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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.
Fuck those $750 PCs, I'm getting me a $3000 Mac.
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.
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!)
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
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.
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?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
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!
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
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I'm a science guy, and for the calculations and simulations done here at the physics dept. where I work, the IBM power4 kills just about everything else. And when I saw the powermac calculate fractals with mathematica faster than the xeon box by more than a factor of 2, I was very excited (although a little cautiously) to see we will soon get power4 performance for well under $20,000
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.
Probably not, since they'll know there's a 50/50 chance it'll be back up on the front page in a day or two anyway.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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
Right on!
b/c we all know that no one uses SPEC for marketing purposes! Everyone uses SPEC benchmarks for evaluating the purchase of a personal computer. Why, just the other day my mom called me up to say, "Hey Bill, your father and i were just about to buy a new PC so that we can send digital pictures to grandma. what's the spec CPU2000 numbers on that little Lindows number you keep on talking about?"
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.
> Vote, you fools!
Are you _sure_ those are the people you want voting?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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)
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. :)
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.
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...:-( )
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?
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
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.
I was thinking...
Greg = 2 Steve
Greg (2 Steve) = 2 Greg
Greg (2 Steve) - 2 (2 Steve) = 2 Greg - 2 (2 Steve)
2 Steve (Greg - 2 Steve) = (Greg - 2 Steve) (Greg + 2 Steve)
2 Steve = Greg + 2 Steve
2 Steve = Greg + Greg
2 Steve = 2 Greg
Steve = Greg
I have been pwned because my
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.
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 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.
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.
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."
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.
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!
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.
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.
Lets see, shall we?
p.s. Steve Jobs is a genius!
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.
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'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
Man are you way behind the times. I can do that even with my dual 1Ghz G4.
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
To be pendantic you should also note that they are 'imminent owners of the slowest 64-bit Personal Computer in the World', with the understanding that it is the only 64-bit Personal Computer in the World (at least until the AMD chips start showing up on PC's.)
I do think that it is cool that Apple gets to claim the crown for a while, even if only for a couple of months. On the other hand, how important 64-bit computing will be for the PC market remains to be seen.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
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."
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
Yeah, but the Wintel zealots have been pooh-poohing those for years, if not outright dismissing the results as fraudulent. I've been to a few MacWorld keynotes and seen the Photoshop "bake-offs" with my own eyes. I watched the replay of the WWDC keynote video Monday evening and saw the dual 2GHz G5 totally smoke the dual 3GHz Xeon running a handful of 'real world' apps.
There's just no pleasing those assholes, there's always another complaint. I've just tuned them out, now all I hear is that noise like Charlie Brown's teacher makes.
I make my living supporting the shit that Microsoft sells-- I've seen all manner of Windows failures and shortcomings, and I've seen my share of that commodity hardware the Wintel zealots love so much fail horribly. That's why I happily spend my hard-earned money on a Mac, so I don't have to deal with those things when I come home after doing it all day at client sites. Besides, I can easily afford it because cleaning up Windows' messes is quite lucrative. Last year my end-of-year bonus (based on billable hours) was damn near $5,000.
Sure, there's a home-built PC running XP Pro sitting under the desk my G4 calls home, but I don't use it much-- it's mostly there for the occasions when I feel like tinkering for some reason. I actually turn it on maybe every other week just to download the latest handful of security updates.
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.
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!
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."
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
So there are other 64bit PCs.
I hate it when people ask silly questions without reading the first thing about story. Here is the quote to save you from scrolling back to the beginning: "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."
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.
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.
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."
Apple has CodeWarrier, which is better than their native GCC by about a magnitude of 20. Had they used that, their code would have been as good if not faster then the VC++ stuff.
He's actually right about the compiler hurting them. =p
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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%.
...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 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).