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Apple Issues New G5 Benchmarks
rocketjam writes "According to an article in The Register, Apple has issued SPEC benchmarks for the new dual G5 2GHz machines, comparing it to a two-way Dell Xeon and a 3Ghz Pentium 4 machine. The article says the G5 lagged behind the Dells in integer performance, however in 'the parallel "rate" benchmarks, which tax both of the CPUs in the test machines, the G5 edged out the Xeon 17.2 to 16.7 in the integer score and 15.7 to 11.1 in the floating point tests, suggesting Apple makes far better use of its two CPUs than the Xeon machine....the results augur well for Apple G5 performance in technical and scientific computing environments and for playing games.'"
what does auger mean in this context. I was thinking he meant to type favor but the keys aren't even remotely in the same place...
Here.
These are the same numbers that have been up on Apple's G5 site for how long now? Since June or something? What are you people? Blind? Or just lazy. Wake me up when you get with the present. People have been arguing the validity and what not of these SPEC scores represent for months now.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Apple will not be the only one selling 970s. IBM is basing a new line of servers on them too.
Are you an open source warrior?
So go G5. There are two vendors of compatible processors, IBM and Motorola, while the only vendor of x86-64 is AMD, and the only vendor of IPF is Intel... not only that, the PowerPC is more efficient and has a technically brighter future.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Actually, by purchasing a G5 you aren't locked in to Apple's platform. Yes, they are the only vendor for such equipment, but that will change once IBM begins to ship their version of the same processor. Even with purchasing an Apple branded PowerPC computer, you are still free to apply whichever operating system you like - there are many versions of linux (Gentoo, Yellowdog, RH,) there is Darwin (Apple's BSD clone) or OS X. Lots of choices for lots of different platforms.
That's not to say the Opteron isn't a cool-ass chip tho...just saying that between the two, we consumers have great non-intel options these days. I champion both companies.
I agree that dual CPUs provide little benefit to games, perhaps if Apple standardised on two processors developers might take advantage of them?
Chasomint has here a table comparing the 1.6 Ghz G5 (slowest available) to 6 other windows machines. It is a complicated photoshop benchmark. The 1.6 Ghz G5 gets beat by the single P4 3.06, however it is the 2nd fastest machine there by benchmark wins. Note that the 1.6 Ghz machine is the lowend G5, and has nowhere near the performance of the dual 2.0 ghz G5's that apple uses to test.
Well it runs everything I need, photoshop, maya, shake, Illustrator...I'm going to assume it also runs those apps very, very fast. Which is what I want.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Nice troll. I can't believe you were moderated UP as interesting. Here's a very small list:
- SimCity 4 - released for Apple
- America's Army - released for Apple
- Dungeon Seige - released for Apple
- Neverwinter Nights - released for Apple
- Warrior Kings - released for Apple
- Warcraft III - released for Apple
- Master of Orion - released for Apple
- Unreal Tournament 2003 - released for Apple
- The Sims - released for Apple
- Quake III Arena - released for Apple
- Civilization III - released for Apple
Obviously the list goes on. So there are more games released for the PC. It could be said that there are even more games released for the console market. It seems to me though that games that tend to be commercially viable tend to be ported to the Mac. So next time you want to troll, please, at least have a specific gripe instead of spouting off on something you couldn't care to look into.
In any case there was much consternation in the past about the VeriTest benchmarks becuase they did not use the same compilers that Dell used. Also VeriTest used things like an optimized malloc library on the G5's and faster memory with semi-secret memory timing tweaks in OF. If you want to take these benchmarks with a grain of salt, you should compare the DELL numbers from the SPEC site to those of the G5 from Veritest.
I will assume that this is the case, so let me be the first to inform you that BSD errr... I mean OSX has in fact, 'improved' multitasking over your experience with OS 9 or earlier.
Drawing any conclusions about the Mac platform based on experiences with OS 9 or earlier is much like concluding that Automobiles are not useful based on your experience with a motorized skateboard.
Rambling statements aside, on my 5 year old G3 (400mhz) I happily run updates, VirtualPC with WinXP, edit my Photoshop files, use Terminal with all its Unix-y goodness, browse the net, listen to music, and play a game of DiabloII... yes, at the same time.
Now your windows machine can do all that too, but you'd need two OS's to do it
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
64bit != faster. Why must people always assume (especially on /. where you are supposed to be technically inclined) think that 64bit MUST be faster than 32bit.
However, having said that, you do realize that this is comparing a 2Ghz G5 setup to a 3Ghz Intel rig right? So even if they came out equal the G5 is faster per Ghz?
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
The G5 consumes huge amounts of power (like 90W), so dont expect to see it in a laptop anytime soon.. Thats why the G5 PowerMac has "climate zones" and "9 silent fans".. lots of heat to move away.
Dont get me wrong, its a great, powerful machine. AND it is rather quiet. Just that the G5 is no laptop stuff...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Most Mac games are not specifically written to take advantage of SMP. However, OS X (which is required for a G5) is pervasively multithreaded, and distributes the load among multiple processors very well. Any thread can run on any processor, as needed.
So, if a game is multithreaded it will use both processors. The graphics system under OS X is multithreaded, so it can use both processors. (And for that matter, the graphics card as well; Quartz Extreme offloads quite a bit of processing that way.) Basically any system call is likely to be done in a separate thread, and two threads should never take running time from each other.
As a real-word example EV Nova (one of my favorite games, so I'm plugging them.) runs much faster on my dual 867MHz MDD Mac than my uncle's 1GHz iMac, without being 'designed for' SMP. (I wish I had a real benchmark for you though.) The OS takes care of that.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Apple used GCC in their P4 benchmarks.
/. story about Apple's benchmarks to read all about it.
You know what? You're right. Of course, Apple also used GCC in their G5 benchmarks, so I'm not certain what your point was. This has been debated extensively. Look at the last
t'nera semordnilap
The Apple Developer Connection Student Program is a low-cost membership program (USD $99 / year), providing tools and special discounts for students 18 or over interested in developing for the Mac platform. Members receieve a once-per-lifetime 20% discount on hardware. Hardware can be purchased through the ADC version of the Apple Store (click the 'ADC Hardware Purchase Program Store' link). Without the discount a Dual 2 GHz G5 would be USD $2999, and with the discount a Dual 2 GHz G5 would be USD $2499. Details of the program are covered in the FAQ.
--- Fox
With 90+% of the people running PC's, PC's will be where the games are found.
I've seen this argument presented hundreds, if not thousands of times, and it is high-time that someone deconstructs it.
Sometimes, percentages are a good measure, such as in elections. However, in other situations, they make no sense at all. Just because 90% of X is using Platform A, and only 10% of X is using Platform B does not mean that someone producing games for Platform B is going to lose money.
The real question here is: Is there sufficient demand for Mac games? The answer is yes, and there are new titles coming out all the time. Are the games you want to play available for Macs? That's subjective, and you are free to decide for yourself.
Here's another reason why that argument doesn't hold water -- the PC hasn't always been the dominant game platform. In the 70s, PCs didn't exist yet, and all the games were for Apples, Commodores, Ataris, and various other game platforms. (By PCs, I'm referring to what used to be called IBM clones, and are now more accurately called Wintel boxes.)
In the 80s, the PC arrived and soon became the most popular computer platform, but games were still predominantly available only for Commodore Amigas, Atari STs, as well as various Nintendo and Sega platforms. (At the time, PC owners would often smugly contend that their machines were superior business machines, and that games were frivolous and superfluous. Now Mac owners use the same argument.)
It wasn't until the 90s that PCs began to dominate the game industry, and even today PC owners have to wait for ports from dedicated game platforms!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Well, the (upper-end) G5 has about as much GPU and bandwidth as you can buy in the consumer market.
What that hell is this?!?!
These exactly disclosures were available on the day of the G5 launch. The link with the raw data is here:
Veritest PDF
And you can find a thorough debunking of the whole thing on my site here
This is very, very old news.
At WWDC I had the lucky opportunity to test the G5s with a few apps. Yes, Apple claims that the machine is dead quiet, and it *can* be, when using less than a tenth of the CPU. When I sat down I could hear no noise at all, but after I started playing with the Dock the fan started kicking in, blowing cool air out the back. I launched one of my apps that uses almost all available CPU power and after ten seconds the fans were full blast. This thing heats up fast, and the fans, although still relatively quiet, were chugging hot air out that case faster than anything I've seen.
I think the space inside is necessary for all that air throughput, as well as some of the plastics inside that direct airflow. This was not designed to be an iMac... while it is sleak, it's not something to be displayed on top of your desk. It's certainly large and loud enough to be put on the floor, and I don't think the people using this professionally will mind the noise (or the size). If you want a quiet, stylish performance, get an iMac.
rock on
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Don't own one yet, but a 400 MHz Xeon dissipates 40 watts or so and the latest 3 GHz plus models poke above 100 watts, a 3.2 GHz P4 dissapates around 85 watts, while a PPC970 at 1.6 GHz dissipates 40 or so watts while the dual 2GHz racks up about 95 watts alltogether.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
>So go G5. There are two vendors of compatible
>processors, IBM and Motorola, while the only vendor
>of x86-64 is AMD, and the only vendor of IPF is
>Intel... not only that, the PowerPC is more
>efficient and has a technically brighter future.
No, only IBM produces the G5, motorola only produces
32 bit variants. And that is just the processor.
If you are using Opteron you get hardware from
many companies, not only Apple.
Please stop spreading FUD. This is NOT old news. It's new. Apple updated their scores, and now there are production low end machines that have been tested.
And, we've all seen the "I'm jealous so I'm going to debunk this" website. Next.
You can chose to use a Mac or not. At worst case scenario the Mac is maybe 5 to 10% slower, which is not perceivable to a human unless you're running a multiple day long task. At best, the Mac is 200% faster. That's noticable in the timeframe of a second.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Now, to answer your question, I don't think that the G5 is supported yet by any of the distributions. Just give them some time (Yellow Dog is very diligent when porting to new models, and the rest follow naturally). I may be wrong on this, since IBM plans to use the PPC970 on some of their products and they would probably want to launch them with Linux.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
OpenGL still requires some grunt work on the processor. The GPU can't do things like prepare DMA sessions.
Microsoft is working on a hardware-accelerated graphics system for Longhorn, due in 2005 or 2006.
Yes, some Mac games are SMP enabled.
mbbac
I just verified the $2499 you mentioned -- this price includes the $99 student membership fee.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Um... actually, the Quake III test did come out first on the Mac, back in April of '99, then on Linux and Windows. id wanted the initial release of the test version to be on the platform with the fewest/most controlled variations in configurations. Windows users got to try the test a couple weeks after Mac users did.
You don't know a thing about Spec. All the details required to reproduce the results are in the Spec report, if they aren't published along with the numbers, the numbers are not endorsed by the Spec organization. The entire system, including compiler and OS as well as hardware must be made commercially available within 6 (or maybe only 3) months from the date of publication.
As for optimizing for the Spec benchmarks, that is part of the plan. Spec is composed of portions of real-world applications that the Spec commitee thinks are representative of the kind of mainstream applications that are both common to many real users and where modern architecture may be somewhat lacking - the Spec guys want to encourage manufacturers to focus on those areas to help improve the market overall. Of course there all kinds of politics that go on in Spec that undermine this focus, but those are clearly stated goals of Spec.
Furthermore, how about we leave the compiler completely out? You hand-translate the C and FORTRAN code in the Spec suite to G5 assembly and I will do the same for x86-64 assembly. You do your best to write the fastest implementation for the G5 and I will do the same for x86-64 that way we can measure the true performance of each platform. Now how is that any different from letting the best compiler for each platform produce the best asm that it can for each platform?
The answer is: It ain't any different, just faster than doing it by hand.
No, you couldn't squash it, except maybe if your PC came with a FireWire Bulldozer. First, RTFA. Do you see those benchmarks? Second, not only do you get your choice of OS on a G5 (OS X, Linux, etc.) you can also run Office natively, write programs natively that compile to X86, but you can also run X11 applications side by side with Mac OS apps, all on a system running with a BSD Core. The fact that you said, "my choice of OS" cracks me up. Do you even realize that OS X is based on BSD and is open source at the core? Need your precious Windows? Ever heard of Virtual PC? (Which will be compiled for the G5 soon according to Microsoft and Apple.)
I don't know about you, but I'm a goth. Part of that, to me, means I think for myself. In this case, it means no Intel, and no AMD. IMHO, PowerPC and *NIX are the future.