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G5 Benchmark Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "In an ironic twist to the recent benchmark wars, Intel referred the Mac site MacFixIt to an analyst at Gartner Group who actually backed the PowerPC G5 platform with this assertion: 'These models certainly equal Intel's advanced 875 platform and should allow Apple to go until 2005 without a major platform refresh.'"
Another anonymous user writes, "While browsing the Xbench benchmark comparison site, I discovered some G5 benchmarks! The 'G5 Lab Machine at WWDC' got an overall score of 164.78, but much higher scores in certain areas. All of the tests are calibrated to give 100 on an 800MHz DP Quicksilver G4."
vitaboy writes "Sound Technology, one of the "leading UK distributors specialising in musical instruments, music software and pro-audio equipment," seems to have some data regarding the real-world performance of the G5 compared to the high-end PC. They state, 'The dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 with Logic Platinum 6.1 can play 115 tracks, compared with a maximum of 35 tracks on the Dell Dimension 8300 and 81 tracks on the Dell Precision 650 each with Cubase SX 1.051 ... More impressively, the 1.6GHz single-processor Power Mac G5 played 50 percent more tracks than the 3GHz Pentium 4-based system.'"
That Charlie White gets off on doing nothing more than trashing the Mac and he often makes tons of things up...
A real good point, and one to points to the fact that Charlie White stats are COMPLETELY cooked up and fake, is that apparently AMD benchmarked against a SINGLE G5 2Ghz Powermac...
Hmm... Where did the Single 2ghz G5 Powermac come from? We know Apple doesn't make them...
If you're gonna lie, at least do it right. Sigh.
(And another thing, AMD has more credibility than Apple regarding self-reported benchmark scores? There is no reason for that other than bias.)
Right! He obtained them.
It's a biased opinion piece. Now I'm aware that Apple kick-started the G5 with lots of smoke, which is the nature of the business in the computer hardware world, but to discount these numbers just because of some hype during WWDC presentation is silly.
How about we wait for the REAL benchmars from Anandtech and put away some speculation from webmasters who can't even hire anyone older than 14y/olds to design their websites?
if you had read anything in the last week you would know that the only area the G5 is slow in is integeres. It dominates on floats. it's basically a tie on integers: in Single processor mode it loses by perhaps 10% on the SPEC tests and in Dual processor mode it beats the Dual xeons by a margin of maybe 20%.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'll wait til the systems are actually shipping and I've seen some independent real-world benchmarks before making any judgements. Xlr8yourmac.com should have some good information once they ship, and maybe barefeats.com
Probably because we're still talking about prerelease hardware. The Veritest results are reliable, but they're not necessarily going to be perfectly representative of what you'll see in production hardware running the final build of 10.2.7.
Apple will submit figures to SPEC when they've got final hardware and software.
use this link to spec as the above one doesn't work all to well in all browsers. [missing the "www." some browsers add this if it's missing - others don't]
People obviously shouldn't form an opinion on a new platform in the first week following its much hyped anouncement. I think the only thing this first week proves is that at least Apple was able to put itself back on the map and be worthy of performance comparison with high-end systems. Or else, why would these PC-centric doofus post early benchmarks and make asses out of themselves if not to try to defuse an apparent threat? What I want are options. I think Apple just gave me another one. But I won't base my judgement on the number of times Steve Jobs says the word 'awesome' in a keynote address or on shady benchmarks done on an apparently non-existing model (single 2ghz cpu)... I think people should let their emotions settle down and wait to get their hands on a real machine and try it out themselves...
Looking at everything I've seen so far, it looks like the G5 at 2.0 GHz is comparable to a current Xeon or P4 on raw speed. Maybe it lags a little bit in some areas, and in a few areas it can beat the Xeon or P4. But I think we've gotten a little too anal about the processor specs. If I'm not mistaken, Apple didn't claim "World's Fastest Processor." they claimed "World's Fastest Personal Computer."
At 2.0 GHz, the G5 is on par with the current top processors, but what I think people need to look at is that the 1GHz bus is a monster. It allows data transfer rates that smoke other desktop systems. This is where Apple picks up a lot of speed, especially with disk-hungry programs like Photoshop. So the total system is significantly faster than the PC in terms of that kind of real-world performance.
And there are two more things that give the G5 an advantage: price and GHz. If the claim of twelve months to 3.0GHz is true, then at 3.0GHz the G5 will be exponentially faster than a 3.5 or 3.6 GHz P4. I don't know precisely how fast the Intel chips will be in 12 months, but a whole GHz? Unlikely.
Lastly, price is a fantastic advantage for the G5 systems. At $3000 you can buy the fastest Mac and a machine that can run certain apps twice as fast as PC systems. And it's cheaper than these top-of-the-line PCs by more than $1000. The G5 is simply the fastest, cheapest system with the most potential in the future to get even faster. When looked at in total, there really isn't a lot of debate on those points.
They showed four top-shelf apps: Photoshop, Mathematica, Emagic, and one other I'm spacing on. In each case the apps were not demoed by mac but rather by someone from the app company. And the examples they gave were clearly practical ones not special cases noone would actually want to do. In the case of Photoshop it was actually a commerical product (movie poster) that was recreated by replaying the artists commands. In the case of the Emagic it was the compositing of the actual musical composition that the musician had done. In the case of mathematical it was the calcualtion of a fractal curve: theodore grey pointed out they had to dumb down the calculations so they xeon would not run out of memory.
in all cases the Apple ran more than 2X faster than the Xeon.
now you could try to say these were tweaked apps, but that wont wash. these are pro-sumer apps that these comanies sell for a living. you better believe that would optimize the heck out of both the wintel and Apple versions. Certianly, if there was any tewaking tobe done they had lots of time and no shortage of manpower and experts to do it on the intel instruction set. Another test they did not demo live was the 40% higher frame rate in Quake
If all they had shown was some single case like photshop or Quake I might have been less convinced. but here are five different genres of applications, in the most demanding fields of Imagery, music, (real world) numerical math, Gaming and others. Okay so your application--say MS word or web browsing--isn't so demanding. That's not the pointis it: you aren't doing things where the machine is the speed limit.
I think its pretty reasonable to assume that over time compilers for the new G5 will imporve more that those for the i86 instruction set since there's new things to exploit. Likewise relatively few compilers do a good job of taking fulladvantage of the Altivec extensions yet. And with the fat, independent pipes to disk, and memory apps will need to be re-written since many of the old bottlenecks they were designed to avoid aren't there anymore
So argue all you want about SPEC tests, but were taking shaving ten or 20 minutes per hour of real world usages. Its phenomenal. In my opinion the diveristy of tests clearly shows the mac is not only the fasest currently on-sale platform, but that there is not even any wiggle room to doubt that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm surprised that slashdot is still stuck on benchmarks as an indication of processor speed. Hasn't it already been pointed out over and again that it is incredibly difficult to compare across platforms?
I think it is best leave the pointless statistics to hardware fanatics, and use whatever platform makes one most productive. As such, if any benchmark is even minimally admissible, it is `real world' benchmarks. Yet they do not complete the picture, since productivity is a function of other things, such as user experience, planning required (for the type of job), ease of use-- the list goes on, but you get the idea.
After a point, increasing the number of FPS you get in Quake 3 is not going to make it any more fun for you; likewise, beyond a certain threshold, it becomes pointless trying to get those pro tools to run faster.
now, how come everyone is just focusing on SPEC benchmarks?! which compiler, what options were set, etc.?!
i saw the keynote, they had photoshop/mathmatica/etc. going on there... photoshop has been out on PC for a while... REALLY enhanced with MMX/SSE/SSE2... and it probably was using the intel compiler... but the G5 version was only a few months old, barely optimized, and using whatever tools apple gave them (probably GCC 3.3)... and the G5s still kicked a lot of ass.
benchmarks are important but it's not my job. if i can get shit done faster in photoshop with BSD guts, i'm all for it.
fuck the benches. welcome to the REAL world...
I think its pretty reasonable to assume that over time compilers for the new G5 will imporve more that those for the i86 instruction set since there's new things to exploit.
Actually from an optomization standpoint x86 is pretty new too. What you need to do for Pentium IV (pre HyperThreading) is very different than what is needed for Pentium III and different from what is needed for PIV w/ HT. Further the complexity is so great that compiler science of today is really not up to the task.
Conversely the G5 is much simplir problem due to better design. OTOH it also much newer. It may be that in practice (especially when people are willing to lose 32 bit and/or G3 compatability) you might get some truly wonderful improvement.
So I'm really not sure where there is more room for improvement over time. I just don't think its nearly as easy to say as you had it in the above. In my opinion its going to come down to a political choice regarding the G3s vs. advances in compiler technology.
Because the first thing my Mom does when she buys a new computer is to run over to the SPEC website and check their numbers.
The problem with the XBench and the Altivec test is that it uses some instructions (dst) that are very bad to use on the G5 look at these technotes about tuning your program for the G5:
The Altivec test uses the dst instruction every iteration through a loop so slows down the G5 (it might also slow down the G4 also).
At this point, does it really matter if Intel, AMD, or Apple is the slightly faster computer?
They're all extremely fast and all run one or more UNIX-like Operating Systems (Linux or BSD or OSX). For the Slashdot crowd, Windows is an afterthought, but I'll mention it as well.
What a person decides to buy is not going to be based on speed anymore. All of the fastest current machines will blaze playing Quake 3 or UT2003.
People who buy Macs may enjoy the speed, but that's not why they buy them. They buy them because they're cool, the have a really nice, easy-to-use, elegant OS that allows them to be productive. Also, they can use the commercial applications (Photoshop, Office, Filemaker, etc) they need on a stable, reliable UNIX platform.
Linux/BSD users have a very different set of criteria. They're looking for cheap, super-secure, stable, configurable or some other particular criteria, but are not particularly concerned with the UI experience or with running commercial desktop applications.
Windows users are a different group too. They want to run their commercial and vertical applications. They are not looking at Linux or Mac because their apps are not there.
That's why there's not a lot of crossover right now between Mac and Intel/AMD. The audience is just different. Thanks to things like Lindows, there may be some Windows->Linux crossover, but this too is pretty small.
- Vincit qui patitur.
ahem... the Dell wasn't running Logic.
The above is based on the live feed done by iPalindrome @ arstechnica.com. The important bit is as follows:
[14:51] Qbase on windows vs. Logic on Mac
[14:51] Complex music piece created for the Matrix trailier
[14:51] Play the PC first then the Mac
[14:52] PC CPU is spiking aroujnd 85-90%
[14:52] Audio is skipping
[14:52] skipped again
[14:52] Used Qbase for the bakeoff because Logic isn't available for Windows anymore
[14:53] massive skipping and jumping ahead
[14:53] Music has stopped ast the CPU meter is at 100%
[14:53] On the Mac now
[14:53] CPU is >30%
[14:53] One CPU is at 50%, the other a [14:53] Music is playing smoothly
[14:54] SJ again
Apple did not cripple the other machines. Read the testing procedures, the reply from Apple, and the numerous comments about the issue. Apple provided the best results possible using GCC and it really all comes down to the compiler. Spec.org even supports this fact as they have commented on the controversy.
You'll notice on spec.org that there are G5 benchmarks provided by IBM that do extremely well against the Opteron and P4. Oh, and by the way, these same results that are provided by IBM are significantly better than the results Apple is using. Just goes to show you how much SPEC relies on compiler. The important thing is the G5 is competitive and so close it probably doesn't matter too much. Doesn't every company claim to have the fastest CPU out? Come one now, repeat after me. M..A..R..K..E..T..I..N..G.
As for the Quake benchmarks, there's not much documentation provided, but from what I understand, the results are consistent with that model Dell running a fresh install of Quake with no tweaks or optimizations. Still, I agree the numbers could be a lot higher and we'll have to wait until a G5 is released to get the real verdict.
Finally, Apple states they are the first 64-bit desktop. Yeah it's marketing and it relies heavily on the definition of a desktop, but I tend to agree with Apple. Why do I agree that Apple has the first 64-bit desktop? Because any 64-bit machine that was released before the G5 had to be ordered from a manufacturer of workstations or built using parts intended and marketed for workstations. If I had billions of dollars and I buy a an ASCII White to use at home, does that mean ACSII white becomes the fastest desktop ever?
Yeah, a consumer could always buy a 64-bit machine, but it's not marketed toward them and is more difficult to obtain. There was no mass market/consumer availability. Can you go into your local CompUSA or Best Buy and get a 64-bit computer? No. Can you order a 64-bit computer from the Home & Home Office section of Dell? No. You will, however, be able to walk into an Apple Retail store or CompUSA and buy a 64-bit G5 once they start shipping in Aug/Sept. In fact, you can buy one right now, except you won't get it for another month or two.
So yes, Apple may very well have the first 64-bit desktop... as long as Dell Home doesn't begin selling a 64-bit machine before September. They also conducted their own benchmarks because unlike the results provided by Apple, the results posted on spec.org are not well-documented and are usually inflated quite a bit.
if you can't build it yourself why bother?
I feel the same way about cars, major home appliances, and especially consumer electronics.
Does anyone else smell wire burning?
I gotta go....
I can build a comparable PC based system for far less money than what these things will be going for.
Comparable is in the eye of the beholder. I, like many other Mac users I know, wouldn't trade an OS X box for a Windows or Linux machine no matter how much faster it is. To me, paying the extra money for an Apple machine is worth it as it allows me to use the OS where I can be most productive. It doesn't matter how fast your processor is if you don't like working on your machine.
...is that these things don't have an optimized operating system yet. It's like running benchmarks of Photoshop on Windows ME on a dual Opteron or something.
Once 10.3 comes out, and once 64 bit apps get optimized, this system will kick even more butt...
Orange
The G5 results are
SPECfp_base2000: 840
SPECint_base2000: 800
SPECfp_rate_base2000: 15.7
SPECint_rate_base2000:17.2
All of these are documented in the Veritest report, which includes a complete breakdown of results.
As for the intel compiler, the fact that icc produces good code for AMD processors has been known for some time. For those of us who prefer to use free compilers, the gcc results are still of some interest.
Of course, to really compare "gcc performance" one might choose to subtract out the Fortran programs-- those were compiled by the non-free NagWare Fortran. Or you could choose to compare those propriatary results with scores published on SpecBench.
The F90 programs are galgel, facerec, lucas, and fma3d. The F77 programs are wupwise, swim, applu, mgrid, sixtrack, and apsi.
Let's massage the data into submission...
"The best benchmark is the app you want to use"
Wisest advice I've ever heard--it was in my machine org and assembly textbook.
*Any* cross-platform benchmark should be taken with a shaker full of salt--they simply do not represent real world performance.
SPEC, for all of its nice points, also falls into this same category. In the end, when all is said and done, people prefer to confuse the model with reality--they think that real world performance follows SPEC scores.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
There isnt an appropriate fortran compiler to properly compile SPEC in OSX. The current version is out of date and apple has to use a Fortran to C converter inorder to build them.
This is possibly why they havent submitted any benchmarks.
Granted the compiler should make everything look the same in the end but this is just a theory.
It's not always the cycles, it's how they're spread around and how you use them.
I still have an original 25MHz NextStation. CPU is a Moto 68040, plus (Intel?) Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip that does (most of?) the rendering for both the display and the laser printer.
Back in 1999 I compared this box in actual usability with a Mac Powerbook 5300, admittedly the slowest and lamest PPC Mac ever built.
I found that in general usage, opening windows, updating display, doing word processing, etc., the NeXT outran the PB 5300.
Compiling speed sucked big time. Stuff that took a few minutes on the PB5300 ran overnight on the NeXTstation. This demonstrated to me the advantage of having a display coprocessor.
The user interface was also better by far than the Mac that stage. I used several 3rd party enhancements, such as one that provided an infinite-size virtual window, so it's not a completely fair comparison. The NeXT also scame with a bunch of cool apps, like Mathematica, Webster's, Lotus Improv (completely unique approach to spreadsheets, so far unduplicated.)
Most impressive thing about the NextStation was the industrial design. It is still the most elegant design I have ever seen in a desktop computer. For example, the ribbon cables from the mainboard to the floppy and the disk are about 1.5 inches each - just a 90 degree curve, essentially. Those are the only wires inside the box!
I've still got the NeXT, though it's back in the original boxes. I'll probably sell it eventually. I've also got three Perq workstations from 1982-3, but I haven't benchmarked them.
It's worth noting that NextStep's complete object integration across all apps was cited as a major inspiration for Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal for the World Wide Web. In fact, I even have a running copy of that first version of TBL's code, called (surprisingly) "WWW".
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
No, they didn't. Independent would mean that they weren't getting paid by anyone who has anything to gain by the results one way or another. As it turns out, apple hired them and they're not independent at all. M$ hires 'independent' think tanks to issue reports and lobby the government all the time.
Liberty.
The machine that a dual 2GHz G5 trounced in all the real-world app tests was a Dell with dual 3.06GHz Xeons. Notice, I said "real-world app tests," not the questionable benchmarks. You can dispute the benchmarks, but it's hard to argue the performance differences I saw with Photoshop, Mathematica, etc. The Dell was flat-out dusted.
/. discussions at ~$4000 in configurations comparable to the G5's. I just did it myself. I configured my Dell PWS 450 by selecting two 3.06GHz Xeons, downgrading to 512MB of RAM, upgrading to a 120GB hard drive (still smaller than the G5's 160MB), upgrading to the cheapest drive that could write DVDs, adding a modem, adding a FireWire card, and subtracting a monitor. Components not specifically listed here were left at their default settings. Final price: $3772.
If a dual 3.06GHz Xeon system was shown to be slower than the dual 2.0GHz G5, please explain how a Dell with only dual 2.4GHz Xeons (which is what I presume you meant) is faster.
The Dell dual 3.06GHz Xeon system has been repeatedly spec'd out in recent
Since the bone-stock G5 is $3000, please explain how the dual Xeon costing $3772 is cheaper.
BTW, the exact Dell system above configured with 2.4GHz dual Xeons is $2522, not "under $2000" as you seem to have claimed.
~Philly
When Apple bought Emagic, they discontinued the Windows version. There was no "hobbled" version of Logic being compared. Apple has no version of Logic optimised for Windows to compare their version of of Logic on the G5 with - so they used Cubase SX.
Why didn't they use Cubase on the Mac?
Why would they? They want to show off their professional DAW and how it screams on the G5, not someone else's. You may say that it isn't fair, but I say that Cubase SX on the Mac is a big turd of code that needs flushing. I have no experience with the Windows version.
-- What I don't have in intelligence, I make up for in a lack thereof.
Intel (and others) could dispute every benchmark out there, but no matter how fast a P4 or Xeon is, it has one major problem which prevents me from buying one...
It still can't run OS X.
And no...rumors about an Intel based Mac running OS X deep inside Apple HQ doesn't count.
Even with all the disputes for and against the new G5s, it is good to see Apple providing a worthwhile high-end machine.
:-)
The fact that these benchmark arguments are even occuring is 'a good thing' for the Apple community.
For the last few years Apple owners have always had to begrudingly admit that they had no hope of beating Intel/AMD on nearly any performance metric. Thanks to the G5 they now have a glimmer of hope (and pride)!
It is also good to see Apple announcing a 3Ghz edition of the G5 in the near future.
Regardless of the benchmarks, it should really show off Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)
Let's call a Spade a Spade.
Dell is no saint here.
The MicroQuill SMP HEAP library it used costs a cool 1200 Bucks. I didn't think Dell is shipping this library with each system it sells.
So, for Spec number's you can't look at Dells and believe them either.
I want to see a pure test between systems and library's I can buy.
I stopped reading the article when I got to the subtitle where it refers to Apple as a "Cupertino Fruit Company." Look, Mr. White, if you aren't even going to show any respect at all and even mock one of the companies in your so called comparison, how do you expect anyone to take you're evaluation seriously?
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
"The PC enthusiast's resourse"
Personally, when dealing with a site so proudly dripping with bias, I assume that Macintosh performance is understated by at least 50%.
Or, even if you overlook THAT (How CAN you? It's at the top of their site!), did you forget their "RISC suxors, CISC r00l3z j00... GO INTEL!!! woot woot!" ranting against Macs a while back? Sorry, but ars technica has NO claim on any "unbiased site" title.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Because, perhaps, they couldn't trust SPEC to withhold the information long enough to keep the G5 s surprise? Perchance? Anyhow, I'd expect to see something around the time the G5 actually ships.
... brains are for kids!
Silly pundits
Here's my idea of a real world benchmark. Take 75 people with varying levels of technical no-how. Divide them into three groups of 25, and assign various real world tasks.
Obviously one group of 25 is using only the latest and greatest that the wintel people has to offer, while another group is using only the latest and greatest that Apple has to offer.
What is the third group doing? Each person in the third group gets to choose which platform they can use.
All three groups would be given real world objectives. Some would be as simple as writing a report. Some would be as technical as application development. Others would be as pointless as a Quake III tournament. All would be measured for how much time it took to complete, and/or other pertinent measurements to see which platform stood out. This is less of a performance test and more of a productivity test.
What is the third group for? It's the preference control group. Do people really prefer one platform over the other AND are they more productive when they can choose? That's what I'd really like to know. Most companies are dead set on one side or the other (usually wintel). If anyone goes off the beaten path, they are the black sheep.
Personally, I like to work on multiple platforms - some at the same exact time. If the current BitTorrent implementation is better on OS X, I'm using it. If the best IRC implementation is in the X Window system, I'm there. If it's quicker for me to pull up the Windows calculator when I'm trying to convert a decimal value to hex, that's what I'll do. But am I really being more productive (and why am I using BitTorrent and IRC to measure this)?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
A lot of people seem to be making a big deal out of benchmarks, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to buy the thing because it's the fastest Mac on the planet, and I don't care HOW it compares to other chips/boxes.
The only comparison I'm interested in is how it does against the G4... and it ROCKS.
Now I'm just waiting for a dual proc G5 XServe to be released...
*drool*
$0.02 (CDN)
If everything was always about cost then we'd all be driving Yugos.
Q.
Spin doctoring Apple's spin doctoring...classy.
Charlie White is quick to rattle off about Apple's marketing practices, but he seems to forget how, oh, the rest of the industry does this too. It's standard practice.
AMD would have you believe their chips are 3200+ fast...whatever that means. As if Quantispeed isn't the current biggest marketing annoyance on the planet...I mean how can AMD sit around trying to convince people of the MHz Myth when they can't even convince themselves...forcing themselves to use Pseudo-Hertz...
And lovable Intel...with their NetBurst Architecture...it makes the internet zippier! Or HyperPipeline Technology. It must be good...
If Charlie White really wants to convince people the G5 sucks, he should be a little more candid about his bias.
To proove this, I draw your attention to the number 13821. As you can see, this number is over 10 times larger than the number 1259. That's right, a difference of over an order of magnitude between these two numbers clearly show that the G5 is faster.
Next week, I will be showing that black and white clearly infringe SCO's copyright on the colour grey.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
i don't know what planet you are on, but here on earth i'm pretty sure 1 Apple G5 is much cheaper than 100 x86 systems...
This might shed some light on the innards and appearance of the new G5, for comparison purposes.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
Perhaps not much, but I bill out for a couple of hundred bucks/hr, so the time I'd spend assembling a box myself makes the 'build your own' approach rather silly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Some "trashing" that was. Yes, he goes on to deflate Apple's PR, but that's entirely different from being anti-Apple. He's clearly impressed by the hardware and the OS -- just not by the inflated claims made by the marketing department. Can you understand the difference?
You're right, actually. Macs aren't PC at all. It's much more PC to get a Windows PC...oh, wait...
You know, when you don't define what an acronym stands for, you can say a lot about what it does or does not apply to, and none of it means anything. Around here, PC usually stands for Personal Computer, a category which clearly includes Macs.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Check out these articles from macobserver and the website of luxology on their view of G5 performance. The whole spec-crap is totally irrelevant. Only applications matter:
Luxology's response
The mac observer on GP performance
Perhaps everyone is tired of the arguments, but Luxology (one of the more impressive "real" Demos IMHO) has issued a response to all the controversy.
I applaud them for stepping forward. They do not comment on the other benchmarks or bake-offs, but they stand by their results. The short of it: when running their software, the dual G5 is faster. They also mention that 75% of their market is Windows based.
Oh, and right on BOXX's homepage, it says Workstation. And speed? In fact, the fastest Opteron you can get is 1.8GHz. So, again, this guy is an idiot. And if he wants to spend about $1000 more (yes, that's right, check the dual 2GHz G5 against the dual 1.8GHz BOXX with similar specs) on his system, then he's fallen into the same trap that all us deluded Mac users have evidently fallen prey to: quality costs money. Perhaps it's the fact that a G5 costs $1000 less that makes it "not a workstation"? Hmmm? 'Praps? And anyway, it's an Opteron. If that's what the G5 is competing agains, why is AMD bothering to make the Athlon64, which they freely admit is their desktop 64-bit processor? Let's see what these Opteron systems do against, say, a Power4.
It's also so very nice of him to blindly trust AMD. Surely, they have nothing to gain by claiming that they have the fastest processor, oh no. And AMD naming their chips with blatantly misleading numbers, well, that's not marketing at all, is it? How can this Wintel court jester say that AMD has more or less credibility than Apple?
And here it is, the crowning turd on the dung heap: "But then, there's credibility, which some people believe is everything." Though, evidently, not this delusional puppet, because he has none.
Do not touch -Willie
I'm waiting till people can actually test the G5 and see if they feel that their "hard earned cash" was well spent or not.
I'm not interested whether the Dual Opteron is faster in benchmarks. I want to know whether the new G5 can do the job better or not. This obviously includes such things as MacOSX, available applications, stability (reboot and redoing work), maintanence (virus checking and security updates), etc.
If Opteron based systems ran MacOSX or an equivalently supported OS, then benchmarks would be one of many deciding factors.
The rest is just tripe.
Anyone doubting the speed of G5 should take a look at this
http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_perf_ results.asp?resulttype=noncluster&version=5
In short, the IBM pSeries 690 with 32-way 1.7 GHz IBM Power 4 is 10% faster than the newly released HP 64-way 1.5 GHz Itanium 2 6M Madison, which means the Power 4 is 220% as fast as Madison and much more than the 3 GHz Xeon.
According to IBM, the Power 5 will be 400% faster than Power 4 and is coming next year. It looks that Apple is in good company.
According to this article:
http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaret opics/hardware/server/story/0,10801,82642,00.html
A Dell 1.3 GHz Itanium 2 (Madison) server costs 200% as much as a dual 2 GHz G5 Power Mac.
There were 1900 Itanium 2 servers sold in the last 3 months - an embarrassing figure shared between so many OEMs. According to Intel, there are only 400 native programs for Itanium.
In contrast, there are over 6000 native OS X programs that will run the G5 with no modification, and there should be many 64-bit apps in the next few months. So why should anyone want to pay twice the money for a hot and noisy Dell with less performance, less feature, less style, and much less software than the dual G5 Power Mac?