7th April 2006, 7:09 PM
Some of what you said doesn't make any sense. Hyperthreading is always handled by the processor from what I understand, at least it is on x86. Anyway, PowerPC use to have a huge speed advantage over Intel, but Intel narrowed the gap quite a bit over the last few years whereupon there isn't much of an advantage either way anymore. PowerPC probably has a bigger advantage at the higher end, which is why the game consoles are using it, but overall there is a negligible difference. One of the reasons Apple switched is power consumption. People had been clamoring for years for a G5 laptop, but IBM never delivered because they couldn't cool the processor enough for a laptop. It's tough comparing processors because they have different compilers, algorithms, etc. but I don't think Apple going from PowerPC to x86 is much of a downgrade, if it's a downgrade at all. It certainly has its advantages such as dual-booting Windows and OS X.
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