"jhu" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> PPC970 @ 2.5GHz faster than a 3 GHz core2? I find that hard to believe,
> especially for Povray since core2 has a much more powerful FPU than the PPC970.
> Have you done any Pov benchmarks?
Not _faster,_ just roughly on par with. They aren't my benchmarks, though,
that's just the general impression I get from looking at assorted results for
GeekBench (http://browse.geekbench.ca/) and some other assorted benchmarks.
(Note, though, that that's for the 2x dual-core DDR2 model. Older G5s,
single-core especially, seem to score a lot closer to a mid-range P4.)

I haven't done any tests with POV-Ray yet, I want to try getting 3.7 RC3 built
first so that it's actually using all four cores. (Though I suppose in a pinch I
could launch four separate copies rendering 1/4 of the viewport...nah.)

"jhu" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Granted there are several caveats here including:
> 1) povray 3.5 (PPC 970 test) vs. povray 3.6 (Celeron 220 test)
> 2) Mac OS X 10.2 vs. Debian 6.0
> 3) gcc/ibm compiler vs. icc.
>
> From my own tests, the speed difference between povray 3.5 and 3.6 is rather
> negligible. However, povray is consistently, but slightly, slower (~3.7%) on Mac
> OS X vs. Debian (tested on my dual-boot iBook with PPC 750 @ 700 MHz).
Hmm, interesting. Is it still true that POV-Ray doesn't support AltiVec? I
wonder how much of a performance impact that would have...



Just for the record, I'm not a "PPC is the best" fanatic, I just find x86 kind
of gross under the hood and since I can get something nice for cheap now that
all the Apple "ooh, shiny" cult have all moved on to the Intel models, I figure
this will meet my needs quite nicely ;)

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