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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.'"
Dual-processor macs have been shipping in one form or another for at least 3 years, and a number of game ports do explicitly take advantage of them. Also, the OS is smart enough to move things like sound and asynchronous OpenGL operations to the second processor for an automatic speedup.
If you're only interested in the G5, I'm not sure I understand where the situation differs from buying a wintelCPU product. Both sets of hardware can run Linux and BSD quite nicely.
It seems odd to me that wintel hardware makers like HP seem more desirable because they don't make an OS to support their products. They even use software driven hardware (e.g. winmodems) that will be non-functional if you ditch the OS they bundled.
Admittedly Macs aren't everyone's cup of tea, but finding fault with Apple because they actively develop their own operating systems (one of which is open source) is a bit like finding fault with your parents for actually raising you instead of putting you up for adoption when you were born.
I should think before answering... third time.
What does this mean?
AFAH/WG, the PowerPC is even more open than x86-64 or IPF, having two chip vendors (IBM and Moto) while the latter have one each (AMD and Intel) only.
AFAS/WG, the same holds true: the PowerPC runs GNU/Linux and BSD just fine, besides Apple's semi-proprietary Mac OS X instead of MS's completely proprietary Windows; the Hurd is being ported, there is Amiga-derived MorphOS and the AmigaOS itself.
Some PCI stuff is more expensive due to the presence of x86 assembly code in firmware of dirty cheap adaptors, but this should be fixed by AMD and Intel adopting OpenFirmware's Forth dialect. So all in all, it is a more open platform.
And BTW, if someday we get to use processors made from GNU GPL'd designs, RISC in general is a better candidate than x86-64 or IPF, being much simpler and more efficient. See that China is trying to go MIPS... MIPS in the East and PowerPC in the West would make for a much more open environment than, say, IPF in the US, x86-64 in Europe, MIPS in China and PowerPC in the high-end...
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
That's if you buy your computer based on games.
Personally, I don't even like 98% of the games released for the PC. They're mostly shitty first person shooters anyway. Instead, I got a gamecube. This provides just about as much games support as i could concievably want.
It all depends on what you want to do with your computer. There was a point where I might have considered switching from OS X to Linux, but the fact is I liked the OS X Cocoa programming environment to the point that it was enough to keep me on the mac despite the fact i hated Aqua. If you like PC games enough you're willing to let that rule everythign else about how you use your power, okay, go for it.
-- super ugly ultraman
The performance gap would be very big, it might dissuade people from buying a mac laptop at this time, they'd wait until there was a G5 laptop... Could be a while before they figure out how to cool one down to fit into a laptop.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
>>The Mac is easier to use.
:-)
.Mac were still free it would really be no contest.
>
>Arguable. Mostly depends on what you're used to. I've
>been around plenty of noobs with their shiny new boxes.
>I've seen people take to Windows with no problem, and
>I've seen people trip up over Mac OS X.
But - easier to use for advanced users? I'd have to give that to a Mac. I could care less what is easier to learn... Or, if not easier to use, how about less frustrating.
>Could go either way. The other question is what do your
>friends, who will (hopefully) guide you through your
>dark days, use?
Counterpoint - 10 people come up to me and say "my computer keeps rebooting...". I just shrung and say "Sorry mac, I have an Apple". Sometimes it's good to be alone.
>>Now it's also as fast (or significantly FASTER) the the PC.
>For the sake of argument, let's just say that both are
>equally well suited for common consumer tasks: web
>browsing, digital cameras, email, burning CDs, average
>3D games. Stay away from fancy stuff for a second--no
>firewire 800, no DVD burning, etc. Still with me? OK,
>good.
Lost me at the first one. Web browsing? Safari at least lets you block popups. I don't know how many people I've directed to the google toolbar - after I've pointed them to AdAware because they have a large number of very suspicious popups (hey look, the company intranet just added popunders! don't think so...). Oddly, I have yet to need AdAware or the like on my Powerbook.
Email? I get bayesian filtering out of the box. If
Burning CD's? PC's (even modern ones) still seem a bit more fragile in that regard.
Digital camera support might be about equal... but what about digital video? I hate hate hate trying to edit video on a PC. I will never do it again, and I will do everything in my power to save others from doing so as well.
Only a PC user considers burning a DVD "fancy". I consider it nessicary for backups and great for pictures too (for large slideshows). That kind of thing should be basic sttuff for all computers by now, all the parts are there.
You do have a point at games.
>>It runs all the commercial apps you need.
>
>Unless you want games, or cheap clip art, or scores of >other things. Most people do *not* buy MS Office for their
>home computers--the use MS Works or AppleWorks or
>whatever comes with them. Most also steer towards
>cheap photo editors (more than jusr rotate & enhance
> that iPhoto offers) like PSP or the cheap Adobe products, >rather than Quark-Photoshop-Illustrator stuff.
So what's wrong with Appleworks for what most people really do? Why can't I use any of the thousands of cheap clip-art or font CD's? I can... If they need office to read work files, they will just buy (or pirate) Office X. End of story. Windows makes it a little easier to pirate Office if it was not bundled. I can access my corperate intranet just fine from the mac with Citrix and RDC clients for OS X.
And as for Photoshop, you have Elements on both platforms. And the Mac also has GraphicConverter, a really good program for very little money. It even works with 16-bit Tiff's which Elements does not accept... I'm not sure what you were getting at there. Again, games are really the only thing where you have a significantly better library of software.
>It can play all the latest games, even if they laga couple months (get a PS2, also!).
>So after you've bought your expensive (see below) Mac,
> you recommend a $150 console too?
How many PC owners have an XBox? What's up with that? You need as console anyway if you are really into games. Personally I bought a PS2 some time before my Mac because I was tired of the PC merry-go-round of upgrades and driver failures.
>>It's UNIX u
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley