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Apple Hardware VP Defends Benchmarks
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).
Really?
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 and build yourself a cluster for the price of one of these new machines.
I have been pwned because my
At least everything that they did seemed to be amply documented.
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.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3877
the article is analyzing if the recent announcements from Apple were innovation or simple catch up.
I think he forgot to mention an important part about the benchmarks: they are not all that useful for a real life comparison with real applications.
Fuck those $750 PCs, I'm getting me a $3000 Mac.
If they were really interested in providing users with realistic benchmark results, they would have submited their systems for the offcial spec testing, insted they opted to hire some 3rd party company. (wonder what NDA they had to sign for that?) this stinks of the tpc benchark disaster.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
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.
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.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Why on earth would you want to separate the software from the hardware? This isn't a IBM vs Intel comparison. This is an Apple vs Dell comparison. Apple is selling a platform, not a bunch of PCB boards. I sure as heck won't use GCC to compile SAS or Oracle just before I put up a mission-critical database server...
Unless mankind redesigns itself
He's a Corporate Drone(tm) justifying Marketing Speak and Glossy Lit numbers.
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.
I hadn't looked through the detailed report before - one interesting thing was that they physically removed one of the processors for at least one test (SPEC CPU 2000). I seem to remember some people claiming some of the spec tests were unfair when run on a DP system... well there you go.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The G4 is so last month.
So someone says "my benchmark is better than yours" (and vice versa)
/. though, it's all set for processor wars. Book your seats.)
Can you all just go off into a field and fight it out, and leave the rest of us to just get on with our work.
(FWIW, the G5 is fast enough for most folk in the real world. On
Anyone that uses abstract benchmarks as a decisive factor in a new computer purchase deserves what they get.
I suspect that most folks would be more far interested in rendering and encoding times...
It's incorrect to normalize the compiler out when performing CPU benchmarks. Instead of measuring 2 different CPUs with the same compiler, they should be using the fastest compiler for each platform. The compiler is integral to CPU design- I could make a teraflops VLIW CPU that does 1000 floating point multiply-adds per instructions, but it would be useless if I gave it a compiler that wasn't designed for it.
So, the correct SPEC results for the 3GHz Intel CPU (from the www.spec.org website) should be 1200 SPECInt and 1229 SPECFp, vs. 800 SPECInt and 840 SPECFp for the PowerPC 970.
The Intel CPU wins (by a lot!)
You? Some slashdot nobody?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
that all software vendors have to be honest now, or just Apple?
If the 'high performance' malloc that was used is not thread safe (as it seems from reading about this issue) I strongly doubt it will be the default in the shipping system...
Personally I don't care very much about synthetic benchmarks, day-to-day apps are a much better test: OTOH if it comes out that this 'tweaked' malloc library was used for PhotoShop (with, say, side effects of making PS taking up 2 gigs of RAM and it crashing every 2 hours) then my feelings of this would change...
-- the cake is a lie
My PC is a piece of crap, I got what I paid for. Now that the 3 year mark is approaching (I buy a new machine every 3 years, or so), I think I am just going to drop the money for the mid-range G5 tower. I really don't care if the Mac is slower and more expensive than a PC, I have the money to spend, and I want a nice box.
Fuck all you poor, dirty, Lunix PC hippies... welcome to the real world.
Steve Jobs owns your ass.
This is the first time I think _I_ have seen slashdot with an article they wrote compltely on their own.
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.
tilTrue.info contechtext.info prettypowerful.info twitter.com/frets fb.com/prosody
In addition, in the keynote speech Apple is comparing a system (G5) that will not ship in 3 months with a system (dual Xeon) that shipped 3 months ago! To put it in perspective, this is like comparing Intel's Prescott processor (aka Pentium 5 - 90nm) or Madison to G4.
Still, I am dying to replace my G3 iBook with a G5! I am such a sucker for shiny metal objects.
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.
Okay, if he asserts that redoing the test WITH hyperthreading, and on Windows, will only slow down the Intel scores, then DO IT.
I think that Apple should benchmark every case, especially the ones that the Wintel boosters are whining about, and post ALL the results. It certainly can't hurt if the G5 wins them all anyway. And even if it does not, it will bolster the argument that Apple's trying to be a straight shooter with these tests, which will help their credibility. Which is important, because that's at least as much at stake here, as the arguably temporary "bragging rights" of being the fastest.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Have fun apple people..
from terraserver.com/includes/provider_stats.inc
conn.ConnectionString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Persist Security Info=False;User ID=terraweb;Password=1mag3s;Initial Catalog=tsv6;Dat a Source=terradb01"
It seems to me that this rep from Apple, unless I am very naive, is being very candid and honest with us. It seems that, by showing us the complete specs on the benchmarking, they are doing what they claim to be doing. Thinking differently, and giving us (for 3 grand) an honestly faster machine. I appreciate the prompt frank response from Apple on this controversy. I am typing this on a PC, simply because I could build it myself for less money than I could buy a nice Apple. Ah, the life of a poor student...
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
...Steve Wozniak...how many *os**iaks does Apple have on the payroll?
The one thing he didn't mention was that during the benchmarks, the G5's were also parallel processing computations on the most painful wretched hideous punishments, to be bestowed upon the web server admin who fucked up and released the G5 specs days too early.
The numbers are coming in, and it won't be pretty.
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!
It's a well known facts... they're fanatical, they love to say "we're better," and having numbers to back up that claim means a LOT to them. You're absolutely right, it's comparing apples and oranges, but the argument always turns into "which is the tastier fruit."
~Berj
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.
Winged Power Photography
Would that guy from Haxial just be ranting now that iChat steps on his excelent NetFone software?
I bought those guys the 20bucks NetFone and it IS FANTASTIC. It already saved 5 times the money spent. Don't regret buying it even now with iChat that does the same thing for free. However a great thing on iChat is that does echo cancelation.
For *years* I have been wanting a Mac, but have been to cheap to get one. Now that I have the money, I'm getting one (Maybe not the dual G5, but *something*)
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.
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!
Since gcc uses different code generators and optimizers for PPC and x86, they aren't really the same compiler. All they are normalizing out is the front end and some generic code generation.
I use the Intel compilers on all the x86 boxes (including Athlons) I run on, because they give me the best performance on my application code (a computational fluid dynamics code). When evaluating a machine, the only thing that matters to me is how fast it runs my code. I will use whatever compilers give me the best performance (while still giving the right answer).
For people not doing high-performance computing, none of this matters. Nor, for that matter, does any chip from the last year or so -- they are all fast enough. But when looking for the fastest platform to run your specialized codes on, everything must be taken into account.
An interesting benchmark I'd like to see if for Intel and Apple to agree on some codes/benchmarks, and then they should be free to trick out machines however they seem fit, and run the codes at the maximum speed (without outright cheating, and still making sure they get the right answer), and submit those numbers for comparison. In the end though, it is whatever code you run personally, and how that performs that matters the most.
You need another hobby.
Clint Eastwood : Old West Action
Greg Joswiak : Steve Wozniak ???????????
Why stick up for big business?
One interesting thing about the benchmark report was that both Intel systems were equipped with 2 gigabytes of memory, wheres the powermac G5 only had 1.5. I don't know if this actually has an effect on performance, but its good to know all the details of the tests conducted.
if a software company didn't lie about its benchmarks?!
Slashdot has a huge readership of IT professionals, both in-charge of purchases, and the target market themselves.
If my car has 200HP at 6,800RPM on the sticker, I usually donâ(TM)t take the stickers word for it, but trust that I would get around those numbers on average.
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? No. Does the P4 make âthe internetâ(TM) faster? No. Just take it for what it is and let it go.
I think apple did a reasonably good comparison, as much as would be possible. I don't like these spec-indexes too much anyway as more things factor in.
What I do like is the real-world application performance. I was much more impressed by the photoshop, etc. comparisons (Mathematica: comparison to higher end unix-workstations!) than those silly benchmark numbers. Real tests that finish twice as fast are more impressive and less deceptive (well, a bit anyways).
So now we wait...for panther, for the G5's and for the G5 powermac (could be some time though...sigh). I am already happy that apple is back on track, if their product is even any faster than other platforms: good for them...and us. Even other platforms must welcome some competition, right?
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.
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.
The Apple guy is both correct and wrong.
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.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
That's almost as fast as some of the SCO happenings recently. Man, there's several new things a day sometimes. Things sure happen fast these days.
Is Slashdot stories the new unit of Internet Time? Will there VPs yelling at PR to get a press release out before an attack story scrolls off the front page?
yo.
Is there good reason to believe that the same compiler will produce relatively as well-performing of code for one chip it supports as it does for another? I don't think so.
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.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
+informative
As someone submitted in the last story, hyperthreading and those other options does not always mean a performance increase in every situation. I am glad to see that Apple responded to clear up the confusion. I had suspected something like this was really the case when the trolls came out looking to bash.
What seems to be missing in all of this is the big picture. Whether or not the G5 is 1.2% faster or slower than the Xeon/P4/Opteron is not a uniform answer. Different apps are going to perform differently on different platforms. Not only that, but there are a million possible variations of benchmarks that could make both sides the winner. Like Greg said in the interview, if Apple was looking to cheat they wouldn't have hired an independent company and provided full disclosure.
Processor speed notwithstanding, most Mac users are so because of Apple's OS not their hardware. Windows would slow me down much more than 6 extra cycles of processor speed. For my circumstances, the fact that Apple now has hardware fast enough that it can even attempt to make the 'fastest' claim is far more important.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
.....can be trusted 100%. Only Apple would exaggerate for marketing purposes.
I have this theory. A 2Ghz twin G5 system is really fast. And if you have some money to spend and you want a really fast system and you'd like to run OSX then you could do worse than buy one.
Now wash your hands.
All this talk of gcc removing a variable is naive at best, misinformation if the speaker is knowledgable on the subject. Gcc is not a constant, the quality of it's code optimization varies from platform to platform. To be more specific, gcc is used by Apple to build MacOS X and Apple has been improving gcc PPC code generation. Apple provides gcc to Mac developers. Apple is also IBM's partner in the development of the PPC970. Gcc is the developer optimized compiler for the chip in many ways and is more comparable to Intel's compiler in this respect.
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.
As long as they openly an honestly declare the details of how the bench marks are made, I don't see what the issue is. Benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, caveat emptor. Anyhow I'd love to have one, just to have another 64 bit BSD OS would be great, the new Macs are a bargain compared to comparable Sun/Solaris workstation. Yeah, sure you could build a cluster of linux boxen for the same price, but some of us just want to code, and not fiddle with *nix on our spare time. MM
Don't read Mac threads.
Unless you enjoy telling us all how pissed off they make you.
Because, you know, we really care.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Every time I hear the name "Joswiak", I keep thinking the guy is some hybrid between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak -- some kind of mutant creature straight out of the R&D Labs at Apple. :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The only thing that makes me think the app demos were not tweaked much was that they did not crash! But I have to admit it does seem likley a bit of tweaking by at least one of the app vendors might have taken place...
But I agree with your other points, that it's fantastic how much faster they are than current machines and also that we'll have to wait for shipping systems to determine how much faster it really is than other platforms. I think people are going to be pretty happy!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would't jump to fast to say that apple wouldnt prove themselves just based on a /. discussion. The slashdot crowd is the cream of the crop when it comes to nerds and our preferences influence the purchases of not just our homes but spouses, parents, signifigant others and most importantly many of our jobs.
The earlier discussion on the tests blew up at 1000+ comments and after a careful read (of both the article _and_ the discussion) even i, a confessed mac zealot, was wondering how true the tests were. having joswiak (i love that name) immediately come out and justify apples claims is as big of a PR move as spending a few undred thousand on advertising while costing less and telling us more.
just my 2c but i dont recall nvida immediately coming out to diprove any claims of cheating and thats why there are numerous nvida jokes in the origianl thread.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Not quite. Fair would have been testing both systems as they ship to customers, testing default configs only.
In one case, they turned on an option that wasn't default on the tested system but will be on the versions that ship. That's perfectly acceptable. However, one of the other options is something that is turned off by default. I don't think that's a good comparison, because there has to be some downside to that option or else it would be on by default.
Additionally, they made changes to the Dell machines from how they ship. They suggest this is so Dell will compare as favorably as possible, but why would they do that, when comparing the Dell machine as it would ship is quite acceptable? Additionally, Dell has claimed marks that are better than the "best case" stats Apple quoted - so somebody's lying (either Dell, that they got those stats at all, or Apple, claiming that they tested an optimized Dell system). So something needs to shake out here.
As for the compiler stuff, I dunno. On one hand it seems fair to try both with GCC. On the other, it seems fair that Intel be given the advantage of having developed the better compiler - hardware doesn't exist in a vacuum, and if the programs I run will be compiled using that better compiler, then this seems to matter. But that's certainly less than fraudulent.
Bottom line is, it would be nice to see both machines tested as they will ship, using the best compiler available to either machine. If Apple is correct and they really were giving the Dell the benefit of the doubt, then they deserve to claim the better numbers. If they were shafting Dell, they deserve to be exposed. If Dell lied about their original numbers, then they deserve to be flogged. I think it would be informative, or at least interesting, no matter who comes out on top.
Disclaimer: no, this is not an attempt to get mac fans to abandon their macs, nor is it a prediction of which machine is faster, or better. If you'll never use a PC, then this only affects your upgrade schedule, if that.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
> Vote, you fools!
Are you _sure_ those are the people you want voting?
The fact is apple can now compete very well in the desktop computer market when it comes to performance. And they will compete event better in the server market when the G5 xServe comes out. The times of buying a mac and knowing they are a little slower are over. I personally don't care which machine is faster it just doesn't matter. I will be buying a G5. Maybe not now but it is way better than the alternatives.
That is why, use the honest one, the open source one let people decide based on a compiler not tweaked for spec, I have heard intel spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make spec faster on their systems with certain compilers. Apple does not have that money to spend, the compiler makers will not waste money to get spec points they are more concerned with the performance of specific apps. GCC is an honest compiler with lots of x86 specific tuning and very little ppc tuning. It is funny that apple tested with OS X as they could make other os's run the SPEC faster with a specialized compiler. Apple probably took some liberties but there test results seem entirely reasonable and the fact that they were done by an independent firm and documented so well leads me to believe they are being somewhat honest. IBM's SPEC for the same 970 2ghz part is like 1100.
Well, Motorola has one that turns out code from 5% to ... 20%? 40%? I can't honestly remember. Anyway, that much faster. It's kind of expensive and only runs on AIX, though, as I recall. Apple used to do all their compilation on this one before they sent out the final binaries. Then when X popped up, everyone was told that they'd have to take a large performance hit and use gcc, and if it was a really big problem they should optimize their code. Oh and by the way gcc optimization level three doesn't work for the forseeable future, have a nice day.
MrC is almost as fast as the Motorola one. It's probably still available on Apple's web site. I think it's a MPW plugin, and isn't available for running on MacOS X. Pity, that.
-Fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
looking at the posts, the "apple cheated" story has garnered 1400+ posts. meanwhile the original "apple comes out with new shit" _only_ prompted 1100+ posts. if it was that big of a deal im sure it was time well spent for apple.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
You're not supposed to mention Opteron.
I recently created a website with a group of friends for a University project which went on to discuss why a P3 may well be quicker than a P4... take a look but more specifically, take a look at the editorial to find a short piece of C++ code to test your machine with. Compile the code and run it on your machine to find out how slow it really can be, the results might surprise you!
He gives the illusion of parity by using the same compiler on both platforms. But the back ends to these compilers are different pieces of code written by different people. There is no parity.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
In the third test, why does the Mac 1.6GHZ beat the max 1.8GHZ?
Wouldnt it make more sense then to buy the 1.6?
paul reinheimer
Gags jerk. I? Ow! :)
It's a shame if Apple have resorted to this sort of thing, I thought it was bad enough that nVidia had produced drivers designed to give false results, but actually crippling your opponents hardware, to show that your product beats it, is pretty low.
Lets hope we can look at some independent tests in the coming days and see which unit is really value for money, because if Dell's benchmarks are correct their unit is 20-30% faster and only 2/3rds the price.
Metroworks is much more tuned but it is owned by Motorola, so apple could do zero tuning for the G5. Unless IBM writes a mac compiler, apple uses GCC because they do most programing in Obj C which is only supported by GCC not Metroworks. Apple chose GCC because it is what they use. Hopefully either IBM writes a compiler or apple severely overhauls GCC. Give apple some time and they will get more performance out of GCC, but they simply have not had the time yet. Like when the P4 came out it was slow until intel made a good compiler for it. The truth is apple is offering similar performance for less money and the package is higher quality. If it is slightly faster or slower is really irrelevant right now.
First it's "They're too slow and too expensive."
Now it's "They're blazingly fast, but still too expensive"? Have you SEEN the $799 G4 eMacs?
That's what all the fuss is about - that price/performance seems to favor the G5 now.
At least for Dual Xeon systems...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple did spec the price/performance: the dual 2.0GHz G5 PowerMac they tested cost $3,000, and the dual 3.06Ghz Xeon Dell Precision they tested cost $4,000. Since the G5 is both significantly faster and drastically cheaper, it should be obvious that it has a better price/performance ratio.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Humm... you must have missed the part of the keynote where they priced a similarly equipped dual 3.06GHZ Xeon system from Dell and found it cost about $1,000 more than a dual G5 PowerMac. You can check the Dell web site yourself. Don't forget that the G5 has superior point-to point-bus, hypertransport and much faster memory access that the Dell system as well. The spec mark won't show you that.
Pricing on the lower end models are not as aggressive, but for what you get, it's still reasonable.
If you tell people what they want to hear, it's unsurprising that they'll believe you.
:)
With those folks, all I can think of is "Open source, closed mind."
Apple did.
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?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Watch the QT stream of Steve's keynote, and pay attention to the part where he discusses the pricing of the G5 box. Apple beats *everyone* for price/performance at the high end of desktop machines.
Even if Apple is faster than Wintel, the Price:Performance ratio is horrible for Apple hardware and software.
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?
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
I still think that using GCC probably gives a good indication of relative performance levels real users will see. After all, Intel programs will use better compilers that generate better code - but then so might PPC apps (one would hope). So hopefully compiler optimizations would come out the wash, so to speak, yielding the benchmarks as correct within a 10% margin or so even after much better compilers are applied on both sides.
I'm really hoping that Tom's Hardware or other great hardware sites do a detailed review with shipping models. That would be exciting to see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The "status quo" crowd that jumped all over Apple this morning for the "fake" benchmarks and "dishonest" wording will still find lots of reasons and ways to disparage the fruit company, simply because Apple isn't doing what they want - building the best, fastest, and most cutting-edge computers for $400.00.
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?
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. :)
for some reason I never pictured a Chinese Jesus.
But now every time I see a picture of Jesus, I'll think "I wonder if he was really Chinese..."
Turning couscous into mu-shu and such.
"The slashdot crowd is the cream of the crop when it comes to nerds"
Get over yourself.
i use a 700 mhz pentium pc with linux and it is fine for everything i do, including a lot of intensive scientific computing. i don't speak for everyone, but how many people will really be adversely effected by a speed difference between the 970 and the best pentium ?
Found it, credit where credit is due: Peter Ammon - pa44@cornell.edu from comp.sys.mac.advocacy
remember the diatom demo? it was optimized for use on the PPC, but not on x86. same for the photoshop demos they did (remember the gaussian blur examples?) - the plugin was PPC optimized, but not x86 optimized. nothing new here. move along.
see if you can get someone to whip up a G5 icon for ya' :)
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"
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Seriously, the jury is out on this one until we see comprehensive benchmarking, optimized and unoptimized for both platforms by a reputable hardware magazine/website. I would like to see Tom's do an analysis.
Apple did spec the price/performance: the dual 2.0GHz G5 PowerMac they tested cost $3,000, and the dual 3.06Ghz Xeon Dell Precision they tested cost $4,000. Since the G5 is both significantly faster and drastically cheaper, it should be obvious that it has a better price/performance ratio.
Yeah, but you can roll your own dual 3.06GHz Xeon for WAY less than $4,000 (or $3000 for that matter).
2xCPUs would cost around $1400
Motherboard $300
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Even if the G5 isn't the fastest PC on earth, it's still a pretty impressive performer, isn't it? At 2 Ghz, it's at least in the same ball park as the 3Ghz Xeon. I'm still impressed, even if the benchmarks aren't totally honest. Does anyone expect total honesty from a marketing department? I sure don't.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
I wonder if Apple isn't shooting itself in the foot to a great extent here - to me a large part of the attractiveness of these machines is architectural - 64 bit, PCI-X, fast Firewire, etc.
Isn't using SPEC as the basis of comparison likely to be missing other performance differences between architectures? Don't these benchmarks generally sit in L2 cache?
Who else has a machine with AGP, PCI-X and a pair of 64 bit CPUs?
What I'd like to see as a basis of comparison is video manipulation tasks. These days that is the most time consuming thing I have to do, and it would seem to me that this architecture should excel at this sort of work.
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.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
A processor company could write "Spec compilers" with special cases for the Spec code -- and that was half-OK for anything else. Then the code could be run on special test machines. Also, the processor company could be a member of the spec organization so they could influence what is part of the Spec suite -- and also know what will be in the next version, so they could update the specialised compilers in advance...
Intel seemed to be doing all of the above 6-7 years ago.
The main problem was that the Spec suite wasn't available for everyone to test on real systems with compilers that don't unroll loops exactly right for the Spec code, etc...
Some or most of the previous points might not be applicable anymore (e.g. the building of special "spec test machines", probably.) But I really doubt the value of specialised compilers for a test suite -- especially when the test suite isn't free!!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Ok....if your time to research and setup is worthless, and the piece of mind caused by a warranty, support, etc., etc is also worthless....then maybe you have a point. But probably not.
It's good that Apple have responded quickly to the issues raised by the SPEC's. To be honest, they have gone out on a limb releasing SPECâ(TM)s that are a common yardstick in the Intel/AMD world and not so common for Apple's or their consumers. They are opening themselves up for judgement by the same rule as any other machine, which would not have been possible with the G4 as it had laughable SPEC scores. As they have released all the documentation and it was done by a third party, I'm inclined to believe that the results are ~accurate. The bickering over the use of GCC as the compiler for the benchmarks is pointless really. If Apple wanted to max their SPEC's and create tight code, they could have used IBM's proprietary compiler, which is just as highly tuned for the PPC (32/64) as Intel's is for x86. GCC uses the same codebase⦠Itâ(TM)s Apples to Apples, eh.
I am not an expert, and Apple may be using a fixed version; however, I have read that GCC 3.x does not optimize properly for the P4. The documentation I have read for gentoo says to use -mcpu=pentium3 to work around this. Could this have (unwittingly) contributed against the P4/Xeons tested?
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?
if I can't play any fucking games on it. Maybe if they got some god damn software it wouldn't be a worthless piece of over-priced shit. Let's face it, do you need a G5 to check your fucking email you bitch?!?! Because you're not doing anything else with it. You want pretty colors? Bring it by my place and I'll fucking spray paint the damn thing for you. Hell, I'll throw in a botanical scent for free.
The thing I'd like to know, however, is why Cubase SX on PC was pitted against Logic Audio Platinum on the Mac... both programs are available for both operating systems. Sure, Logic is more popular for the Mac and vice versa for PC, but it would have been a much fairer comparison if the two products were not pitted against one another.
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!
Well, considering that I got 1:2.5 encoding using an older single-threaded version of the Heuris encoder on an 800mHz G4 (dual), I think we're probably there with the G5 Macs!
Ya know, it's a very strange day when the Apple faithful are getting a raging hard-on from a new IBM processor! I'm wearing my Apocalypse-proof suit until August, just in case.
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
I assume you're talking about Photoshop, et al.
Actually, the take of the guy who did the article in the previous story was that the Mac software was heavily optimized, and that the Wintel software wasn't.
Which leaves one to wonder why the software makers would do such a thing.
You must have wanted the "I'm a loser and have nothing really intelligent to say" thread.
Hope this helps.
So many people are slamming Apple for posting biased benchmarks. Yet, I found it very interesting that Apple posted one benchmark which showed the G5 being the slowest machine: the SPECin_base2000, single processor mark. For someone posting completely untrue and biased benchmarks, showing a last place finish shows that not everything was biased in favor of the G5.
Is the PowerMac G5 the "world's fastest personal computer"? Probably not, but it may be the first 64-bit personal computer to ship to the masses (ie. bought in a store like CompUSA). I wonder if AMD will move up the Opteron release now or if Intel will drop the price on their Itanium. If so, then people who want 64-bit x86-compat CPU's should thank Apple for bringing them their CPU's faster. =)
Anthony
It seems to me that if Apple could get better results with another compiler, they'd do it. They chose gcc because it's what they use... isn't pretty much everything OS X built with it?
It's a bit disingenuous when they're using the best compiler available for their platform, while using a clearly handicapped compiler on the Intel platform. The fact that they're written by the same organization is irrevelevant - it's not a test of *compiler* performance, it's a test of CPU's capabilities, and developers are going to use whatever compiler gives the best results for their CPU. In any case, since it is the primary compiler for their platform, Apple has a lot more interest in improving it's performance than Intel or Microsoft with the x86 version.
Not that it really matters - it's still a great OS on a great new platform. But there's just so many Mac fanatics that take everything that comes out of The Steve's mouth at face value, and sometimes they can be very annoying. It would be nice if they were at least somewhat realistic and accurate. (It's amazing how many people still thought the recent G4's were still the fastest desktops on the planet...)
At least Adobe admitted up front that they had optimized Photoshop for the G5 (I assumed they used the patch they refered to in the keynote?)
You would know, for you are certainly full of it!
The argument that you need to work out the compiler doesn't make any sense at all. Presumably most shipping software is going to use the best compiler available before they release binaries. The compiler has a huge impact on performance. When you test using the same compiler, you're basically testing the CPU and the optimizations available for that compiler.
The only reasonable test is to use the 'best' compiler for each platform. Probably this means compiling the test platform on all the available compilers, and choosing the highest score.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hey, we didn't all fall for it. :-)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
-- weave
It would still be cheaper than the Apple.
Here are some more:
A jerks wig go
A Jew riggs OK
Jaggies work
Gag jerk I sow
Jag we go risk
Gas Jew rig OK
Gas joker wig
Jaw egg sir OK
and
Was Joker Gig
GCC is the compiler that Apple's Project Manager application uses unless you provide another compiler -- such as CodeWarrior's, which cost $400 plus $200 or so a year to keep up to date.
Also, OS X itself is built with GCC.
The over priced computers suck anyway.
If you want to measure the "power of the chip" then you should measure with the best compiler for bragging rights, then you should measure with the best compiler for that chip.
If you have your own code you want to compile, you should look at benchmarks based on compilers you have access to.
If you spend most of your time in one app (available on both platforms), like a CAD app, or Quake 3 or whatever, you should look at benchmarks of that app or at least similar app.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'm sure Apple would love to go head to head with Intel's own compiler using their own optimized for Altivec
Look how much press it got. Putting misleading things in the 'small print' only to show why (some of them) don't really matter anyway.
Still I have to disagree with him. He claimed to use gcc to 'normalize out' differences in software. Yet they use a specialized malloc which is software!
Its better than it looked, but its still not clean. If its faster they should have just tested everything RAW as shipped/received. Then they would be clean.
As suggested already, the G5 is not a piece of hardware, but a complete computer.
Isn't this Slashdot? I thought any thread was an "I'm a loser and have nothing really intelligent to say" thread.
And the comment you just posted is worthwhile?
1 word: Lighten up!
Slashdots defalt view? Did someone change it or did slashcode get messed up?
Instead of:
My post subject
My post blah blah
Replys
It is now:
My Post subject, name
Replys
I liked reading through all comments the first way instead of having to click the link for each one.
I use a 667MHz Powerbook with a G4 that is nowhere near as fast as modern P4's and the PPC 970, but I love this machine and I love this OS. I also have a Dell laptop with a 2GHz P4 and WinXP and an old 450MHz K6-2 that runs Debian. I use all of them but mostly prefer this Mac and OSX.
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.
But, it'd still be interesting to see the benchmarks of both platforms running with all the tweaks and optimizations that you can apply running on them, since that's how speed-freaks are going to do with the machines in real life anyway. In both cases, the question is not "How fast does this set of instructions run?" but "How fast can I push this piece of hardware to run if I set up everything just so?"
The idea that people buy fast hardware because the hardware's fast, with no concern whatsoever about the speed of the software that's going to be running on the box is a pretty weird one.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?sku=V133-1144
$2100 (more RAM, better video, less HD, no OS, no Superdrive compared to what Mac has to offer)
Specs:
# Dual (2) Intel® Xeon 2.4GHz Processors
# Intel E7505 (Hyper-Thread Ready) Chipset
# 512K Cache
# 533 Front Side Bus
# Hot Swap Trays Sold Separately
# 1GB PC2100 DDR Memory Learn More
# 1.44MB Floppy Drive (Black)
# 52x24x52 Lite-On CD-RW Drive (Black)
# 120GB ATA100 7200RPM Hard Drive
# 128MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 Pro Video
# Onboard Dolby Digital 6-Channel Audio
# Intel 1000BT Gigabit LAN
# US Robotics 56K Fax/Modem
# Cyber Acoustic 3-Piece Speakers With Subwoofer
# Wireless Keyboard And Mouse (Purple)
# Monitor Not Included
# Operating System Sold Separately
I still like the G5 though.
Interesting how Apple did no comparisons to the Opteron... it is a 64-bit processor too, and the Athlon 64 (which is coming out soon) is based on similar architecture. I guess they didn't want to bring up the fact that the Opteron can even beat the Xeon, running at almost twice the clock speed, in some real world tests, and coming pretty close in others.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
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"
I think he mistook "The Xeon" with "our buggy intel implementation"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
::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!!!::
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
GCC is the fastest compiler for PPC. If it isn't, then they should have used that mythical faster compiler.
Using the same compiler is like trying to test the 0-60 time of various cars while using the exact same fuel. It's stupid. You should use the best fuel for the car.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't know if I'm atypical in this respect, but when I see lots of 9s, I tend to think "big". When I see 0s, I tend to think "nothing". I wonder if other people have those same initial reactions. I really think marketing folks should do some more psychological studies. It'd be funny if it turned out they were unwittingly discouraging buyers at a subconscious level.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Tom can be incredibly biased, depending on whoever is giving him more free stuff at the time. A couple years ago he was loudy proclaiming that there was no way that Intel could compete with AMD, and would end up exiting the microprocessor buisness. Things have changed though....look at any of his recent benchmarks comparing Athalons and P4's. For example, on all the ones I've seen, his game benchmark consists of Quake 3. If you didn't know, Quake 3 has always run much faster on P4's than on Athalons. If he wanted to be fair, he'd bench more games than that one; for example Serious Sam enjoys a similar advantage on Athalons.
> The slashdot crowd is the cream of the crop when
/. users are uninformed tools who think they know what they are talking about.
> it comes to nerds...
HAHAHAHAHA! What is the average demographic age here, 17? Maybe? Yeah, on average
-
Now waiting for all the posts about how various individuals are not in fact tools. Sigh.
The one thing that neither benchmark is taking into account is the time. Apple will be shipping their G5s in the fall, on September 5. We shouldn't be testing a 1 month old machine against a machine 2 months from its release date.
The whole thing cuts both ways. It doesn't matter if the P4 3.2Ghz or Athlon 3200+ is faster if they're released in limited quantities and I can't get my hands on a machine with one in it. It also doesn't matter if the G5 is faster if I can't get my hands on one of those either.
I'll be very interested in seeing a comparison in 2 months when these things start hitting desks. Until then it's all masturbation.
Say what you want, but the already published SPEC results for the p4 at 3ghz with ICC kicks the crap out of the published results for the g5. No amount of theorizing is going to change that.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You must have wanted the "I'm a loser and have nothing really intelligent to say" thread.
Thanks for starting that thread for me!
Too bad about you feeling like a loser. Good thing you low IQ helps you forget about that.
Pull the other one.
...but to claim it's "the world's fastest desktop", that's just deceptive marketing, plain and simple. How many non-techies will now go around repeating this CNN headline without a clue about what's really behind it?
Enough With Think Different
More at 11.
After we get a Doom3 build for the Mac is anyone going to care about Spec scores?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
... this "Apple cheated" hoax is the kind of meme that will go around the Internet numerous times. It will show up regularly for years to come. This is the Internet, folks. Expect to see many many dupes on Slashdot, expect to see blogs taking this up again in two months' time as if this was some kind of brand new scandal.
I feel depressed right now.
Using the same compiler for the G5 and the P4 and benchmarking them is like trying to compare a Ferrari and a Honda Accord and using 87 octane gas.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
= ~$920 total.
And all told you'd get a machine that runs KDE beautifully - on the same OS that underpins the Mac (MacOS is based on FreeBSD 5.0, although 5.1 is already out for the PC; Safari is based on KDE's web browser - Konqueror).
Okay, some assembly required (ask a friend who's build a PC for help if you'd never done it before). An hour or two to assemble and you're up $2000 compared to an Apple.
I've not skimped on the components (except perhaps you'd want a $40 CD burner), but have pushed back a little from the absolute cutting edge for the sake of $$$ - a P4 3.2GHz or 3.0GHz are not worth 50% more $$$ given the 7% clockspeed difference.
Add $150 for XP for the Windows experience (although I'd stick with Win2k - less crap there) and the above would make an awesome machine for just about anything you can throw at it.
I have replaced my $100,000 Avid edit system with a dual G4 running Final Cut Pro, totaling $6,000 all in (with dual flat screens!!). Due to workflow my productivity is up close to 300%, and I have saved $94,000!!! That's what I'd call a damn good price to performance ratio for both hardware and software.
The truth is whether a company brings out SPEC marks made under fair configurations or faked configurations, there will always be those who will accept the figures at face value, those who will contest them no matter what and those who really counldn't care less. I am in the third category, if you're curious ;)
Everyone buys a piece of hardware for different reason, some for design, some for brand, some out of faith, some because they have the money and even some because of an application. If you are choosing for the last reason then the question should be whether it is fast enough for you, and does it in they you want.
I would recommend everyone to buy the computer that meets their usage requirements and not for some theoretical and utopic bunch of values that don't really mean much in the real world, unless you are only wanting to gloat over something totally subjective.
As a final word, sometimes the slowest factor in getting a job done, is not necessarily the computer, but the user taking their time, because the application has been so badly implemented, to be difficult to use and understandable.
Computers have the potential to the make the most complicated of applications accessible to a layman of the subject.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Get over yourself."
That's one of the more insightful comments made in this discussion.
Apple is showing benchmarks that make their product look roughly twice as fast as the PC counterpart. I don't even have to look at the finer details to call it ridiculously exaggerated. The fact is that there has yet to be a computer released to the general population that has been tremendously faster than its competitors. A huge advantage thus far has been defined as a Pentium 4 being 10% faster than an Athlon.
Apple, or any other computer company, is not going to release a product that is years ahead of the competition. Months maybe, but definitely not years.
While I'm on the subject, Apple has been claiming for years that their computers are faster, easier to use, and reasonably priced. That sounds like a killer combination to me. So what is their market share again? Five percent? Either the public doesn't like things like fast, easy, and cheap, or someone is full of crap. I'd bet on the latter.
"Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
Look, don't we all know by now that people use Macs because of the OS, not because of the speed?
As I see it, even if Apple fudged the numbers a bit (like what manufacturer hasn't), these new G5s are still the first time Apple can justifiably say that they are "comparable" (whatever that mean, and, like I care!) to Windows machines.
Frankly, I am not a computer guru (by any stretch of the imagination), but don't you all find it pretty lame that Apple needs a 64 bit processor to come close to the speeds of a 32 bit Pentium?
Still, I have a slow-assed 733 mhz G4 on my desk because I prefer OS X and because I prefer not to have MS's DRM and oppresive licening on my computer.
For running a webserver, NFS, Samba or whatever, I buy an x86 box and run Linux, because it is just cost-effective.
-A
I seems that some people just like to bitch.
./'s favorite vendor.
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.
OK, here it is. I hope the slashdot editors are listening.
Pudge is doing things right as much as micheal is doing things wrong.
I would actually considering paying for a subscription if we saw more of this type of content. Proactive reporting, original stories and write-ups, etc. I have seen no fewer than 4 good original content articles posted by pudge in the last few days, and I scratch my head and wonder why none of the editors do this or why pudge only covers Apple.
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.
No, sadly gcc is the fastest compiler for OSX. They should not cripple the x86 machines with gcc code just because there is nothing better for the Mac.
Apple G5 running Mac OS X:
###(My little bench mark bar graph)###
Dell Intel Xeon running Mac OS X
#
Mac OS X runs infinitely faster on the G5 than the Dell Intel XEON. Focus on that.
The G5 blows the G4 outta the water, so I really don't care how it performs to the Intel XEON.
Processor speeds aren't going to make people 'switch'. It's the User Experience / WTF can I do with this computer now? (Meaning does it run the apps I need it to run?)
I think it was Panther that stole the show for Apple, not the G5. That is an awesome OS, just the fast user switching alone sells it for me.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
See Fargo for an example.
This seems reasonable of Apple now. There are many applications compiled on Windows that don't use Intel's optimizing compiler. Indeed that's the norm, since most Windows developers use Microsoft's compilers that ship with Visual Studio and other x86 environments like Linux are dominated by gcc development. You have to buy Intel's compiler separately and add it to your development environment in most circumstances and it ain't cheap despite the obvious benefit getting better x86 optimized apps released has for Intel. The biggest difference AFAIK is Intel's good work in optimizing for their SIMD style instructions like SSE2, where their compiler does a much better job at parallelizing multiple serial operations into a single SSE op. The difference this makes to some code when comparing Intel's compiler to Microsoft's compiler on the same CPU can be dramatic, even 2X or more on specific benchmarks.
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.
I agree that perhaps the Mac software was optimized to some degree - but then again hasn't the PC versions of each of those pieces of software undergone equal amounts of heavy tuning over the years?
If the apps were optimized for the demos, that's one thing - if they were just generally optimized for the G5 a bit then I feel the comparisons are still valid as that's the experience a user would get.
I would think they would not tailor the demo software too much to specific demos. After all, when the G5's are released people can try the same demos at home on Photoshop or other apps, and if the performance differs significantly then we'll see some epic bitching by the community at large! It would just not be worth the risk, and I don't think the application developers have that much to gain by cheating considering they sell to both platforms.
I prefer Occam's Razor in this case, that the simplest answer is probably closest to the truth and the machines really do run applications pretty fast. There's no reason to believe this not to be the case given the overall system architecture (which is probably contributing a fair degree of the performance boost aside from the G5 itself).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I won't use a Mac as long as it doesn't run the software that I use. VirtualPC has no support for 3d acceleration, so that rules out every 3d modeling application and 3d game.
Well, the OS upgrades for OSX, IMO... not that they aren't nifty and all, but $100 plus for an upgrade every few months seems a bit steep.
a 64bit desktop computer for general use.
Certainly at $3000 the dual 2Ghz is pricey, but look at what you can do with it. This computer can work with video, audio and bitmaps NOW and it doesn't take Joe average weeks to figure out.
Only an idiot would use a shotgun to kill a fly, or a semi-trailer to bring home the groceries, but both have their place and purpose. I'm sick of idiots claiming you can create a Linux cluster to get the same power at the same price, but then not mentioning the applications they will run and more significantly their price.
Reality is MacOSX works, it works well on a G4 and even better on a G5. I'll bet no-one in your neighbourhood will buy a NEW Opteron workstation, but a few will buy a G5 Apple.
The less you know about computers and computing, the more appealing Apple's Products become.
There is something for everyone, BSD Unix for geeks, and a great interface for the rest. If only they cost a tad less!
I'm sure gcc hurt Apple more than it hurt the P4.
the SPEC resutls for the p4 with with ICC kick the crap out of the G5 with GCC.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why compare a dual Xeon to a dual G5 when a single P4-3.0 is faster at SpecInt, SpecViewPerf, SpecFP and SpecCPU. And for less than 1/2 the price!!
Suddenly all the people who said that Apple is an evil company that use false advertising and crooked benchmarks are nowhere to be seen..!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
...Leroy has been begging Apple for something newer, faster than motorolas chips for the past several years now. So, they finally got one. Well, two, on the same board, shazzam and stuff. Of course they are gonna talk that up, too, along with the new OSX version.. seems sorta...obvious.. heh
%^)
What do you mean $100 upgrade "every few months." When did Jaguar debut? More than a few months ago. Did they charge for 10.1? No. You probably don't even own a Mac or have never even paid for an OS upgrade, either.
Yet another facetious and inaccurate accusation.
Hearing Mac Zealots constantly denigrate the PC while I was growing up made me hate the company, which only added fuel to the fire by publishing bullshit benchmarks and misleading information like what they've just done.
I have no problem with things like the BeBox, the Amega, SGI machines or anything else, and I'd probably enjoy trying them. But Apple constantly lies and misleads and insults my intelligence. Mac Zealots constantly lap it up and spit it out. These days it's just annoying but when I was a kid it was downright insulting. That's why I dislike apple so much. I've grown out of platform zealotry myself, but apple still has a huge legacy of BS to overcome in my mind. And they are not doing anything at all to overcome it.
Compare this to the way Linux users in general have handled themselves, especially after the Linux Advocacy HOWTO which tells people not to insult others and that kind of thing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The G5 will be available on September 1st. The Athlon64 will be available in the same month. With both processors purported to bring 64 bit to the desktop, it would seem the Athlon 64 would be more appropriate to compete with rather than the Xeon.
This is an old story where someone fudges alittle on the scores, this is called "marketing." Intel does it with the "3.06Ghz" BS and AMD does it with there bizzare Athlon XP+ 3200 when it runs at 2.1GHz. And let us not forget the nVidia/ATI scandels! Apple has now done the same thing where they use a different way of benchmarking. I think that this has come under more fire because of the Mac vs. PC battles of old. I would like to ask "Who cares now about the benchmarking scandel with ATI and nvidia?" The answer would be very few. So in the end, Apple, just like everyone else, is marketing their new computer. If you want the facts go to a respected third-party like PC World or CNet, not some shady little site for accurate benchmarking!
As a final word, sometimes the slowest factor in getting a job done, is not necessarily the computer, but the user taking their time, because the application has been so badly implemented, to be difficult to use and understandable.
Just a anecdote. Where I work we have SGI machines and PCs. The SGI machines come with a program called Multigen Creator which is just shit. Most of the people there would probably rather use 3ds max on a 486 then deal with creator, even on our million dollar SGI machine.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Who care about the lame games, how about the games people actually play...
I also think THG is biased, but that is a personal opinion. If I took his advice, it would cost me twice as much as I usually spend. (I got Dual Athlon, work out the difference for equivalent Dual Xeon...OUCH!)
I'm guessing you're trying to imply that the Xeon machine was somehow unstable. That could be true, but we don't have enough information.
Why would the Xeon machine crash? Perhaps:
* The Mac version of Mathematica got recompiled for a 64 bit architecture, so it could handle 64 bit memory space. The Xeon machine didn't have a 64 bit version of Mathematica, and therefore couldn't handle it.
* The Xeon version didn't handle PAE properly and had bugs.
* Any number of other reasons.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Why? because almost all the software I run on a daily basis is compiled with gcc. I am really surprised that the slashdot crowd suddenly is crying out that gcc sucks as if none of them use it.
As far as I am concerned if a dual G5 can outperform a dual Xeon under Linux using gcc then that is more "real-world" than Intel's spec results.
The opteron has been out for a while.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually IBM has been providing processors to Apple for years. My G3 Blue-And-White has a true-Blue copper G3 350MHz in it. IBM has continued to evolve the G3 series of chips, and they have continued to supply Apple with faster and faster G3s for the iBook series of laptops.
Apple has had strategic alliances with IBM since Taligent in the early 1990s. A lot of their know-how went into the PowerPC design. (What, you think that Moto could have done it alone?)
Considering how badly Moto has botched G4 production, it's not surprising that they turned to IBM for the future of the PPC line.
Big Blue hasn't been Big Brother for a long, long time. You'll have to switch your focus from Armonk, NY to Redmond, WA.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Unfortunately that really only proves that those results used a better compiler/heap/etc. This is a really simple concept folks. I'm sure if they had used a nice compiler along with all kinds of crazy compiler, OS and system optimizations, an even larger group of people would be saying that Apple was misrepresenting the benchmarks.
I'm going to say this once again: the Apple benchmark chose software consistency over potential performance winds in an attempt to isolate the performance benefits of the hardware.
It's worth noting that IBM's own 1500MHz Power4 CPU "kicks the crap" out of the published results for the G5. Guess what? The Power4 processor is the slower processor. IBM's own SPEC benchmarks show that the G5 at 1.8GHz should "kick the crap" out of that 1500MHz CPU, let alone a 2GHz model.
For the record, IBM's own SPEC tests for the 970 put it at 937/1051 when running at 1.8Ghz. Extrapolating this would suggest that the 970 using an "optimised" test bed, would score slightly below those ICC results for integer, while beating it for floating point. So amazingly, this performance differences demonstrated by Apple's benchmarks actually correspond to performance differences that exist in the case where both sides are using an "optimised" test bed.
Sadly, I haven't seen any 970 SPEC_*_rate benchmarks using IBM's compiler yet, but given that those benchmarks are much more influenced by motherboard design, it's quite possible those numbers would be misleading anyway. That being said, for the SPEC_*_rate benchmarks, IBM's 1500MHz Power4 system definitely "kicks the crap" out of the Dell system your suggesting.
sigs are a waste of space
Some of the compiler optimizations can make a huge difference, especially on a raw benchmark like this. Using SSE2 or not using SSE2 could make a LOT of difference. Turning on SSE2 flags for GCC doesn't necessarily mean that SSE2 will be used in all of the places that it should be used, while in the real world, the computation intensive stuff will probably make good use of SSE2.
GCC is almost certainly the compiler that PPC apps will use. It is the one that Macintosh uses, distributes, and supports. But it isn't necessarily the one that x86 apps will use -- x86 developers also use MSVC and Intel, among others.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
When I was a very young boy without a computer of my own. Then I took a programming class that used DOS and I thought the "Command Line" was the coolest thing EVAR. After that, I was hooked.
Pretty weird, in retrospect.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Not to mention their reviews of games, where everything is "oh look, pretty color and pretty things - hear money being transfered to tom's pockets - and we so conclude that these now games by microsoft kicks ass"
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
Actually, I just watched the video again. He actually said:
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Overpriced is not the right word. More like Underpriced.
I urge anyone to compare the featureset of Final Cut Pro 4 ($899) vs. similar solutions in the PC world. Avid Xpress DV doesn't even stack up, and with all the plugins and tools, you'll end up spending far more to equal twice the price of the Apple G5 hardware.
It really amuses me when people talk about 10.x updates as if they are service packs. Someone yesterday mentioned this saying "Microsoft doesn't charge us for SP.x upgrades", which was really comedic. Windows ServicePacks just fix broken stuff, and sometimes even break more. With OSX 10.x updates you get brand new features all the time.
I wish people really understood how this shit worked.
The first thing that occured to me was "why are they comparing their 64-bit unit to the Intel 32-bit units?"
I don't follow your logic. It sounds like you're more concerned with finding out which compiler gives the fastest compile times on both platforms than finding out which platform can perform the best given nearly identical tasks.
I'm not denying that getting the true facts on which compiler is "the best available to developers on the platform" is good and useful information. I just don't think it's what you want to be concerned with when launching a new system and want to pit it "head to head" against a competitor.
The speeds of different compiler software will always change with each revision. (Back in the day, Borland and Microsoft C compilers went back and forth, back and forth on who was faster, with each successive version.)
I just want to take the *same thing*, run it on both platforms, and see which can plow through the same commands the most quickly.
How damn fast does your CPU have to be for the computer to be usable? How many people are so damn impatient that they can't wait walk away from their CD ripping and have dinner while it writes the MP3.
I don't wear this "we used the SSE flags" shit for one second. All you're saying (give or take a bit) when you set an SSE flag is that it may be used. It's not like it magically parallises your code, or aligns the data on the right boundaries.
:(
That being said I would like to see a G5/AltiVec vs P4/SSE2 number crunching bake off. Arguably these are the only benchmarks that matter in this day and age since the applications that need that much speed should be using the parallel instructions anyway.
Not like I can afford *either* chip though
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
I'm also typing away on my Powerbook.
So we've moved most users to OS X, a few special purpose Windows machines (Quickbooks, two designers that bring their own Windows machines, and one developer choosing between Linux and OS X).
If I cared about speed for my Unix workstations, it's a fair comparison. My OS + Applications would be run on Redhat 9 using GCC to compile under Linux.
In all honesty, the numbers aren't that meaningful, as we wouldn't consider a dual-G5 (or a dual-Xeon), but it is nice to know that Apple has "caught up." Maybe the P4 is faster or maybe the G5 is faster, but it's pretty similar.
To me, that matters, as the guy who is deciding played with an old G4 Cube with Jaguar, and it was too slow for him. Knowing that it will run OS X fast is critical in his decision.
If I run a Linux machine, the apps will be built with GCC. For Windows tests, they showed the Photoshop + Mathematica tests. For the pure crunching tests, they compared OS X to a Redhat workstation, not an unreasonable comparison.
Alex
Amen.
I wonder why everyone is crying over the processors. It's the system architecture that makes it fast. Damn fast. Memory bandwidth is the real reason the G5 smoked the Dell on stage, not processors. They about on par with intel chips, +/- a few SPEC tests. The real thing to get hopped uop about is Memory Bandwidth.
Say it with me again: Bandwidth. Feels good doesn't it?
Most server chips are basically pokey little toys compared to desktop CPU cores, but they can shove bits around like nothing else. This box is not revolutionary because of it's SPEC score (which aren't all that) it's revolutionary because of the dual 1GHz channels. The dual DDR 400MHz memory channels and the dual Serial ATA channels. It has B...a...n...d...w..i..d...t...h
That's the reason mathmatica did better. That's the reason photoshop did better (It was basically an i/o test after all....am I the only one who noticed?)
Mmm. Bandwidth, it's what's for dinner.
Man are you way behind the times. I can do that even with my dual 1Ghz G4.
Wow, you're not the brightest bulb, are you?
OMG OMG LUNIX OMG
It is called "market lock-in"
It doesn't matter if it is a better product--someone will ask their friends "what will work for me?" their friends say "I use this, it works for me" and that prompts said person to go out and buy X.
Most people I talk to I can sway to buying a Mac--if I get to them first and let them get their hands on one.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Great point. I wonder if the reason that Apple is so into boasting about performance -- and they did this at the G4 launch, though I think they have a much better case here -- is just that that is what people nag on them so much about. They just want to say "no I ain't". No matter how many times they try to tell people that size doesn't matter.. OTOneH, Better if other people do your bragging for you. OTOtherH, I also rememeber a time in the early nineties when Apple hardware was very competitve with Wintel, but people only looked at Mhz; I can understand them wanting to inocluate themselves against that. But isn't it funny, no one talks about Mhz when Opeteron is mentioned..
compilers are used for compiling. As such, optimizations are a good thing. If you have a chip with floating point, do you not use it to be 'fair' for all those 386/286/8086s that don't have one?
I'm the head of a mid-sized consulting company that deals almost exclusively with digital media and digital arts firms. We have a few G5s on order, and because we're a solutions provider, we'll probably get them pretty early. I'm going to wait and see exactly how fast they are, not just in Photoshop, but also in Final Cut Pro -- which in my experience has a history of outrunning similar applications on faster hardware. It's going to be real-world performance that matters. Not SPECfp scores. And we won't know the real-world performance until people start getting their hands on some production units. End of story.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
Several other posters have noted that GCC/970 is really not the same compiler as GCC/Xeon. Sure there may be a bit of code in common between the versions, but the job of a compiler is to produce object code... and by definition, the object code for 970 is different from that for Xeon.
What matters to a purchaser is "How much performance can *I* get out of this machine". If I am performing CPU-intensive scientific calculation that require the fastest CPU I can find (at least for a given number of kilodollars), I'll almost certainly spring a few hundred extra for the compiler that produces the fasted object code on that platform (if needed, there's nothing ruling out GCC automatically because it's free).
It happens that for a Xeon or P4 (or Opteron, for that matter), the compiler that produces the fastest object code is ICC. Intel has done an amazingly good job with their compiler.
Now, sure, I *could* get a similarly optimized 970 compiler for comparison.... if one existed, that is. It looks like right now, GCC is the best you can get on a 970. It doesn't do a buyer any good to know that IN PRINCIPLE a more optimized compiler could be written.
All that said, the 970 looks like a very respectable chip. And Apple is selling their new machines at a very competitive price; and Macs have extremely friendly and stable OSs. All that means that it is probably well worth buying a PowerMac even if it will crunch big computations a few percent slower than a more expensive Xeon. But still... the "GCC is the common element stuff is pretty darn bogus."
Buy Text Processing in Python
Let's face it: in their own way, Apple is being quite fair. Everybody in the free software community uses gcc, and publishing SPEC scores on x86 gcc is valid and useful.
However, IBM probably has C compilers for the POWER architecture that produce far more optimized code than gcc. Why hasn't Apple licensed and ported this technology?
Apple needn't resell such a C compiler, but critical system binaries (i.e. the kernel) could be recompiled for much better performance. Granted also that IBM is unlikely to support Objective C anytime soon, so such a compiler is only marginally useful.
However, Apple positively wastes these POWER chips without a vendor-optimized C compiler.
Just so you know.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Actually, I did price it out. It's about $4000, for a somewhat similar loadout from Dell with no firewire.
But we're hackers. We makes our own, right? Right. Now remember, the G5 has 4x DVD burning, Firewire 800, USB 2.0, a 160 gig Serial ATA hard disc and an ATI 9600 Pro. SO:
Mobo -- Best I could find was the IWILL DPI533-SATA, which covers our LAN, PCI-X, Serial ATA, USB 1.1 and gigabyte lan. Best price I could find:
$357
Chips -- The comparison is at 3.06, best price is:
$711 x 2 = $1422
Ram -- 512 meg PC 3200 registered. Best price is:
$112
HD -- 160 Gig serial ATA:
$160
DVD -- 4x write, 12x read:
$154
Firewire 800:
$85.
Video -- ATI 9600 Pro:
$162
Sound -- Has to have optical in and out:
$23
Without a case & power ($70+), fans ($20+) or USB 2.0 ($10), we're already at $2438. Put it all together, and yes you can build a passable alternative for $2538. This is assuming you don't splurge and get decent PS/Case/Fans, that you already have a keyboard and a mouse and that you can somehow get the whole thing shipped for free.
At newegg, this load out came to: well, i could get EXACTLY the same stuff, but close enough loadout was $2572 shipped. And I even resisted getting the cool aluminum case.
Of course, this is for a 32 bit machine...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
OS X is becoming overpriced. lets see...
$30 for public beta + $120 for OS X retail + $20 for upgrade + $130 for Jaguar + $130 for Panther. Throw in tax and shipping and my single-machine copy of OS X is slowly creeping towards $500.
I have to think that really big applications (like Mathematica and PhotoShop) are not just using GCC. Or, perhaps IBM's Power4 compiler will make a showing on the Mac. Either way I still think performance will balance out in the larger apps, or at least apps that are heavily performance oriented.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do care how long it takes me to encode a mpeg.
I do care how long it takes to render my 30 minute 3D animation.
I do care how long my earth simulation takes to run.
Performance matters to a lot of people and benchmarks let us know which machine is gonna get it done faster.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
OS X 10.0 - released March 2001 - price $129
OS X 10.1 - released Sept 2001 - price $129, upgrade $19.95
OS X 10.2 - released August 2002 - price $129, upgrade $19.95 for any purchased Mac after July 17, 2002
OS X 10.3 - released ?2003? - price ?
Dunno what you're talking about really... seems like a few months between releases to me. Besides, I did say each release was nifty... just seems like paying for each 10.X is a bit much.
Now some poor slob will sell me his 15" titanium cheap.
I know not all of you can be as lucky as me and be blessed with both size and skill but hey, stop worrying about how hot your system is and spend your time coming with something useful to do with that system!
It comes down to the G5 being waaaay more than you need or the P4 being waaaaaaay more than you need.
Never seen that before.
Is that a bug in the microcode?
OOOOH. I'll bet you mean they got Windows 98 to crash. That was hard.
I used a DOS machine from '85-'91 and thought it was pretty hot shit. When I started college in the fall of '91, the school required incoming students to have access to a Mac.
Since my existing computer was then almost six years old and showing its age, my parents opted to loosen the purse strings and buy me a Macintosh LC. Within fifteen minutes of getting it out of the box and up and running, I knew I was gonna be a Mac user for life (sorry, Apple-haters, but there was no consumption of Kool-Aid involved). Not long after that I got my first look at Windows 3.1, and I couldn't believe what a half-assed Mac knockoff it was. Microsoft has made great strides with Windows over the years, but they still can't touch the synergy between hardware and software that Apple achieves. That synergy means much more to me than raw speed, and I'm more than happy to pay for it.
Therein is the basis for the holy wars, IMHO: The Mac people don't understand why the Windows users are eating dogfood when they could be having filet mignon, and the Windows people don't understand why anyone would choose to pay more for a computer that they perceive as working the pretty much the same as a much cheaper Windows box.
These days, I make my living as a system integrator. I support Windows and Macs, but specialize in Macs-- slightly difficult because my Mac clients seldom need me. I own several Macs and a couple PCs, but my main machines are a G4 and an iBook-- after a long day dealing with Windows (which "just stops working" from time to time), it's damned nice to come home and use my Macs (which "just work"). In my experience, more often than not, people who have really used both OSes for an appreciable amount of time prefer the Mac.
~Philly
I'm becomming really dissapointed with what seems to be the majority of posts on /. (and especially in this thread). I was anticipating a lot of /.ers going on and on about how sweet the tech specs are on the PowerMac G5 hardware. It shouldn't matter what religion you are (M$, Sun, *NIX, Mac, IdogAppleToSoundSmart...), the hardware freeking rocks! Just like my attitude towards BeOS - I don't necessarily care whether the thing will gain 82% market share, its just cool shit.
But is it really that sweet?
More like the same old same old.
Add to this that the discussion surrounding the whole thing is about how Apple rigged the benchmarks and what do you expect?
Boring hardware upgrade + stupid marketing tricks = complaints
A 'specialized malloc library' is a program specific enhancement and is not part of any system or OS. It can only be part of a compiler, or added to a program manually. There is no excuse for using it on one platform and not another because malloc libraries are fairly easy to port. I know from experience that specialized malloc libraries can increase allocation performance by as much as a factor of 1,000 (note: I doubt that theirs was nearly that much quicker!), so this is no small matter. It could also take care to allocate memory on boundaries to help the CPU process without choking, but I don't know if that's relevant on PPC architecture.
The only other modern compilers Apple could have used are 32-bit compilers... Motorola's MrC and Metrowerks' CodeWarrior.
Metrowerks is owned by Motorola!
However, IBM does write their own commercial (read: not gcc) compiler for the Power4, from which the PowerPC 970 is based. Perhaps Apple could have overhauled and used that compiler.
Yeah! You tell'em! And you forgot to mention how much software that extra $1000 will buy. ...
...
... Oh yeah, Apple. Shit, my mistake.
You know, SOFTWARE. The stuff you run on the computer to do stuff.
Huh? What do you mean there's no software for
You know I opted to view the comments attached to the parent of the post you replied to just so I could laugh at that "cream of the crop" comment. You've got to be joking, right?!
It's nice to see that didn't need to bother writing my own comment. You did a commendable job, Sir.
$30 beta was your choice AND refundable against the purchase price of 10.0
10.0 updated to 10.1 for free over the Internet -- you paid $20 for media -- that was your choice
Both Jaguar and the original version have been easy to find for less than MSRP.
Let's see, comparable MSRP: Windows 2000 Pro MSRP $319 + Windows XP Pro MSRP $299. That's over $600 for the privilege of running Windows on your system during the same time period.
I think you're about to get a deal if you install Panther on your system.
You do know that those upgrades are the full OS right? It's not like Microsoft's upgrade CDs, you get a full bootable version of the OS without the Digital Rights Management hoopla.
When you spend $129 for Mac OS X that is the equivalent of buying a retail copy of Windows XP Professional at a fraction of the price.
Windows XP Home
Upgrade:$99
Full:$199
Windows XP Professional
Upgrade:$199
Full:$299
Oh and you can buy a 5 client Family Pack of OS X for $199. Teachers get a free copy. The educational price for OS X is $69. So there are other options.
And if XP Professional was much of an improvement over Win2K, I'd have upgraded my PC. But even at $129, it would have been a waste of money based on the few improvements.
Why compare a dual Xeon to a dual G5 when a single P4-3.0 is faster at SpecInt, SpecViewPerf, SpecFP and SpecCPU. And for less than 1/2 the price!!
Because in a dual-processor machine you get to use BOTH processors AT THE SAME TIME. So the relevant benchmark is not SPECint_base or SPECfp_base, it's SPECint_rate and SPECfp_rate. At these tests, the G5 spanks the shit out of the P4.
FOR LESS MONEY.
AT 2/3rds THE CLOCK RATE.
WOO.
I am curious about the SPEC benchmarks. SPEC CPU2K does not explicitly use the SSE2 instruction set (or and SIMD instruction set) as far as I know -- does SPEC CPU2K use an outside library like, say, the BLAS, or some other library that would be probably be optimized for SIMD instructions?
I know that GCC 3.3 on x86 has support for SSE2, but it does not automatically vectorize computations. If it is not explicitly used, wouldn't -mfpmath=sse just be a digital placebo? I can feed -faltivec to gcc on my OS X box, but it doesn't follow that I then have an altivec accelerated application! :P
While his explanation helps clear things a bit, on this point the benchmarks still seem a bit unfair, and I don't see how it has been addressed.Of course, this is for a 32 bit machine... ...without any software.
Yes, you can get FreeBSD for free. If you think that's comparable to Mac OS X, you're even further detached from reality than it previously appeared.
(I'm not speaking to you, Dasmegabyte. I'm speaking in the rhetorical sense.)
If you read the PDF you would see that they removed one of the G5 processors to ballance the fact that they were running a non-SMP kernel on the dual processor intel system. This evens out the playing field when it comes to running non-SMP aware benchmarks.
Of course, I doubt people will be pulling processors out of their systems to run apps that are not coded for SMP. Then again, I doubt Linux users will reboot into a non-SMP kernel under the same circumstances either.
But the fact of the matter is that every post I've seen on slashdot "qeustioning" These benchmarks has been from a PC Zeolot casting about for excuses not to believe that the PowerMac is faster than a PC.
Fact of the matter is-- Apple was criticized for using stock versions of photoshop in the past (and you guys lied and said they weren't stock) and so they used SPEC, and three other applications as well for the comparison!
And did you accept these honest benchmarks? Hell no.
Of course, not, you're zeolots, and the only thing you'll believe is that the Mac is slower-- you'll pick nits and blame the difference on the nits no matter how irrational it is.
This is part of the reason slashdot is worthless for professionals. There's very little input from professionals here-- they've all left after geting modded down for being technically correct!
The weakest point of Mac systems for many years has been slow bus speeds. Nobody's challenging the bus speeds and they're much, much faster. If you had a bus this fast on the G4 systems, they would dramatically improve their real-world performance.
RAM capacity is also not under challenge. So, for 23999 I can get a system that would permit up to 8GB of ram on the system.
Just those two unchallenged figures make this much more than just another boring speed bump hardware upgrade.
If they're providing the actual compiler flags they used and the flags used disprove one of the doubter's claims (no SSE2 use) then maybe Apple is *not* just making stuff up?
Wow ... have you ever added up how much you've spent on coffee since September 2000?
The $30 for the public beta was rebated on the purchase of the retail copy. So in reality you will have spent by end of year 2003, $406.95 give or take a bit cause you can find the OS cheaper at places like Outpost. Divide that amount by the 40 months between the release of the Public Beta in September 2000 and the release of Panther in December 2003 and you spent $10.17 a month or roughly 33 cents a day for OS upgrades.
Not an inconsequential sum but nothing compared to the cost of buying a latte grande at Starbucks every day.
Granted, its a full OS (not un update disk) and yes, it's a lot better value than XP - not that I ever claimed otherwise...
And I still run 2000 at home also, XP isn't worth the upgrade.
So what if they *were* tweaked? A tweak is still valid code (just faster than the untweaked code). Hence, argument is invalid.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
I don't see why people are even debating this so early on. Come August, when home and commercial users get their hands on these systems, I'm sure we'll see more than enough benchmarks: Photoshop, 3d animation programs, Quake and other games from so many sources our heads will be spinning. We can then all witness which system comes out on top overall.
From this IBM document:
SPECint2000 @ 1.8GHz - 937
SPECfp2000 @ 1.8GHz - 1051
Dhrystone MIPS @ 1.8GHz - 5220
Peak scalar GFLOPS - 7.2
Peak SIMD GFLOPS - 14.4
RC5 - 18Mkeys/sec
Apple's numbers for a 2.0GHz 970 are actually lower than IBM's for a 1.8GHz 970, and if we lend any credence to IBM's numbers, I'd say Apple's results are very reasonable.
Intel's compiler is a free download.
I'm actually surprised that Apple chose to use benchmarks like this to make their point. Oh sure, a new class of processor is always going to have these kinds of benchmarks in their specs. But who runs benchmarks in the real world to get anything meaningful done (unless you are Tom's Hardware)? The benchmarks that really matter is what Apple has been doing for years: real applications doing real things with real OSes and all the fixin's. Nobody cares if a Mac can run an Excel spreadsheet recalc quickly. But for Apple's key professional markets (Publishing/Imaging, Audio/Video, Scientific), the new hardware is a dream come true. Second, nobody's mentioned anything about the hardware itself. It looks like Apple has borrowed a page from a tweaker's ideal setup. An aluminum case configured for maximum cooling (9 fans!)...A 1 GHz (!) FSB, PCI-X, point-to-point hypertransport (people forget that Apple is also a chipset maker, unlike virtually everyone else), Serial ATA, Firewire 400/800, USB 2.0, optical audio in/out, etc...all great stuff.
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 --
Wrong, entirely. GCC generating x86 code might as well be an entirely different compiler than GCC generating PPC code. The code generated is obviously entirely different. Also, different optimizations are performed for each platform.
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.
Also bunk. That doesn't prove that it is optimized better for Intel. If anything, because GCC has a lot of contributions from Apple and IBM it *should* optimize very well for PPC. Intel on the other hand has their own compiler--and they don't contribute nearly as much to GCC. A proper benchmark would use the typical compiler for the platform--which for performance apps on x86 would be Intel's compiler.
Intel puts a lot of R&D into it's compiler for good reason. The compiler is a very large factor in performance.
That said, the hoopla over this is overrated anyway. They are benchmarks and by nature don't prove a thing--especially for a product that won't ship for 2 months.
No, actually, Metroworks CodeWarrior produces significantly faster code (i.e, the generated code runs faster).
But Apple wanted to do a test on a *level* field. That means both CPUs running the same code, to see which CPU is faster. The closest you can come to this is to use:
1. the same source code (spec)
2. the same compiler (gcc 3.3)
Since Intel's compiler is not available for the PPC, Apple used gcc.
Interestingly, Metrowerks/Motorola's compiler (i.e., CodeWarrior - Motorola bought Metrowerks a year or two ago) *is* available for both PPC and Intel, but Metroworks/Motorola may not have completed their G5 specific back end yet.
spec tests processors, and processors only, with other factors (like compilers) held constant. If you want to test real world performance (as in your analogy of the cars and fuels) you should test real applications, running on both platforms, side by side...
Wait, Apple already did that, and the G5 smoked both the P4 and the dual xeon boxes.
The G5 would have the same problem if it was working on a dataset that was 1.5x the size of its physical memory.
MJC
...not windows.
At least Apple's -making- money right now. That's better than a lot of companies can say these days. I'm sure they could be making more, but the fact that they aren't losing money says a fair amount...
Since when does Mathematica need to use 4 GB to crash? They manage to do it in 16 KB!
... Steve is the square root of Greg.
Actually, the Xeon only has 1 MB of memory (or 2, depending on the model). And it can address up to 64 GB (it supports PAE).
I don't see what you people are getting so worked up about. If you want OSX, then you simply have to get a Mac, and if you want the fastest, you have to get a G5. So, what IF they mistated the numbers a bit? They see that the PC Market has been winning out by saying that their computers are the fastest, based on numbers. Processor speed. That's all that the average PC buyer sees, because that's all he has been trained to see. If this weren't the case, why has the PC market been whipping Apple for so long? You and I know that Apples are far FAR better than PC's, but put yourself in the position of a person who wants to buy a new computer. THEY don't know that. If you want Apple to survive, you have to be willing to cut them a little slack. Are you now not going to buy a G5 just because of this? Of course not. As I said, I don't see what all the fuss is about.
-Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
The Power4 is a dual-core chip. The PPC970 is a single-core chip.
Wow, wonder how i generate these binaries on my AIX box?
Of course I read the PDF - how else would I have known they pulled out the chip?
I was just pointing out they did so, as some previous post in the first story was going on about how it wasn't fair to run the test on an SMP system.
Basically, I was just impresed at the level of detail they went into outlining the exact steps used to setup the hardware for the tests and though I would point out that small tidbit as an interesting bit of trivia related to the benchmarking.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The 30th International Symposium on Computer Architecture had an interesting panel discussion on benchmarking in industry and academia, with people like John Hennessy, Dave Patterson and Gurinder Sohi on stage. The conclusions: most benchmarking in industry, especially SPEC, is a pack of lies. And benchmark results published by academic researchers aren't much better. So, not really much point in losing a lot of sleep at least over their SPEC numbers.
why are you reading /.?
i mean give me a break. talk about self righteous, you dont reply to the post in any way except to bash a single line....
but i guess youre right - apparently you guys are just a bunch of trolls who would rather sit around insulting the site that you are reading than add to the discussion in any way.
kinda odd dontcha think?
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
... I mean, 2 words: Lighten up, buddy... ... I mean, 3 words: Lighten up some, buddy... ... I mean, 4 words: Amongst our weapons are, fear, surprise, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope!
Then I say match the best compilers for both platforms. Nothing wrong with that. I really don't know, though, whether Apple has written one, and I'd bet my ass Motorola hasn't. So Gcc might be the best they have, at which point PPC GCC vs. Intel's compiler would be the fairest test of what real-world programs will do.
I'm really hoping that Tom's Hardware or other great hardware sites do a detailed review with shipping models. That would be exciting to see.
That's what I'm talkin' about!
The G5 that I am posting this is on is indeed the most awesomely fast machine I have ever encountered. And, even of a roomful of them don't make any audible fan noise, as the independent speed controls only run the fans when needed.
One big advantage with SPEC is that there are rather detailed rules for the tools and setup you can use to report benchmark numbers.
One of those rules is that you can use a prerelease compiler, but it has to ship on your operating system within 6 months (or shorter, if they have updated it since last year...)
I'm now getting up off the floor. That was the best laugh I had all day. It's really funny when you say the name out loud and realize how accurate your comment was.
/. users are uninformed tools who think they know what they are talking about.
/.'ers may not be the cream of the crop we do influence many buying decisions and are looked to for advice. The original post was right in this regard, but you certainly proved yourself right by trolling on a comment trying to pay you some respect.
Yes, when I read your post that is exactly what I thought. You sir, are an idiot first and foremost and a troll to boot.
While
Apple has been lagging behind the PCs for years in the performance field. This made Apple's user base frustrated, angry and/or anxious.
With the G5, Apple seems to be at an equivalent performance level with the PCs. With equivalent, I mean comparable, that is not extraordinarily faster or slower.
The message from these benchmarks are clearly targetet at their user base to turn their frustration / anxiety to exhilaration.
The Mac faithfuls will believe the message, even if the supporting evidence seems rather dubious, and deflect any rebuttal as coming from jalous / incompetents / trolls.
The rest of the crowd will not take Apple's words for granted and will wait for independant benchmarks when the G5 will be available, showing (my guess) that it is a very good CPU indeed, but certainly not significantly faster or slower than the best x86 offerings.
But Apple does not really care for the rest of the crowd. They passed the message to their base, it has strengthend their confidence and that is what mattered.
The 970 (G5) being 64-bit just means it can handle larger integers. That's it. You can address >4 GB of RAM and you can express integers >4.3 billion. In general, 64-bit isn't faster than 32-bit unless you're specifically doing 64-bit math (which would have to be emulated on a 32-bit processor). In fact, it's often slower. If you're using 64-bit integers and you don't really need them, you're sucking up twice the memory bandwidth for no reason.
Many people have this idea that 64-bit processing is some kind of SIMD (like MMX, SSE, or AltiVec). It isn't. The 970 can't process two 32-bit integers with one instruction (unless you're using AltiVec, but we're talking about its 64-bit capabilities here). There is no reason to expect a 64-bit chip to be intrinsically faster than a 32-bit chip.
Apple 2x2 G5: $3000 Dell (2x3.06 Xenon): $4000
Who cares about 1,000 dollars? Stupid Apple and their IBM silicon chips... this Dell baby here uses NOBLE GAS! Electrical impulses though inert free-flowing gas, man. Not only does it sound better, it's a friggin' miracle!
Dell, the miraculous computer.
If you really want to test system performance, why not use what almost all the drones use these days, Windows.
I'd like to see a M$ Windows XP and Microsoft compiler test verses Mac OS X and gcc. That's what the developers are using on each platform, so why not test them with their respective compilers?
Except that if Apple did move to AMD/Intel, they'd have to dump all the classic and carbon apps, and become a new OS with no support. The same awesome strategy that saw BeOS achieve such mammoth success.
What an awesome way to bring in a bunch of new users- chuck away all the old ones. OS X could join the glorious ranks of MS/intel competitors like DR-DOS, PC Geos, OS/2 and BeOS!
Plus they'd be inundated with whingeing users wanting to know why their windows only scanner doesn't work with OS X when they're using a PC,
Plus! with the tremendous advantage of having to support every piece of shit network card and graphics chipset under the sun, they'd be able to take advantage of the same legendary performance and stability offered by Wintel PCs today.
Your genius is wasted on Slashdot, go and apply for a job as a CEO at a multi-millon dollar company today!
The numbers, according to Apple, are
A few things really stand out here:
Even a 2.0 GHz G5 machine, which isn't even shipping - is only 21% faster than a commodity P4, according to Apple. (Apple only give the numbers using one of the processors. This is on the floating point test, too, which favors the G5. This is absolutely amazing to me. Despite a 1 GHz bus and a 64 bit architecture, and accepting Apple's questionable benchmark, their cpu is only 21% faster? WTF?
But using the specs from the Spec2000 website make the G5 look even more disappointing. Apparently a fast P4 (which is available today) is significantly faster than the fastest G5. According to Dell, it's 30% faster. According to Intel, it's 44% faster. That's a huge difference. And to those of you who say it's not, consider if someone sold you a 2 GHz chip, and when you looked inside the box, you saw it was actually running at 1.12 GHz. You'd be pissed, and rightfully so.
(An Itanium II, btw, is 61% faster, running at half the clock speed. Incredible.)
Why does Intel say its sytems are 75% faster than Apple says they are? I really don't know. But I seriously doubt that it's pure coincidence that Apple is the only company that can't get these machines to run fast.
I'm sure this will be resolved in a few months, once the results can be independently (in the "not under contract by Apple" sense of the word) verified. But I, for one, was expecting quite a bit more out of this chip, and have a very hard time understanding how Apple did not cook the books on this one ...
"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."
What a predictable response. Of course the bechmark measures hardware+compiler since that it the point! You see after all you have to compile most software with a compiler of some sort. Just hardware can give you squat performance. Compilers matter and if Apple doesn't have one good enough to for their CPU then they should know better and stay out of serious things like SPEC.
You know what his argument sounds like? He is trying to compare a Honda Civic to a Corvette saying that the performance of the cars depends on the car mechanicals/engine plus driver and since we don't have good drivers we are going to use 13 year olds to drive both cars so that the driver isn't the issue! Okay this might be a stretch but you get the general idea. Clue to Apple: You need good compilers for getting the best out of your CPU and if you cannot then please stay away from dumbing down your competitors score.
As for GCC being avaliable for longer for x86 than PPC, this is classic Apple trying to mislead. GCC's internal architecture is based on 32 register RISC CPU and hence trying to shoehorn x86isms on it has always been tough. GCC naturally takes to RISC CPUs and in that sense PPC code generation would be more natural for it than x86. He is trying to muddy the water by saying irrelevent things here. Moreover till GCC version 3.1 (which is fairly recent) and above GCC has been pretty pathetic at code generation.
"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."
What different compiler does Apple have? So then why didn't it show that compiler SPEC scores? Wanna know why? Coz then Intel would have creamed Apple in SPEC scores. Let there be no doubt that Apple chose GCC for one reason only. BTW most serious commercial applications on the Mac are compiled with the Metrowerks Code Warrior compiler and not Apple's GCC. I guess Motorola now owning Metrowerks might also have something to do with Apple's new found love for GCC.
"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."
Of course the score would be higher on Linux since GCC is pretty pathetic on Windows since it has been written with UNIX in mind and not Windows. If Apple has the guts then let me see them compare against the new VC++ 7.1 (with SSE2 support) on Windows. That would lay their claims hollow.
All in all thier whole argument sounds hollow and unconvincing due to the fundamental issue of using GCC for P4. They cannot complain and whine like a sissy that Intel has a better compiler. Apple: Deal with it. Read my analogy about drivers and cars above. Just cars and just drivers don't matter. Its the combination of the car and driver that really wins races. And sometimes a good driver makes up for an okay car and sometimes a good car makes up for an okay driver. So in the end it is the combination that matters and not either of them in isolation. Its a similar thing with CPUs and compilers in computers and if the Apple VPs do not get it then perhaps it might make sense for them to take a Computer Science 101 class in a University.
Who care about the lame games, how about the games people actually play...
:) Valve totally fucked it up with the 1.4 update. Rather than focusing on new maps or creating new mission types, they screwed around and completly changed the gameplay. Thats what beta periods are for.
Plenty of people play Quake 3, and a great many games are based on its engine. If your card performs well running Q3, its likely to also running Alice.
That, and nobody plays CS anymore (compared to what it used to be).
And while you're busy mulling that over in your mind, I agree, let's wait 'til a third party sees these, and can compare side by side.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Dell has official SPEC scores for their hardware available. Apple didn't need to produce their own results for their hardware, using techniques they knew would reduce the effectiveness of the hardware to be more favorable to their position. All they had to do was take the official scores, and provide their own best effort for their own platform, and compared the results objectively.
You amuse me. Dumping the classic apps is exactly what Apple has been trying to do.
How much noise have people been making about this or that app soon to be released native for OS X?
You can ignore reality, but the fact is that most people, most computer buyers, are not willing to pay a large premium for the kind of quality and aesthetics that Apple provides in its hardware.
Dell's equipment may not be as slick as Apple's, but it works really well, and they've been selling the hell out of them for years. And like it or not, MS has made good progress with its OSs. I'm no MS fan, but XP is "good enough" for the buying public, just like PCs are good enough.
Your argument about other doomed OSs has no relevance. BeOS died from lack of apps, not because it was based on Intel platform.
You sound like yet-another-rabid-Machead. If Apple didn't want to support every peripheral in the world, they could produce an approved hardware list. Microsoft did that for NT, and other OS vendors do that for Linux. And anyway, nowdays it's largely up to the hardware vendors to write the drivers for the OS. All Apple would have to do is review/approve/certify them.
Regarding reliability, despite my dislike for MS, I have to say my office development machine (running XP Pro on a Dell P4 workstation) runs flawlessly. I never reboot it, at least not often enough to even remember. It's up for at least 30+ days at a time. Of course, my RedHat 9.0 running on the Dell P4 workstation beside it stays up even longer, but it doesn't see as much day to day use.
So basically you're full of FUD, and you can't accept that Apple is not known for being smart about business.
You're right about one thing, I am wasting my "genius" responding to people like you.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Actually, the new DP PowerMacs are 39.2 pounds, the older mirrored door DP G4's are 42 pounds.
;)
So, ya, they're heavy as hell... but not as heavy as the older models
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Hey Apple... turn on the toys, do the tests, and shut these defensive Wintel users up ;)
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It's parity because all companies had the same opportunity to submit improvements to gcc.
I think it's great that they are using gcc, because gcc is the compiler I use, whether on an Intel or an Apple machine. That surely applies to most Open Source and MacOS users (whether or not they do their compiling themselves). Who cares what performance the Intel compiler can deliver when most PCs don't have a single app compiled with that compiler on them?
If Intel are dissatisfied with the x86 back end then they know what to do - contribute a better one. If they are dissatisfied with Apple's SPEC scores then they can submit their own gcc-based SPEC scores. AMD already did for Opteron servers (and they are better than Apple's by the way!).
Open Source advocates should be cheering about this - at last, a benchmark that shows the performance WE get from OUR hardware on a day to day basis.
and if games are all you want... I would suggest getting a console like the xbox or PS 2 and leave computing to adults.
/. what would the amount of software that is available for the OS matter? Linux is not known for its copious game support, nor for the major vendor software released for it for business or anything else for that matter. And almost all of the good stuff linux has in the way of apps etc...are already on the Mac or being ported.
And as to no software... anything worth having usually comes in both flavors! Can you get it at your local computer super store? No... and was that NOT part of the case against MS? The practice of "renting" shelving space etc? You can find it online and usually save money.
And seeing as this is
Guys, c'mon. What you really need to do is wait a month or so (I know it's tough, but deal). At that time, some of the other independent testers we all know and love will test these machines themselves. They'll do things like run Quake III, Photoshop, and SQL Servers on them. You know - the programs that most of us use everyday and have a little bit of experience with. Then we'll be able to see how doing things on these G5's really compares to x86's from the end user's point of view.
It is quite difficult to produce better code than gcc, and my tests on powerpc (granted, those were a few years back using xlc on RS6000 with AIX 4) showed that xlc produced code of about the same quality -- sometimes worse, sometimes better.
The gcc "Haifa" scheduler was donated by IBM Haifa, by the way, so I think it's not surprising that gcc produces good code on powerpc.
On Intel it's quite the same, except that gcc does not vectorize code. From what I have seen, however, icc's vectorizer is not very useful either. I recently tested ogg-vorbis (which is a plain C floating point intensive benchmark) with icc 7 and gcc 3.3 and the gcc version was actually faster than the icc version (on my Athlon XP, target CPU pentium3) despite icc having vectorized several loops.
So all this "vendor-optimized C compiler" stuff is really besides the point. No C compiler will ever be able to match the quality of hand optimized assembler code, and the most important code (ffmpeg MPEG-2 decoder and MPEG-4 codec) has already been hand-optimized. You might be able to squeeze anoter 5 percent out of your code by using a vendor C compiler with insane optimizer settings, but what good is that if the end user is only going to use gcc anyway. I know I am, so I find the numbers for gcc actually more useful for comparison purposes than some vendor C compiler comparison.
Also, we don't want to encourage vendors to produce super vendor optimizing compilers, we want them to optimize gcc (so that everyone benefits, not just their users). So the more benchmarks are done using gcc, the better!
They have used a third party with full disclosure, selected options (SSE2, no hyper threading, Linux instead of Windows) to give higher scores to the Dell. How fair is that?
/. readers are more sophisticated than just focusing on the manufactured numbers. There are far more important factors to consider, and the G5 is 200 - 700% faster than the Dell in running real-world apps like PhotoShop, Logic, Mathematica, BLAST, HMMer, etc.
The whole benchmark industry has been created by the like of Intel and Dell for marketing purpose only. I expect the average
Intel writes their own compiler for x86 and it's available for win32 and Linux. Why should they give a shit about gcc? "Don't like GCC? Use ICC!"
IBM should be the ones writing a compiler for the PPC970.
UNNGGGHhh!! Apple in one hole, Motorola in the other!
Oh no! You've uncovered the shameful secret of the Mac zealots: they have no software! All they can do on their beautiful Macs they so much love is sit around -- when they boot, all they get is a blank screen because there's NO SOFTWARE!! How could they be so deceived?!
a beowulf cluster of these things!
Kyndar: Exotic Imports, Jewelry, Candles, and Incense http://www.kyndar.com
As a computer science student one of the things they teach us is to evaluate performance (mostly of algorithms) in terms of n. If you have n items, and one algorithm takes n seconds and the other takes 2xn seconds to process them, both results are on the order of n or O(n). In order for there to be some significance to the difference in results, there must be some other factor of n (like log(n), n squared, n cubed, etc.).
So, for all intents and purposes the benchmarks, though interesting, are not really significant EXCEPT that it shows that:
Look, I love macs and have been an Apple fan since my //e, but as a computer professional, even I have to be dispassionate about these things.
Either that, or I'm just pissed because I can't afford a $3,000 computer when I just bought an iBook with my student loan.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Apple is probably introducing single processor machines now because 1) even single gives a good speed boost for current users, 2) even single gives performance parity with an average PC desktop, 3) there aren't enough PPC 970s going around yet to give all duals at a good price.
By next year I figure Apple will probably make all of them dual processor, not just to keep up with Intel/AMD, but because that's what this chip is built for, and where its performance shines. This is why the dual-processor benchmarks go much better for Apple.
So I don't really care about the single processor benchmarks, because I know that I need to go dual if I want to get the most out of the G5's potential.
The single 2 GHz G5 is still 21% faster in SPECfp than a 3 GHz P4, but 11% slower, so it's fair to say the P4 is NOT faster than the G5 overall.
I mean 11% slower in SPECint.
At least there are benchmarks and enough of a description to allow discussion. It would be much worse if benchmarks were prohibited from publication.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You are obviously missing the whole point of "taking the compiler out of the equation". The Apple results are done by an independent lab with full disclosure using the open source GCC for both x86 and PPC.
You also miss the point that GCC is much more optimized for the long established x86 platform than any other less commonly use CPU architectures such as SPARC or PowerPC and the least for the new born G5.
>> An Itanium II, btw, is 61% faster, running at half the clock speed. Incredible.
The Itanium II costs over $3000 per chip (more than the total cost of a dual 2 GHz Power Mac), consumes 3x more energy (130W vs 40W), and relies on massive on-chip cache to boost its SPEC numbers. In short, your comparison is just pure bullshit.
It only shows that are tools are not specialized enough to keep up with the demands of business. Everyone is trying to write to be the platform for everything, and I think there is the case for trying to be the platform for a specific industrial space.
This is my sig.
The evaluation versions of Intel® Software Development Products are free and valid for product based time period from the day you receive your license and will cease to function at the end of that period. The evaluation license will be non-renewable.
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The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Half that much will buy me either a nice cozy Athlon-based, Rad9700Pro-Equipped game box, stuffed with 1 Gig of RAM, or maybe a nice dualie Athlon-based box with a 760 chipset for video encoding, or some other variants I can think of. Slightly more will buy me an 'Intel Inside' sticker on the case.
Twice half as much, hence same as what said G5'll cost will also buy me a black AseTek Vapochill case, phase change and all, that makes the G5's noise level, cooling and general sexiness look like an 80-year-old wartnosed hag next to Nicole Kidman. And I'll probbably have enough left to throw in a small SCSI 36Gig 10K-spindle dual-HD stripe (3'll kill the PCI).
So WHY exactly would someone buy that G5, other than to prove something to the big wide world by showing off his mac?
And spare me the "I'm into Graphics" bit. Wake up and smell the Hummus. All adobe software runs just fine on Windows nowadays.
Not having a 6-digit income nor a wealthy parent, I find myself settling for the "half as much" solution.
And if I wanted a 64-bit desktop, I'd simply wait till September. Hammer's here.
-
Get one of the physics guys to take some code and compile it on both platforms. We'll run the machines in a native mode. Use whatever compiler you want (although a standard compiler like gcc would be best) with all the optimization turned on for effect. Then crunch a big multi-gigabyte raw data files, like those generated by modern particle accelerators. Finally, feed the data into visualization utilities and display it.
Unfortunately, I'm no longer at a nuclear physics facility with access to this kind of data; otherwise, I'd do it myself. My 400Mhz P2 (linux box) used to take ~23 hours to make a first pass on a 2GB "raw" data file (which only represented 90 minutes of data btw). This will give you a real world feel for raw compute power and visualization power. If there is a significant difference, it should be obvious.
Forget the debate over if restricitng GCC is fair, let's think about what we are trying to measure!
What it comes down to is the speed of the system, not the chip. The 1000+hp dragster is a useless vehicle to me because I don't need to go in a straight line at over 200 mph. What I do need is to be able to accelerate in traffic, handle corners, etc.
To me, a computer is a system. So I don't really care if the G5 is cranking out power I will never need. I feel like the G4 and the P3 are plenty powerful chips if the OS is built to be efficient and the supporting components to the system are configured correctly.
These days, my biggest reason to upgrade to a new computer is desire for faster system components. I wish my P3 had firewire (might go buy a card), I wish my PowerBook G4 (400mhz mind you) had BlueTooth (not 1600 extra mhz).
Benchmark the user experience, give a review that is more like Automobile or Road and Track. Tell us the zero to sixty and then move on the how the G5 handles in the turns. Tell us if the wind noise is less than a Xeon. Tell me if it has power windows. But don't spend 90% of your marketing materials telling me about the engine, that is only 10% of my buying criteria.
You just gotta TRY OS X!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
First...Windows machines do not 'just stop working' any more than Apples 'just stop working'. Don't get me started on my experiences with Apple hardware. From Powerbook plastic kits, to 1710 MDB failures, to iMac problems that were finally resolved by replacing every unit in the machine, piece at a time, and then calling Apple Tech Support to inform them as to what part fixed the issue. I had to work on a failed G4 that was owned by the Pittsburgh Zoo and used to record and analyze elephant vocalizations. This machine was critical in that there had been a birth in the past month or so and the zoo staff needed the machine to analyze and archive all the sound data they could gather. I ended up replacing the ENTIRE SYSTEM because Apple could not get a good, working system board out to me. Either the onboard audio was crap or the mic inputs didn't work or some other issue was present. In the meantime, ATS had me replace memory, processor, and video cards!
Your Mac may 'just work'. So does my WinAMD.
I do not see what the big uproar about all of this is. Perhaps Apple tweaked their system to make it look better. Maybe they disabled a few things in the Dell system. If they did that stuff, then it is a shame that they had to resort to doing that. However, I really do not care who is faster. If it takes me 2.56 seconds to open a program on one system and 2.57 seconds on the other, does that matter to me? No! So please people. Grow up, and realize that there are always going to be new hardware and software out and somethings will run better on different systems. So please, try to act your age and quit arguing about what is better before people have a chance to compare things for themselves.
"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."
Well, why the hell not? I say 'do it'.
Although, I can see the trolls now: "Apple cheated! They used Windows!!!! of course the Mac looks better..."
At least a fair number of embedded projects are compiled under GCC.
One option for Wind Rivers Tornado Toolchain is the GCC compiler.
There are also a number of embeddable Linux distributions which naturally use GCC.
Yawn...
on the PC you can select what you want to have in your machine, you might think that gigabit ethernet is pointless, you might think that sata hard drives arent that much better than udma 133 ones... you might think that a dvd writer is pointless... you might want a cooler soundcard than the analogue 5.1 one... you might want firewire or not... you might think bluetooth is even more pointless... etc.
yawn out, i think you got my point...
Admittedly, this was when the PowerPC was pretty new, and the choices were the IBM/AIX compiler which was robust and produced fast code but required an AIX box in addition to a Power Mac, or the nacent Metrowerks CodeWarrior compiler which run natively on the Power Mac, but generated poorly optimized code.
If I recall my history timeline correctly, after CodeWarrior came
- the Apple MPW "MrC" compiler (better code than CodeWarrior 1.0, but with a wacky command-line "IDE"), then
- gcc for PowerPC (cruddy code back then), then
- the Motorola PowerPC compiler (better code than Apple's compiler, with NO IDE - it plugged into the CodeWarrior or MPW IDE).
- Then Motorola inexplicably stopped selling their compiler.
- Later Motorola bought Metrowerks.
- Somewhere along the line, gcc learned to generate better PowerPC code.
- Eventually, Apple pretty much shelved their "MrC" compiler, and settled on using gcc for Mac OS X
- Monday, Apple released their "Xcode" environment -- still using gcc, I believe.
Apple's MPW tools are still available (free) here for Mac OS 7/8/9. The new Mac OS X tools including Xcode are available here.As a side note, it's really nice to see Apple giving away a full development suite for free, and continuing to put development time and effort into improving it.
-Mark
Given the current state of the PC industry, I'd say any profit right now is indicative of a well-run company.
Dell and HP are about the only two players selling personal computers that are consistently profitable today - and HP's profits derive mainly from their high-margin servers and printer supplies - not from desktop computers. On the other hand, Apple's server business is a drop in the bucket, they only sell two real peripherals (one peripheral until this past Monday - the iPod), and have a minimal business selling boxed software. They make their profit based almost entirely on their ability to sell desktop and laptop computers.
To take one more benchmark, Gateway is the only other major manufacturer to run company stores. They've lost a bundle, locating in strip malls and out-of-the-way locations. Apple has opened over fifty stores, mainly in very high-rent locations, and is on the verge of break-even after less than two years in retail. So that's a pretty well-run business as well.
Intel/AMD? Not going to happen. Period. Same with becoming a software-only company. I posted a comment a while back explaining why that would be idiotic, and I'm sticking to it. I won't recap here in the interest of brevity, but look it up if you want to see my argument.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
...is that they introduced fast user switching, A/V iChat, Expose, and many other features that are very simply, cool as shit, and we're spending over 2000 posts on neglegable differences in pure chip performance. It just seems like the OS benefits far outweigh any of this piddly crap everyone is arguing about now. I would have MUCH rather have had Mr. Jozwiak spend his time talking about alll of the other things, but noooooooo,
Jeezus, I swear...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
iPod.
Don't smack others down unless you have your facts completely straight - it undercuts your argument.
I wonder if it will still be possible to run Linux on the new Apple Powermacs. When Jobs was talking about the new 9-fan cooling system, he specifically said that all the 9 fans are regulated by Mac OS X, meaning Linux probably wouldn't know how to activate them etc, and thus fry the motherboard, since it wouldn't have any cooling! Obviously, it is possible that thats regulated by a lower-level system component that runs separately by OS X, but we'll have to see when they ship.
to see lots of benchmarks (G5 vs. P4 vs. Athlon XP) start popping up once the G5's are actually shipped. And it'll be more interesting if the G5's are vindicated. But of course, more interesting will be to see how they stack up against Opterons and Athlon64's.
:)
Of course, personally I'd like to own a dual 2GHz G5 and a dual Opteron (or Athlon64) desktop system. Not that I'd be likely to stress either machine most of the time, it'd just nice to have both
I switched 6 months ago, i hated MAC os 9, i flamed mac users when Q3 came out for them first.
I worked as an admin on a PC windows/linux netowrk, and when Apple went unix i got an iMac for the netowk, the day after 10.2 came out i bought a powerbook.
And that was it! I can't believe how great the OS is, i use it for normal everyday crap and also audio production with pro-tools and Cubase. It never crashes, and its impossible to get it to freeze up.
As soon as the G5 gets into a powerbook i'm getting it, and i doubt i'll need another PC ever
"Cheater! Dirty cheater, I say!!
What, did he use GCC to compile them?! Filth!!! DIE!"
I'm way off topic here, but given the popular literature released on Saturday, that many of us are no doubt reading, did anyone else hear Sirius Black's mother screaming this at us?
"Out, ye filth! Blasphemy! Mudblood Scum!"
It could be argued, that small Sun desktops (Ultra 5, Ultra 10, Blade100) are essentially PCs with an Ultrasparc CPU. (aside from the UltraSparc CPU and the mainboard, they have commodity hardware like IDE drives, PCI bus and cards, VGA graphics, USB etc)
That's true, but they aren't marketed to the home/SOHO crowd, or even power users for that matter; they also lack the range of software available on a PC (x86/Mac), especially the office/presentation stuff.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Well, actually I'd hoped to prove that the "comparable machine" wasn't that much cheaper. But it was $500 off. Ironically, I think that's what my Time Warner discount on the new machines is...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The point is, that the raw end-user speed of a system is bound by the compiler. As in, if all available compilers for the system are 3x as inefficient as your competitor, it doesn't matter if your system is 2x as fast in terms of raw operations, except to the guys making your complier more efficient.
In the real world, CPU speed is not as important as CPU+compiler.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
I'm happy it didn't come off as trollish, as I feared. I guess it does help to have a common experience...I always deeply want to look at Tom's reviews, but I always leave his site pissed off because of the experience.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Of course, the differences between Win2K and WinXP are roughly equivalent to the differences between OS X version 10.x and 10.x+1. The service pack equivalents are the 10.?.x releases, which you get free (just like the windows service packs).
Sure the minor update (not SP) rate is faster.
9.66 months apart on average (assuming an august release of 10.3), vs. 2+ years for Windows. But the cost over that span is roughly the same. The numbers are as follows:
Mac OS X:
10.0: included w/ Mac (early 2001)
10.1: $20 (upgrade) (late 2001)
10.2: $130 (full) (mid 2002)
10.3: $130 (full) (mid 2003)
10.4: $130 (full) (mid 2004?)
10.5: $130 (full) (mid 2005?)
Total: $540
Windows:
Win ME: included w/ PC (early 2001)
2K Pro: $200 (upgrade) (equivalency upgrade)
XP Pro: $200 (upgrade) (2002)
Longhorn: $200 (upgrade) (2005?)
Total: $600
Notes:
I extrapolated out to OS 10.5 and 'Longhorn' based on estimated release dates for Longhorn and a projected yearly 10.x update (see 10.1 -> 10.2 -> 10.3). So in the course of 5 years, if you keep both machines at the most recent releases, you pay $60 less for OS X updates (despite buying full versions of it and upgrade versions of Windows). If you skip one of the updates, you end up paying $10 more for OS X, but if the wait between 10.3 and 10.4 is longer than the projected year, you might save an additional $130 (total of $190).
Let me also point out that you're more likely to have to buy a new machine to run Longhorn effectively than to run 10.5 effectively.
Dude! You're half way to ISO9000 certification.
Motorola own Metrowerks who produce CodeWarrior and most commercial Mac apps are built with it as it outperforms gcc on PPC.
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
thats right, I said dell1 6.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/314
According to Joswiak, HT was disabled in the SPECint and SPECfp base tests because it yielded higher scores than when HT was enabled. VeriTest did keep HT switched on when it performed its SPECint and SPECfp rate tests.
Indeed, a number of Register readers have pointed out a report on Dell's web site that supports Joswiak's claim. Essentially, it says HT is good for server applications, but less well suited to compute-intensive apps. It uses SPEC CPU 2000 as an example of such an application, and found a "system performance decreased 6-9 per cent on the CPU 2000 speed tests and decreased 27-37 per cent on the CPU 2000 throughput tests" with HT enabled.
So if the average x86/windows developer is going to be using VS, why didn't apple compile with VS on x86?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I'd like to quickly point out that the Itanium II has no provision for running 32-bit apps natively, and is a dedicated serverland chip. I'm sure that the Opteron and Power4 give similar numbers. (Though, IIRC, the Opteron DOES have the ability to run 32-bit apps natively.)
In Apple's case, there is no other compiler.
Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product
marketing at Apple, today denied claims that he
is the result of a genetic engineering experiment
gone horribly awry. "Just because of my last
name, people think I'm the miracle test-tube
love child of the founders of Apple Computer," said Joswiak. "All of their creations suffer
from unfair criticism! Nobody believes
claims about my performance either! Beep boop!"
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
Firstly, I'll clarify my point from the first message.
I have formed the opinion over the years that no company can compete in x86 space while Microsoft has the power it currently has over PC manufacturers. I believe that that's the reason why BeOS, OS/2, PC Geos and DR-DOS died (by the way, I've used all of the former).
"Dell's equipment may not be as slick as Apple's, but it works really well, and they've been selling the hell out of them for years. And like it or not, MS has made good progress with its OSs. I'm no MS fan, but XP is "good enough" for the buying public, just like PCs are good enough."
By crap hardware, I don't mean Dell. I mean $5 network cards from a chain store, $30 taiwanese motherboards etc. I don't give a shit about the aesthetics of the computer I use as long as it has a querty keyboard and the X and Y axis of the mouse isn't inverted, to be honest.
"Your argument about other doomed OSs has no relevance. BeOS died from lack of apps, not because it was based on Intel platform."
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the x86 platform, in fact I like Dell servers running a Unixy OS, I'm saying that no company can compete on the x86 platform because Microsoft can force them out of the business instantly by using strongarm tactics against the PC manufacturers. I base this opinion on the fact that they have done it every other time a commercial OS competitor has come along trying to swipe the crown jewels from them.
"You sound like yet-another-rabid-Machead. If Apple didn't want to support every peripheral in the world, they could produce an approved hardware list. Microsoft did that for NT, and other OS vendors do that for Linux. And anyway, nowdays it's largely up to the hardware vendors to write the drivers for the OS. All Apple would have to do is review/approve/certify them."
If it was left up to the hardware vendors to supply drivers for linux, you'd have a choice of Framebuffer, nVidia or ATI video cards, 3com network cards, no mice as far as I know, no sound cards, no USB devices etc etc etc. There never was a scanner driver made for BeOS as far as I know...
Hardware manufacturers might support Apple, but their primary focus would always be on windows. It most likely wouldn't improve driver support, but it would increase the number of people who put crap hardware in their computers, and then expect it to work in OS X because it works in Windows.
As it is, Apple get Apple specialised hardware manufacturers because the platform is sufficiently different electronically to prompt the companies into action. I'm convinced that companies that produce PC hardware don't support Linux because they've already done a driver for x86 and don't see why they should do it again.
"Regarding reliability, despite my dislike for MS, I have to say my office development machine (running XP Pro on a Dell P4 workstation) runs flawlessly. I never reboot it, at least not often enough to even remember. It's up for at least 30+ days at a time. Of course, my RedHat 9.0 running on the Dell P4 workstation beside it stays up even longer, but it doesn't see as much day to day use."
That's nice. I have three machines here running windows, used by the rest of the household, two laptops, and one machine slapped together out of parts bought from a nearby computer supplier. The two laptops have hardly any problems, but I did have all manner of problems with expansion cards in the white box.
This is what I'm talking about. The laptops have wireless cards in them, apart from the fuss of getting them set up with WEP (had to resort to 56bit in the end to get it running) they work pretty flawlessly.
I'm arguing this point to you. When you buy a computer from Dell or Gateway or Compaq/HP, you get something that someone has taken a reasonable amount of time to test and make sure the parts all work together well. When you buy a box and slap it together yourself, you don't know whether the problems come from the hardware/drivers or the
For a single-threaded application, having HyperThread technology active can reduce performance by about 5%. And this is what Apple reportedly did for the single CPU benchmarks. Is that fair? Nope, especially not when HyperThreads were then turned off for the multiple CPU benchmarks! This may have reduced performance by as much as 30%.
All this bantering about compilers and SSE and blah blah blah. It's quite funny if you take a step back, or, in my case, just don't fully understand it. ;)
:P
For me, what's important is that as of Monday, the G4 is dead in high end machines and it finally means i can end my personal moritorium. (I'm bitter because i shelled out a lot of money to buy a top-end G3 blue and white to be stung two months later with the announcement of the G4).
I'm happy it kicks my G3's ass by a factor of 10 or more, and I'll happily invest in a new top of the line system. Looking damn forward to an optimized After Effects. mmmmm. drooool.
As far as how fast it is as compared to Intel, I don't use Intel based systems for anything, so it matters about as much to me as car racing specs, sport scores or a new arnold schwarzarepublican movie.
I find it amazing the fury which the G5 and Job's keynote speech is causing. Why are so many /.'s stressed out about the G5?
Seems pretty obvious to me:
1. The 2GHz 970/G5 is a respectfully fast chip and compares well to the current best desktop chips made by Intel, etc.
2. The 970/G5 may well have more headroom in terms of future speed improvement. IBM is only using a 130 A process, so you just know that there will be announcements by Christmas about still faster G5s. IBM is no Moto and you know that IBM will push the performance envelope. So just maybe you will have a harder time of heaping dung on future head-to-head comparisons?
3. The G5 runs 32 bit code and 64 bit code at the same time. That makes it easy for macheads to move to the new processor while you do have a bit of a compatibillty problem on the other side of the street, don't you?
4. Apple's prices for these new machines aren't too bad. Kinda takes away from your price argument.
5. Apple's latest supercomputer brag got you pissed off? Why? I am sure that we could devise one test showing a '86 machine faster at doing something and a G5 faster at doing something else. So what? The only real issue should be is which machine makes you faster and better at what you do. If what you do involves at lot of inteaction with a monitor, keyboard & mouse, that will probably be a very personal decision which will be largely based on what you are used to or comfortable with.
I suspect that what has you realy annoyed is that Apple is a small company with a puny marketshare which seems to make more noise than it's size warrants.
Frankly, I like to see the underdog do well. If apple had 80% of the market (heaven forbid), then I am sure would be pulling for microsoft.
So why does it stick in your craw to see the small guy get his licks in once in a while? Chances are that his licks have made your machine better today than it otherwise would have been.
DELL's own comments on SPEC benchmarks and turning off hyperthreading for best results:
0 2- khalid.htm
http://www.dell.com/us/en/biz/topics/power_ps3q
Well, regardless of whether or not the G5 is faster than a P4 (and I bet it is), the G5 is sure as hell a quantum leap above the G4, and as someone who was going to buy a Mac anyhow the G5 makes an even more compelling case that I buy one now... I'm sure a huge segment of Apple's installed base was waiting for the G5 in order to upgrade to OS X and their hardware. With the G5, they no longer have an excuse not to... The G5 is an awesome step forward for anyone already comitted to Apple and regardless of whether it makes anyone switch from Intel/AMD, it should generate significant sales from Apple's installed base and on that ground alone is a huge success for Apple's lagging and "beleagured" desktop sales...
I didn't say that Apple did NOT have an approved hardware list. I just explained that having one is some sort of protection against user complaints when they try to add a piece of hardware that doesn't ultimately work.
Why don't you read a little before you respond? Better yet, read the whole thread.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
What's the #1 argument used against Macs in corporate workplaces? "They're not compatible - we don't want to support more than one platform."
What's the best way to show that's wrong? Have a sysadmin type open up his Powerbook and say "Look! It sees the file servers, it opens Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, it sees the printers, and it does all that with no support."
How do you get that kind of support? Make your laptops attractive to geeks. Powerbooks are becoming the Swiss army chainsaw of choice for sysadmin types - they let you run MS apps and Un*x development/diagnostic tools.
How do you keep that kind of support? Pay attention when the geeks question your claims. Treat their objections seriously, and answer them with minimal corporate spin applied.
Apple has actually handled this flap pretty well. Their artificial benchmarks are at least defensible, and the application demo wall-clock times are really impressive - beating the competition by a factor of two is definitely past the point where you should sit up and take notice.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Plus, add cooling system with self-regulating fans that automatically adjust to accommodate the temperature of each specific region they cool, and make sure you keep the db level as low as the new G5. Oh, and don't forget to add firewire 400 ports, firewire 800 ports, USB 2.0, optical audio in and out, analog audio in and out, dual-head support (dvi for both to be fair). And tell me how much luck you have putting each of those Xeons on their own 1000mhz bus.
And don't forget AppleTalk! Everyone always forgets AppleTalk.
Um much of the "old" Max software won't run under OSX. I have friends who have been told by Apple to dual boot their macs so they can run all their "old" software while they buy new copies. I know a Mac user *warning what follows is second hand knowledge* who wanted to move to OSX but would have needed to re-buy Office, Photoshop, and several other programs that would have cost as much as a new mac.
I understand how it works. I paid $149 for 10.1 two years ago, $149 for 10.2 last year, and now 10.3 is already coming out. At least Microsoft only makes you buy a new OS every 3-5 years. I know the "minimize all windows" feature in Panther looks "Super cool", but I wouldn't pay $149 for it and a freakin video conferencing program. This reminds me of the late 90s with 8.1,8.5,8.6,9.1, etc... all the same with some annoying new "search tool". Just because Apple releases something does not mean it's good or revolutionary... OS X is good but don't get so caught up in the hype.
god's lonely man
I just went to the apple.com... the 2 x 2Gz G5 is $3000 without a monitor and with the Radeon 9600. On the other hand, I can get a Dell 8300 with 1X 3.2 ghz Pentium 3, Radeon 9800 Pro, and a 21 inch monitor for $3098 after rebate... Do you really think 2 CPU's help the typical computer user?
god's lonely man
Um, I went to the apple store online. That $3000 doesn't even include Airport, Bluetooth, or even a monitor or speakers (and only has the Radeon 9600). For $3098, I just priced a Dell 8300 3.2 ghz Pentium 4/800 mhz frontside bus with 21 inch monitor, Radeon 9800 Pro and H-K THX 5.1 speakers. THe similarly configured G5 was $4500. So, how much is that second processor worth to you, and how much extra performance do you think it actually gives you on anything other than Photoshop or raytracing?
god's lonely man
Check out the published specs for the Dell Precision 650. They blow the G5 away... no wonder Apple had to redo the PC benchmarks themselves. http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/
god's lonely man
Again, this is assuming Dell didn't rig their own tests to beef up their SPEC scores. I agree with the parent, you X86 fanboys are no less zealits than the Mac fanboys.
The physicists I know at the school I went to all used *nix for their simulations, LaTex for their word processing and pdf's for presentations. They just did it all on OS X. One of them was a Next fan until he got his hands on an early copy of OS X Server and a G4, and the other has used Macs since the OS 8 days. Both are on OSX exclusively now.
It's funny how things change over time, but for them (and for me)Mac OS X has become the easiest, simplest, and most useful solution on the market. The G5's just bring the power factors into line with all the other hardware out there.
I know the "minimize all windows" feature in Panther looks "Super cool", but I wouldn't pay $149 for it and a freakin video conferencing program.
So don't. When Panther is released, will Jag-wyre suddenly stop working? Why spend money on software you don't need?
On the other hand, if Panther provides functions and features you _do_ need, maybe it's worth paying for...?
In reference to the haxial.com link, you accidentally called it an "article" instead of a "giant troll".
On Windows, probably programmers' common choice would be the Visual C++ / Visual Basic, etc, not Intel compiler. However on MacOS X, most people's choice would be the gcc. So... wouldn't it be great to compare the both?
And... endless debates.. benchmark DOESN"T reflect real performance. It just shows how fast it can be. Something like reference.
Suck my tit.
(Yes, I'm a girl.)
Dell hardware is far from good. We are considering dumping them as a vendor and moving to IBM. We continuously have hardware issues with our Dell servers. Our Cobalt, HP, and even off-the-self-homebrew servers have MUCH higher reliability. Their hard drives seem especially crappy as we have lost up to 10 a week in our platform!
Hell we even have an old G3 350 running Eudora Mail Server for years without an hitch. Dell has been one of the consistently crappiest hardware vendors we have ever dealt with.
Uh, blaming it on Mathematica's "buggy" WIntel implementation is quite silly. As a long time Mathematica user, I can only say that Mathematica is probably the single best application available on the Wintel platform, has been since 1989. The OS X version is a complete from-scratch rewrite of the software for the new platform, so is much younger and less tested than the Wintel version to boot.
Not only is there CodeWarrior for the Mac, Jobs repeatedly pointed out that they are still working on getting gcc to run as fast as CodeWarrior does.
I've read through most of the streams on this topic over at Ars, here and Geek â"most of it consisting of shrill whining over Intelâ(TM)s compiler not being used. Iâ(TM)ve looked at all the views, read the study -and from what Iâ(TM)ve CAREFULLY read, the testing methodology was fair.
3 1.html
c s/power_ps3q02- khalid.htm
...declarative boobs.
... also noted that Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests.â
I feel those shouting the loudest -scanned, rather than read the report.
Typical of the 'outrage':
http://news.com.com/2100-1042_3-10206
"It wasn't really a fair test," said Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds, who said that the Dell machines are capable of producing scores 30 percent to 40 percent higher than those produced under Apple's methodology [using the Intel compiler]...â
-Well DUH! I guess we then should have expected Intel to trot out a hand-coded/Spec optimized version of their compiler for the G5 too! Idiocy.
âoe...In response, an Apple representative said it wanted to compare hardware performance, so it made sense to use the same compiler on the Mac and the Dell. The SPEC benchmark tests measure the performance of the hardware and the compiler. âoe
-Lets get real here! NOT normalizing the compilers on each systems is nutso â"even to me (which isnâ(TM)t saying much.)
âoe...Joswiak said that the Power Mac settings were representative of how the final machines will ship, even though a few settings did differ from the way current prototypes are configured. As for the Intel-based PCs, he noted that some of the settings that have been criticized were chosen because they actually improved the performance.â
DUH again! Even I saw that! Hey people, the methodology rationale was even explained in the study! Read it!
The bottom line of most of the PC-lumpenproletariat out there seem to be: âoehey dude, ya needed to use the Intel compiler because the Specmarks are, like, soo-ooo much higher on the Dell. As for the G5, use whatever â"it sucks anyway.â
Another big moan out there was that the Dellâ(TM)s Hyperthreading was turned off. They donâ(TM)t seem to realize is (according to DELL) is that, re SpecMark, this was to Dellâ(TM)s advantage!!!!
http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/topi
(...As was the fact that the Dellâ(TM)s were packing 512 MB more RAM than the G5! (Which NOONE seemes to have noticed. btw.)
âoe...Peter Glaskowsky, editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report,
Damn right they do! To put it mildly.
Iâ(TM)ve read scads of articles on the various, ahem, Spec-specific âoptimizationsâ(TM) theyâ(TM)ve built into their compiler. Great too if youâ(TM)re comparing one Intel product against another â"but other than that, itâ(TM)s just marketing fluff, IHMO.
"...Jobs on Monday also showed demonstrations in which the new Power Macs outperformed the Dell by greater than 2-to-1 ratios on several programs...Reynolds says he has no reason to contest those claims. âoe...the application benchmarks look quite credible," Reynolds said.
Those usage tests may also be more important than synthetic benchmarks, he said. "The SPEC benchmarks aren't that relevant anymore. People now are looking for things like multimedia (performance) and content management."
Agreed. I also think there is just too much marketing driven Spec-chicanery going on out there for them to be considered meaningful benchmarks -if they ever were.
Anyway, the telling of the tale will be on actual boxed applications.
And although I may be surprised, I would place big bets (right now) that the G5 system -especially running Altivec-aware, 64bit recompiled applications, -will run (multiple) circles around the best MP PC versions that are out there (right now.)
But Intel and AMDâ(TM)s caldrons are busy bubbling â"and the landscape may change radically by October (doesnâ(TM)t Intel typically intro their new stuff in September and March?).
Even so, it will be interesting to see the price point any new uber-systems come in at. Right now, (unless you, brrrr...., 'roll your own'), theyâ(TM)re priced in the workstation stratosphere.
Well, that certainly isn't my experience. I've been using all my OS 9 apps in Classic side-by-side with my native OS X apps for months with no problem. I've never encountered an older app that didn't run just fine in Classic. If you want Office for X, well, yeah you have to buy it. Why wouldn't you? I get along just fine using Office 98 that runs in Classic.
I think I'll stop here.
I've read the comments with interest, and it's perfectly natural that a dialogue on slashdot would go this way, of course, but it's important to keep in mind that that 99.9% of people who are looking to buy Apple computers (or PCs, for that matter) are simply looking for a fast machine that can run the software they want, and an operating system that lets them work and play without crashing a whole lot. Does anyone really think that there are people out there besides us who give a rip if the geeks are het up about the benchmarking being tweaked slightly for marketing purposes? Especially in light of the fact that nobody's particularly sure if the numbers are really that unfair?
I'm at WWDC right now and posting this comment from Safari running on a G5. I don't care what any of the benchmarks say -- this machine screams from a user's point-of-view.
No matter what I throw at it, I can't get either one of the CPUs above 50%.
Okay, now I know you are trolling. IBM made both chips, presumably this makes them pretty good experts on which is faster.
When did IBM say the power4 was slower? Do you have links to the press release? I was under the impression that the PPC 970 had a smaller floating point unit.
You linked to the spec int scores of the power4, not the spec fp. The spec int scores of the power4 chip are lower then the p4 scores.
Anyway. It's simple. If apple wants to prove they have a superior system, they are going to need to find their best compiler, and put out a benchmark showing that they are actually faster then Intel machines. Benchmarks of the power4 chip have absolutely zero bearing on this.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think you are mistaken, sir. The link is not to Apple's site.
Who's purchasing their spouses, parents, sig others or jobs these days? Is it expensive? Where can I sign up.
Because they used RedHat 9 for the test machine's OS. But why didn't they use XP on the x86 machine. Because then the ./'ers would complain that the OS choice biased the benchmark.
But why didn't they run VS under Wine on Linux....
this is getting tiring.
i like the idea, that SW are the tools you use but that leaves the HW in limbo in this analogy. the only though i could find fitting would be that the HW is the world we are doing the building with in, ie some matterials are better made in the vacum of space. so yes it does play a part, but mostly if you knowledge leads you in one dirrection, use it. ie if you dont like space enought to save money working there, dont. its your money.
Just do the tests.
... I guarantee my Cube runs iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes a whole lot faster than your PeeCee..
(though I'd definitely be online for a G5 laptop with which to play Simcity 4 on the ferry...)
Well, guess who I think is a gullible moron who has been screwed out of his money.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
I wonder if this is why apple threw so much weight into helping improve GCC? so they could use the "unbias" OSS combiler for there benifit. if so i wonder if other companies will start 'helping out' GCC?
I think if it wasn't for the fact that Apple's invested a lot into the OSX moniker they would have moved on to OS 11 by now. I mean when I first started using Macs back in late 95 the OS was at system 7.5, when i graduated college they were at or very close to OS 9 with Rhapsody on the horizon. Apple has always required you to pay for the "big" upgrades, the .5s, and done the others as freebies(or 20 bucks shipping and handling). This has changed with OSX, they really seem to be hesitant to get away from 10. Give the usual shape of things Jaguar should have been 10.5 and Pather should be 11, but OSXI just doesn't look as cool and OSX (v.11) is just confusing, so it's 10.3. But i'm sure other folks have hashed this out in a much more informed and eloquent fashion. :)
I held off buying Jaguar for a very long time and I'm debating Panther. I probably won't upgrade my current OSX machine, a Pismo G3 laptop, but I'm also planning on buying a G5 so hopefully Apple will throw in a rebate for a free copy of Panther, hint hint.
-sam
I was just here, where did I go?
If that works, great. Just for a sanity check. Are you able to run office/photoshop ect in OSX or is it a dual boot? If they run in OSX did you have to do anything special to get them to work? I am NOT a mac person, however i have several friends that are. They have all seemed to have problems running older software. It might be because they are mostly art-types, but it would be nice to know.
Thanks.
But I can buy single-processor Apple with the same 800 mhz FSB as your Dell for $2000, and it will still wipe the floor with the P4, 1.5X faster on photoshop, 1.5X more tracks on audio, and 2-4X faster on genome/DNA sequencing. Hell, I can even add the Radeon 9800 Pro card and a flat-screen monitor and come out cheaper than your CRT Dell. Or I could buy the Dual and double those stats. But comparing a dual 2 GHz G5 to a single P4 is ludicrous.
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a
grid_zones_completed_per_sec(machine2) = ( SPEC_FP(machine2)/SPEC_FP(machine1) ) * grid_zones_completed_per_sec(machine1)
to within a few percent, when you optimize appropriately (and I'm more than happy to use gcc). Its a fairer benchmark than most, and if you look what the FP tests are comprised of you'll see they're real scientific number crunching of a variety of types. If I want to buy something new and fast to work with, then a detailed inspection of the SPEC results **that are on the official spec web site** (including the motherboard used, performance on specific aspects of the SPEC tests closer to my type of computing etc) is the way to go.
IMHO, unless you're trapped with only being able to run apps on one OS you should always base your purchase (if you're after number crunching power) on the highest SPEC FP_base/cpu_dollar_cost ratio you can find. Right now I estimate thats best for a 2.8 Ghz P4 (faster than that you pay too much extra for the top of the range).
As for this G5 stuff, the way I feel is...1 296
1) Remember the G4 all the hype? Its not the first time Apple has stretched the truth. People are right to be skeptical of *all* extraordinary claims, be it by Intel, AMD or Apple.
2) Forget the minute details -- the fundamental point is that the SPEC results apple quoted for P4s and Xeons are not in line with the tons of existing spec measurements with those systems. Its deliberate spin - yup, others do it to, but cheating is cheating.
3) Apple did use a version of gcc optimized for the G5 - you'd be naive to believe they didn't experiment until they found the compiler that gave the best results.
4) I don't know about mathematica, but I'm sure you will agree that Apple has a history of comparing apple-optimized photoshop against non-pentium-optomized photoshop.
5) AMDZONE has an insightful analysis of the whole G5 PR-thing, not just the SPEC values. See
http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=
Buy whats best for you, not the hype...
Do you really think 2 CPU's help the typical computer user?
Yes. Go use one and see for yourself. The explanation of why has to do with things like processor affinity, cache misses, and memory bandwidth, and is far too dry and long to get into here.
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!
Heh. I remember when all I wanted was to be able to decode MPEG-1 video in real time.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Intel's roadmaps don't have the Xeon moving to a 800Mhz FSB (that's 200Mhz QDR, for you picky folks) for a while. Right now it is at 533Mhz (133 QDR), and it will move to 667Mhz (166 QDR), but evidentally Intel doesn't think the 800Mhz FSB is stable enough to move their server processors. And it's a shame too, since that bandwidth is shared in the P4s case, and it could really, really use the extra bandwidth. Actually, 24 * 133 == 3192, so you will probably see a 3.2Ghz Xeon, but it won't be the same 3.2Ghz as the desktop processors. And you certainly won't see the same performance improvement that you see out of moving 3.0 -> 3.2 as you do on the desktop.
Well, it really depnds on which mpeg we're talking about and what your settings are. It can vary anywhere from 2x real time to 1/3 real time.
Whenever the Classic app has the focus, the menu bar at the top changes to an OS9 look. Give the OS X app focus, back to the new Aqua look. Fairly seemless for me at least, and there certainly may be problems with some apps in Classic. I just haven't encountered any.
Of course now with Fink's easy install of XFree86 Rootless or Apple's own X11 you can also run X apps, including GTK+ or KDE/Qt apps, on top of that.
I think I'll stop here.
Thanks for the info.
:)
I won't say who I am, but check this out:
/opt/ibmcmp/vac/6.0/bin/xlc
..... /opt/ibmcmp/xlf/8.1/bin/xlf
....
[puter:~/Desktop] xxxxxx$
xlc(1) IBM XL C Version 6.0 for Mac OS X xlc(1)
[puter:~/Desktop] xxxxxx$
IBM XL Fortran for MacOS X
[puter:~/Desktop] xxxxxx$ uname -a
Darwin puter.local. 7.0.0b1 Darwin Kernel Version 7.0.0b1: Mon Jun 16 23:01:44 PDT 2003; root:xnu/xnu-452.1.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
...but what does it say when a new IBM 2GHz chip meets or exceeds the execution speed and power of the Intel top of the line 3GHz chip? What happens when the G5 hits 3GHz next year?
I don't know Intel's roadmap, but they gotta be sweating a bit. Is there any doubt of the benchmark outcome when the GHz are equal?
I think DVB must be a fairly small-scale activity for computer users. You certainly don't see these cards sitting around in the average computer retailer space, and I hadn't heard of it before your post (joke/yeah, typical of slashdot readership, I assume if I haven't heard of it, it isn't true/doesn't exist/doesn't matter /joke)
Also, 2 of the solutions mentioned by the other poster include time-shifting capabilities, I do believe. With El Gato, I believe you can record an hour of (analog) TV down to 700 MB in MPEG format. With the built-in burner on your mac, it becomes quiet simple to burn a collection of your favorite shows, recorded automatically for you.
Point 2: As a Mac user, I don't want Apple to spend time developing a specialized piece of hardware to do DVB for the few hobbyists that are interested and snub the extant offerings mentioned here. Third-parties can do that if they like, it certainly is easy enough to develop on the Mac. Apple (or any other manufacturer) has done all they need to do by producing good, free development tools, plentiful documentation and standards-compliant hardware.
Point 3: The question of ratio of support staff to workstations is always a funny one. My wife's company is typical I think of many Windows-based workplaces. Their ratio is somewhere between 100 and 150 to one. Sounds great, right? Well, their level of support is quite bad. For most problems, the users are self-supporting. The 'support' staff is mostly used for administration of services and carting hardware around. The people in her department, like all the other departments with which she interacts, all solve their own problems. Not because they want to or know how to, but because they put in a trouble ticket, attempt to solve the problem continuously and eventually persevere. Tech support will (1-3 days later) call to see if the trouble ticket is still valid, the user says, "No, I sorta fixed it this morning" and that is that.
Not what I call sparkling support, but certainly typical of what I've seen in Windows-based offices. Odd, considering the dollar value of the time of her coworkers. Odder still, she is under the impression that the IT support is outsourced through IBM, and I think she might be right. Who knew they did that, and who knew they were bad at it?
Point 4: What the heck is 'wads of cash'? I know you gave a price for your motherboard in the earlier post, but seriously, what did the whole system (including OS) cost you to get home and assemble? (Total USD and hours spent, please) I'm not seeing 'wads of cash' as a differential when I price comparable commercially-available Windows computers compared to G4's or G5's. If you found a way to beat that, please enlighten with detailed specs and how the performance has been (subjectivity okay, just don't stoop to the level of using benchmarks).
The benefit of a Mac will become clear if you are forced to use one for about 4 weeks. That's how long it will take to unlearn some Windows habits and begin to appreciate the fact that Mac OS X and the hardware on which it rides do not fight you as you try to get your work done. The longer you use it after that, the harder it will be to go back to Windows.
I recommend you borrow one from someone, a faster G3 or newer with Jaguar on it. Do some programming, do some websurfing and word-processing, check out how very well, how beautifully, Mac OS X Mail.app filters out spam. You may not end up buying one, but you will understand the appeal.
If I had some ham, I'd make a ham sandwich, if I had some bread
Considering Win32 is probably their primary platform right now, purely in terms of profit margin, I'd hazard a guess they've invested more in that port and it should be quite solid. Plus the app has had plenty of years more to mature on the Win32 APIs than it has with Cocoa/OS X.
[mode="out-of-line-personal-jab"]
Christ, look at your own comments on your own site about problems you've been having with your SQL server on Windows, and your hardware problems to boot. I spent 2 years with a series of Athlon and P4 based boxes that I built myself and had quite a bit of hardware failure too. Guess what I did, I got something other than a PC.
[/mode]
I tend to agree this would have been more relevant. Despite the level playing field, what matters is the compiler and CPU combination that the apps use. I don't know what the outcome of such a test would have been.
He said Fastest 64bit PC, not faster PC, witch does make a diffrence as can you call a computer with a server/workstation class CPU in it a PC?
When i first read that i didn't belive the "fastest PC stuff" But i then noticed it said fastest 64bit PC witch could be true when you don't include all server/workstation 64 bit CPUs in that catagory.
Any time anyone holds a particular moral, ethical, or other belief -- any belief -- they believe that it is correct, and other beliefs are wrong. If they believed that their belief was incorrect, then they wouldn't hold it. People of every religion believe that every other religion is wrong. That is the very basis for any belief. If you believe in a certain thing (A), then you must necessarily believe that all other things (anything that is not A) are wrong.
The extent to which someone can be called a zealot depends on their self-assuredness relative to proof. If they are very confident that they are correct, but have little physical evidence or logic to back it up, then it may be appropriate to call them a zealot. However, if they have much physical evidence or logic to back them up, that label is not appropriate.
The extent to which someone can be called a zealot does not in any way depend on how strongly they adhere to their beliefs. Adhering strongly to one's beliefs is an admireable quality. The extent to which someone can be called a zealot depends on two things: (1) How confident they are that they are right; (2) How much proof [if it is a scientific opinion] or logic [if a philosophical opinion] they have to back up their confidence.
For example, I do not categorize those who say they are 100% sure of evolution as zealots. There is an enormous pool of proof to back up that belief.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I could do with a few less "features" and a little bit more "integration and development". I'm running 10.2.6 right now, and here's a few "features" I'd be more than happy if I never saw again:
1. Metal. There are techniques to get rid of most of it, but a few apps like iTunes can't be converted to Aqua. If Apple wants to provide a themable interface and let me pick when and where I want the New Butch Look of Metal, by all means, but if I don't want it, don't force it on me.
2. Services and Context Menu. Make up your mind, Apple. Where should I look for shortcuts and new tools? Surely the context menu is supposed to provide a subset of (hopefully) frequently used commands, but there's things I can only do through the context menu, and things I can only do through the Services, and (now that I think of it) things I can only do through menu icons on the right side... and some seem only available through keyboard shortcuts. How about bringing all this together and giving us a "Shortcuts" preferences pane that lets us pick the keystrokes, chords, and menus that extensions use?
3. Where's my application menu? The dock is actually pretty nice, though I'd rather that iconified windows and docked folders and the trashcan weren't all mixed up in the same section. But it doesn't provide all the functionality of that old upper right button.
4. The say Safari handles FTP is really clever, but clever isn't the same as right. It breaks ftp-hosted web pages and it seems to break ftp access through http proxies (though perhaps there I'm missing something). Plus, this kind of browser-desktop integration is the kind of thing that's caused so many security problems in the Windows world. Please, Apple, back out of that and keep the browser separate from the OS.
5. Looking at that new finder in Panther, I'm filled with fear and trepidation. It's Metal. It's apparently iTunes-like, so it might end up being non-optional Metal like iTunes. And it's got all this extra junk in the Finder windows, taking up more of my precious real estate.
Meanwhile, there's a few things they seem to have lost from the old UNIX side that I'm starting to miss. Number one is tape drive support. I've got to keep my Intel UNIX system running because I can't use Mac OS X as an AMANDA server. Also, Darwin supports more older devices (like the Adaptec 2940) that OS X has given up on... they could at least keep up-to-date drivers in there. Finally, the remote file system support is very hard to get used to... if their automount is based on the traditional one, they ought to include the -hosts map. Or toss in amd...
Oh, and the default Sendmail configuration. It doesn't really work behind a non-routing firewall. And, well, sendmail on a personal computer? How about having another look at the options available... there are mailers that are less tricky to configure, safer, and if they don't have all the functionality you need to run a major ISP they're more than adequate for home use. And anyone who actually needs sendmail should have no trouble installing their own (most of them install all the servers and server-side applications from source anyway).
Question: If this is branded as the world's most powerful Personal Computer, then why do you need SATA drives, a 1 GHz FSB, PCI-X, Gigabit ethernet, etc.?
And if this is meant for use in the industry, why do you need iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, etc?
I think the problem with Apple is not that they make bad products--in fact their stuff is great. But the reason I use a PC is that I can build it myself, choose my software, hardware and save money while getting exactly what I want. If I want a DVD-R at a later date, I can go buy it. Interestingly, at that later date, a DVD-R will be significantly cheaper than today. However, the G5 will not budge much from its current price point.
OS X is great, but it's not an all-singing, all-dancing, all-purpose operating system. There's no such thing. Consequently, Apple users often pay a premium for a lot of features you'll never use (or hardware that you use but don't notice the performance difference). Think about it this way: a BMW has a lot more HP than my little Toyota. But you know what? If I'm feeling saucy, I might push 80 on the freeway, which my car handles without a sweat. I don't miss the extra horsepower then and rarely ever will. Similarly, on my home-brewed PC (with a legit OS -- gasp!), I don't miss iMovie, SATA drives (though I have the connections), gigabit ethernet, etc. And if ever I do miss such a feature, I can just upgrade (and probably do it cheaply).
And for those of you attacking indviduals for not factoring in the cost of software, what do you say to a Linux user? There's plenty of damn good software out there that doesn't cost a penny and that you are free to tweak as you please.
Well, that's my two cents. I'd very much like to see benchmarks from other well-respected sources. Until then, I reserve judgement on the question of G5 performance.
Yeah, I agree. But then again, its no secret that Mac owners aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
The key point in this is the Quake III scores. They used the default Quake configs on both machines. Either machine can beat 400fps with a tweaked config, but on the default the dual G5 beats the P4.
This raises the question of how well Quake III utilizes a second processor under OS X. The readme for 1.32 (Mac) says "- SMP support in the renderer. Detects CPU count, r_smp 1 default if available. (thanks to Gareth Hughes for contributing this)". Google says Mr. Hughes has been working on SMP and 3d accelerators on PPC for years (anybody with an ACM email address is ok with me). On the other hand, it's a first implementation. 1.33 might be a lot faster on a dual G5 than 1.32 is.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
They do in Mac OS X. If you know anything about it you should know that the entire operating system, and every program running on it, takes advantage of the second chip. Some are written specifically to use the second chip in a certain was, like VPC, but they all can, and will, use it.
I really don't know who you are Anonymous Coward but I really think you have it out for Apple or something. Was it a bad experience or something? I think all the users using Macs are happy doing photoshop or ' business apps' just like the Windows people are happy using them on their platform. In my opinion I don't care about any games. Doom3? a game I suppose... shows what your priorities are man. I'm no techie but I do have interest in it. and all the gcc compiler posts here are boring to me. but having interest in technical things I do browse them a bit. Frankly I don't care if A is better than B etc... I have used Macs since the first iMac and I use a Sony Vaio at work with a Japanese Windows 2000 (no problem I read japanese.) and I must say.... I like Windows 2000 more than Mac OS 9 but I really love Mac OS X the best. I've also tried Linux PPC on my old iMac and ibook and they looked ok. SUSE 7.0 PPC but sometimes I found the loads of software that were on it were not working that well as gui. I was getting into the Linux stuff but sometimes with all the problems I had with it and at the same time Mac OS X coming out I fell in love with OS X. it was slow and all at first but over say 2 years I think Apple did a lot more to improve it than the entire Linux community did to improve Linux. Microsoft seemed to have even done better with XP too comparing to their previous oses. well I still have to use W2000 at work to access the student database at my school and sometimes over lunches I'm there I surf the net. I must say my Jag is MUCH better than 2000. sorry my preference. One thing I can tell you about OS X that I like besides having a pretty face is that even though my iMac and powerbook have default installs of OS X in Japanese as I live here and bought here, is that I can login to my account in English and my girlfriend can log into her account over the LAN in Japanese. that's cool in my books. I remember having to buy the English os if I wanted my native language os. now I don't need to do that. I don't even have to wipe the disk and reinstall in English. I can have all menus in English and still write Japanese emails and letters to my students families. And they look great. I am perfectly happy with my iMac but since in the near future I am expecting some money my way and because I have chosen to be childless even if I get married in the future, I can spend MY money on ME and I tell you what. I don't care about those stupid benchmarks. If I have the money I am really considering a new G5. I'll wait for them to be out a couple months to see the feedback on them ( I won't jump to conclusions like you seem to have done....' already crap..', 'gay ass OS') then I'll make my decision to buy. but probably I will buy by next jan at least. I don't need it... I just want it and despite the big pricetag I guess I could spend more on a 'workstation' but I may finally have a computer I will keep for more than 2 years. I'm looking forward to it man. I hope you are happy with what you got but please don't knock us who love the platform. I must say that I have noticed alot of sites now have OS X related stuff on the net, O'reilly, /., osxfaqs.whatever.... never used to be this kind of thing with the old mac os. only the freaks who were fanatics. I guess the increase must say something about that 'gay os' .... I never knew I was gay, thanks for the info..... back to Doom 3 for you?
It's OK, we don't have to lie about this any more. Everyone knows about the kool aid that ships with new Macs.
*reaching for the glass to take another swig*
Mmmmmm, icons on the right side of the desktop. All is good with the world now.
From Macfixit.com
Apple's public designation of the Power Macintosh G5 as the "world's fastest personal computer" accompanied by a set of stellar benchmarks for the new machines, seems to have evoked the investigative spirit in a number of interested parties. Among them - the full gamut of major processor manufacturers including Intel, AMD and Motorola; media outlets of all sizes; and most importantly, those with actual access to the still publicly unavailable machines.
We contacted Intel to find out what they thought of Apple's benchmarks, and the industry's reaction. Naturally, the company had no official comments of the own at the time, noting that they had no G5 machines to test, and were merely reading through the crossfire with the rest of us.
They later referred us to an analyst with the Gartner Group, Martin Reynolds, who we naturally expected would be highly skeptical of Apple's claims and present some Intel backing. Hours later, a Gartner report written by Reynolds was issued, containing this statement:
"These models certainly equal Intel's advanced 875 platform and should allow Apple to go until 2005 without a major platform refresh."
The "875" platform to which Reynolds refers, is the chipset backing Intel's current line of top-end Pentium 4 offerings. It sports an 800 MHz frontside bus - compared to the G5's 1 GHz - with support for dual-channel DDR400 RAM.
It is unclear to us whether this means Intel is admitting Apple may have a superior platform -- at least for now.
ok I wasn't right using the gay word. I just find that Mac is going into a deadend. I don't think it will eventually lead somewhere it will stay like it is.. yes it's fine for some kind of people, but I can't understand why. sorry for my insults, it's just so manny mac people said so horrible things about pcs that it's just frustrating. again sorry. what do you think about those fake results about the G5?
zealot \Zeal"ot\, n. [F. z['e]lote, L. zelotes, Gr. ?. See Zeal .] n.
One who is zealous, especially excessively so.
A fanatically committed person.
[Middle English zelote , from Latin zlts, from Greek, from zlos ,zeal .]
Source :The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
n. One who is zealous; one who engages warmly in any cause, and pursues his object with earnestness and ardor; especially, one who is overzealous, or carried away by his zeal; one absorbed in devotion to anything; an enthusiast; a fanatical partisan.
Source :Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
n : a fervent and even militant proponent of something.
Source :WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
According to the experts my application of the word is correct. Sorry about that.
Let's try another one:
imÂbeÂcile ÂÂ n.
A stupid or silly person; a dolt.
A person whose mental acumen is well below par.
A person of moderate to severe mental retardation having a mental age of from three to seven years and generally being capable of some degree of communication and performance of simple tasks under supervision. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.
adj. also imÂbeÂcilÂic (mb-slk)
Stupid; silly.
Well below par in mental acumen.
[From obsolete French imbécille, weak, feeble, from Old French, from Latin imbcillusÂ: in-, not; see in-1 + possibly bacillum, staff, diminutive of baculum, rod; see bak- in Indo-European Roots.]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
I'll even use it in a sentence for you:
You are an imbecile.
P.S. - A little unsolicited advice. Unless you're Canadian, don't call people buddy. It makes you sound like a condescending prick.
- learn to swim.
I haven't had any trouble with the following components: Windows2000, SQL server, and Apache. I am having trouble with the following things: Apache tomcat 4 (never had a problem with 3, oh well) and (where almost all the problems come up) software that I wrote myself. Tomcat is written in java, and so is the code I wrote. It wouldn't take me more then a couple hours to switch all that stuff from Windows to Linux or any other OS. I really doubt it would make things any more stable.
I freely admit that I wrote is buggy. I'm not claming that it's "Crashing the K6" when my software goes down, and it's ridiculous for Wolfram Research to claim that their software "Crashes the Xeon". You don't just 'crash' CPUs like that. These CPUs are extreemly well tested and rather simple in structure. Bugs are very rare, and often result in a CPU recal.
Almost all software, on the other hand, is buggy.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A sister topic would also be to take into account the acoustical properties of the box. It's great if the box is ultra-cool, but if they sound like a Cessna at takeoff, then you've got problems, especially if you've got offices near your data center, or if you're scattering a bunch of these machines throughout an open office environment.
Michael C. Hollinger
Heh. Just market it as a white-noise generator.
I'm pretty sure the bugs are in tomcat itself, not the VM. I'm using sun's VM for windows (not microsoft's, obviously). The glitches are weird things like not setting more then one cookie at once and the http request object getting corruped.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
At first - I'm working with PC AND Mac, and I like AMD over Intel on PC ;) Read - I'm not a Mac fanatic. But look at this: all chickening on Apple testing begins from EXACTLY THAT ONE man and his article. No more sources. So I decide to research all the data in that article and more. And guess what I found!
s /res2003q2/cpu2000-20030407-02056.asc) which shows hyperthreading being enabled for a "Rate" benchmark. It says, "CPU(s) enabled: 2" and "System State: Default". So, Dell seems to think that hyperthreading should be ON for the "Rate" benchmarks. " - citation from soapbox article.
.NET (7.0.9466)
..... ......Not ready to be fooled, I found this March 2003 Sharky Extreme article by Vince Freeman. As you can see, Sharky Extreme says they achieved 334 fps,"
All the article is full of , say, incomplete data and , say, some interesting kind of personal vision.
Example:
"Here is Dell's Precision 650 benchmark(http://www.specbench.org/cpu2000/result
"Compiler: Intel C++ Compiler 6.0 (020613Z)
Microsoft Visual Studio
MicroQuill SmartHeap Library 6.01" - citation from mentioned in article document.
Now look here "Apple/Veritest used a special fast malloc library on the G5 benchmark, but did not use it on the Dell/Intel benchmark, thus giving the G5 an unfair advantage." - from soapbox.
Ang go www.MicroQuill.com ans see, what "SmartHeap Library 6.01" is.
Another example:
From soapbox article: "Pedantic note: It is probably the NAGWare Fortran compiler which is poorly optimized for the Intel P4, not so much GCC. I say this because according to this SPEC FAQ, SPECfp2000 contains 10 Fortran programs, and 4 C programs. In other words, SPECfp is mostly Fortran, and NAGWare is the Fortran compiler, so therefore it is most likely NAGWare that is the bad compiler for Intel, not GCC.)"
For those, who do know what Fortran is it is just funny crap. Anybody? Am I wrong?
Another example? Here it is:
From soapbox: "If you look at Apple's Graphics page about the PowerMac, you can see a pretty graph where Apple claims that in a 1024x768 Quake 3 benchmark, the G5 scores 337 fps
So what? 337 is still bigger than 334 and try to find configuration of box on which they "acheived" that result:
"The Radeon 9800 Pro is poised to be the fastest ATI video card, and potentially the most powerful desktop solution, so we're fitting it with a platform to match. Our test system includes the Pentium 4-3.06 GHz HT processor, an AGP 8X-capable Intel E7205 "Granite Bay" dual-DDR motherboard (MSI GNB Max) and 2x256-MB of Corsair DDR. Our reference configuration represents the high-end of the Intel platforms, and with AGP 8X and dual-DDR enabled, the E7205 is the fastest we've tested, and even beats the i850E/PC1066 combo in 3D games"
and: "Quake III Arena Test Specifics
Version: 1.30 (retail)
V-Sync: Disabled
Sound Disabled
High Quality Defaults"
Go Veritest result - Apple tested with DEFAULTS on 1.32, mean 32 bit color, Sound Enabled.
So, found that (and more), I'm telling you - soapbox's article is fact manipulation, if not an undirect lie.
dmdimon
Actually, Apple has been attempting to inform the entire computer world that it's machines are faster than Intel/AMD's offerings for years. Think RISC, think the powermac, think SCSI. It just does a pathetic job of convincing, thus nobody really BELIEVES this to be the case.
Really? So if I send you a video at 1024x768 @60fps you'll be able to encode it to MPEG4 in realtime? That's one hell of a processor you got there.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
fake or not the posters that posted their opinions after playing around on it had positive things to say about it. I for one want to hear more about it. although expensive I still am very interested in getting one and that will be my final ultimate machine for quite some time. I am always interested in a more responsive system. Jaguar (10.2.6) on a G4 iMac is fairly good for me but sometimes the gui does slow down when I select opening too many things at once. If I can find an os that rocks with responsiveness due to a fast processor and more memory as well then I will consider myself as lucky to have one of the best oses and machines going. I'm not into Windows myself. used it but prefer the Macs as a preference and I like to play around with unix things that I couldn't do on a Windows machine. so I consider myself getting 2 benefits. a nice looking gui and a unix underpinning. now I just want a screaming box to go with it. So if the pentiums etc are fast enough for you and you are using the system you like you should be satisfied wether we believe company x or not. we don't need that kind of stress in our lives do we?