Apple TV benchmarked, not a supercomputer in disguise

So it's true after all, Apple has no magical wand for squeezing unrealistic performance out of off-the-shelf components, but they have managed to put together a halfway decent "Mac" for the price. Tipster Matt wiped his Apple TV's drive and ran a clean install of 10.4.9, just to throw it to the Xbench dogs. It came out surprisingly well, with a 55.75 score, about half that of a medium-range Intel Mac mini. In most operations it actually managed to score fairly close to its taller cousin, just falling behind significantly in certain operations, specifically 3D graphics. Of course, Xbench scores are user submitted and not all that scientific, but it should at least give you a general idea of how this $299 Mac in disguise stacks up.

[Thanks, Matt]

[Heyzeus @ Apr 2nd 2007 1:49PM]

Mep

[Shadyman @ Apr 2nd 2007 1:51PM]

Feh

[bobgorila @ Apr 2nd 2007 1:52PM]

It beats the snot out of my Powerbook G4 :(

[Christopher Price @ Apr 2nd 2007 1:56PM]

I'm sorry, but XBench is not a reliable benchmarking tool. It is not suited for comparing PowerPC to Intel, and even the release notes say that Intel support is preliminary. I suggest people use some more real-world benchmarks before passing judgement on Apple TV as a Mac

P.S. The Apple TV has not yet had OpenGL support added, the GoForce drivers have not yet been coaxed to run on regular Mac OS inside of Apple TV. Apple TV's performance will improve greatly once GoForce drivers have been installed properly, but to-date nobody has figured out how to do that yet.

- Christopher Price
http://www.phonenews.com

[dubious @ Apr 2nd 2007 2:21PM]

how is this different that installing OSX on some low priced off the shelf PC hardware? For this to be legit you would still have to buy a license of OSX so I would stick with the mac mini.

[Cain @ Apr 2nd 2007 2:39PM]

"How is this different that installing OSX on some low priced off the shelf PC hardware?"


Show me some low priced off the shelf PC that is a 7 inch square thats 1 inch tall and has HDMI and optical outputs.

[Andrew H. @ Apr 2nd 2007 3:26PM]

i guess that answers the one question on everybody's mind when they were considering buying the apple t.v. : can it run doom?

[Josh Warner @ Apr 2nd 2007 3:54PM]

This little box is looking more interesting every day. If I see a story with OSX and Ubuntu/Fedora dual booted on this thing, I may have to get one.

Oh, and if Apple is listening: Don't go the Microsoft route with this thing (see: Xbox 360). Don't start epoxying the hard drive into the case, or pulling other shenanigans to try and stop this. Let the modding continue (it'll get press from the geek set) and you'll sell more hardware, not less. Most people aren't doing this stuff, but for people like me the fact that it can be done pushes us over the edge into the "buy" category.

[WTangoFoxtrot @ Apr 2nd 2007 4:00PM]

been looking for a small cheap desktop for a while but a mac was not only top of the list but also out of the question due to the pricing. now the apple tv seems to be sounding better and better. has anyone tried playing HD video through OSX on this thing ?

[Matt Carrell @ Apr 3rd 2007 11:43PM]

Hey, I'm the guy who did the Xbenching on AppleTV. Trust me, it will play HD video.. However, it has NO SOUND.. yet.. under regular OS X. I've tried copying the extensions from the AppleTV OS (no I didn't format over the original drive, I used another similar drive for this project).. and that didn't work.. so.. not being the biggest Unix expert, I'm at a stopping point, but hey, any unix/mac hacking experts in the Victorville CA neighborhood, message me eh?

I see that http://www.appletvhacks.net/ is down.. I can't help but wonder if Apple legal got them, their ISP, or wether or not they themselves got hacked! :O

[Justin Gehring @ Apr 2nd 2007 4:45PM]

Anyone know if could use these things to build a super cheap compressor cluster? I would love to get some cheap added performance to my final cut rendering times.

[kadajawi @ Apr 3rd 2007 8:50AM]

I wouldn't know why you couldn't, except for the RAM. But I'd say it makes more sense using Minis... more RAM, faster, ...

[Yardman @ Apr 2nd 2007 4:55PM]

@Josh Warner

Keep dreaming!!!!!
don't you know that Apple is the king of all lock-in...when have you known them to show the modding community any love and why would they start now when there whole business model is set on DRM....?

Oh and microsoft do this to stomp out game copying...and cheaters...

[Martin Hill @ Apr 3rd 2007 5:12AM]

Yardman,
How on earth can you can call Apple the "king of lock-in" and say their "whole business is based on DRM" with all of the following being the case:

- Steve Jobs Anti-DRM stance since before the iTunes Music store existed (see Rolling Stones interview)
- Apple announcing today all of EMI's music will be available in high quality DRM-free formats
- By the end of the year 50% of the content on iTune will be DRM-free
- Mac OS X having zero activation or serial number protection (compare with Windows XP or even worse Vista!)
- Microsoft's draconian Windows Media DRM policies bending over for the Music cartels. Harsher usage restrictions than Fairplay has ever had
- Microsoft's integration of HDCCP over HDMI into Vista to lock down HD-DVD and Blue-ray HD video playback on Vista PCs
- Apple's open source OS X and contributions to the OSS community
- Apple's support for the open ISO MPEG-4 formats as opposed to Microsoft's proprietary Windows media formats

Etc etc

Sheesh!

-Mart

[gordon @ Apr 2nd 2007 6:08PM]

you know I wasn't expecting this the Apple TV to be a super computer but it is nice to know it performs well. beowolf cluster anyone?
G.
http://www.cheapgreencar.com

[M Burke @ Apr 2nd 2007 6:13PM]

ok.. ok... what exactly am i supposed to do with this tv-box thingy? It's not a DVR... its not a networkable media device... what is it?

[eh @ Apr 2nd 2007 7:15PM]

55 is not a bad score at all. Its a little slower than an average iMac G5. My "hacintosh" scores 75 with a athlon64 3000+ and 1.5gbs of ram and runs very quick. Im actually surprised that this thing could score so high with just 256mbs of ram, it would be a really cool thing to get if the ram could be upgraded.

[tau zero @ Apr 2nd 2007 8:34PM]

next, someone should install boot camp on it and run #Dmark06!

[JohnnyL @ Apr 2nd 2007 9:01PM]

I would rather have the Apple TV co-existing on a Mac-mini.

[macona @ Apr 3rd 2007 1:11PM]

It seems to benchmark faster than my Old MacMini 1.42. If they can get sound and ethernet working it might make a nice replacement for my mac mini since I use it hooked to my infocus projector to watch vids, surf web, ect.

I just wonder how well it will handle 720p h.264 or mp4. As it stands now my mini just cant handle it without frame dropping.

[Matt Carrell @ Apr 3rd 2007 11:47PM]

The answer to your question is the Apple TV was built to handle 720p and h.264... I was able to play a test video (the iPhone commercial "HD" setting) with no dropped frames on it. See my new blog. I will be answering many of your questions about accuracy of benchmarks, applications etc there:

http://web.mac.com/macos_on_appletv
http://web.mac.com/macos_on_appletv/iWeb/Site/Blog/40480DAF-8E2A-48DB-84F0-A376D698A6F8.html

[Steve W @ Apr 3rd 2007 8:09PM]

@Yardman

"Keep dreaming!!!!!
don't you know that Apple is the king of all lock-in...when have you known them to show the modding community any love and why would they start now when there whole business model is set on DRM....?"

Guess you never heard of Woz and his "Modders Delight", the Apple ][+. Guess you didn't hear today's news about EMI and DRM. Guess you don't know that that there are no serial numbers or other DRM on Mac OS X. ResEdit, anyone?

The Mac is not an Apple. True, dat! The Mac is supposed to be an Appliance Computer. That's not saying you can't mod it. That's just saying you got to get creative.