MacWorld Magazine Benchmarks the G5s

La Temperanza writes "Macworld has released yet another set of benchmarks of the full line-up of G5 desktops, along with Dual 1.42GHz and single 1GHz G4s. The results are very interesting indeed, and I think I can safely say they're not biased in the G5's favor." I dunno, it should not come as too much of a shock that a dual G4 can beat a single G5 in many tests.

Comments

Re:Mixed feelings

[noewun]

Is there really much need for so much desktop power? How many users will utilize the full potential of a dual G5?

Anyone who does serious work in Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro/Avid, etc. Increasing system power provides for increasing sophistication in terms of what one is able to produce, and the reach of the creative impulse will always push the envelope of available technology.

Put another way, I can make a maxed out dual 1.42 G4 crawl in Photoshop. Give me a large enough hi-res, CMYK image with many layers and an art director who wants to try something new and the G4 will soon be sweating. I'm sure my ex-girlfriend the Avid editor can say the same thing with examples from her field. And, while I am neither a scientist or a programmer, I'm sure there are people in both fields who are salivating at the prospect of larger data sets and the ability to consider more complex calculations.

Plus, I wanna be able to run Duke Nukem Forever.

Digital video

[CarlBenda]

Two words that together will suck up all the resources of a machine. I think you'll see plenty of home users maxxing out their G5s once they start doing home videos. The market may swing back to the home users from corporations because the general home users do have a few apps that will need it.

Bus speed, ddr memory path, floating point????

[goombah99]

So far it looks like the benchmarks show that the difference between a g4 and a g5 is just the clock speed difference. This seems a bit wacked so I suspect the test codes are not testing the right things.

The obvious ways this thing should be different are huge memory moves: the true independent DDR and fast bus means this thing can move a DVD's worth of data in ten seconds. The other way this should be better is that the processor should be able to have multiple floating moint commands being processed at once (in addition to altivec). neither of these are showing up in the app-based benchmarks.

these difference should be huge and impossible to miss. something is wrong. maybe some debug codes in the new OS or the compilers are crippling the G5.

Re:Bus speed, ddr memory path, floating point????

[Visigothe]

The "why" in this case, is actually due to the fact that most iApps are very altivec-heavy. The problem with the G5 is that its implimentation of altivec isn't as mature as the 745X series of G4 processors.

The other thing to understand is that once the G5 becomes more mainstream, apps will be compiled for it [things like making sure both FPUs are fed, getting rid of vec_dist instructions in altivec code, etc]. As of this moment, few apps know what a G5 is, and to that end, can't run on it well.

Also, the DV codec either doesn't use Altivec, or doesn't use the 2nd processor.. I can't remember which. I am sure this is in a TIL somewhere

Give it time. All will be right soon enough.

For more reading on the subject, I suggest checking out the various threads of Mac Ach. over at Ars Technica.

Also, Panther shows some *serious* gains when using a G5. Expect the 10.4 to fully exploit the processor. [It has been stated by Apple that Panther/10.3 won't be "fully optimised" for the G5/64 bit]

Re:Mixed feelings

[jcr]

Is there really much need for so much desktop power?

In a word, Yes.

Think about all the compute-intensive tasks that were overnight jobs a few years ago, that have become real-time or near-real-time work today. Did you ever use a video editing system that made you wait to render transitions? (And I do mean *wait*.)

There are many situations where any double-digit improvement in processing speed translates directly into thousands of dollars of productivity per user per year.

-jcr

What's waste?

[daviddennis]

If using it, or even looking at it, gives you joy, and you have the bucks, what's the harm?

You're helping keep Apple in business, so it can make more cool things, so you can buy them. If we stop buying them, then they can't make cool things anymore :-(.

That being said, for my purposes, anything that increases real time capacity and reduces rendering time in Final Cut is bound to pay off big-time. And, judging by the rest of the responses, most serious PowerMac users feel the same way.

D