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Technology (Apple) Businesses Apple Technology

PC Mag Compares G5 to Xeon 196

Posted by pudge from the i-will-take-one-of-each dept.
zpok writes "PC Magazine did a comparison between a dual 2.0-GHz Power Mac G5 and an equally expensive Dell Precision 650 Workstation running dual 3.06-GHz Xeon processors. Their conclusion: 'we see that indeed the G5 is generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available.' But of course 'our cousin Ned can build you a better'un at half the dough.'"
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PC Mag Compares G5 to Xeon More

PC Mag Compares G5 to Xeon

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  • objectivity (Score:5, Informative)

    by madbeaner ( 568435 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:05PM (#7018725)
    according to PCMAG, the G5 cost $4349 as tested. Using the apple store, i can get that with the 2x1gb RAM modules, superdrive, no bluetooth/wifi, Radeon 9800, and a modem. now, let's configure a similar Dell Precision 650. the review doesn't mention that the Dell has a Radeon VE 32mb, no 56k modem, a 120gb ATA HD (compared with the G5 and its 160gb SATA), and uses DDR266 (compared to the G5 using DDR400, but that can't be blamed on Dell, but the mobo config). According to PCMAG, they were "comparing the results with a similarly configured (and priced) Dell Precision 650 Workstation". Funny how they give the exact price of the G5 and not of the "similarly priced" Dell.

    as you can see, the Dell is $835 more. now, let's try and be objective, something PCMAG disavowed in their introduction saying they took Apple's claims about the speed of the G5 "with a grain of salt". in other words, the test was designed to debunk Apple, thus throwing objectivity out the window.

    IF we were to buy the RAM by a third party, drop the 56k modem on the G5, and leave the default video card (which is still better than the Dell), the system would cost $3188 (RAM is DDR400, 512mb+1gb on pricewatch). The Dell would cost $4057 (again, with RAM from pricewatch). That would make it $869 more.

    On top of that, PCMAG admits to not taking into account a certain loading time (for controls ... they don't explain what it is, but they make it obvious that said delay is not experienced on the Mac). According to the story, "on the Windows system, loading the controls often took a minute or more. If these times are added back to the actual test times, both Macintosh computers would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer." They don't make a note of it on the actual benchmarks, just the preface.

    so if anything should be taken with a grain of salt, it's PCMAG.

    • Re:objectivity (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't neglect the fact that the Dell 650 uses more expensive ECC memory, for increased reliability. Is any Apple product even capable of using ECC memory?

    • Re:objectivity (Score:5, Informative)

      by madbeaner ( 568435 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:47PM (#7019352)
      you're right, the G5 doesn't support ECC (check the Virginia Tech Supercomputer threads for those complaints ...) and no, IF you buy the RAM from Apple, the price skyrockets and the Dell and Apple are pretty much evenly priced, but honestly, who the hell would pay those prices? Also, you're probably configuring the Dell for 4x512mb sticks when the G5 config uses 2x1gb, and again the Dell is more expensive. really though, scratch that and leave the default RAM in and just add aftermarket prices, and you'll see the Dell is still much more expensive (i know i sound like a broken record right about now)

    • as you can see, the Dell is $835 more. now, let's try and be objective, something PCMAG disavowed in their introduction saying they took Apple's claims about the speed of the G5 "with a grain of salt". in other words, the test was designed to debunk Apple, thus throwing objectivity out the window.

      Nah, cut them a little slack on this one: it's perfectly valid to take a position as your null hypothesis -- in this case, that Macs are always slower than PCs -- and them come up with a suite of tests that atte

  • Objectivity here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:17PM (#7018806)
    The same criticisms of the Apple propaganda organs that always say that the Macs are faster also applies to the PC propaganda organs saying that PCs are faster.

    Objectivity, wherefor art thou?

    • Re:Objectivity here? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:58PM (#7019715)
      Objectivity, wherefor art thou?

      Right here.

      Both the Power Mac and the Dell are decent computers. Neither one is fast in any absolute sense, but both are faster than they need to be for average users. The Dell has more configuration options, but the Mac is far better designed.

      If you are in the market for a desktop computer as fast as these, you won't make your decision based on which one squeaks out the other in some test.

      These sorts of "shoot-outs" are a colossal waste of time and effort.

    • Re:Objectivity here? (Score:2, Informative)

      by sg3000 ( 87992 ) *
      > Objectivity, wherefor art thou?

      Why is objectivity important? What an odd question. Objective measurements of consumer goods makes it easier to understand substitute products and to determine if you're getting a good price for what you bought.

      Oh, you meant, "where are the objective standards?", not "why are there objective standards?" As we all know, "wherefore art thou" isn't a fancy way of saying, "where are you?" It means, "why are you?" or "what purpose are you?"

      I'm just glad the word "whither" h
      • I'm just glad the word "whither" has gone out of fashion again. Casual, improper use of Shakespearean English makes fools of us all.

        Personally, I like using the Shakespearean "die" when I'm in mixed company. (As in "I would live in your heart, die in your lap, and be buried in your eyes.")

        Since nobody gets it, I'm far less likely to be slapped in the face than if I say what I mean in modern English. :)

      • Casual, improper use of Shakespearean English makes fools of us all.
        "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

    • Re:Objectivity here? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      some objectivity can be found here:

      http://www.spec.org

      note that Apple don't have any results there yet. One should compare SPEC-sanctioned results with SPEC-sanctioned results.

    • Shakespeare... (Score:2, Informative)

      by deep square leg ( 703399 )
      Apologies for this off-topic post, but 'wherefore' translates better as 'why' than 'where' (as many people think).

      Juliet was basically saying "Why art thou Romeo" (as in why is he from a rival family) rather than asking where he is that that moment.

      Therefore, you are asking Objectivity why it is what it is :)
    • ... but I have to comment on this. I didn't realise it myself until recently -- "wherefore" means "why," not "where." And duh, Romeo's like right in front of her, why would she say "where are you?"

  • preach on, good brother, preach on (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eskimo232 ( 681800 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:24PM (#7018847)
    Many pc morons fail to realize that their single processor P4 they built themselves for under 1k is nowhere near the dual processor G5 in performance. They bring up things like Dell's 350 dollar computer and how much cheaper pc's are, ya they are cheaper but you get what you pay for. for 350 you get every possible corner cut everywhere in that pc and it will most likely require another 500 at least to get it to respectable speeds. When comparing prices/computer, you need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Shoot the xeon processor, the most comparable to the G5 in terms of performance, is like 800 a chip or some ridiculous price, so start configuring guys, hit up pricewatch and try to make your system 200 bucks cheaper than the g5.........then also try to sell your system for 60% of what you paid for it 2 years later..........and finally try to add in 1 year of no questions asked award winning support..............and tell me what you get.......nothing....because you can't get that on pc's. I just sold my 2 year old 867 Mhz quicksilver for 1,000 on ebay, no monitor included. I paid 1600 for the thing........so i basically rented a mac for 300 a year for 2 years. Get with the program folks, and get a mac.
    I know you hate all the hype and think they are overhyped, etc. Well believe the hype, and then some

    -yet another satisfied mac user

    • mod parent down (Score:1, Troll)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How is a ranting piece of Mac zealotry Insightful?

      I'm not saying the Mac is slower or trash - it looks like its the winner so far, but geez, why does Mac vs. PC have to be such personal debate?

      • Re:mod parent down (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Smurf ( 7981 )
        I agree with most of eskimo232's opinions. I would probably not mod him "insightful", though; maybe "interesting", but that's a mater of taste.

        On the other hand, the parent post was simply expressing his opinion. He thinks that eskimo232's post does not deserve to be modded as "insightful". And he has a right to think differently. He even acknowledged that "[the Mac] looks like a winner so far".

        If moderators don't agree with him, that's OK, leave him alone. But modding him as a Troll is unacceptable, an

    • Re:preach on, good brother, preach on (Score:5, Informative)

      by Quikah ( 14419 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @11:58PM (#7022175)
      Actually the Xeon is a pretty crappy chip right now, not really comparable to a G5. The P4 is a much better comparison, but no dual support. Intel is really hurting for a good workstation chip right now, once they bring 800 MHz bus to the Xeon, they will be in better shape but they still are in trouble with the opteron/Athlon64.
    • I tell you what, I would buy a $500 Mac with all the corners trimmed off if only Apple would sell one. Since Apple made the switch to standard, OTS components (USB keyboards, IDE disks, VGA monitors), there's not much reason that they can't (versus won't) compete at the bottom end.

      Give me a 1 GHz G4 with a 40 GB drive, a modest video card and 128 MB of RAM, bundle it with a 15" flat panel monitor, OS X and AppleWorks, price it for $500, and get outta my way. If Dell and Gateway can do it, why can't Appl

      • Because all of the companies selling stripped down PC systems for $500 are <b>losing money</b> on every unit they sell. It's a terrible business. Apple made a pretty reasonable business decision that they're not going to play the 'lose money for market share' game, and instead actually makes a profit. Dell is the only other profitable computer company, and while they don't release such details, analysts are pretty sure that even the master of low-margin commodity PC's loses money on their low-en

  • Believe it or not.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:30PM (#7018886)
    Despite what many people here on /. like to imply, the Apple benchmarks were about as close to objective as you're gonna get.

    Keep in mind, as well, that 10.3 is not up to release version yet. The G5 is running on incomplete software, and, at almost $900 less, still outperforms the Xeon, even with the questionable objectivity of the study. I think it says a lot that a magazine aiming to trash Apple and claim the superiority of PCs is unable to get more than a tie with their unfair methods.

    • Re:Believe it or not.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by zpok ( 604055 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @09:53PM (#7021662) Homepage
      It was objective alright, but most (intelligent) people objected on other grounds than -erm- objectivity.

      They argued PC's should have run an optimized compiler, as the G5 should have. That way you'd have a subjective but real world benchmark. Because that's the thing most people would do with a machine like that, when programming. Only makes sense.

      What Apple showed with that benchmark was that the G5 was faster at a bunch of tasks people wouldn't necessarily want to perform under that set of circumstances.

      I personally only started drooling after that. When Stevie Wonder showed Photoshop, Mathematica, Logic/Cubase, rendering and FCP stuff. That's what this beast is made for, that's why you'd buy a G5 instead of a Dell. Not only good soft, but screaming hardware... etc etc

      And that's why this PC Mag article is for most people more interesting than two high-end machines running an open source all-purpose compiler.

      Apart from that it shows the G5 in a decent light to a mostly PC audience. Could have been worse.

      Disclaimer: if I were Apple I would have done the same thing. It might not excite me personally, but it did show the G5 advantage in a levelled field, set up by the best and most impartial people they could have hired.

  • I am pretty sure that you have to (Score:5, Funny)

    by maccw ( 693528 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @01:33PM (#7018905)
    run windows on that Dell too.

  • Yes, but (Score:5, Funny)

    by McAddress ( 673660 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:04PM (#7019083)
    What I want to know is how long it takes to copy a 17 MB file from folder to another.

    • Re:Yes, but (Score:2, Funny)

      by godawful ( 84526 )
      perhaps this should be included in their benchmarks from now on, along with installing a copy of acrobat (i hear it's upwards of 20 minutes!)
    • Well 20 minutes of course, if the Mac is at your freelance gig and you have a dual Pentium III running NT 4 at home (which the mac should be much faster than . . . )

  • That is good review from a hostile source. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:20PM (#7019206)
    With the fact that they were giving the text to debunk apples claims and to come up with a comparable system. Is actually a good review. Could they have done things to improve Mac performance or make the tests more fair, probably. But there were things that they could probably do to the PC side to improve performance. But the fact that PC World was a hostile reviewer and they said it is a tie. Is a really good review for apple. But benchmarking PCs vs Apples is always tough because they were engineered for different jobs as shown in the results. So if you wanted a glowing PC review you subtract the benchmarks that Apple won. If you wanted a glowing Apple Review then you take out what the PCs shined in.
    I don't tend to follow benchmarks I use what seems like it is good for me, A difference in milliseconds doesn't effect me that much because normally I cannot type that fast.

    • Why only compare top of the line systems? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cpt_Corelli ( 307594 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:17AM (#7022620)
      Let's face it: most people will not buy a new computer for > $4000.

      It would be far more interesting to see what you can get for different amounts of money. E.g. What is the price / performance for a system for $900, $1000, $2000 and so on. This is where I believe Apple will have a hard time keeping up with Intel based products.
      • Well, you will buy a computer for 4 grand if it is going to help you make more money. So, on a bussines enviroment, it is acceptable.

        One wrong argument to defend Apple computers is to say that you have a good reselling price for a 2 year system, compared to a 2 year PC system. It is partially true: Macs have better mechanical components (fans and stuff) that degrade with time, so you can have a good system for 4 years or more.

        But what is happening now on the used Apple marketplace is just casual: the G

    • If you average the results across all of the tests, you'll see that the Dual G5 Mac beat the Dual Xenon PC by an average of 22% overall. Of course, there were some tests where the PC beat the Mac by a bit, and some tests where the Mac beat the PC by quite a bit, so as always it's dangerous to generalize from any benchmark to performance on the applications you use. But it looked like overall the Mac beat the PC by a fairly significant margin. I'm not sure that a 22% performance boost alone is enough justifi

  • speed no longer matters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:23PM (#7019230)
    For most of the stuff that most people do most of the time, today's machines are hugely overpowered, and whether the top-end G5 or the top-end Wintel machine wins the benchmark race hardly matters at all.

    Sending e-mail, writing reports, editing web pages, and 98% of what we do as software developers can be done with equal speed on a dual-processor G5, a G4-based iMac, or a G3-based iBook. Same goes for the Wintel world. Speed matters a little more if you're crunching a truly huge spreadsheet or running a filter on a large digital image. And speed really starts to count when you're editting video or running a large simulation. But most people don't run large simulations or edit video most of the time.

    Those that do a lot of video editting, etc., generally do it for a living, and the speed improvements are so important that the price differential usually isn't a problem. Time is money and all that.

    • Re:speed no longer matters (Score:4, Insightful)

      by perlchild ( 582235 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:35PM (#7019291)
      Odd, how they spend so much money developing "faster" machines, that never speed up the tasks people DO! *wants faster hard drives, to speed up the saving of documents, something I do quite a bit often*

      • Re:speed no longer matters (Score:5, Funny)

        by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:49PM (#7019368)
        It's due mostly to microphallus economics, I suspect.
      • Actually, hard drives are dramatically faster than they used to be. Back when I worked at GCC Technologies writing had drive device drivers, you were pretty happy if you could move 1 MB/sec (Mac Plus to 20 MB HD). I just read a review of some 10K RPM drives (http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2003q2/10k-co m paro/index.x?pg=1) that delivered sustained throughput of over 72 MB/sec.

        Of course, systems also provide far more formatting capabilities, and have much better displays, which consumes disk space and C

    • Re:speed no longer matters (Score:5, Informative)

      by KH2002 ( 547812 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:52PM (#7019380) Journal
      "For most of the stuff that most people do most of the time, today's machines are hugely overpowered... ...most people don't run large simulations or edit video most of the time."

      Many people do lots of video editing or 3D, or use virtual instruments & effects to do music. We can use every last bit of power we have- every day. Plus we're cranky and outspoken...

    • Re:speed no longer matters (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      but.. I thought Macs sucked because they were so slow and expensive, and concentrated on crap like "user experience" and "gui".

      Now that they are comparable in power to WinTel, speed doesn't matter????

      Look if you take away the price and speed advantage of WinTel, you're left with a bunch of annoying crap!

      I'll take OS X on a 500MHz iMac over Linux or Windows any day..
      • Now that they are comparable in power to WinTel, speed doesn't matter????

        Ah, you've mistaken me for a PC zealot. I'm actually a Mac zealot who's just sick and tired of hearing people blather on about whether this machine or that one is a few miniflops faster than the other. Now that Macs are comparable to the fastest Wintel machines in speed, they're still better (IMO) mainly due to the superior OS. I'd also take an 500 MHz iMac over a 3 GHz Dell running Windows any day.
    • That's not entirely true. For some users, the small delays with a slower machine are not a problem. I, however, find myself getting very frustrated at the iBook for being slow, I'm spoiled byt my desktop (dual G4), but even this thing bogs down with regular tasks occasionally. Also, the G5 includes many other speedbumps- HDD, memory, FSB, etc. that are more likely to be noticed by the average user than the insanely fast CPU (not that that hurts either). Also, tasks that are 'resource intensive' are bec
    • "98% of what we do as software developers can be done with equal speed on a dual-processor G5, a G4-based iMac, or a G3-based iBook."

      Speak for yourself. I have done software development on my Dual G4, my 800mhz iBook, and my friends shiny new G5 for an afternoon. IDEs are ever-increasing in complexity and responsibility. Apple's new XCode and VC++ have for a long time done many, many things that require quite a lot of lookups, analysis, and parse tree building.

      Sorry, these things create stutters, slowdown
    • I've seen people make this argument for at least ten years now. (And I suspect that it's been made far longer than that, and I'm just displaying my relative inexperience.)

      It always turns out to be pretty shortsighted. Yes, an average new computer is overkill for most users the day it's purchased. Software is targetted at the average computer in use, new computers tend to be faster than the average, so new computers are always overkill. This is so definitional as to border on tautology.

      But software continu

  • icon update needed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 1nv4d3r ( 642775 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:27PM (#7019258)
    Shouldn't the slashdot topic icon say G5 on it by now?

  • My favorite quote from the article (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lumpish Scholar ( 17107 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:34PM (#7019286) Homepage Journal
    "We started [Photoshop testing] with a 59.5 MB test image, but many operations completed too quickly to time...."

  • Hell, the G5 did better than PC Mag said it did (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KH2002 ( 547812 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @02:37PM (#7019298) Journal
    The G5 did better than PC Mag's quote "generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available." The G5 won 4 of 6 tests; and its wins were mostly by much bigger margins. For Photoshop, they also said that if you factored in the Xeon's much slower-loading controls, "both Macintosh computers would would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer." That would make it 5 out of 6, all but one by big margins, and the one loss was almost a tie. And PC Mag calls that "neck & neck"? The G5 completely dominated in video encoding- with software that's not even G5-optimized yet.

    Another insight was that one of the oft-criticized older Mac G4s beat the Xeon in one test (two if you factor in the controls issue), nearly tied it in another, and wasn't so far behind in two more. Heh.

    • Re:Hell, the G5 did better than PC Mag said it did (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:31PM (#7021850)
      Yea your right. I decided to do the numbers.
      I took all the times for all the tests and got the percentage improvement (it is a negative number if it is slower) over the Xenon. Then I took an average of all the test and I got that on the average the G5 is 15.7122479017% faster then the Xenon. which is not truly a neck & neck race there. I would say if it was less then 5% difference but 15% seems like a good margin. And right now I don't feel like pulling my statistics book from college to check to make sure that this is a statically significant advantage over the Xenon. In case you do their are 6 Data Points with the following values points
      [11.578947368421053, 44.270833333333329, -21.374045801526716, -2.4911032028469751, 38.549618320610683, 23.739237392373923]
      Have a blast.
      • on the average the G5 is 15.7122479017% faster then the Xenon

        By taking percentages, you have assumed that each test is of equal relative weight. This runs the risk of oversimplification.

        For example, if computer A does task 1 in 1 second, and computer B does the same in 1.1 second, then B is slower by 10%. If A does task 2 in 5 minutes, and B does it in 6 minutes, then B is slower by 20%. If you simply take the average, then you'll show that B is slower by 15%. However, if you add up the times taken

    • While they did acknowledge that "Current users can download 64-bit plug-ins or upgraded versions of [Photoshop]," they also suggest that they didn't use the Adobe G5 plugin for the test: "the PowerPC G5... will continue to run 32-bit applications (like those in our test suite)."

      I guess they were trying to make the test "fair" by not using code optimized for the G5?

  • Professional Journalism at its finest! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:05PM (#7019440) Homepage
    And by outperforming top-specked Windows machines on some tests ...
    Top-specked? What the hell is that? The same kind of paint specks on both machines?

  • PSBench (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Llywelyn ( 531070 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @03:22PM (#7019520) Homepage

    Some of the folks in the forums over at Ars Technica [infopop.net] has been using PS7Bench (a 21 filter test) on a 50 MB test file. Their results are summarized here [geocities.com].

    It is interesting to note that the G5 performs significantly better on the first 12 tests than on the last 9. The tests it performs the worst on are NTSC Colors, Accented Edges, and Water Color.

    • PLEASE MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)

      by valmont ( 3573 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:20PM (#7020118) Homepage Journal

      please mod parent way up. very interesting stuff. I am noting that a single-processor 1800Mhz G5 is neck-and-neck in performance with, but slightly lower than, dual-processor 2200Mhz Xeon.

      in all benchmarks i've seen, it is becoming clear that while the G5 processor itself is a dramatic improvement, the overall motherboard rearchitecture entirely designed around high bandwidth for data flow is most definitely paying off. IMHO this overall architecture, beyond the mere CPU, is what will keep paying-off in the long-run.

      The intel-based chips have been stuck around 3Ghz for a while now and my guess is a key reason has to do with heat dissipation and power consumption issues which could render dramatically faster clock speeds unsafe for your averagely-cooled machine. And this brings me to one main draw-back of the PC world: since so many components are independently architected, built and assembled by such a wide variety of vendors, no single component, and especially the CPU, fits as part of one consistent, overall hardware engineering vision. The intel chips weren't designed with efficient power consumption in mind in the first place. They were designed to sustain high clock speeds. period. MMX was an after-thought answer to Altivec. Most PC manufacturers have always grossly architected motherboards and enclosing cases without ever putting as much thought as Apple did with the new G5 architecture. [apple.com]

      Apple defines the requirements of every single component that goes into their boxes. They will find vendors that meet those requirements. From the processor-maker, to the heat-sink, to every single fan, to the hard drives.

      My guess is there is plenty of room for that G5 processor clock speed to grow. And when it does, the superior architecture of the enclosing case and all motherboards subsystems will both enable this clock speed growth and dramatically increase its performance boosts pay-offs.

      • I am noting that a single-processor 1800Mhz G5 is neck-and-neck in performance with, but slightly lower than, dual-processor 2200Mhz Xeon.

        Are you also noting that a 3Ghz P4 is quite a bit faster than both of them (and a *lot* cheaper) ? :)

        Photoshop on the G5 clearly benefits more from SMP than PS on the Xeons - probably because of the G5's much faster bus. I suspect those Xeon results come from older machines with only a 533Mhz bus and the top P4 results come from machines with an 800Mhz bus.

        The intel-

        • And you think Dell, IBM, HP, etc *don't* ?

          HP and Dell go for the cheaper. IBM is better, so their machines tend to cost noticeably more.
          • HP and Dell go for the cheaper. IBM is better, so their machines tend to cost noticeably more.

            Maybe in their bargain basement machines. I've never seen anything in a Precision workstation that gives the impression of cheapness.

        • "Are you also noting that a 3Ghz P4 is quite a bit faster than both of them (and a *lot* cheaper) ? :)"

          Umm.. you know why these benchmarks that everyone does are stupid? Because the test the machine doing one task at once. Sure, the task has multiple parts, and may include more than just the processor, but all too often we see these little head-in-the-sand benchmarks that make the 3Ghz P4 look so good.

          It's not. Want a real test? Run two of these benchmark tests simultaneously. Run 3. The p4 has a vastly h
          • Umm.. you know why these benchmarks that everyone does are stupid? Because the test the machine doing one task at once. Sure, the task has multiple parts, and may include more than just the processor, but all too often we see these little head-in-the-sand benchmarks that make the 3Ghz P4 look so good.

            Given OS X's poor GUI responsiveness, an attempt to recreate a "realistic" multitasking benchmark is going to make it look worse, not better.

            It's not. Want a real test? Run two of these benchmark tests simul

            • Given OS X's poor GUI responsiveness, an attempt to recreate a "realistic" multitasking benchmark is going to make it look worse, not better.

              Yeah, um, it's plenty responsive on my iBook 800. I do not know where you're drawing this from. Are you complaining that OSX doesn't have a smooth scroll feature like Windows does? They do in Panther, but honestly I don't like them. It's a lot harder to tell how far you're scrolling when there is an animation delay imposed.

              The P4 completes a single task faster

              • Yeah, um, it's plenty responsive on my iBook 800.

                Ah, this must be one of those special edition machines Apple gives to Mac Fans.

                I do not know where you're drawing this from.

                A great deal of experience. I've be using OS X off and on since the public beta, on a large selection of machines all the way up to (recently and briefly) a 1.6Ghz G5. OS X's GUI remained unresponsive and chunky on all of them.

                I bought a Rev A 667 because I wanted to run OS X. Then I bought Jaguar because I was digusted at how fr

                • A great deal of experience. I've be using OS X off and on since the public beta, on a large selection of machines all the way up to (recently and briefly) a 1.6Ghz G5. OS X's GUI remained unresponsive and chunky on all of them.

                  Okay, at first I thought you were just trolling, because my experiences with the G5 have been liquid smooth. Maybe we're using different meaningw or responsive sand smooth? On my dual 800 and even on my iBook there an be some frame loss when dragging very large windows or doing

                  • Right now I have about 50 tabs open spread over 4 Firebird windows, 5 IE windows, Outlook checking 6 email accounts every 2 minutes, a VMWare machine idling away in the background, MP3s playing, 6 Word documents open, 4 IM windows, 15 terminal windows and about 30G of data being...

                    Bullshit. But go on.

                    See, this is the point at which I lose interest in anything you have - or had - to say. Pretentious, snotty and condescending tones I can excuse as immaturity. But a personal attack - and a direct insult to

                    • You lost yours the moment you began arguing both sides of the same argument. One for Opteron (set up for SMP, which incedently means set up for context switching and context sharing) and another for G5 (implication that P4's context switching is not slow compared to G5, which is also very optimized for SMP).

                      No, I didn't. I merely asked you to explain the conclusion you were drawing and the data you were drawing from.

                      Among other things. Like, "I don't own a P4, but I'm bragging about the one I'm using

    • And the reason for that, if I recall Photoshop correctly, is that the last 9 tests are all plug-ins. The G5 accelerator that Adobe shipped only sped up the core graphics engine, not any of the plug-ins.
      Supposedly PS8 (isn't that the next one?) will have all components re-compiled and optimized for the G5 systems.

      At least I'm guessing that the G5 accelerator patch is just like the accelerator that made PS compiled for 68K run much faster on PPC.

  • And not even with Panther... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @05:59PM (#7020365)
    The G5 in these tests was running 10.2.7. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) will, by all accounts, increase performance even more. For example, from this Bare Feats test [barefeats.com]:

    "PANTHER PUNCH"
    Meanwhile, here's some data on the speed increase that OS X "Panther" (10.3) will provide G5 owners once it's released. We ran Xbench 1.1 on a G5 1.8GHz with 10.3 beta build 7B49. Compared to 10.2.7 "Jaguar"....
    ....CPU score increased 40%
    ....Thread score increased 44%
    ....Memory score increased 38%
    • You are trying to claim that the CPU score is going up 40%? Considering that in CPU-intensive applications the operating system takes 2% (probably much less, just a quick measure) of the CPU time, and the operating system has nothing to do with the work the CPU is doing in my application (unless you are calling it, in which case it isn't really a CPU test), how can you possibily get that kind of speed increase? I call bullshit
      • XBench is one of the worst benchmark programs ever.

        Don't trust anything an XBencher has to say about their XBench results. It's all crap. The test fluctuates by 10%-30% just by running it multiple times on the same computer. It's a crappy benchmark. The only reason it gets used at all is because it has a simple interface and thus anyone can run it.

        Intrepreting the scores however is like reading palms.

        It's like a weather forecast in Boston.
      • The CPU Xbench is probably based on some set of standard arithmetic algorithms. G5-optimized math libraries might show big improvement for those cases.

        The G5 is a sincerely new and strange chip with pipelines unlike its Motorola ancestors. Binaries designed for PPC/G3/G4 run inefficiently on the G5 compared to true native binaries.

      • You are trying to claim that the CPU score is going up 40%? Considering that in CPU-intensive applications the operating system takes 2%...

        I think you have the wrong end of the stick. Applications are loading and calling routines from the Cocoa and Carbon runtime libraries. Upgrading the OS means (inter alia) upgrading the libraries, hopefully delivering a 'CPU' improvement to all applications.

  • The only way to solve this... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zugok ( 17194 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @02:48AM (#7022708)
    is by Celebrity Deathmatch. Nothing like a good fist fight. What they're computers? I guess we'll have to settle for a game of chess then.

  • Wins 4-out-of-6 = "generally as fast"??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @07:42AM (#7023490)
    The review begrudgingly acknowledges that the G5 is "generally as fast" as the Dell, but the performance table [pcmag.com] suggests the G5 is much faster than that. The G5 bests the Dell in 4 out of the 6 tests. While the G5 is more than twice as fast on one test, the Dell wins by an unnoticable 2.5% for one of its wins.

    Its not surprising that PCMag is a sore loser because they are afraid of losing subscribers to Mac magazines.
  • If you look at the total scores, the distribution is as follows:

    With Final Cut Pro, the G5 and G4 comparison is:

    G5: 5306.47s
    G4: 7481.06s (41% more than the G5)

    Without Final Cut Pro, the full comparison is:

    G5: 1206.47s
    G4: 1281.06s (6% more than the G5)
    Dell: 1462.4s (21% more than the G5, 14% more than the G4)

    This shows quite a different picture. Of course one could argue that the tests should be weighted differently, etc...
    All you have to do to figure out which machine you should get is to weigh the

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