"commodorejohn" <com### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> 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.)
>

You can just test out single thread performance with pov 3.6. That'd be the
easiest thing to do now. I'm sure a bunch of us would like to see that.

> Hmm, interesting. Is it still true that POV-Ray doesn't support AltiVec? I
> wonder how much of a performance impact that would have...

Altivec only does 32-bit float, so not likely.

>
>
> 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 ;)

Can't argue with getting something cheap. Although the 970 is a power hog by
comparison (one of the big reasons why Apple switched to Intel).

I had, at one point, considered getting an Itanium2 system from ebay since
they're so cheap now. Then I realized that I could get a few computers for
Povray usage for cheaper that use less energy overall and had greater processing
power in aggregate.

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