. I think we are going to have some new screamers next year, not to mention Powerbooks with 2.5 ghz mobile chips and integrated wireless no more stupid $99.00 airport card!

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WHY are people making a big deal about the performance of the Intel 3.6 GHz processor? It is not one that will be used in production units and it is not even the top of the line Pentium processor, I would say it is middle of the line. Actual production models will have top of the line processors and will be 64 bit, Dual Core. So there is no point in benchmarking them when it won’t matter in a year.

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Exactly. The benchmarks now don't mean squat. Sensationalism at it's best. Get people all fired-up using statistics that won't mean sh*t by the time they actually start doing these things.

Freaking twats.

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The benchmarks do mean squat to Apple unlike Microsoft once a release date is set they will do whatever it takes to meet the date this emulation is basicaly just to get a starting point programs that run slow on emulation first and work thier way up and when release time comes if theres a couple programs left to recode to intels they can be emulated without noticably afecting performance.

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