Comparative G5/G4 Tests

rocketjam writes "Barefeats.com has posted test results comparing a 2GHz G5 MP, 1.8GHz G5, 1.6GHz G5 and G4 MP's at 1.4GHz, 1.25GHz and 1GHz. They use Photoshop, Cinebench 2003 and a Bryce 5 render for tests. Bottom line is the G5 2GHz MP has the best bang for your buck, but you might think twice about trading in that dual processor G4 for a solo G5...the G4s hold their own quite well. They also say tests in Panther yielded significant increases in the G5 scores."

Comments

Re:Hmm. Not much of a review.

[BigBir3d]

BareFeats is meant to give a quick initial impression of what is going on. Some of his tests are supposedly done in a store with display model machines.

In general though, testing procedures for Macs is nothing like it is for PC's. Too bad Anandtech and others wouldn't put some focus on Mac's from time to time. *shrug*

What about Panther gains for the G4s?

[Jon Abbott]

The article says there are pretty hefty performance gains from upgrading to Panther on a G5, but unless we know how much Panther benefits a G4 as well, it is hard to say what plan of action is best. You can get a Powermac G4 Dual 1.25 GHz for $1599 (went to store.apple.com, clicked on single 1.25 model, and added a second processor), and it looks like it gives you performance that equals or rivals the single G5s (based on the benchmarks given, with all systems running Jaguar)... I think it may be best to wait until Panther arrives before making any purchasing decisions based on these kinds of benchmarks.

Re:What about Panther gains for the G4s?

[daviddennis]

I don't know if they'll actually ship that machine.

But MacWarehouse, as of last week, had about 20 of them left at under $1,700. My company bought one for me. It's a great machine, and the bang per buck is unbeatable.

I'm getting a G5 for my home, but that's because I do heavy video editing and effects, which should benefit a LOT from the faster system.

But for most things the dual G4's still a great system, especially at that price.

D

Re:What about Panther gains for the G4s?

[dthable]

I'm getting a G5 for my home, but that's because I do heavy video editing and effects, which should benefit a LOT from the faster system.

I'd be more excited about the increased memory capacity. Last time I did any clip manipulation on my Powerbook, the swap time was my real killer.

This is nothing new...

[VoyagerRadio]

Whenever a new generation of Mac systems comes out, the faster of the oldest systems beats the slowest of the newer systems. The G4's don't need to be traded in for quite some time.

Re:Hmm. Not much of a review.

[Alan Partridge]

Barefeats is a "real world" benchmarking site. No benchmarking is TRULY scientific, and Rob at Barefeats hardly pretends to be. Still, the benchmarks that he posts give a good general indication of the performance you can expect.

The G5 is NOT going to excel at Altivec optimised code, the G4 will remain the Altivec champ until IBM puts the kind of Altivec resources onto the 970 that Moto put onto the 745x series. For most other stuff, the G5 will wipe the floor with the G3 and G4 chips.

Re:caveats about these tests

[Jon Abbott]

The G5 has a DVD-R drive, which appears to account for that $200 price difference... Moral of the story: Get what you want, and be happy. :^)

I think the tests bode quite well...

[ZackSchil]

...for the G5. Adobe Photoshop has been specially coded to take every possible advantage of the G4's architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if the program held back information and bits of commands in order to keep the standard 133MHz bus clear and chugging along with data as fast as possible. Just imagine the sort of speeds we'll get when Adobe really unleashes the beast and allows the program to entirely saturate two 1GHz busses with information and optimizes the code for the G5.

Pile that all on top of the speed increases seen under Mac OS 10.3 and you'll get a box that absolutely screams for Photoshop work (let alone anything else). With the tests performed today at bare feats, we can see that the G5 can beat the G4 at it's own game, let's see what the G5's game looks like.

Are Benchmarks Premature?

[crispy1083]

Might it be too soon to really determine how fast the G5 is? I imagine there's a lot of room for optimizing the code of a lot of applications for the PPC 970. Also, IBMs newest XL compilers are said to make a big difference in a lot of cases. Maybe the true speed of the new PowerMac isn't quite apparent yet?

Re:Not hard to do

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot yet another one.

It doesn't run OS 9, however it does run Classic, and from a security standpoint OS 9 is a problem, and most Mac viruses are written for OS 9.

Unless you have a specific application that you must be running in OS 9 and that is unable to run in Classic mode on OS X, or specific legacy hardware that is not supported in OS X (or by the new G5) From a long term viability standpoint the G5 will be a better alternative.

(unless of course you must run VPC 6.1 or earlier on the mac which is currently not supported on the G5 due to differences in the CPU and handling endian issues.)

Re:Not hard to do

[HTH NE1]

The G4 has twice as many internal storage bays.

Though I'd love to have digital audio I/O, for video editing more internal drive bays is winning out. And that I have a sizeable investment in non-serial ATA drives and the video data upon them.

Add to that that I still can't find any external Firewire drive enclosures with large (>137 GB, >128 GiB) drive support (existence so far is only rumored, not substantiated).

More?!

[agent dero]

How many more benchmarks are going to be necessary for people to start believing that this _is_ a great, viable, and priceworthy computer?

1Ghz FSU, dual 2Ghz 64-bit CPUs, 8GB RAM, serial-ata drives

All that for less than a UltraSPARC server, and you _still_ (!) need "proof" or validation???

This is getting ridiculous

Re:Not hard to do

[Pope]

Well, you could just updgrade the processor on your current G4 and wait until the next revision of G5 comes out.