Is a 733 P3 more powerful than a 405mhz G4?

[robisc]

Not wanting to open a can of worms here and compare Mac to PC since I am talking game consoles here, just looking for some intelligent replies, me and my cousin have discussed this one and I know the question is kinda relative and maybe like comparing apples and oranges since Steve Jobs says the G4 is more powerful than the Pentium but what benchmarks or tests have you seen that proves which will be the better faster game console processor. I'm am referring to the Xbox and the Gamecube since their processors are 733 Pentium 3 with 128k cache and 405mhz G4 with 256k respectively? Supposedly the pentium is "off the shelf" and the Gecko is modified for games. Any knowledge on this?

 

[TheOverlord]

as far as the chips are concerned i think it depends what you are trying to do with them...since they are different architechtures they each have strengths and weaknesses. the GFLOPS of a G4 will be higher than a P3, and for things like RC5 cracking the G4 cant be beat...an example here on rc5 power you can compare the chips in what they'd do with certain speeds...

as for the gaming systems i dont really know, ive read that the X-box is going to be a stock p3 but it wil lbe on a specialized board with the graphics proc and ram, not with the typical bottlenecks of a PC motherboard...

hope this helps get you started

 

[Oreo]

For games the P3 would be about twice as fast as the G4. In Photoshop they would be pretty much the same, but in basically every other app the P3 would be faster.

 

[robisc]

Oreo are you just basing the clock speed of the CPUs on the fact that you say the P3 is about twice as fast or do you have some other basis behind that?

 

[Rand]

There are a lot more components to the Gamecube and XBox that will have a large influence on perfomrance besides just the CPU.

 

[robisc]

No doubt there is more to a comparison between these 2 consoles than just numbers like clock speeds and polygon counts, that is the input I am looking for from you guys.

 

[Sunner]

The G4 seems to be a very mixed bag in terms of performance.
At least from what I've seen.

Its really really impressive in some areas and not so impressive in others.

 

[Goldni]

Well from what i hear there are pros and cons to both. What i want to know is about the chache. the XB CPU..(P3).. has 128k on chip. The Cube's Gecko(mac G4) has 256k on chip. Does this make up for the faster P3. And Open GL and Direct X8. What about those. I know Carmack loves the OGL environment. Comments?

 

[BadSeed]

Another thing to add to this, Apples G4 Cube is classed as a super computer (not sure what speed proc is in those though). This can't be said of a P3 based computer.

But I think that until you could run some sort of standard os on each of these processors, it is unfair to compare them. I don't really see the point of comparing numbers gained from a G4 running MacOS, and a P3 running Windows. They are just so different.

Just to answer the original question, I think that we won't really know what these processors can do until the consoles come out. But whatever one comes out as "the best", I think we are going to get some really stunning games.

 

[Xe0n]

who classes computers as supercomputers? by definition, a supercomputer has mutiple processors...thats just some apple markerting crap...they call anything they sell with a g4 chip a supercomputer (they even call their titanium laptop "the only supercomputer you can take with you&quot

anyways, g4s apple sells have 1 meg cache, the one your talking about only has 256k

 

[dutchboy]

Ummm, not to get in the way of your discussion, but the official x-box site, xbox.com, says "733 Mhz processor", not pentium 3. This leads to the conclusion that it might be a athlon. Anyways, i think that it used to say p3, but they changed it, giving more truth to that idea.
Just my $.02

 

[Xe0n]

in a recent interview (i forget where) the amd guy said they will not be doing xbox, because it would require them to only work on the consele scene, and drop the pc market

 

[broadwayblue]

Xe0n, I think the amd guy was full of crap because we both know that there's no way intel is giving up the pc market to only do consoles. so why would microsoft have held amd to a different standard? sounds like a bs excuse made up by a company who may be upset that their product wasn't chosen. I'm not bashing amd (i will be buying a new thunderbird "c" from them shortly) but it just don't sound right.

 

[MikeyP]

I believe it is because AMD would not have the fabrication capacity needed. M$ is going to need a huge amount of chips very quickly, I don't think AMD could produce enough by October (unless they have been stockpiling them). Who knows, we'll have to wait and see. I personally hope AMD gets the Xbox