[mythtv-users] Re: New Mac Mini

[Justin Kim]

At 6:42 PM -0500 1/11/05, Magnus Meinfretr wrote:

>What you forget is this is a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4.  This is not a
>Pentium 4 or an Athlon.  Don't fall into the mental trap of thinking
>the GHz ratings even compare.
>
>This is probably (conservatively) at least as fast as a 2GHz Pentium 4
>for all intents and purposes.  Any code that makes good use of the
>Altivec instructions could very well be beyond current x86 performance
>potential.

   I don't know about that.  It's not just the processor.  The mini
has a rather slow 167MHz bus, so I'd guess most 2GHz P4 desktop
systems would be considerably faster in most tasks.  The mini is
probably more than sufficient for email, web, and Sims/Quake 3 level
games, but I wouldn't buy it to do anything processor-intensive.

   Also, I think you may be overestimating AltiVec to some extent. 
It's very good at the tasks it's designed to do, but doesn't instantly
make your machine a supercomputer.  I remember when the G4 came out. 
Folks were talking about how AltiVec would make 3D accelerators
obsolete -- we all know how that worked out.

Justin