Someone finally tests Adobe apps on Rosetta vs. PPC

Bare Feats has been busy with their Mac OS X vs XP tests earlier today and now this. From what I can tell, they are probably the first site to post some benchmarks of non-Intel native Adobe apps, specifically Photoshop CS2 and After Effects 7.0. Check out the machines they used, and note the equality of RAM:

MacBook Pro CD/2.0 -- Apple Intel MacBook Pro with 2.0GHz Core Duo and 2GB of memory
PowerMac G5/2.0 -- Apple Dual Single-Core G5/2.0GHz Power Mac with 2GB of memory
PowerBook G4/1.67 -- Apple PowerBook G4/1.67GHz with 2GB of memory

Not surprisingly, the PowerMac swept the floor with the MacBook Pro, but to my delight: the PowerBook didn't perform that much better. In fact, in the After Effects render test, the MacBook actually beat out the PowerBook.

The SP (Single Processor) Actions test is where you can really see the performance void of Rosetta apps on the MacBook Pro, as the PowerMac and PowerBook clearly are going home with the prom queen.

Still, I'm glad to see that the MacBook Pro will perform more or less like my PowerBook G4 when running these pro apps, especially since I'm living in After Effects these days. Unfortunately, I now must curse Bare Feats for ever performing these tests, as they got my 'hmm, maybe I could upgrade' gears grinding again. Thanks guys.

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Source: http://www.barefeats.com/rosetta.html

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Bare Feats has been busy with their Mac OS X vs XP tests earlier today and now this. From what I can tell, they are probably the first site...

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David Chartier

#5:

We've been reporting on all the other MacBook Pro benchmarks we've seen, including those from Macworld and other Bare Feats tests.

My point with this post is Bare Feats seems to be the first ones I could find who have done After Effects 7.

April 15 2006 at 7:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kevin

thanks for the info guys, especially ingo

tuaw, what is up with you guys? ingo makes a very good point

April 15 2006 at 3:28 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ingo

Where have you been? Powerbook G4 vs MacBook Rosetta tests have been published since the eary beginning of the MacBook. See for example http://www.macworld.com/2006/02/firstlooks/macbookfirstlook/index.php

But this definitly is the first time that a MacBook with Rosetta was faster than a Powerbook. Oh, I see, in Bare Feats test it was only this one special test where it was a little bit faster. It didn't even beat the PowerBook in the multiprocessor Photoshop CS Test. So why did you just report this one result and not the others?

April 14 2006 at 3:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dan

Remember, also, that the MBP has 2 cores, and the PowerBook only have one. My guess is that the PowerBook would be A LOT faster compared to the Core Solo Mac Mini on the same test.

April 13 2006 at 8:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

eric

kevin, the answer is true IF you have 2GB memory available.

I was using my MacBook pro 2.16G with 1gig ram, and after open a few intel apps (browsers + mail clients) and a powerpc Acrabat reader 7 pro, i have 40 MEGABYTE free memory left.

April 13 2006 at 5:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kevin

so in other words, applications running under rosetta are faster than (or about the same as) applications running native on powerpc?

April 13 2006 at 5:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply