Slashdot Log In
Apple Hardware VP Defends Benchmarks
from the i-blame-florida dept.
He said Veritest used gcc for both platforms, instead of Intel's compiler, simply because the benchmarks measure two things at the same time: compiler, and hardware. To test the hardware alone, you must normalize the compiler out of the equation -- using the same version and similar settings -- and, if anything, Joswiak said, gcc has been available on the Intel platform for a lot longer and is more optimized for Intel than for PowerPC.
He conceded readily that the Dell numbers would be higher with the Intel compiler, but that the Apple numbers could be higher with a different compiler too.
Joswiak added that in the Intel modifications for the tests, they chose the option that provided higher scores for the Intel machine, not lower. The scores were higher under Linux than under Windows, and in the rate test, the scores were higher with hyperthreading disabled than enabled. He also said they would be happy to do the tests on Windows and with hyperthreading enabled, if people wanted it, as it would only make the G5 look better.
In the G5 modifications, they were made because shipping systems will have those options available. For example, memory read bypass was turned on, for even though it is not on by default in the tested prototypes, it will be on by default for the shipping systems. Software-based prefetching was turned off and a high-performance malloc was used because those options will be available on the shipping systems (Joswiak did not know whether this malloc, which is faster but less memory efficient, will be the default in the shipping systems).
As to not using SSE2, Joswiak said they enabled the correct flags for it, as documented on the gcc web site, so that SSE2 was enabled (the Veritest report lists the options used for each test, which appears to include the appropriate flags).
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want OSX, you'll need to get the PPC.
If you want Windows, you'll get the x86.
If you want Linux, you can pick up 10 [slashdot.org] and build yourself a cluster for the price of one of these new machines.
Curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you recieve a phone call directly or something(Apple calling Slashdot)? If so did they act really aggressive wanting to make sure people don't become anti-G5 before it is even shipped?
Not too important you might say, but interests me.
Parent
Re:Curious (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Curious (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I always thought that this would be a good idea for Slashdot. I mean, you guys must have some pretty interesting contacts by now, use some of them to do a "news" article or two on your own. I'd still keep the old Slashdot question/answer interview around because they are interesting and good for the people who don't have time to do a traditional interview.
Parent
Re:Curious (Score:5, Funny)
What, did he use GCC to compile them?! Filth!!! DIE!
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means 3 things:
People just have a hard time dealing with this whole "choice" thing.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does either of those questions alone determine whether you should get a G5 based system or not? No, but that doesn't mean the question isn't worth discussing.
I'm curious how fast the G5 is at certain kinds of tasks. Not because it helps me make a purchasing decision, but because I'm a geek and I'm interested in that kind of thing. This being slashdot, I'm sure I'm not the only one. Does superior floating point performance mean "better for photoshop"? Maybe not, but I'm more intersted in FP performance that PS performance.
I thought the original article was worth a read. I thought some of the comments are interesting. I thought this follow up was interesting. People like me are the ones who care. People who just want to know what kind of computer to buy, well yes, they are totally missing the point.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
I think Apple will have validity (in the performance arena) when AMD or Intel start publishing benchmarks against APPLE's systems.
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's not only thanks to the software, but also due to the great integration of software and hardware.
This integration ("it just works") is why people buy Apple. And therefore it's really hardware and software that attract customers (ey, and don't tell me I didn't buy my 17" PowerBook just for the software, I could have gotten an iBook if I only wanted to run OS X!)
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Honesty (Score:5, Insightful)
I found that to be refresing especially in light of all the recent benchmark tests that have not been so forthright with all their methods and procedures.
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Funny)
No. It makes it a container containing homo sapien fecal matter, deposited on June 24 at 16:21 after a lunch of onion rings and a Rodeo cheesburger from the Burger King establishment.
And to top it off, you now have to deal with a shit in a bucket.
Parent
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the new chips from Intel that were announced the same day as the G5s?
Shit, some people you can never please.
Parent
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that you couldn't get either system yesterday (G5 or 3.2GHz Xeon (I hate it when slashdotters write 'zeon')), I see the whole thing as moot.
It's marketing, folks, not the bible. Greg backed up the test parameters with his data. I think the world would be a less stressful place if Windows went away, but I'm not stressing over a minute saved over a week of Photoshop work.
We spend more time thinking about what to do next in Photoshop than could possibly be saved by a faster processor/architecture/whatever.
That being said, I'll continue to buy Macs because the extra up front cost is well worth the knowledge that one company (and a rather well-run one these days) is responsible and capable enough to develop and market botht he hardware and the OS. They do a rather good job of it for a small premium.
Put another way: If I lose an hour a month because of a hardware vendor who refers me to an OS vendor to resolve a problem, I've lost an hour. I can't get that time back. If my Mac emits smoke and kernel panics at the same time, I know I can get resolution to both problems by calling Apple.
Parent
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Insightful)
How dare Apple! But then they only had the G5 2GHz. Maybe they should wait for the 3GHz, then the comparison will be fairer?
The fact that everyone is nitpicking these benchmarks shows how close the performance is. And with such a huge "megahertz" disparity between the Xeon and the G5 shows how much power the G5 has to offer.
Parent
Everyone should benchmark with GCC (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's not to mention the benefits for OSS compilers. Imagine the kind of resources and funding processor companies would dump into open source compiler projects if they were going to be the basis for their benchmark scores instead of their closed source proprietary compilers.
gcc a constant, that is naive (Score:5, Insightful)
If everyone benchmarked with open source compilers, there would be none of the shady benchmark-specific optimizations you'd expect to see in proprietary compilers. Everything would be above the table.
No. Benchmarks would become less realistic. There is nothing wrong with proprietary compilers. If they use proprietary techniques not available to gcc, so what. The only consideration is whether the compiler is available to other developers. The Intel compiler is available under Windows and Linux so it would be completely fair to try it and gcc and pick the faster of the two.
Parent
Re:Everyone should benchmark with GCC (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense (to quote someone else in this discussion
The tests were designed to show raw hardware performance in the most fair way possible. It was NOT designed to show that the G5 is faster in real-world use. SPEC *sucks* for that, and is not designed for that. Using it in the real world, with real apps, is how you test real-world use. And Apple did that, too, though I am sure it is not the final word on the subject: for that, we wait until the machines get out into the real world.
Parent
But..but..but... (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't everyone realize that this is a black and white issue?
Corporate Drones == Lies
Populist Raving == Truth
Always always always. Doesn't matter what the numbers mean. They threw in that one graph with the single processor machine slower than the Intel just to throw off the hounds. But it didn't work.
Removed one of the processors for the SPEC CPU 200 (Score:5, Insightful)
It really seems like they tried to do a pretty even evaluation. And again, if the benchmarks were so off then why was the performance on the G5 apps so good? And that was without G5 tuning most likely.
Re:Removed one of the processors for the SPEC CPU (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, yeah. Steve probably said "hey, vendors, come on over and do a little demo. Yeah, it'll be a duel, but don't worry about recompiling for the G5 (which is supposed to be trivial). We'll just see what happens."
Look -- they spent every last minute they could optimizing the builds they used for the demo - don't doubt it for a minute. On the other hand, every last minute probably wasn't all that long, and the demos did kick ass.
But let's call an Apple an Apple. This was a DEMO. Smoke and mirrors were involved. But I drank the cool-aid; I believe it's faster. Dunno how much, but I don't really care. Mostly I'm just happy it kicks the crap outta the systems they're shipping now.
Parent
Re:Removed one of the processors for the SPEC CPU (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, my favorite was the Mathematica guy who commented (IIRC) "We tried to come up with an example to show how being able to use more than 4GB of memory was helpful, but we couldn't come up with an example that didn't crash the Xeon"
Parent
G4 story icon (Score:5, Funny)
The G4 is so last month.
Other Benchmarks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Further I notice he didn't mention the problem of not doing comparisions to AMD.
While I can understand his reasoning, the fact is that most software on the PC runs under VC or Intel's compiler. It doesn't run under gcc. The benchmark might be a fair Linux/OSX comparison but implies something about Windows/OSX that is incorrect.
I'd also like to see the tests done under Mathematica and Photoshop discussed more. Apple's had a history with photoshop so there is prima facie reasons to distrust it. But the Mathematica test, which seemed the most exciting to me, is what I'd really like to see.
Realistically though the tools for Apple, including graphics drivers, are all very beta. So we should see improvements with time. And realistically benchmarks are typically kind of deceiving as an indicator of real world performance.
So any word on these other questions?
PS - I love OSX and would love to make a Mac my primary machine. If only Project Builder was up to the task so I could abandon Visual Studio. But I am excited about the G5, but I think Apple's "questionable" tactics have brought a lot of unfavorable press that more honesty would have avoided. Personally I think being within 10% - 15% of the top end PC would have been fine.
Re:Other Benchmarks? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Tom's was using Q3A 1.16 instead of 1.32 (PunkBuster code is thought to be a little slower)
- Tom's used set s_initsound 0 to disable sound while Apple noted default settings, which would imply sound was left on.
- Tom's used demo_001 while Apple used demo_4
So I guess it's up to you to decide in the end if the benchmark was fair or no. I don't know enough about the details of Q3A to say whether the differences above are enough to justify a 30% decrease in framerate. It is worth pointing out that Apple's G5 matched Tom's reported framerates for the fastest Athlon XP.Parent
Impressive turnaround speed (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, so Apple needs the G5 to succeed in order to survive. Motorola just aren't sending out the chip upgrades fast enough. They (Motorola) have enough other problems in their wide range of markets that they're in that not having to worry about CPU competition is probably a good thing as far as they're concerned.
The fact that the (almost) top person at Apple has made this clarification shows how much importance they're putting against these claims. Given that nobody else has had a chance to verify yet, and people are making wild speculations based off of paper and a lack of understanding, it's probably just as well that they're putting a positive spin on things.
Maybe the documents should have been clearer, showing why these configuration decisions were taken.
The "we had to use GCC" argument is a little strange though; is there any other good compiler available for the PPC at the moment? if so, I'd like to know; I use macs myself!
Perhaps a case of ineffective thoroughness? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to say, this puts things in an interesting light.
Does a company, in trying to be fair as it seems in this case, get penalized for choosing the best optimization and not testing with the worst optimizations(as per their views)?
In looking at other sites like Tom's Hardware and Anantech, I think the answer is simple: Show all of the results, both the good and the bad. That way, it removes the spectre of doubt in peoples' minds that fairness wasn't present during testing.
Personally, I don't have the funds to get a G5 based system. It just isn't in the budget. But then again, the only reason I would buy a G5 system over an x86(Opteron or P4) would be to run Mac OSX. :)
I'm guessing that tests will be conducted by various groups over the next few days to either validate or invalidate the tests. Sounds alike like that whole MS/cost analysis/web server speed fiasco all over again.
Despite the tests, for Mac users who wish to stick with Mac OS X, the G5s are as fast as they come.
Amazing how people trust some no-named net person (Score:5, Interesting)
Like, the switch -mfpmath=sse when used in a P4 *does* use SSE2, but this guy thought just cause the switch flag says sse that it must be SSE only.
Then someone else (can't find the post, on usenet, under the mac advocacy group) pointed out that Dell's SPEC tests also disabled hyperthreading [specbench.org].
Then, based on this person's web page who no one even knows who he is, they start drawing conclusions that if Apple faked these (based on his flawed analysis), that they also must have faked those Adobe, Mathmatica, and other demos -- despite the execs for those companies being on stage also confirming the results.
Gotta love the net...
As for me, I don't know what to believe. I'm just going to patiently wait until some reputable sites spend a lot of time and do an in depth analysis and their own benchmarks, like Tom's Hardware for example. Then I may start drawing my own conclusions.
As for me, all I want is to be able to encode mpeg video at something greater than real time. Show me *that* benchmark please!
Waiting for the ultimate benchmark (Score:5, Funny)
::bangs head on keyboard for giving moderator ideas::
::Slashdot story: Tom's Hardware benchmarks the G5, and compares it to dual Xeons, dual Opterons, and (I guess), the P4::
Me: "Woohoo...I'll finally found out which is better" ::clicks link::
"Page 1: We have tested all these systems, and you will soon see our results." ::scroll down through ads, click next::
"Page 2: These tables show the systems we have tested on" ::scroll down, next::
"Page 3: Tables, cont.." ::yells out profanities, looks on table of contents, chooses "benchmark results"::
"Page 45: And now, let us take a look how the G5 stands against the current x86 and AMD64 processors" ::AAAAAAAAHHHHHH...can't stand it anymore, clicks on conclusion::
"Page 666: And thus, we conclude that the G5 is better in some ways and worse in others" ::NOOOOOOO...Now I'll never know!!!::
Parent
I guess my take is this... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are those people who want to know if those numbers are EXACT 101% of the time, so they go bust out their dynamometer and begin writing complaint letters when their engine only hits 195HP.
I think benchmarks these days are no longer a science that they used to be. There are far, far, FAR too many hardware and software variables to do an accurate cross-platform analysis and comparison.
I mean, is it really logical to compare Apples (har har har) to Oranges? I mean, most all applications that will be running on the G5 will be optimized for the G5. So does it matter how a 'comparable' application will run on x86? No, because the x86 Application might have a few more optimizations which would make the comparison pointless.
These days people should take benchmarks with a grain of salt. Just another selling point they'll put on the big list of bulleted marketing jargon on the back of the box to try and rope in first time buyers who are turned on by big acronyms and high-tech sounding words.
So yeah, I think people just need to cool their heels and take this for what it is, just marketing propaganda. Does QuantiSpeed really make your CDs burn faster? [enusbaum.com] No. Does the P4 make âthe internetâ(TM) faster? [intel.com] No. Just take it for what it is and let it go.
Benchmarking (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct in the sense that he wasn't necessarily being unfair. I don't think Apple was raelly cooking the books here. OTOH benchamarking is quite difficult.
No, it would not be fair to compare intel compilers to gcc compilers. But what about, say, another non-hardware tied compiler? Look at it this way - 3dmark scores on graphics cards. Theoretically it should give a good impression on thier relative hardware - but we all know that it doesn't necessarily. It may do something bad on one system, great on another, one system may cheat and have special code to work better with that particular test.
Same here. Ideally you would find many benchmarks, not just gcc, but both with all optimizations on, with all off, both with the best compilers, worst compilers, and middle of the road. You also need memory intensive, processor intensive, grpahics intensive, floating point, integer, and many others to get the full idea and compare it to what you need to do with the computer. For many of the crowd that worries over this stuff overclocking can become an issue also.
This is why benchmarking is as much art as science. I care about all those numbers - I have code compiled specifically for my athlon-mp's, some generic, and some optimized for p4's for the consumer tasks. On our computation cluster we use specialised compilers. I care how it runs on all of it for real world use. But no hardware manufacturer does those extensive of a tests - they pick the best of the ones they can claim "fair" on usually.
And lastly, in the end, who cares? Unless you are regularly running 4 hour jobs from a console it is irrelevent. It is more important that you are productive with the interface and that is personal choice. Few consumer tasks (and even programming tasks) require that power - and the stuff that does is generally handled by specialised hardware. Then if they have the fastests today they won't tomorrow.
...but is gcc equal across architectures? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, performance will in part be a function of how mature and optimized the generation of code for the advantages of that particular chip is.
Because there is no guaruntee at all of fairness by using gcc for both processors, except of course if we had the expert opinion of someone intimately familiar with gcc's code generation for both processors, using gcc for both processors would seem to be little more than a marketing tactic to give the appearance of fairness and credibility.
It seems to me that a better test is to take the best compiler widely available for each chip, and then run your tests with the produced code. Now, this isn't necessarily real world application testing, but that isn't what we are necessarily looking for here.
How well the processor performs with code generated by the best generally available compiler, is, apart from extraordinary measures, the best prediction we have of how generally the processors will compare for any given well-written, production quality code.
Joswiak (Score:5, Funny)
But he didn't refute the most damning claim! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But he didn't refute the most damning claim! (Score:5, Informative)
a department store (was it macy's?) started this practice. the funny part is that the aim wasn't really to fool consumers into thinking it was less expensive. alas, the real purpose was to force cashiers to open the register, since the customer was almost always going to be due some change.
Parent
It's money that matters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget about Serial ATA - (Apple is the first top-tier manufacturer to make this interface stardard across their high-end machines.)
Forget about the new motherboard featuring HyperTransport, PCI-X, and the IBM-fabbed 1GHz northbridge chip. Oh, and 802.11G, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, and Bluetooth, too.
Forget about the imagination and creativity that goes into making a project like this go from concept to reality in eighteen months.
Why support a company like that? Bunch of dirty liars - there's no way a 2GHz chip could be faster than my Intel/AMD/whatever86!
Maybe it's not ultimately faster (although Greg's comments seem to indicate that the playing field was pretty equal). I don't buy "fast". I buy well-integrated tools that help me get work done, and in turn, bill clients. So I (still) use a Mac.
Jeez - to hear people around here, you'd think that innovation, style, performance, and the courage to move forward agressively and definitively with new technologies doesn't come at a price.
What other comapny would develop all these technologies to hardware and software maturity as part of a new hardware platform, then bring it all to market with system software already written (by the same vendor, I might add) to take advantage of new hardware features?
Those things DO come at a price. The price begins at $1999.00 for the 1.6GHz G5, or $799.00 for an eMac.
As long as there are people who just want to get work done on their computers without hiring an IT department or worrying about who is responsible for which component of the system, Apple will still be around.
I bill around eight hours a day with my Macintosh - the $400.00 price premium over PC hardware at the time I bought my G4/800 simply isn't an issue - over the lifetime of the machine, I'll probably bill at least two hundred times that amount for work made possible by its existence.
That $400.00 up-front cost means that I don't have to spend my time - my extremely expensive and finite time - having to deal with at least two vendors just to get a system with competitive hardware, a competitive OS, and support for them both. If your time isn't valuable, by all means cheap out and build your oft-touted (and perfectly capable) PC from parts you buy at Frys. $400.00 means nothing to professionals - it's cheap support insurance.
I hope Apple sells a TON of these machines - because they're practically the only personal computer company willing to take the initiative and responsibility for supporting hardware and operating system on equal terms.
Perhaps if Apple stressed the cost of ownership point to more people, they'd have higher sales. Our small business has nearly thirty Macs. I'm the lone IT person, spending an entire hour a week on supporting a bunch of artists and their Macs. What similarly-sized Windows-based business can make that claim?
Reasonable claims - IBM's Power4 vs Intel (Score:5, Informative)
SPECfp: The Power4+ at 1.7 Ghz has the highest SPECfp score (1699 @ 1.7Ghz); higher than Itanium (1431 @ 1Ghz), the most recent Alpha (1482 @ 1.15Ghz), and the Pentium 4 (1229 @ 3.0Ghz).
SPECint: As far as SPECint, the Power4 is not in the lead (1113 @ 1.7Ghz), but is still respectable when compared to Pentium4's (1200 @ 3.0Ghz).
The G5/970 should do similarly or better than the G5/970 (since the G5/970 is running at 2.0Ghz vs Power4+ 1.7Ghz). One caveat is that the G5/970 has a smaller on-chip second-level cache (512kB vs 1.5MB), which will hurt its performance on some codes.
Certainly Apple's test uses a drastically different compiler than the reported SPEC results. This results in absolute numbers that are lower, but Apple's relative comparison is still reasonable, IMHO. I think it is safe to claim that Apple has really closed the gap in processor speed and now has processors with comparable performance to the fastest chips money can buy. About damn time. :)
Vindication? Or more fuel for the fire? (Score:5, Insightful)
While surprising and most certainly refreshing to see that apple is serious about their claims, serious enough to publicly rebuke the claims almost certainly first brought to the big light by /.'s earlier article, this may only be leading into a circle of prooving and disprooving.
I believe it would be best for apple to answer with a full fury of tests to truly show the full range of operating prowness of the G5's vs the P4's, etc.... at least initialy, and to from there LEAVE IT ALONE. Cause no matter how many tests they do, no matter how much proof ... there will always be people out there ready to bring flames over nothing.... For instance this guys claims that FP isn't all that important, and that int tests are basicly all that matters for the majority of users.
He and others will stick too their guns even if they have only a couple benchmarks to cite as being supirior (kinda like the G4's and their altivec/photoshop optimizations of yester-year).
Apple needs to make sure that they have a clean image of being flatly open on their claims, and then to move on without being bogged down in an obvious quagmire of platform evangalism. The truth is, their strongest advantage remains the OS and not their hardware's direct horse-power. Of course the G5 along with all the goodies they come with are incredibly great, but this isn't apple's mainstay... it's simply another selling point.
If they become entrapped in having to proove themselves through benchmarking every new release, it won't be long before their entire image would have to live up to being ahead at all costs.... and guess what... they ARE going to fall behind again.... and then they'll leap ahead again.... and then they'll fall behind... etc.... And every down cycle will be worse, since the specs will be much more associated with their image.
keep your strong point in innovation apple, and if youve got the great hardware... great.... but don't get stuck in the mind-less mhz/spec race that has stagnated computer innovation for the love of ego's.
just my 2 cents.... I develop ASP, and love win 2k adv srv, ill never use anything but unix/linux for my networking gear, and OSX keeps me damn happy when i want to do anything not mind-numbing. Cisco IOS is arcane but makes me feel good. I am biased towards all platforms.
Amazing, this hatred (Score:5, Interesting)
What mostly surprises me is that so many people feel this desperate burning need to flame computers that are not the same as the ones they have, and operating systems they do not use. Is there a genuine need to diss the PPC 970, when it seems that it is truly -at the very least- in the same performance area as Intels modern CPU's? Why? No one is forcing you, as a x86 Linux, *BSD or Windows user to buy a Mac. Yet you feel the need, now that the CPU is in the same region performance wise to complain about the prices. And again, no one is forcing you to pay those prices or to buy a Mac if you prefer x86 machines.
The x86 machines I have, in one case -the Dell laptop- outperforms my Mac by a healthy margin, yet I find the Dell to have pretty poor workmanship and although I actually find WindowsXP the best Windows version I have ever used, and quite stable to boot, I don't like the way the OS seems to lack a sense of continuity.
I paid more for this Mac than I would ever have paid for a PC laptop of the same performance, but the look, feel and feeling of "good design" is what made me buy this Mac. I don't regret that money at all.
Would I diss x86 if it were slower and more pricy than a similar PPC? No. There are the advantages of larger choice and lower prices that still count and shouldn't be laughed at.
Each to his own.
But envy seems to be a common sin here.
My turn to bitch! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I do, and that's why I'm writing this.
I can't figure out why so many people post to threads like this and
bash Apple, while saying that they would never buy a machine from them
anyway. What's the point in that? Would the industry be better off if Apple
didn't exist? Would you finally be happy if everyone went out of business
except for Dell, only selling boxes pre-loaded with Linux, for $299?
If that was true, Lindows should be
And those that say that they could build a machine themselves for way
less than a Mac, if Apple had a build it yourself, parts in a bag option for
$500 less, then people would still bitch that for that price, it should come
fully assembled.
Although yes, I am a "Mac guy" (but I've got Windows, Linux, Solaris, IRIX,
NeXT and a few other boxes on my home network), regardless of my
prejudice for the platform, you have to acknowledge what a beautiful
$3000 machine the G5 is. Clean inside and out, plenty, plenty fast for
the years that you'll have it in service, arguably a better OS than any
Linux variant and absolutely better planned out and cleanly feature
rich (and economical) than any Windows release. I was doing some
admin work on Win 2000 server today, what a disorganized, steaming
plie that thing is. Some say it's superior, I think it might be the absolutely
worst collection of software ever crammed into one box. Pheeeewwww!
But I digress. I have come here to praise the Power Mac G5....
One of my favorite things about the G5 (and I know that non-Mac users
think than Apple just makes pretty boxes), is indeed, the pretty box.
J. Ive did such a restrained design. So clean and minimal.
There's a guy with rare discipline and insight.
The new design language, aluminum and circular hole accents, also
seen in the iSight and hints of it in the line of new aluminum PowerBooks,
in my opinion is the best we've seen in the 2nd Jobs era at Apple.
I liked the clean white, crystal and chrome designs of the G4 iMac and the
iPod but this new design language is going to make for some other very
exciting products. The new display line will be beautiful, wrapped in a
thin sheath of aluminum. Will a future iPod have the look of a large-ish
Zippo lighter? What would an all-aluminum G5 iMac look like?
I'm just glad that Apple's still here, still thinking different, and still making
insanely great products.
Dell? HPQ? Gateway? Lindows? Sony? (Well, Sony's trying).
The parts bin at Frys? That little shop in the strip mall that sells cases and
motherboards? For the most part, all of that is commodity crap. Even if
you throw on your free homemade Linux on it, it's half-assed at best,
even after hours of effort.
Apple is the only computer company left that's doing anything that really matters.
Like it or not.
Compilers make a big difference but Apple was fair (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all I think this was a fair test of these CPUs, it was a level playing field. OTOH we know Intel can do much better with their compiler, but only some developers use their compiler. It would be interesting to see just how much of a benefit Apple could squeeze out of non gcc compilers, probably not as much as Intel, perhaps not anything, it depends on the work they or IBM et.al. have done on their compilers. You just know if it was to Apples advantage they'd have compiled with their best compiler and dont teh comparrison with those numbers vs Intel's so this situation has been contrived to an extent.
With Intel charging what they do for their compiler developers can be reluctant to pay extra for it, I expect almost everyone (on Windows) would use it if it were free. I know I would, but I can get by without it. I don't really have much sympathy for Intel here, they make billions of chipe, make significant performance claims based on their own compiler, yet charge for it to the point where many developers simply stick with Microsoft's compiler that they've already spend a fair bit on. Now Intel is upset that Apple used gcc, well more people might use Intel's compiler if it were easier to aquire, and clearly it would benefit Intel. If they want to run there business where everything is a profit center and they don't have to be smart enough to evaluate obvious but intangible benefits that's their business, but this is part of the price you pay for charging an arm and a leg for your compiler when you should be in the hardware business and giving your compiler away to help your customer gain the benefit of faster code from the applications they purchase. In the meantime specbench numbers for Intel are simply bogus for many applications.
The Xeon isn't the competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Separate compiler from hardware? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the IMPORTANT benchmarks are the ones that test the whole system. The stuff up on stage during the keynote is the proof of that, I think. The architecture of the G5 gives it a big win. Getting data to the processor is almost as important as having a fast processor itself.
Parent
Re:I love Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: You know what a $750 dual 3gHz Xeon PC is called?
A: "Stolen Goods"
Really, the point for Mac users is not so much whether or not the G5 wipes the floor with the Pentium, but whether or not the long period of performance stagnation is coming to an end, and whether or not top-end Mac performance will once again be reasonably comparable to top-end PC performance. And it looks like the answer to both questions is YES! (FINALLY!!!)
Parent
Re:Benchmarks (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a science guy, and for the calculations and simulations done here at the physics dept. where I work, the IBM power4 kills just about everything else. And when I saw the powermac calculate fractals with mathematica faster than the xeon box by more than a factor of 2, I was very excited (although a little cautiously) to see we will soon get power4 performance for well under $20,000
Parent
Re:Even if Apple is faster (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple 2x2 G5: $3000
Dell (2x3.06 Xenon): $4000
Mac speed in "real world" application tests, about 2x as fast as the Dell.
Dell = $4000/work unit
Mac G5 = $1500/work unit
The Mac G5 is a much better value on cost on a price/performance basis.
Or were you thinking of something else?
Parent
Re:Even if Apple is faster (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is the one time where Apple hardware hasn't been "horribly" priced. A 64bit dual-2Ghz workstation with SATA HDD, DVD-R, PCI-X, a 1 GHz FSB and a max of 8GB of DDR-RAM for under $3000.
As for software, that comment is just pure ignorance. 50% of the stuff they make is free, and the other software is all competitively priced. What software from Apple is overpriced?
Parent
Re:Even if Apple is faster (Score:5, Insightful)
2xCPUs would cost around $1400
Motherboard $300
'Cos everyone knows all you need is a motherboard and processors. Didn't you work in IT at a company I used to work for? You're the one who took the RAM out of my computer and said you'd be "right back", aren't you?
Excercise for you:
Add the cost of Bluetooth, PCI-X, 802.11G, Gigabit ethernet, SATA hard drives and controllers, DVD-R drive, power supply, all the other hardware stuff I've forgotten, plus iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, and the ten or so other bundled applications on the G5s, a Unix-based operating system with superior usability, and one year of free warranty and support for ALL of that stuff.
How much does your dual Xeon cost now?
Parent
Re:Apple: innovation or catch up? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I appreciate the opinions and arguments of the author, I am dismayed by the constant references back to the BeBox. Yes the BeBox and Amiga (similar case) were excellent platforms when they were introduced. Yes, each had quite revolutionary ideas. Unfortunately, neither caught on. Both were targeted at geeks - a niche market with questionable budgets, based on the "$1k is TOO much to pay for a box" posts.
Apple does not invent everything, although historically they tried! Apple is clever at evaluating technologies, combining them into their existing product, and making the results available to the mass audience. I agree that many of the individual accomplishments are unremarkable, packaging all these into a new release is impressive. And doing this three times (10.0, 10.1, and 10.2) in about three years is amazing for any product. Doing this with an operating system is unparalled*.
Take a step back and evaluate Apple's announcement in the broader industry context. You may not be amazed, but I think you'll be impressed.
.
* I suggested that Apple's OS release schedule was unparalled based on the number of features being introduced. This isn't an achievement driven entirely by the programmars in Cupertino. With the Mach / BSD underpinnings, open source software can be easily ported over to the new machine (see: fink, apt-get, etc.). In many cases (e.g. Safari, ProjectBuilder, etc.), Apple is applying a flashly UI on top of standard source. The result is a relatively small number of programmers producing a large number of features. Compare this to Microsoft which uses entirely custom code and where you need a large number of programmers to get a small number of features. Compare this to the Linux model where you need a large number of programmers (as most are part-time), to get a moderate number of features. Solaris and other commercial Unixes also have this advantage, but neither has been quite as driven; I don't understand why this is so.
If this analysis is correct, OS X should have an impressive feature and Microsoft will need to change their OS development model. Linux / BSD, if they can avoid fragmentation, will continue to provide much of the R&D that the other OSes rely on.
Parent
Re:Apple: innovation or catch up? (Score:5, Informative)
The reason the Mac users are happy about all this is because we already knew we were way behind, and we've been begging Apple to catch up!
Even considering all the benchmarks, which may or may not be accurate, the simple fact remains that this Mac is much faster than the previous Mac. Which is good news for Mac users. And presumably the crowd at the keynote was full of Mac users.
Parent