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NASA Benchmarks the New G5 Powermac
sockit2me9000 writes "Well NASA's Langley Research Center recently benchmarked the new G5 dual 2ghz Powermac against a dual 1ghz Xserve, a dual 1.25 ghz Powermac, a Pentium4 2 ghz, and a Pentium4 2.66 ghz. To make things fair, the second processor in the G5 was switched off, as well as the other dual sysytems. Then, they all ran Jet3d. Even with un-optimized code and one processor, the G5 performance is impressive."
The only benchmarks that matter is my impression of the system while using the apps I use. Everything else is opinion.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Microsoft Windows XP Pro Upgrapde: $199
http://shop.microsoft.com/Referral/Productinfo.as
MacOS X 10.3/2/1 Full price: $129
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Microsoft Windows XP Pro (5 Users): $1315.60
MacOS X 10.3/2/1 (5 Users): $199
If you bought Windows XP ($299), and then can upgrapde to Longhorn for $199, you paid $498. If you bought MacOS X 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4, you paid $516. Pretty similar, and that's assuming you only have to pay $199 for Longhorn. In the meantime, Apple users enjoy continued advance, while Windows stagnates for 4+ years.
Do the same with a family licence of 5. Buy Windows XP for $1315.60, then upgrade for $875.60: $2191.20 (over 4 years, for 5 people: $109.56/user/year).
Buy MacOS 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4 (5 User Licence): $796 (over 4 years, for 5 people: $39.80/user/year).
Using http://shopper.cnet.com I found a copy of Windows XP Pro for $207, and an upgrade for Windows XP Pro for $177. I found a copy of MacOS X 10.2 for $98.
If these prices hold over to the newer Operating Systems these companies release, then Windows would cost $384 (23% savings), and MacOS X would cost $196 (24% savings). If you bought every point upgrade Apple released it would cost $392.
Dak
Either way they're still benchmarking Apple hardware to be released in September versus Intel hardware that was available months ago. A quick look at Tejas and Athlon 64 specs will prove that both Intel and AMD have some whoopass coming down the line in Q4. At least this means Apple will be competitive still when the storm hits... but I don't think this hardware is revolutionary when compared to it's future peers.
>>Vector performance of the G5 remains excellent, and is inline with current G4 systems on a per clock cycle >>basis. As a result, raw vector performance of the G5 will be boosted simply by its higher clock speeds relative >>to current G4 systems.
This would seem to be one of the more interesting points made, actually. Prior to the announcement of the G5s, speculation on the PPC 970 suggested that it would be stellar with FP & so-so with integer; the real question surrounded how well IBM would implement SIMD. Many were pessimistic. Given that it seems like they've managed to add it efficiently a scaled-down POWER4 core, future refinements could make this series of chips (PPC 9X0s) real monsters.
But the future viability of that roadmap (given how ruthless the company as a whole tends to be when faced with departmental money losses) depends as much upon the success of IBM's Linux strategy as it does on its success in the PowerMac line.
[With apologies to BadAndy of the Ars Technica boards; thanks for sharing your insights.]
Habit is the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit - Samuel Beckett, "Proust"
It's not Apple's G5, it's IBM's 970 and it's the shizzle.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
"The vector version of Jet3D runs an order of magnitude faster than the scalar version (speedups of 10X-13X are typical)." The dual 2GHz G5 was benchmarked at 5177 MFLOPS (a 1040% increase over the scalar test) and 1.29 MFLOPS/MHz."
5177 MFLOPS when running a Velocity Engine optimized version of Jet3D.
Now, how much does an P4 extrapolated to 3.2 GHz get? Like 288 MFLOPS?
Someone please explain to me how 5177 MFLOPS and ~300 MFLOPS are even comparable.
As the Mathematica guy said, the competition is no longer high-end PCs, it's now $10,000 UNIX workstations...and the G5 is still faster than any of them.
No wonder the G5s smoke the dual Xeon in the Photoshop, Mathematica, Logic, and Luxology app bake-off. All these apps would have been optimized to use the Velocity Engine.
If I were a scientist doing lots of image processing and vector calculations, I'd need a cluster of about 18 or so 3.2 GHz P4 machines to keep up with the dual 2 GHz G5 PowerMac running a typical Velocity Engine optimized app.
That's a sweet 5177 MFLOPS for you - evidence the G5s rock as hard as Apple has been indicating.
Except that
1. They weren't using a compiler optimized for the G5, and expect performance to increase when they have that opportunity.
2. Dual G5s appear to scale better than dual P4s. They're getting close to 2x performance with the dual G5s, much better than most folks are used to with SMP systems.
You'll want to be careful with the code the intel compiler spits out. It may be fast but some scientific codes compiled with it give incorrect answers. Compile the same code on any other f90 compiler and it gives the correct answer. Not something to inspire confience in your answers.