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erichkopp
Joined: Apr 30, 2006
Posts: 4
Location: South Florida
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 Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:06 pm Post subject:
Getting a new laptop
Subject description: PPC or Intel? |
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| I'm going to be getting an Apple laptop, and I'm set on getting a 12". My question is should I get the 12" Powerbook that's out now, or would it be worth waiting for the Intel version to come out? I know it's 5x faster, but is it really neccessary? I'm leaning towards the 12" PPC Powerbook with a gig of memory, but I'm curious to see if I'll regret not waiting for the Intel mac sometime in the future. |
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elektro80
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 12:39 am Post subject:
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I recommend you wait until the macintel laptop line is more complete. You will need a fast machine and with software like Logic Pro and or Live speed important. All the major DAWs will be fully updated to support the new platform so going PPC now is probably not wise. That said, the PPC based Apple laptops are way cool, but for audio use do get an Apple with Intel inside. 
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seraph
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 12:58 am Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | the PPC based Apple laptops are way cool, but for audio use do get an Apple with Intel inside. |
I am planning to wait too before selling my PowerBook until next year.
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erichkopp
Joined: Apr 30, 2006
Posts: 4
Location: South Florida
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 10:12 am Post subject:
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| Does anyone have any idea when the 12" Intels will be released? |
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elektro80
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erichkopp
Joined: Apr 30, 2006
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Location: South Florida
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 2:20 pm Post subject:
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| As is, how is the current G4 Powerbook with running a program like Live? I have a very modest PC laptop that severely struggles with more than a couple of tracks in Live. I've used them in the Apple store and I've used my girlfriends, but neither have Live on them for me to do a side-by-side comparison. What are your experiences with the performance of the current Powerbooks? |
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elektro80
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject:
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The PPC based macs have a "coprocessor" called Altivec. Ableton never utilised this one in their mac version of Live. In essence Live has been running seriously inefficient on the G4 macs. Ableton has several times stated that Live on a PC is about speed, and Live on a mac is about stability.  Anyway, Ableton has announced full macintel support and the latest macintel version of Live is seriously fast. Theoretically a fully optimised macintel OS X and a ditto version of Live can at best slightly outperform Live on XP. ( Another issue is of course that it is generally a tad easier to tune a mac for bandwidth intensive stuff than it is an XP box. )
So.. do get a macintel on not a PPC based mac.
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Kassen
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 3:49 pm Post subject:
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On the Live benchmarks extremely high end G-series processors (think dual G5's) were roughly on par with budget/aging pc's.
Just don't, G5's never made it to powerbooks and the main charm of the G4; it's ability to share cashe is kinda useless if you only have one.
Henke reported that they tried to compile Live for Altivec but couldn't find a performance increase; I believe him, I don't think Stein does.
Anyway, I'm planning to get one of the new Mac-Intells somewhere by the end of this year or early next once the issues have been sorted, I'd recomend you do the same.
Anyway, Ableton has demo versions of Live that will allow you to benchmark your girlfriend's Mac for free. No saving or "render to disk" but for benchmarking; who cares.
Stein; do you have sources on how to optimise OSX for Live compared to XP? I'm a little hazy on the OSX kernal concerning low-latency optimisation. Since Apple doesn't give sources it's not possible to recompile the kernal. Would this involve Jack? This is one topic that I've been wondering about a lot but not a whole lot of info on OSX on a Mac-Intell is available. Some people claim running XP on a Mac-Intell results in a 30% performance increase compared to OSX but Live doesn't react to things the same way as other programs, being optimised for low latency realtime performance instead of bursts like more regular programs and all.
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erichkopp
Joined: Apr 30, 2006
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 4:15 pm Post subject:
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| Hmm, interesting. Looks like I should wait. Is it just a rumor that they're releasing a 13.3" instead of a 12", or has that been confirmed? |
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elektro80
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject:
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| Kassen wrote: | | Stein; do you have sources on how to optimise OSX for Live compared to XP? I'm a little hazy on the OSX kernal concerning low-latency optimisation. Since Apple doesn't give sources it's not possible to recompile the kernal. Would this involve Jack? This is one topic that I've been wondering about a lot but not a whole lot of info on OSX on a Mac-Intell is available. Some people claim running XP on a Mac-Intell results in a 30% performance increase compared to OSX but Live doesn't react to things the same way as other programs, being optimised for low latency realtime performance instead of bursts like more regular programs and all. |
A system tune for any DAW or app like Live is all about bandwidth management/throughput. You know it is quite possible to get even a fairly decent PC to keel over and die if the system is really fucked up or the lot is configured in a "less intelligent way".
For a PC laptop : running n number of Symantec apps, having the disk partitioned in 2 and having samples ( all over the place.. and you would of course have downloaded that lot from bittorrent anyway.. so you have managed to fragment all the samples into a cloud of neutrinos.. etc etc ) In general it is easier to understand the issues and handle the issues on a modern mac on OS X.
As for the OS itself, Apple is doing a great job optimising all the twists and turns to a clean macintel codebase. Forget Jack. In most cases Audio Core is providing you with all the inputs and outputs you would need. If you need some special patches that Live and Audio Core cannot provide then do get Jack or any similar audio router.
General info on OS X: http://apple.com/developer
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Kassen
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 5:08 pm Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: |
A system tune for any DAW or app like Live is all about bandwidth management/throughput. You know it is quite possible to get even a fairly decent PC to keel over and die if the system is really fucked up or the lot is configured in a "less intelligent way".
For a PC laptop : running n number of Symantec apps, having the disk partitioned in 2 and having samples ( all over the place.. and you would of course have downloaded that lot from bittorrent anyway.. so you have managed to fragment all the samples into a cloud of neutrinos.. etc etc ) In general it is easier to understand the issues and handle the issues on a modern mac on OS X. |
Yeah, but that goes without saying. My XP laptop is in quarantine. No net access, no running processes that I can't positively identify as "essential",no graphical phrills, no virus scanner needed because all executable files that go in there ever come from known sources, no warez for example.
Once the Mac latop comes the same rules will hold for it. "Not that vulnerable", "not all that many viruses", "does phone home but not that often" isn't good enough for me.
| Quote: | As for the OS itself, Apple is doing a great job optimising all the twists and turns to a clean macintel codebase.
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Yes, but optimising for what task? Typically UNIX is optimised for making sure all users and programs can get their cpu time which is the total oposite of what realtime performance demands. XP runs well now but only after I turned it upside down and inside out. I ripped so much stuff out it probably couldn't even read a online page without re-installing the whole OS anymore.
| Quote: | Forget Jack. In most cases Audio Core is providing you with all the inputs and outputs you would need. If you need some special patches that Live and Audio Core cannot provide then do get Jack or any similar audio router.
General info on OS X: http://apple.com/developer |
Hmmmmmm, I find this a little hard to believe. As I understand it optimising a UNIX kernel for realtime audio will seriously damage how well it performs in for example Photoshop benchmarks. Apple wouldn't do that, but I would. There must be some setting to change that behaviour or dedicated systems will run circles around it. I briefly went through the "audio" section of that developer thing and that one seems like a combination of a advertisement and some directions on coding for the system and not so much on how to optimise it.
I only found this;
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/PerformanceOverview/index.html
which might be nice for writing programs myself but doesn't seem to be of much use for getting the most out of existing programs. I suppose the info will surface as MS continues to drive people away and the mac-intells will gain acceptance. Something like that "musicxp" site, except for OSX would be nice.
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elektro80
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 5:27 pm Post subject:
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Take a deeper look into the docs on the various cores. As for architecture, handling graphics wouldn´t really suffer from handling timing critical tasks like audio and video on a semikernel level. It all depends on implementation.
As for the phoning home and stuff, this is a little problem on OS X and simply turning TCP/IP off or not providing a router IP usually solves this. Anyways, you will figure this out yourself soon enough. There is very little tweaking that has to be done.
Re the macintel platform, OS X is OS X and the main difference is that the very code has to be compiled for the Intel and not the PPC range of CPUs. Uhh.. add some caustic soda.. and salt.. take a look at the developer section about the universial binaries etc etc.
Anyways, what we are talking about here is a reasonable implementation of UNIX with additional tech tweaks in order to provide "realtime" multimedia core layers.
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Kassen
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| Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject:
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| elektro80 wrote: | | Take a deeper look into the docs on the various cores. As for architecture, handling graphics wouldn´t really suffer from handling timing critical tasks like audio and video on a semikernel level. It all depends on implementation. |
It's not graphics as such that I'm woried about, it's uncontroled bursts.
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As for the phoning home and stuff, this is a little problem on OS X and simply turning TCP/IP off or not providing a router IP usually solves this. Anyways, you will figure this out yourself soon enough. There is very little tweaking that has to be done.
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No problem.There should still be a hosts file, right? I'd like to keep ethernet for OSC use but that could trictly be on a LAN, don't care all that much.
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Re the macintel platform, OS X is OS X and the main difference is that the very code has to be compiled for the Intel and not the PPC range of CPUs. Uhh.. add some caustic soda.. and salt.. take a look at the developer section about the universial binaries etc etc.
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Sure, nothing new; BSD was doing both platforms anyway.
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Anyways, what we are talking about here is a reasonable implementation of UNIX with additional tech tweaks in order to provide "realtime" multimedia core layers. |
Yeah, and some other stuff not typically found in *nixes on both the good and the bad side. When it comes down to it I think OSX is a very good idea but it's not some panacea. I think quite a few people are considdering a switch to Apple in the hopes of getting all their computing problems fixed and Apple is merily advertising that it will. Perhaps it actually will in many cases but there'll be new problems instead.
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