I Want My 4X

Throughout the years, I’ve devised a standard to help determine
when to buy a new Mac. I call it the 4X rule. That is, when the
new Macintosh is generally four times faster than what I have,
then I spring. When I bought my PowerMac 8500 in 1995, it was 4X
faster than my Centris 610 bought in 1993. When I bought my Blue
and White G3 in 1999, it was 4X faster than the 8500 bought in
1995. And when I bought my 2 x 2 GHz PowerMac G5 in 2003, it was
also at least 4X faster than the G3. (I steadfastly shied away
from G4 towers because they weren’t that big an improvement over
my beautiful Blue & White G3 with 768 MB RAM and its upgraded
video card.)

The average interval above was 3.3 years. So three years after my
PowerMac G5 was bought, I’ve been reading about the speed tests of
the Mac Pro.

Here.

And Here.

For the Mac I can afford, the 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Xeon, that
factor of 4X just isn’t there. For some very specialized benchmarks,
it may be 2X or a little more. In general, the number is more like 1.5X.

These tests try to put the benchmarks on an even basis, so I’m
not trying to overlook the penalty induced by Rosetta for not having a
Universal binary.

On the basis of pure number crunching, what Apple and IBM said all along
seems to be true. The PowerPC 970 is a very strong CPU.

So, three years later, I want a solid 4X, and it just isn’t there.