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G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux 486
demonbug writes "Anandtech has an article up comparing performance of dual G5s to AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon workstations. The article also takes a look at performance under Mac OS X versus Linux. It provides an interesting look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of the different CPUs." From the article: "This article is written solely from the frustration that I could not get a clear picture on what the G5 and Mac OS X are capable of. So, be warned; this is not an all-round review. It is definitely the worst buyer's guide that you can imagine. This article cares about speed, performance, and nothing else! No comments on how well designed the internals are, no elaborate discussions about user friendliness, out-of-the-box experience and other subjective subjects. But we think that you should have a decent insight to where the G5/Mac OS X combination positions itself when compared to the Intel & AMD world at the end of this article."
Let's begin the flamewar ! (Score:2, Funny)
Slashdot editors are impressive
Re:Let's begin the flamewar ! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Let's begin the flamewar ! (Score:2)
That is, until "XBox 360 vs. PS3 vs. Revolution" tags in...*ducks*
Re:Let's begin the flamewar ! (Score:3, Funny)
G5 vs. x86 FOREVER. There shall be no higher flame war
SLES 9 - Kernel 2.6.5? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SLES 9 - Kernel 2.6.5? (Score:5, Funny)
No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway..here's the article summary: So, forget OS X in the server room, but have fun if you want a desktop OS.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:5, Informative)
The server performance of the Apple platform is, however, catastrophic. When we asked Apple for a reaction, they told us that some database vendors, Sybase and Oracle, have found a way around the threading problems. We'll try Sybase later, but frankly, we are very sceptical. The whole "multi-threaded Mach microkernel trapped inside a monolithic FreeBSD cocoon with several threading wrappers and coarse-grained threading access to the kernel", with a "backwards compatibility" millstone around its neck sounds like a bad fusion recipe for performance.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:4, Interesting)
"This means that applications use slower user-level threads like in FreeBSD and not fast kernel threads like in Linux. It seems that FreeBSD 5.x has somewhat solved the performance problems that were typical for user-level threads, but we are not sure if Mac OS X has been able to take advantage of this.
In order to maintain binary compatibility, Apple might not have been able to implement some of the performance improvements found in the newer BSD kernels."
Yes, server performance with the xserve seems terrible right now, but I think that will be solved in the future, as apple will incorporate the enhanchements from fbsd 5, and more importantly 6. They are cooperating (freebsd and apple) it seems on many issues.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, I know of very few machines out in the real world that are heavily taxed in ways where OS X suffers. I'm sitting next to a server room with 47 (mostly wintel) servers in it and not one of them has shown greater than 10% load on a five-minute scale for days. I'd ra
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I would allso like to see them use the latest Intel compiler.
I dont, however, agree on the microkernel stuff. darwin is no microkernel design at all, all the
driver, filesystem and memory management is done
in kernel space. There is nothing in that design that makes the OS more stable.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2, Funny)
I suppose these aren't the droids I'm looking for either? Nice try OBIWAN.
Oh well, at least it wasn't modded informative.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
X86/Linux vs G5/Linux
and
G5/Linux vs G5/MacOS X
But comparing
G5/MacOS X vs X86/Linux just seems kinda weird.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:3, Informative)
But, even if they use gcc for both, they are still doing a compiler comparison. They are comparing the gcc version that Apple carefully optimized for the G5 with the gcc version that performs very badly on the Pentium SSE2 instructions. The article itself said so, they mention that they didn't use the Intel compiler because no one uses it in the real world. However, if you really need floating point performanc
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
Hey, that sounds familiar. I did some benchmarking [mac.com] two years ago and it got posted on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. Of course, people were flaming me there that I should be comparing Linux/x86 to OS X as the "native" operating system, and it was unfair to handicap the Apple hardware with something "not optimized for it".
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
I'll say the same thing now that I (IIRC) said in the comments then: Your results gave me a far more favorable impression of Apple hardware than any of those contrived Photoshop tests ever did. Basically, you compared Linux on a platform where it's supported by, oh, three main developers to Linux running in its own back yard, and essentially got a draw!
I think it spoke very highly of the Apple hardware of the time, as wel
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I will point out that this is hardly relevant for a desktop OS, and that I am more than happy with my dual G5/1.8GHz. Getting things done faster and neater due to elegant interaction design is much more important to me than being able to spawn threads quickly ;)
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that they used Apache 1.3 and MySQL, two of the worst possible choices. If they'd gone for Apache 2.x (which actually uses threading, instead of processes) and PostgreSQL, things would've looked much nicer.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
Well, anandtech, nor most of the other hardware comparison companies would provide reliable data to you. Considering that they used gcc for the Linux benchmarks instead of a performance compiler like Intel's, PathScale's, or the Portland Group's, I would assume that they would use gcc for a PowerPC and x86 comparison as well. My psychic forecast is that the PowerPC would outperform the x86 setup because Apple has tuned gcc for the Power
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
Maybe a big vendor like Oracle or Sybase will have invested in say the Intel compiler, but your average end user or developer most certainly won't have done so, and nor have any of the distros.
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Which would probably even things up, if anything. Remember that GCC's largest user base is probably x86, and most of its developers are probably working on x86 PC's. So it stands to reason that a lot of work has gone into the x86 optimisations in GCC over the years. But, they're very different CPU's (translated-CISC vs kinda-RISC) so different things have to be done to optimise
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
Re:No PowerPC Linux in the Review?! (Score:2)
They look at PowerPC running Darwin 8.1 and two Xeons and an Opteron running Linux 2.4/2.6. Why not show the PowerPC running Linux?! I want to see how Linux on PPC compares to Linux on x386 these days!
Probably pretty good, considering Linus Torvalds' primary machine is a PowerMac G5 running Linux [slashdot.org].
Bottom line - with Linux as the operating system, all indications are that the G5 and the Opteron reign supreme over Intel's quaint little offering, and that the G5 will blow the doors off clean off Opteron i
Flawed comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
What performance is he measuring? The hardware or the OS? Comparing both with no baseline control for each is about as informative as pulling numbers out of my ass.
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
MacOSX is not about performance. It's about interface. I don't think Apple (or Next for that matter) has ever tried to deny their intention to overcome the performance problems caused by tremendously complex software through the use of immensely powerful hardware.
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
dumb ass.
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:2)
Its well known that benchmarks are excellent at producing benchmark scores.
I'm guessing the parent didn't read the article, because some of the benchmarks were low level things like memory access and assembler math stuff. These things do not make kernel system calls.
I will say that the threading issues were interesting. Looks like Apple nee
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:2)
Since nither the hardware nor the OS can operate without the other, I'd call it sensible to compare configurations that people might considering using in real life. In fact I don't even know what you mean by a "baseline"; OSX won't run on anything else, and linux is of course not exactly the same on different platforms (if it were, it wouldn't run!)
Besides, the conclusion seems clear enough to me: OSX has some performance problems that precl
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:2)
Since Apple sells xserve with an os x supposedly tuned for servers, in other words, it sells it as a package, it absolutely makes sense to compare it with other solutions. Whether fanboys like the results or not (and even if some have spare mod points to moderate a comment "insightful" even though except for stating that "the comparison is flawed" doesn't say much)
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not flawed. Perhaps they'll undertake your comparison some other time.
What a crock of shit. Guess what, buddy -- he's measuring the performance of both at the same time! *gasp*
He takes the mo
Re:Flawed comparison (Score:2)
Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, that's not what I read:
That hardly sounds like the G5 is "whooping" when it comes to floating point...
Should do a better comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
How about Linux on x86 vs. LinuxPPC on Apple Hardware?
jeesh
First (Score:3, Funny)
Ok, Rule #1 - its a performance comparison...
It is definitely the worst buyer's guide that you can imagine. This article cares about speed, performance, and nothing else!
Calm down, did we forget Rule #1 already?
No comments on how well designed the internals are, no elaborate discussions about user friendliness, out-of-the-box experience and other subjective subjects.
OK... Rule #2, no more posting news for you.
I wonder if he uses a mac or pc....
all i know (Score:2, Informative)
Creating threads slow? (Score:2, Interesting)
But they are running a test and are identifying the thread creation as being really slow on the Mac and that that is the cause for the Mac's slow performance on the MySQL test.
Come now, if you are running software that is slow because you are creating threads all the time then you need to change software.
Use some kind of threadpool and *kaping*, problem is gone.
This is more revealing for MySQL than it is about Mac OS X.
Ummmm...... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ummmm...... (Score:2)
The point is that MySQL would run even faster if it used a thread pool.
I don't know the internals of MySQL so maybe I'm mistaken and they use a thread pool. I'm just basing my information on the article.
I'm wondering if I'm having a brain lapse and I'm missing something. Because what I read is that the system is slow because of creating threads, and Apple had three people helping out with the tests and they are unable to explain what I wrote in my grand parent post.
Am I missing something?
Re:Ummmm...... (Score:5, Interesting)
2. The threading engine on OS X really does suck. This is not new information. Apple says as much if you ask them.
This will all get fixed in due course anyways - Linux is more than a decade older than MacOS X is, and Apple is already doing very well.
Re:Ummmm...... (Score:2)
Re:Ummmm...... (Score:3, Informative)
Umm. No. I'd pick linux running on opteron system.
Re:Creating threads slow? (Score:3, Insightful)
You need threads. But you create 20 threads at the beginning (or something) and then you use those throughout the life of the application.
You can grow the number of threads dynamically to best suit your load.
But the point is, you don't create threads all the time. You pick a thread up from a thread pool.
Creating threads on Windows and Linux may be 5 times faster than on Mac OS X, but it is still a relatively slow operation. A thread pool makes sense there as well.
I'm not saying
I was trying to take them serious (Score:3, Funny)
vs GPGPU? (Score:2)
The PPC970FX/G5 looks really hot, even up against Intel and AMD's top CPUs. I'd love to see such a direct comparison as this report with an extra couple of columns for nVidia and ATI's top-end GPUs. Sure, they don't run Dar
Re:vs GPGPU? (Score:2)
Are you suggesting we run a general purpose OS on a GPU? That doesn't sound like a good idea, even if it were possible. Sure, the GPU's coming out of ATI and nVidia have a lot of theoretical processing power, but it's really mostly only for doing vector calculations (vectors, colours, etc) on massive amounts of independent data. And with little or no branching. It's your classic SIMD setup. The shader programs are explicitely limited in the data they can access, so they can easily be run in parallel. The l
what's missing in the comparison (Score:2, Insightful)
Apples to Oranges (this is not redundant... yet) (Score:3, Insightful)
As some people have pointed out (but not completely), you should be comparing:
Linux forks 5 times faster than BSD, but that's been known for years. You didn't need a new benchmark/ad for that. Finally, the article doesn't have a benchmark that uses Altivec to its full potential, so it might be a hack piece as well.
Re:Apples to Oranges (this is not redundant... yet (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Apples to Oranges (this is not redundant... yet (Score:2)
Hmmm... where did you read that? Even in the fefe test, freebsd and linux have very similar performance characteristics, and that's a two year old benchmark.Quote:
"FreeBSD looks like it would scale O(1) if I could create more processes with it, but as long as I can't confirm it, I can only give it the second place.
"
Check the graphs [bulk.fefe.de] ... and the corrections (author did not read man tuning, sysctl, the handbook... well, the documenta
Comparing them is fine: draw conclusions carefully (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason these tests ARE relevant is that the vast majority of users do not run Linux on their Macs, nor do they run BSD on their PCs.
The tests are pitting the common OS on each platform against each other. That is a fine comparison, because it represents the basic choice that people face when they want to choose a platform.
You just have to be careful how you interpret the results. Since neither the hardware nor the software are held in common as a "control" variable, there is no way to compare Syst
They lost me right here... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, we focus on workstation and server applications..."
How could anyone who has ever met a "creative professional" think they care about "workstation and server applications" like MySQL and Apache??
Sorry, guys, but being a sysadmin does not make you a "creative professional..."
-- Mark
Re:They lost me right here... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you kidding?
I've seen perl scripts that outdo Jackson Pollock or De Kooning...
Re:They lost me right here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably an irrelevant observation, but: (Score:2)
Now, this could be down to a dozen factors, and it only slightly deflated my ambition to own a nice shiny mac - perhaps a macmini - but it wasn't a good thing, that's for sure.
Re:Probably an irrelevant observation, but: (Score:2)
On my 15" PowerBook I have F1-F12 keys and the Optical Eject key is where F13 would be if it existed.
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
I'd like to see these benchmarks rerun with the G5 running the same OS as the other CPUs: Yellow Dog + kernel v2.6.5. The Darwin vs Linux competition makes deriving real info about just the hardware impossible, though an interesting aspect of the review.
Another comparison... (Score:2)
At the presentation, they mentioned the G5's potential, but noted that it was closer to the Intel architecture in the sense that each CPU shared a memory controller (but it's not hampered by the bus). The Opteron's HyperTransport model is simply more scalable. Apple got the point, but whether they will address this deficiency in
What about compilers? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't it have been better to use compilers that are tuned for each platform? Say, Intel's compilers for the x86 systems, and IBM's compilers for the PPC systems. These compilers could perform better prefetching, for example,
MacGCC? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:MacGCC? (Score:2)
Re:MacGCC? (Score:2)
Re:MacGCC? (Score:2, Informative)
Good news! Apple has been doing precisely this with its contributions to auto-vectorization [gnu.ghks.de] in GCC 4.0 [apple.com].
Re:MacGCC? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that a better choice on OS X Tigger would have been GCC 4 for this test, as that's what the OS is built with and it's the native compiler for the OS.. IIRC.
Let me sum up... (Score:2)
Now, had they gone x86 BSD on the G5 versus OSX on the same G5 then that would be a bit different. But nobody ever does that. I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw that "comparison" was flawed a bit. But it is still nice to see the myth of Apple being all-powerful being demolished by cruel charts.
haven't RTFA (Score:2)
If my AMD64 can get me 30fps in ut2k4, compile the kernel in under a minute or two and render porn at acceptable jerk rates...
WTF DO I CARE!
Its doing all this while taking a quarter the power of the G5. All I know is my AMD64 doesn't have a windtunnel in the case to keep from melting through the board.
Efficiency people, not raw numbers.
If you can do X amount of work with Y less power in a comprable amount of time... that's a good thing as Y increases.
To
Excellent article! (Score:2)
ARG! gcc 3.3.3 (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM's C compiler should be used on the Mac side (OSX now uses GCC 4.x BTW), Intels C compiler on the AMD64 side.
Do that, and try again.
Repeat after me - "GCC is crossplatform - performance sucks on all eequally".
threading optimiztions (Score:2, Interesting)
This doesn't appear flattering for Apple, but it's apparent that they have been scrambling to get the user experience right in OSX, at the expense of sub-optimal kernel development. Hopefully they will be able to refocus on the kernel and the compiler and get the performance up to what Linux people expect. Thread blocking
It Proves Only One Thing (Score:2)
And in some cases, you really do want to do that. 80% of the time, you'll be pounding threepenny nails into pine blocks. So this particular benchmark is going to tell you whi
Re:Oh Gawd... (Score:2)
Tell me how well i do.
Hikeeba!
Re:Oh Gawd... (Score:2)
Don't forget five complaints about folks not reeading TFA, at least one list of steps to "Profit!", and three comments about old people in Korea.
Oh. And somewhere, someone is thinking this is all Microsoft's fault.
Re:Where's the Apples to Apples comparison? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's the Apples to Apples comparison? (Score:2)
There's a Darwin port to x86....
I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between Darwin and linux on x86 as well.
Re:Well Duh! (Score:2)
Re:Well Duh! (Score:3, Funny)
"The people who buy Macs are creative professionals" partyline that we've been hearing since Joel was still on the S.O.L.
Re:Well Duh! (Score:2)
They end up coming to the conclusion a G5 is not a good server CPU, but fail to do a balanced test to see if the issue is OS X or the CPU. They should clearly have tested:
Linux x86 vs. Linux PPC
OpenDarwin x86 vs. Mac OS X
Re:Well Duh! (Score:2)
"It is a professional 64 bit Dream machine with supersonic speed! It is beautiful. It is about the ultimate user friendliness. It is about a lifestyle. It is a class apart. You guessed it - I am parroting Apple's marketing."
And... you can guess where it is headed after that... The article goes on to slam Apple.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
The odds are pretty good that you'll need to do some CLI sorcery to get an X-Server to run under OSX.
OSX's overhead comes with a price. Performance. Compare a machine running OS 8 or OS 9 to a Macine running OSX, the machine will be discernably slower when running OSX.
I installed Mandrake PPC on my Macs because it was faster than OSX on the machines in question.
LK
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, no [apple.com].
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
The odds are pretty good that you'll need to do some CLI sorcery to get an X-Server to run under OSX.
Actually, you don't. Just click install xfree86 when you run your os install and there it is. You're right about OS X in some ways it is slower than OS 8 or OS ((although with 10.4, it is also faster in quite a few ways too). Even running on an old dual 533 g4, I don't have any responsiveness problems with OS X, and the machine has been plugging away as a multipurpose server and pvr for many a year.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
Double-click on your hard disk.
Double-click on Applications.
Double-click on Utilities.
Double-click on X11.
Compare a machine running OS 8 or OS 9 to a Macine running OSX, the machine will be discernably slower when running OSX.
The interesting question is, why?
Here's what I've found:
Compare a machine running NeXTSTeP with a comparable machine running OS 8 (say, the Performa 475 vs the NeXTStation Mono)
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
Compared to OS 9? Have you used classic Mac OS? The classic Mac OS multitasking charade (I won't call it a kernel) was appalling. It had no real scheduler, applicatons ran for a while, gave up the CPU voluntarily, and went on. There was no way to get smooth interapplication concurrency because the API was built around operations that weren't even thread-safe, let alone safe for separate independent applications to use concurrently.
That's what I'm comparing Ma
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
Well, it's on the CD, but not installed by default.
Any modern linux distro will have X installed by default.
My Mandrake boxen (1 laptop and one desktop) did not require any extra work to get X running.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:3, Funny)
Try this similie on for size, OS's are like socks. They're all fine at first, but after a while they all start to stink.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:3, Funny)
If metaphors were cars this would be the big honking overcrowded city bus that everyone's ridden and smells vaguely of urine.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
I think some of the performance issues are related to the extreme number of interfaces the OS supports. Carbon Coca and Classic is a good idea from a marketing standpoint but it creates an extremely complex environment where it's hard to write efferent code. Apple's can't leave things alone for vary long. They keep forcing developers to recode old methods to fit into their new ideas so people stop optimizing, as it's a waste of time. I love using Apple hardwar
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
vi is not the only Un*x text editor (Score:3, Insightful)
vi? Where do you *have* to use vi? Is it meant to stand for [any plaintext editor]?
Granted, editing text configs *can* be less friendly in certain situations (it can also be a lot more flexible and straightforward); but I guess invoking the name of vi (which has a reputation for being arcane) makes textual config sound more complex than it actually is.
I use and like vi in preference to Emacs
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:2)
Wow! What distro are you running? Slackware 0.9? LFS? I haven't had to do any of this stuff since 1995 unless I wanted to.
Re:There Is No Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
(I similarly dislike Linux and like OSX, so this article disappointed me. I do think they made some mistakes in their testing. However, the unerlying problems causing the performance issues are
Re:Wooohooo (Score:2)
Hippies are massing. (Score:3, Funny)
My research clearly shows that we are very close to the start of a hippy music festival. It could begin at almost any moment. In fact it may already be too late.
Re:Wooohooo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wooohooo (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not homophobic, and I see the humor in the joke you are replying to. It's called absurd humor... half the joke is in the stereotyping. Macs are stereotypically the favorite computer of gays, and Linux geeks have a strong correlation with the "dirty hippie" and "pinko commie" crowd.
So don't get your panties all in a bunch.
(I'm assuming you're either a P.C. blowhard, or a homo. See, wasn't that funny?)