Re: FLASH: OT Virtual PC on a G4?

[Frederico]

On 1/24/00 1:18 PM, Bill Numerick via

bnumericknetradiant [dot] com

, said:


>I was wondering how well virtual PC works on a G4?  Is it slower?  


Umm... slower than what? A like-speed G3? No. A like-speed Pentium? Yes.


>Would I

>be able to run all my pc software?  The reason I'm asking is because I'm

>thinking about getting Mac workstations however some programs I use are 

>onlyout for the PC.  Any help in this area would be appreciated.


As a general rule, most non-video intensive apps will run at about half 

the host processor speed, often better if you optimise your Mac for VPC.  

I.E., if you have a 450MHz Gx processor, your Windows 95/NT environment 

will feel like a P-II 233MHz or better in most apps.


One real hitch is that Win98 performance sucks (as it does on any real 

Pentium/Athalon), but you can use a few utilities to strip out W98 

extras, if you require W98 parts, to gain back a lot of the performance.


The other bottleneck is that the video card is an emulated Virge S3 4MB; 

and has just as poor 2D/3D performance as it does in the real world.


So, basically, playing processor/video-intensive games will pretty much, 

but everyday apps like Office, Explorer, Netscape, Flash, Dreamweaver, 

etc, are basically fine (as fine as running on a P-II or Celeron).


If you hold out for, or later upgrade to the coming dual G4 500, 600 and 

700MHz Macs, you'll see some pretty kickass performance, but that pesky 

emulated video card will always be a problem (at least until VPC 4).


You may just want to keep a $300 Wintathel (Windows + Intel + Athalon) 

box around; with which you can easily share a single 

keyboard/mouse/monitor(s) config to save desktop space until you finish 

migrating from Windows apps; unless they are low-power, seldom used 

things that you can live with the restricted performance of VPC.


HTH



Frederico


      ~Apple *is* Design.~


                  -- Rob Burgess  CEO Macromedia  5 January 2000


Think OS X -- Summer 2000



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