Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Rogério Brito]

Dear people,

I've been tracking this list lately with some interest since I
got an old Power Mac 9500/180MP to play with one month ago.
Unfortunately, I couldn't install Debian on this machine, due
to some hardware problems (I think) and I don't have this
machine with me again (I took it borrowed from my uncle).

(Details on my quest on trying to get Linux/Debian/anything on
the computer are at ).

Anyway, I liked the idea of playing with a PPC machine and
since I'd like to purchase a low end notebook (it will depend
on the cost of the machine), I would be considering getting an
iBook.

Unfortunately, I'm a newbie with both notebooks and macs and I
don't know which notebook would be a good purchase for someone
that plans to use mostly Linux/Debian on a portable computer,
with X and KDE running almost 100% of the time. One thing that
is very important for me is

So, I'm seeking some advice on the following:

* how does a PowerPC G3 500MHz compare in terms of a x86
  processor? Would it have the same horse-power of a, say,
  Duron 600MHz? Pentium 3 700MHz? Celeron 466MHz?

* are the new iBooks good purchases? I've read that the sound
  wasn't working some time ago, but has any progress been made
  in this area? Does the Firewire port work? Do the USB
  connectors work? Are there other problems that I should know
  about? Is Apple kind to Open Source Projects?

* if a new iBook is not a good machine to run with Debian,
  what other non-expensive notebooks in the x86 family would
  be good purchases? Any recommendations?

I'd like to purchase something that would be as well supported
as possible by Linux and I'd prefer to do business with Open
Source friendly companies.


Thank you very much for any recommendations, Roger...

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Rogério Brito - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Noah John]

the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound 
still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:

G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
is about an 800-933 MHz P3
is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4
is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).

*however* it must be realised that it is immpossible and even foolish to 
compare MHz values between these architectures, since ppc is a RISC (reduced 
instruction set computing) as opposed to CISC (complex instruction set 
computing) i386s.


umm..  that's it
-noah
"watch out for the sheep, they worship bill gates"

_
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Bastien Nocera]

Noah John wrote:

the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound 
still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:

G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
is about an 800-933 MHz P3
is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4
is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).



You certainly have benchmarks to prove that ?
The G3 in the iBook has only 128k of L2 cache, and it is slower than my 
iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).


If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop. 
The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.


In the end the iBook's performances are more than enough for playing 
mp3s, playing quake3 in macos, do hacking, and a bit of GIMPing. DVD 
playback should be possible if we get a version of libmpeg2 that's a tad 
bit faster.



*however* it must be realised that it is immpossible and even foolish to 
compare MHz values between these architectures, since ppc is a RISC 
(reduced instruction set computing) as opposed to CISC (complex 
instruction set computing) i386s.



Cheers

--
/Bastien Nocera
http://hadess.net

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[John Hughes]

On Wednesday 01 August 2001 12:24, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Noah John wrote:
> > the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound
> > still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:
> > G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
> > is about an 800-933 MHz P3
> > is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4
> > is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).
>
> You certainly have benchmarks to prove that ?
> The G3 in the iBook has only 128k of L2 cache, and it is slower than my
> iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).
>
> If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop.
> The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.
>
> In the end the iBook's performances are more than enough for playing
> mp3s, playing quake3 in macos, do hacking, and a bit of GIMPing. DVD
> playback should be possible if we get a version of libmpeg2 that's a tad
>bit faster.

I have to second Bastien, Its right under say a celleron 300a for 
performancemaybeand thats a big maybe. That said, its still plenty 
strong for most everything I do. And I really do get 4-5 hours of battery 
life during normal useage. As far as dvd playback goes...its works for me 
just fine. Every so often it hickups.and we sure could use a more 
efficient libmpeg2 librarybut I am not disapointed by how well it 
behaves.  Especialy now that Ihave a 512mb module in it. But if you are 
looking for some powerhouse number cruncher...well, the iBook2 isn't it.


John

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Bastien Nocera]

John Hughes wrote:


On Wednesday 01 August 2001 12:24, Bastien Nocera wrote:


Noah John wrote:


the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound
still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:
G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
is about an 800-933 MHz P3
is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4
is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).


You certainly have benchmarks to prove that ?
The G3 in the iBook has only 128k of L2 cache, and it is slower than my
iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).



s/128/256/




If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop.
The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.

In the end the iBook's performances are more than enough for playing
mp3s, playing quake3 in macos, do hacking, and a bit of GIMPing. DVD
playback should be possible if we get a version of libmpeg2 that's a tad
bit faster.



I have to second Bastien, Its right under say a celleron 300a for 
performancemaybeand thats a big maybe. That said, its still plenty 
strong for most everything I do. And I really do get 4-5 hours of battery 
life during normal useage. As far as dvd playback goes...its works for me 
just fine. Every so often it hickups.and we sure could use a more 
efficient libmpeg2 librarybut I am not disapointed by how well it 
behaves.  Especialy now that Ihave a 512mb module in it. But if you are 
looking for some powerhouse number cruncher...well, the iBook2 isn't it.



John


--  
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with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]





I think this summs it up:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/reviews/display_groupreview.cfm?ProductID=1509&GroupReviewID=296

--
/Bastien Nocera
http://hadess.net

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Sven]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 05:24:51PM +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Noah John wrote:
> 
> > the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound 
> > still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:
> > G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
> > is about an 800-933 MHz P3
> > is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4
> > is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).
> 
> 
> You certainly have benchmarks to prove that ?
> The G3 in the iBook has only 128k of L2 cache, and it is slower than my 

Err, isn't that 256Ko of on die cache, like the PIII and the later athlons ?

> iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).

Did you do any benchmarking on it ?

> If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop. 
> The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.

but the TiBook costs twice as much and more, and as said battery life on i386
is very bad, especially on the athlon/duron based ones.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Sven]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 06:43:42PM +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > I have to second Bastien, Its right under say a celleron 300a for 
> > performancemaybeand thats a big maybe. That said, its still plenty 

huh, on what do you base this affirmation ?

or do you compare it with an overclocked celeron 300 to 450 or something such ?

or is it a desktop system with a faster system, faster disks, etc, ...

or are you using intel optimized programs for benchmarking ?

comparing a 500Mhz G3 to a 300MHz Celeron hardly seems right to me, but then
i did not really do any tests.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[John Hughes]

On Thursday 02 August 2001 01:19, Sven wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 06:43:42PM +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > > I have to second Bastien, Its right under say a celleron 300a for
> > > performancemaybeand thats a big maybe. That said, its still
> > > plenty
>
> huh, on what do you base this affirmation ?
>
> or do you compare it with an overclocked celeron 300 to 450 or something
> such ?
>
> or is it a desktop system with a faster system, faster disks, etc, ...
>
> or are you using intel optimized programs for benchmarking ?
>
> comparing a 500Mhz G3 to a 300MHz Celeron hardly seems right to me, but
> then i did not really do any tests.

Hmmm, nothing truely official I guess test wise. I own a dual PII 233, 
k6-266, PII300, Cell 300a(over clocked at times, but not at the moment), 
Athalon 800, PIII 450, Sparc 20(dual 55mhz), U1 170. I have owned and gotten 
rid of quite a few more...including a number of laptops. Upon which I have 
run linux on all of them. My opinion...and yes, let me emphasize _opinion_, 
is that my iBook2 _seems_ to perform at about the level of a Cell 300a 
desktop across a wide range of tasks. But I would probably give the edge to 
the Celleron. I would like to state that this does not disapoint me at all. 
As I said I have owned several laptops and they all perform at about 50% or 
less than what an equivilant desktop would. I think the iBook2 is great, 
it may be the best money I have ever spent on a computer. Just dont expect it 
to be some super fast super computer.

John

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Colin Walters]

John Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Hmmm, nothing truely official I guess test wise. I own a dual PII 233, 
> k6-266, PII300, Cell 300a(over clocked at times, but not at the moment), 
> Athalon 800, PIII 450, Sparc 20(dual 55mhz), U1 170. I have owned and gotten 
> rid of quite a few more...including a number of laptops. Upon which I have 
> run linux on all of them. My opinion...and yes, let me emphasize _opinion_, 
> is that my iBook2 _seems_ to perform at about the level of a Cell 300a 
> desktop across a wide range of tasks. 

What about the hard disk?  If you're like me and keep a lot of
applications open under X, and switch back and forth between them,
you're going to be in a little bit of swap.  And the disk in my TiBook
seems incredibly slow compared to the disks in other machines I have.

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Peter Cordes]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 07:05:44AM +0200, Sven wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 05:24:51PM +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > Noah John wrote:
> > 
> > > the ibook is definatly a good purchase.  from what i gather, some sound 
> > > still doesn't work.  However, what i really meant to say was:
> > > G3 500 MHz vs. i386.
> > > is about an 800-933 MHz P3
> > > is about a 733 MHz Athlon or P4

 That's odd.  The P4 needs more clocks to get work done than
an athlon.  A 733MHz Athlon would not run at close to the same speed
as a P4 at 733MHz.  Look at the SPEC benchmarks.  (and note that if
you scale down the proc clock speed without changing memory speed, you
get more bandwidth and less latency relative to the clock cycle, so
the P4 has less advantage due to its bandwidth, but the Athlon has
less advantage due to lower SDRAM latency.)

 This is a rough enough comparison that this probably doesn't matter,
but I would have thought you'd put the P4 at 933 and the P3 at 800 if
you were going to use the numbers you did.

> > > is about a GHz celeron (celeron has no b-side cache).

 All celerons since the 300a have had 128kB on die L2 cache.  I don't
know what set-associativity it has.  (This makes a big difference,
BTW.)  I think it runs at the proc clock speed, instead of half speed
like pre-coppermine PIIIs.

> > 
> > 
> > You certainly have benchmarks to prove that ?
> > The G3 in the iBook has only 128k of L2 cache, and it is slower than my 
> 
> Err, isn't that 256Ko of on die cache, like the PIII and the later athlons ?

 The PPC 750 does not have on die L2 cache, but gets almost as good
hit latency by putting the cache-management logic (tag lookup, etc.)
on die, and having a dedicated L2 connection bus.  

 IIRC, apple chose to run the L2 at half the proc clock speed.  (The
chip allows the board designer to set the clock ratio to use for the
L2 bus, from 1:1 on down.)

> 
> > iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).
> 
> Did you do any benchmarking on it ?
> 
> > If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop. 
> > The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.
> 
> but the TiBook costs twice as much and more, and as said battery life on i386
> is very bad, especially on the athlon/duron based ones.

 Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
it in his lap...

 One important thing to note is that GCC's codegen for PPC takes
longer than for x86.  This means that compiling the kernel is not a
relevant benchmark for comparing compute power of x86 vs. PPC.  It is,
however, an appropriate benchmark for seeing how long it takes to
compile stuff.  If compiling stuff is one of the things that you do
that actually matters how long it takes, then it's something to think
about.  (some stuff takes so little time that it doesn't matter which
machine does it faster, like running ls.  ls runs fast enough on any
new machine.  0.1ms vs. 0.2ms doesn't matter.  Compiling a kernel (or
the project you're working on) is something that takes long enough
that you have to do something else while it happens, so it does matter
how long it takes.)

-- 
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ;  e-mail: X([EMAIL PROTECTED] , ns.ca)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
 Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
 my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Sven]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 07:05:44AM +0200, Sven wrote:
> > Err, isn't that 256Ko of on die cache, like the PIII and the later athlons ?
> 
>  The PPC 750 does not have on die L2 cache, but gets almost as good
> hit latency by putting the cache-management logic (tag lookup, etc.)
> on die, and having a dedicated L2 connection bus.  

no, the G3 in the new ibook is a IBM ppc 750Cx or Cxe, with 256Ko of backside 
cache,
as can be seen in the tech sheet :

-
500-MHz PowerPC G3 processor with 256K on-chip level 2 cache.
-

Also notice, that the ibook is one of the lone notebook that has a ATI Rage 
mobility 128 
as it's graphic chip, most others have plain rage boards, or other kind of 
graphics.

The only one competitive in this area are priced twice as high, and have either 
rage 128
or nvidio go chips. But still there are not many.

>  IIRC, apple chose to run the L2 at half the proc clock speed.  (The
> chip allows the board designer to set the clock ratio to use for the
> L2 bus, from 1:1 on down.)

This is true for older ibook or powerbooks, but no more for etiher the new 
ibook nor 
the new imacs.

> > > iMac G3 400 (which has 512k of this same cache).
> > 
> > Did you do any benchmarking on it ?
> > 
> > > If you want a powerhorse of a laptop, get a TiBook, or an x86 laptop. 
> > > The x86 will give you a crappy architecture, and not much battery life.
> > 
> > but the TiBook costs twice as much and more, and as said battery life on 
> > i386
> > is very bad, especially on the athlon/duron based ones.
> 
>  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> it in his lap...

Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery does it 
have. I guess
it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
Watt/hour battery
(which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that on a 
i386 box.)

Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while the 1Gz 
PIII
want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being downstepped to 
run ~300MHz
or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.

>  One important thing to note is that GCC's codegen for PPC takes
> longer than for x86.  This means that compiling the kernel is not a
> relevant benchmark for comparing compute power of x86 vs. PPC.  It is,
> however, an appropriate benchmark for seeing how long it takes to
> compile stuff.  If compiling stuff is one of the things that you do
> that actually matters how long it takes, then it's something to think
> about.  (some stuff takes so little time that it doesn't matter which
> machine does it faster, like running ls.  ls runs fast enough on any
> new machine.  0.1ms vs. 0.2ms doesn't matter.  Compiling a kernel (or
> the project you're working on) is something that takes long enough
> that you have to do something else while it happens, so it does matter
> how long it takes.)

YEs, i guess the appropriate benchmark would be to have a cross compiler on
both boxes, building for a common arch, with a common config file.

But still then there would be some difference.

Also, the main app is not gcc, not for everyone that is.

Also some apps (like openGL and such) are 3dnow/mmx/katmai optimized, but
not yet altivec optimized (will this ever come), which anyway is irrelevant on 
a G3.

also RISC code is bigger than CISC one, so it would also take longer to load it 
from the disk.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> >  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> > laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> > I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> > it in his lap...
> 
> Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery does 
> it have. I guess
> it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
> Watt/hour battery
> (which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that on a 
> i386 box.)
> 
> Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while the 
> 1Gz PIII
> want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being downstepped to 
> run ~300MHz
> or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.

My Sony VAIO Z600TEK has a 550/700 MHz Mobile Pentium III.

With the standard (small) battery (20720 mWh), it lasts about 1.5 hour.
With the optional large battery (62160 mWh), it lasts about 4.5 hour.
Both at 550 MHz.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Sven]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 09:36:05AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> > >  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> > > laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> > > I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> > > it in his lap...
> > 
> > Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery 
> > does it have. I guess
> > it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
> > Watt/hour battery
> > (which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that on a 
> > i386 box.)
> > 
> > Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while the 
> > 1Gz PIII
> > want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being downstepped 
> > to run ~300MHz
> > or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.
> 
> My Sony VAIO Z600TEK has a 550/700 MHz Mobile Pentium III.
> 
> With the standard (small) battery (20720 mWh), it lasts about 1.5 hour.
> With the optional large battery (62160 mWh), it lasts about 4.5 hour.
> Both at 550 MHz.

Sure, but i guess you would halve that time with a 1GHz version, isn't it.

And anyway, the PIII are much less powerhugnry than the durons, especially if 
the notebook maker did put some desktop durons indeed, instead of the mobile 
version.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 09:36:05AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> > > >  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> > > > laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> > > > I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> > > > it in his lap...
> > > 
> > > Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery 
> > > does it have. I guess
> > > it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
> > > Watt/hour battery
> > > (which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that on 
> > > a i386 box.)
> > > 
> > > Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while 
> > > the 1Gz PIII
> > > want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being downstepped 
> > > to run ~300MHz
> > > or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.
> > 
> > My Sony VAIO Z600TEK has a 550/700 MHz Mobile Pentium III.
> > 
> > With the standard (small) battery (20720 mWh), it lasts about 1.5 hour.
> > With the optional large battery (62160 mWh), it lasts about 4.5 hour.
> > Both at 550 MHz.
> 
> Sure, but i guess you would halve that time with a 1GHz version, isn't it.

Depends. If it's mostly idle, you won't notice that must difference between 550
and 700 MHz.

Of course it depends on what you're doing. Cron.daily consumes quite some
battery power, due to the heavy disk access.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Sven]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 02:39:05PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 09:36:05AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Sven wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> > > > >  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> > > > > laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> > > > > I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> > > > > it in his lap...
> > > > 
> > > > Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery 
> > > > does it have. I guess
> > > > it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
> > > > Watt/hour battery
> > > > (which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that 
> > > > on a i386 box.)
> > > > 
> > > > Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while 
> > > > the 1Gz PIII
> > > > want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being 
> > > > downstepped to run ~300MHz
> > > > or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.
> > > 
> > > My Sony VAIO Z600TEK has a 550/700 MHz Mobile Pentium III.
> > > 
> > > With the standard (small) battery (20720 mWh), it lasts about 1.5 hour.
> > > With the optional large battery (62160 mWh), it lasts about 4.5 hour.
> > > Both at 550 MHz.
> > 
> > Sure, but i guess you would halve that time with a 1GHz version, isn't it.
> 
> Depends. If it's mostly idle, you won't notice that must difference between 
> 550
> and 700 MHz.

Let's say, you are building X over and over again, for example, ...

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[Peter Cordes]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 09:24:55AM +0200, Sven wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 01:08:00AM -0300, Peter Cordes wrote:
> >  Battery tech is getting pretty good.  My friend got a 1GHz PIII
> > laptop with 512MB RAM, and he says the battery lasts 3-4 hours IIRC.
> > I asked him how toasty it got, and he said it wasn't very nice holding
> > it in his lap...
> 
> Sure, but was the processor actively working ? and what kind of battery does 
> it have. I guess
> it was magnitudes higher that the one in the ibook, which only has a 42 
> Watt/hour battery
> (which makes it use ~ 8Watts/hour, there is noway you can achieve that on a 
> i386 box.)

 Your units are incorrect.  I think you meant to measure your battery
capacity in watt hours (watts times hours, which is a unit of energy),
and to calculate the energy usage as 8 watts.  (watts = energy / time,
using joules and seconds.)

> Anyway, you can't forget that the G3 eats less that 5W of power, while the 
> 1Gz PIII
> want around 15-20Watts, i think, that is when it is not being downstepped to 
> run ~300MHz
> or such. And the duron case is worse, since it wants around 25-30Watts.

 What percentage of the total power is used by the CPU?  How
significant is that extra 10W for the CPU?

-- 
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ;  e-mail: X([EMAIL PROTECTED] , ns.ca)

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
 Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
 my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE

Re: Questions about notebooks and Debian

[furball]

hej,

Okay. This might also be relevant for the benchmark speed compare
thread we had earlier (is my celeron faster than my G3? 
[hint: there's more in the computer than the casse and the processor])

--- rant ---

> > With the standard (small) battery (20720 mWh), it lasts about 1.5 hour.
> > With the optional large battery (62160 mWh), it lasts about 4.5 hour.
> > Both at 550 MHz.
> Sure, but i guess you would halve that time with a 1GHz version, isn't it.

Sure. Because the harddisk spins twice as fast, the display is twice
as bright, the memory is twice as fast, the loss through warmth is twice
as big and of course the battery is still as bad. The speakers will
always play at twice the volume, the CD ROM is at twice the speed,
movies play double-size and you suddenly get a 200 Mbps ethernet.

not mentioning all the other funny parts that suddenly double their 
efficiency and energy consumption when there's a processor having 
twice the frequency.

Needless to say that of course the frequency correlates very much 
directly to power consumption. Since Processor speed is "cycles per
second" you only need to replace "cycle" by "joule" (which most
obviously must be the same) in the physical formula and you get
power consumption as "energy per second".

--- end rant ---

please, no.

Philipp Kaeser