Apple Issues New G5 Benchmarks 661
rocketjam writes "According to an article in The Register, Apple has issued SPEC benchmarks for the new dual G5 2GHz machines, comparing it to a two-way Dell Xeon and a 3Ghz Pentium 4 machine. The article says the G5 lagged behind the Dells in integer performance, however in 'the parallel "rate" benchmarks, which tax both of the CPUs in the test machines, the G5 edged out the Xeon 17.2 to 16.7 in the integer score and 15.7 to 11.1 in the floating point tests, suggesting Apple makes far better use of its two CPUs than the Xeon machine....the results augur well for Apple G5 performance in technical and scientific computing environments and for playing games.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
rvsb quote (Score:3, Funny)
Or as the guys from redvsblue [redvsblue.com] put it here [redvsblue.com]:
The confusing thing about PCs is just that you go to the store, and there is just so many games... everywhere you look! While on the Mac, its just six. And you know which ones are good, 'cause you have already played them on the PC like five or six years ago.
Untrue (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac is easier to use. Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC. It runs all the commercial apps you need. It can emulate proprietary in-house apps with VirtualPC. It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!). It's UNIX under the hood and runs X11 for added compatability. All of this, and it's not any more expensive than comparable PC hardware.
It's time to take an objective look at these systems if you're in the market for a new machine. Just take a look. If you don't like it, then don't buy it... but the Mac is a VERY viable platform these days. More so now than ever.
Re:Untrue (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't play all the latest games, only like 1 or 2 of them
It's not really easier to use at all"
I'm glad you posted this because it's a good example of how a lot of the public doesn't understand the current G5 situation.
Three points:
1. Get a dual-CPU (2 Ghz each) 64-bit computer complete with 128-bit DDR RAM, 1 Ghz motherboard w/8X AGP and nine slow-speed fans. Add a CD/DVD burner. Add a Radeon 9800 Pro. Add a 80GB-or-larger hard disk. Add optical audio, PCI-X and firewire 800. Don't forget the case. If that PC costs half as much as a G5, well guess what? I still wouldn't buy it because I'd rather have a stable-as-hell operating system with a great interface that keeps UNIX under the hood.
2. Does your digital camera require drivers? Does your wireless networking card? Does your MP3 player? Does your printer? So far on OS X I haven't had to install drivers for any of this stuff. Still not convinced that it's easier to use? Try this: Put your Soundblaster Platinum in the PCI slot next to your ATI All-in-Wonder. Now sit your grandmother down in front of your PC and have her figure out why it is that one or both of them don't work. My grandmother wouldn't be able to do it, but she uses OS X on a daily basis and isn't the least bit hindered by random problems, conflicts or other mishaps. The Mac isn't perfect, I will grant that, but I won't budge on the fact that it is most definitely easier to use, especially for those who don't know a lot about computers.
3. If you think the Mac only has one or two of the latest games... dude... that's the kind of talk that doesn't say "I'm trying to make a point". It's the kind of talk that says "I just want to make fun of the Mac without having to know anything about it"
Don't get me wrong; I don't strive to be a Mac evangelist. I just like to play on the level field of fact vs. fact.
Corey
Re:Sure, I'll fan this flame :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
Not always. If the $500 I spend today lasts for one year, but the $800 I could have spent would have lasted two, it's better to spend the $800.
My Dell is a about 18 months old and I'm considering a replacement; the sum total of upgrades I'd have to buy to keep it going make it attractive to just replace the box. My year-old iMac is going strong, and the late-2000 Cube is still playing all the games I've bought recently.
YMMV of course, but the numbers I've seen for businesses (which jibe with my personal experience) show that Apples stay in service more than twice as long, with fewer service calls. There's more to consider when calculating cost than just the sticker price.
Another misguided soul destined for correction... (Score:5, Interesting)
>
>Arguable. Mostly depends on what you're used to. I've
>been around plenty of noobs with their shiny new boxes.
>I've seen people take to Windows with no problem, and
>I've seen people trip up over Mac OS X.
But - easier to use for advanced users? I'd have to give that to a Mac. I could care less what is easier to learn... Or, if not easier to use, how about less frustrating.
>Could go either way. The other question is what do your
>friends, who will (hopefully) guide you through your
>dark days, use?
Counterpoint - 10 people come up to me and say "my computer keeps rebooting...". I just shrung and say "Sorry mac, I have an Apple". Sometimes it's good to be alone.
>>Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC.
>For the sake of argument, let's just say that both are
>equally well suited for common consumer tasks: web
>browsing, digital cameras, email, burning CDs, average
>3D games. Stay away from fancy stuff for a second--no
>firewire 800, no DVD burning, etc. Still with me? OK,
>good.
Lost me at the first one. Web browsing? Safari at least lets you block popups. I don't know how many people I've directed to the google toolbar - after I've pointed them to AdAware because they have a large number of very suspicious popups (hey look, the company intranet just added popunders! don't think so...). Oddly, I have yet to need AdAware or the like on my Powerbook.
Email? I get bayesian filtering out of the box. If
Burning CD's? PC's (even modern ones) still seem a bit more fragile in that regard.
Digital camera support might be about equal... but what about digital video? I hate hate hate trying to edit video on a PC. I will never do it again, and I will do everything in my power to save others from doing so as well.
Only a PC user considers burning a DVD "fancy". I consider it nessicary for backups and great for pictures too (for large slideshows). That kind of thing should be basic sttuff for all computers by now, all the parts are there.
You do have a point at games.
>>It runs all the commercial apps you need.
>
>Unless you want games, or cheap clip art, or scores of >other things. Most people do *not* buy MS Office for their
>home computers--the use MS Works or AppleWorks or
>whatever comes with them. Most also steer towards
>cheap photo editors (more than jusr rotate & enhance
> that iPhoto offers) like PSP or the cheap Adobe products, >rather than Quark-Photoshop-Illustrator stuff.
So what's wrong with Appleworks for what most people really do? Why can't I use any of the thousands of cheap clip-art or font CD's? I can... If they need office to read work files, they will just buy (or pirate) Office X. End of story. Windows makes it a little easier to pirate Office if it was not bundled. I can access my corperate intranet just fine from the mac with Citrix and RDC clients for OS X.
And as for Photoshop, you have Elements on both platforms. And the Mac also has GraphicConverter, a really good program for very little money. It even works with 16-bit Tiff's which Elements does not accept... I'm not sure what you were getting at there. Again, games are really the only thing where you have a significantly better library of software.
>It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!).
>So after you've bought your expensive (see below) Mac,
> you recommend a $150 console too?
How many PC owners have an XBox? What's up with that? You need as console anyway if you are really into games. Personally I bought a PS2 some time before my Mac because I was tired of the PC merry-go-round of upgrades and driver failures.
>>It's UNIX u
Re:Agur! (Score:3, Interesting)
How is running a dual proc machine going to help software that isn't traditionally multi-threaded? The OS might have a fun time swapping which proc gets the game for the next 10 million cycles, but auguring well for performance.... what a farce.
Re:Agur! (Score:5, Insightful)
I typically never noticed the benefits of an MP box until I start doing web development or design on a single processor system. There are noticeable delays when switching between tasks... even on a fast machine.
But, hey, Apple has been selling MP boxes for years now. There are a lot of applications and games that take advantage of SMP on OSX.
Buying an MP system from Apple was the best thing I ever did. My Dual 450 g4 still feels like new to me (as long as I'm not playing games)... even with modern software.
Re:Agur! (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's one thing I think people haven't noticed. I looked at Shake 3 and Final Cut Pro, they use a new networked clustering controller called QMaster. It is a new background system service for rendering video out of Shake or FCP Compressor. You can control a whole render farm of Macs from your workstation with QMaster. This doesn't have to be a rack of XServes, it could just be the regular macs around the office. I think Apple's moving to a more networked, distributed processing model, this could be an incredible increase in computing power.
Re:Agur! (Score:3, Interesting)
Handing off renders to multiple machines would be a big benefit to us, even if it's only to make the Powermac and Powerbook work together - three processors has to be better than two in this sort of task.
If it really works well, for a small outlay it would be pretty easy to put together a little farm of old G4 boxes - dual 450s and 500s to use them p
Re:Agur! (Score:5, Interesting)
By allowing more than one program at a time to run well.
For example, I might have iMovie capturing DV to an external FW drive while I also doing something like play one of the games that are available for the Mac. I've actually tried and been unable to get iMovie drop out on a dual 1 GHz Mac. No matter what I throw at it, including Finder copies to/from the same external FW drive iMovie is captuing to or firing up Win XP in VPC, iMovie keeps capturing that video without dropping a frame.
Try that with a single processor machine!
Re:Agur! (Score:3, Interesting)
Very few games take advantage of multiple CPUs. It takes a lot of work to get a modest advantage from a dual-CPU system when developing a game. Take a look at Carmack's
Re:Agur! (Score:5, Informative)
Um... actually, the Quake III test did come out first on the Mac, back in April of '99, then on Linux and Windows. id wanted the initial release of the test version to be on the platform with the fewest/most controlled variations in configurations. Windows users got to try the test a couple weeks after Mac users did.
Apple's results... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Linux on Apple (Score:3, Informative)
Now, to answer your question, I don't think that the G5 is supported yet by any of the distributions. Just give them some time (Yellow Dog is very diligent when porting to new models, and the rest follow naturally). I may be wrong on this, since IBM plans to use the
Shocking! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Recall that the clock speed of an individual processor in the ES is 500Mhz, and each processor has only 1 scalar unit, the rest being specialised vector units.) Thus you could probably contrive an example where the raw clock speed of a P4 could get the work done more quickly. I can't think of such an example myself, but someone out there probably can.
Re:Shocking! (Score:2)
Am I the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just my pennies.
---
Jedimom.com [jedimom.com], go banana!
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
You ARE locked into a platform: x86 based computers.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can build/buy yourself a basic bookpc for $300 or get an 8-way compaq that can nip at the heels of Sun's usparc3 based servers.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Informative)
So go G5. There are two vendors of compatible processors, IBM and Motorola, while the only vendor of x86-64 is AMD, and the only vendor of IPF is Intel... not only that, the PowerPC is more efficient and has a technically brighter future.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, it's what all the cool kids use. You want to be cool, right?
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not a kid, I have a kid.
Actually I want to have a cool, silent, energy-efficient machine. While current Apples aren't as silent and energy-efficient as I'd like, I can get a silent, energy-efficient EyeTech or Genesi.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not relevant. Betamax was proprietary to Sony, while the PowerPC has quite a momentum and community around it.
This has nothing to do with paper. The Apple G5s are there, IBM's are just around the corner, and Genesi and EyeTech are already preparing to fit their current G4 systems with G5. I write from a 366MHz G3 that is quite enough for me, and silent.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not to say the Opteron isn't a cool-ass chip tho...just saying that between the two, we consumers have great non-intel options these days. I champion both companies.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:4, Interesting)
When the performance only varies by a few percent, the cost and availability will totally make the decision for me.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:2)
For now you're right, but IBM will sell them too later. IBM prices tend to be high, but also quality; for the low end, EyeTech in the UK and Genesi in Luxembourg are now selling G4 systems. They should have G5 systems just a little down the road after IBM.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems odd to me that wintel hardware makers like HP seem more desirable because they don't make an OS to support their products. They even use software driven hardware (e.g. winmodems) that will be non-functional if you ditch the OS they bundled.
Admittedly Macs aren't everyone's cup of tea, but finding fault with Apple because they actively develop their own operating systems (one of which is open source) is a bit like finding fault with your parents for actually raising you instead of putting you up for adoption when you were born.
You are a moron (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, be my guest and spec out a (comparable!) dual-opteron or a dual-Xenon system with AGP 8x Pro, 1 GHz FSB, 3 PCI-X slots, FireWire, USB, Optical Audio, SATA, DDR400 (8 slots, 2 GB DIMM support), ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, a 56k modem, AirPort Antenna, Bluetooth, a spacious aluminum case, quality power unit, and a CD-RW/DVD-R system for $3000. Don't forget the operating system as well (sure, you can compile Linux from the ground up for it, but I consider my time to be valuable).
That is what you
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:5, Interesting)
I should think before answering... third time.
What does this mean?
AFAH/WG, the PowerPC is even more open than x86-64 or IPF, having two chip vendors (IBM and Moto) while the latter have one each (AMD and Intel) only.
AFAS/WG, the same holds true: the PowerPC runs GNU/Linux and BSD just fine, besides Apple's semi-proprietary Mac OS X instead of MS's completely proprietary Windows; the Hurd is being ported, there is Amiga-derived MorphOS and the AmigaOS itself.
Some PCI stuff is more expensive due to the presence of x86 assembly code in firmware of dirty cheap adaptors, but this should be fixed by AMD and Intel adopting OpenFirmware's Forth dialect. So all in all, it is a more open platform.
And BTW, if someday we get to use processors made from GNU GPL'd designs, RISC in general is a better candidate than x86-64 or IPF, being much simpler and more efficient. See that China is trying to go MIPS... MIPS in the East and PowerPC in the West would make for a much more open environment than, say, IPF in the US, x86-64 in Europe, MIPS in China and PowerPC in the high-end...
We need more benchmarks, Apple! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but when are they gonna test it against the other noble gases?
Five bucks says Argon wipes the floor with the G5, :)
I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the floating point performance for games (Score:2, Informative)
I agree that dual CPUs provide little benefit to games, perhaps if Apple standardised on two processors developers might take advantage of them?
Re:It's the floating point performance for games (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not that developers don't want to take advantage of them, it's that it takes a very large amount of work to get a very moderate boost (or any boost at all, initial work on using dual CPUs for Quake 2/3 slowed the game down) from most games. Oh, and then there's the fact that most games get most of their measured performance from the video card's capabilities,
Re:It's the floating point performance for games (Score:3, Interesting)
The P4's Q3 benches should be much higher than these. Typical results [anandtech.com] for the P4 show scores higher than 400 fps for the fastest processors, and the linked scores are from a testbed containing an older GPU (i.e. 9700 Pro). Apple's "benchmarks" on t
Re:It's the floating point performance for games (Score:3, Informative)
Here are some official SpecFP (baes) scores:
The P4 3.2GHz : 1252
AMD Opteron 246 (2.0GHz) : 1209
IBM Power4+ 1.7GHz : 1598
HP/Intel Itanium2 1.5GHz : 2119
As you can see, Apple's score of 840 in this benchmark isn't exactly impressive. Even one of the
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't know (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft is working on a hardware-accelerated graphics system for Longhorn, due in 2005 or 2006.
Re:I don't know (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you're still running Windows ME, then no amount of extra processors will help your game. And, yes... games need to be multithreaded/multiprocessed in order to get any benefits from dual-CPUs (other than if you happen to run background processes in the meanwhile, at the same time).
On the flip side of that coin... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On the flip side of that coin... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:On the flip side of that coin... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I don't even like 98% of the games released for the PC. They're mostly shitty first person shooters anyway. Instead, I got a gamecube. This provides just about as much games support as i could concievably want.
It all depends on what you want to do with your computer. There was a point where I might have considered switching from OS X to Linux, but the fact is I liked the OS X Cocoa programming environment to the point that it was enough to keep me on the mac despite the fact i hated Aqua. If you like PC games enough you're willing to let that rule everythign else about how you use your power, okay, go for it.
-- super ugly ultraman
Re:On the flip side of that coin... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I can't play the newest PC game title, but I get plenty of gaming in on the PS2. And as a bonus, I get the warm-n-fuzzy moral feeling of not giving WinTel any of my hard-earned $$$
--Mid
yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to compare a current machine (PC)... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gee, I could compare the latest, fastest Dell with one that will ship 6 months from now and the one that will ship 6 months from now will win!
Re:yawn (Score:2, Insightful)
Replace X1 and X2 with any variable and the statement will still be true. Thanks to the Law of Marketing. (:
Re:yawn (Score:3, Informative)
Heat? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Heat? (Score:5, Informative)
SMP gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
On the PC, very very few games take advantage of SMP. DirectX itself seems to make zero effort, and games seem to be starting the draw from the same thread that runs the rest of the game logic. At best, you benefit a little (almost immeasurably) on I/O handling or some of the audio processing.
Since SMP is more pervasive on Mac than on PC, do Mac games take more advantage of SMP? Does GL on the Mac render retained mode data outside of the calling thread or otherwise significantly distribute game-related work in the OS itself?
MAC games? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:SMP gaming (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SMP gaming (Score:4, Interesting)
This achieves no speed advantage, and anyone who's taken any class talking about caches, would understand why it'd be generally good to leave the task on a single CPU for at least a second or two.
In Linux, my computer performs tons better, never "locks up" waiting on I/O. (Which is stupid of Windows, because I have two CPUs) And tasks generally split processors, but only occationally... as in, I can watch them wander back and forth.
I've still yet to compile my multi-threaded raytracer for Windows, so I personally can't compare the speed one way or the other for real.
Re:SMP gaming (Score:5, Informative)
Most Mac games are not specifically written to take advantage of SMP. However, OS X (which is required for a G5) is pervasively multithreaded, and distributes the load among multiple processors very well. Any thread can run on any processor, as needed.
So, if a game is multithreaded it will use both processors. The graphics system under OS X is multithreaded, so it can use both processors. (And for that matter, the graphics card as well; Quartz Extreme offloads quite a bit of processing that way.) Basically any system call is likely to be done in a separate thread, and two threads should never take running time from each other.
As a real-word example EV Nova [ambrosiasw.com] (one of my favorite games, so I'm plugging them.) runs much faster on my dual 867MHz MDD Mac than my uncle's 1GHz iMac, without being 'designed for' SMP. (I wish I had a real benchmark for you though.) The OS takes care of that.
Re:SMP gaming (Score:3, Informative)
WTF? Um, old?! (Score:3, Informative)
Games? (Score:2)
Time magazine ad (Score:3, Interesting)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:2)
OS Bias (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows never really has been that efficient in a dual processor situation.
Games. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, a fast CPU certainly doesn't do any harm, but a lot of games these days are bound by either processing geometry on the GPU or by memory bandwidth for texture lookups.
Few games are multithreaded, so having two processors isn't such an advantage.
Still, I wouldn't turn one down.
Re:Games. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the (upper-end) G5 has about as much GPU [apple.com] and bandwidth [apple.com] as you can buy in the consumer market.
So many games for Apple... (Score:4, Funny)
Right.. because of these tests every pc game developer is now going to make a port to MAC OS of all the games they are developing..
why the focus on SPEC performance? (Score:2, Interesting)
topic Icon (Score:3, Insightful)
games, fragmentation.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Mainstreat Intel based OS will see the same problems I guess, 32 and 64 bit versions, linux, windows versions...
But I bet you if id software releases doom3 for a dual g2 64 bits mac... it'll be fabulous performance compared to intel architectures.
Independant 1.6 Ghz Benchmark Results (Score:5, Informative)
Please look at the Dell results at the SPEC site (Score:5, Informative)
In any case there was much consternation in the past about the VeriTest benchmarks becuase they did not use the same compilers that Dell used. Also VeriTest used things like an optimized malloc library on the G5's and faster memory with semi-secret memory timing tweaks in OF. If you want to take these benchmarks with a grain of salt, you should compare the DELL numbers from the SPEC site to those of the G5 from Veritest.
Lies, damn lies and benchmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to test relative compiler technology, you use the fastest compiler for each platform. If you want to test the platform itself, you use software which is as close to identical between platforms as possible. Hence, gcc.
Pretty basic experimental technique is at work here.
Re:Lies, damn lies and benchmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to compare compilers, you run different compilers on the same hardware. If you want to know how fast the hardware is, you let the manufacturer hand-tweak the test as much as possible, which includes picking the compiler and its options.
If you want to know how fast the hardware is in the eyes of the user, you use standard configurations which the software vendors will use: GCC for G5 and MSVC or Intel for x86. Using an inferior compiler on x86 (the x86 backend of gcc isn't that great, in fact it is quite bad) doesn't mean squat to the user. Word/Excel/Photoshop isn't going to get compiled on gcc for x86 anytime soon.
Re:Please look at the Dell results at the SPEC sit (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the nature of SPEC is that you perform your own tests and submit them. You certainly should not be performing any other manufacturers tests for them...
Why not test the things people care about? (Score:3, Interesting)
ADC Student Developers get a 20% hardware discount (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ADC Student Developers get a 20% hardware disco (Score:3, Informative)
Numbers aren't all that sell computers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Numbers aren't all that sell computers... (Score:3)
Except that SMB services on Jaguar kinda suck. There are a number of bugs. WINS name resolution, for instance, doesn't work. So if you use NT Domain services (not Active Directory) you can't browse shares on a routed network. Bit of a problem for many corporate user
The REAL Reason for P4 & Xeon Comparisons (Score:3, Insightful)
Marketing, pure and simple -- and effective.
Double speak? or you just forgot what you said? (Score:3, Insightful)
Edging out now implies that it's far better?
Look at the actual numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
First, single CPU performance. Apple claims 840 for SPECfp_base2000, and 800 for SPECint_base2000. A Dell Precision 360 with 3.2GHz P4 and DDR400 memory gives 1267 and 1242, respectively.
Next, dual-CPU. Apple claims 15.7 for SPECfp_rate_base2000 and 17.2 for SPECint_rate_base2000. A Dell Precision Workstation 650 with dual 3.06 GHz Xeons gives 18.0 and 25.6, respectively.
Of course, there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks, but in this case I think it's fair to compare actual SPEC numbers with vendor claims.
And don't get me wrong, I think Apples are wonderful systems. I recommend them to many of my friends. But for raw CPU power, they lag the Intel powerhouse.
Re:auger? (Score:2, Informative)
Augury: divining the future be examining the entrails of dead birds, or somesuch, especially before a battle. (in ancient roman times)
If sth 'augurs well', that means a favourable outcome is likely.
Re:auger? (Score:3, Funny)
And what do G5's have to do with boring holes in wood or ice, anyways? And how did we get onto snoblowers?
Speedholes. Duh. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:auger? (Score:5, Informative)
1. To predict, especially from signs or omens; foretell. See Synonyms at foretell.
Auger (your spelling) means a drill, or to drill.
Re:auger? (Score:2)
On another note, I augur that a visit to http://www.spec.org could enlighten us all to which CPU is fast, and which is not.
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:2)
Seriously, we all knew that the later G3s and all the G4s were behind the competition for all but a few very specialized operations. That's why Apple dumped Motorola, and is now working with IBM.
The G5 doesn't suck. And for the first time, its FSB and memory bandwidth don't suck either. Apple's using standard SPEC benchmarks, and it looks from their writeup like they were fair. So give it a rest.
Re:Yeah, right... (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
DISCLAIMER: I am a fan of apple. I'm typing this on an iBook.
Apple's been pissing me off with the advertising of the G5. All these benchmarks are just plain stupid. They compare it to Pentium 4, Xeon, whatever. Guess what Apple, you forgot a processor. The G4. Really, tell me, inform me as to who is currently torn between a 3GHz Dell and a Dual 2GHz Apple, and needs to know which one is faster. To 99.99% of the market, a few seconds difference encoding
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:3, Informative)
Dont get me wrong, its a great, powerful machine. AND it is rather quiet. Just that the G5 is no laptop stuff...
who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Your neighbour of course. The guy who brags about his $5K new ultra-fast machine which will bring his to new heights of web-surfing, tax-crunching and e-mail-sending pleasure.
Oh, and people who do a lot of video encoding. If I can encode my video at 35fps instead of 29 fps, that is a large difference. It gives me more time to make sure I have tweaked all the settings nicely to give the best encode for the filesize.
"Even if the G5 was undeniably faster by a great margain, I doubt that fact would sell more than a few hundred units."
They already have 100,000 pre-orders [macnn.com]. Of course I don't expect this rate of orders to stay steady. If you look at military enrollment statistics in Canada (and probably other countries affiiated with Britain) during the first world war, there was a large wave of fanatics joining in at the beginning and then reality set in and the numbers became more realistic.
"So I want to know how it compares to the G4. Because most of your sales aren't going to be from people who want to buy the fastest desktop computer. It's going to be from people who want to buy the fastest Apple."
I'm not entirely sure what you're implying here. Are you saying that the G4 might be faster than the G5? I find that hard to believe.
Btw: One thing that almost makes me cry is that the FSB on the 2 GHz G5 machines is faster than the CPU clock speed of my iBook. (Sniffle ... )
Re:Games? (Score:5, Informative)
- SimCity 4 - released for Apple
- America's Army - released for Apple
- Dungeon Seige - released for Apple
- Neverwinter Nights - released for Apple
- Warrior Kings - released for Apple
- Warcraft III - released for Apple
- Master of Orion - released for Apple
- Unreal Tournament 2003 - released for Apple
- The Sims - released for Apple
- Quake III Arena - released for Apple
- Civilization III - released for Apple
Obviously the list goes on. So there are more games released for the PC. It could be said that there are even more games released for the console market. It seems to me though that games that tend to be commercially viable tend to be ported to the Mac. So next time you want to troll, please, at least have a specific gripe instead of spouting off on something you couldn't care to look into.
Re:Games? (Score:3, Funny)
Apple needs to reach out to the mediocre and uninspired developers. Churning out another lame wargame with soldiers who dance like puppets when they talk? On x86 there are thirty competing titles, but only two or three on the Mac! Contract-publishing a tedious racing game with no charm or originality? Mac users are waiti
Re:g5 problems (Score:3, Informative)
When you look up... do you see a large granite object?
I will assume that this is the case, so let me be the first to inform you that BSD errr... I mean OSX has in fact, 'improved' multitasking over your experience with OS 9 or earlier.
Drawing any conclusions about the Mac platform based on experiences with OS 9 or earlier is much like concluding that Automobiles are not useful based on your experience with a motorized ska
Re:Anyone else finding 64 bit cpus disappointing? (Score:3, Informative)
64bit != faster. Why must people always assume (especially on /. where you are supposed to be technically inclined) think that 64bit MUST be faster than 32bit.
However, having said that, you do realize that this is comparing a 2Ghz G5 setup to a 3Ghz Intel rig right? So even if they came out equal the G5 is faster per Ghz?
FUD (Score:3, Informative)
And, we've all seen the "I'm jealous so I'm going to debunk this" website. Next.
You can chose to use a Mac or not. At worst case scenario the Mac is maybe 5 to 10% slower, which is not perceivable to a human unless you're running a multiple day long task. At best, the Mac is 200% faster. That's noticable in the timeframe of a second.