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

I just want to say

[skinfitz]

...that it's nice that a totally independant and unbiased organisation is benchmarking the G5.

MacAddict benchmarks

[CarlBenda]

More benchmarks are becoming available. Some like MacAddict's start to point out what a huge effect having a lot of memory means to the G5.

URL for MacAddict benchmark

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.macaddict.com/news/news_007.html

G4 still kickin'

[Mr12inch(Powerbook)]

This just goes to show that, depsite the FSB bottleneck, the G4 DP still has a lot of life left in it. With the love affair of the new G5's in full force, maybe I can pick up a G4 DP dirt cheap now:)

Re:G4 still kickin'

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't. Macs never really drop to the "dirt cheap" point until they're utterly obsolete. You can still expect to pay several hundred dollars for the original 450 MHz DP G4, for instance.

Re:G4 still kickin'

[commodoresloat]

Not dirt cheap perhaps but $600 is damn inexpensive considering what you're getting for your money; it's not cutting edge, but a 450 DP G4 is nothing to sneeze at.

...and computers, too!

[Otter]

Boy, we've had the squabbling over whether the G5s will be the first 64 bit this or that, benchmarks, benchmark rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, more benchmarks, still more benchmarks, nonsensical stories of Gentoo installs with performance that violates the laws of information theory...

It'll be anti-climactic when real computers start shipping!

Why not ship them running at full speed?

[rodik]

One would wonder what the downside of setting the energy saver preference to 'best performance' really is. Seems odd for Apple not to be shipping the machines running at full speed if there isn't any difference when it comes to processor life, etc. Energy use can't be the issue here.

Re:Why not ship them running at full speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Noise. At full speed, the CPUs generate more heat, and the internal cooling system speeds up to deal with it, generating more noise.

With default system settings, a G5 under moderate use is damn near silent. The noisiest thing in it is the hard drive. But the harder you work it, the louder it is.

Mixed feelings

[rhetland]

I have been reading all the G5 benchmarks with mixed feelings lately. First of all I should clarify that I am a fan of Macs, and so I am glad to see that there is any interest in the platform at all.

However, I do most of my real computing on a home-grown linux cluster using Rocks. These intel machines are simply so cheap if you step slightly back from the bleeding edge, that I don't know if I could justify spending a significant amount on an equivilent Mac cluster (although I am watching V. Tech's apple cluster, just like everyone else apparently is...).

Is there really much need for so much desktop power? How many users will utilize the full potential of a dual G5? Keep in mind that if even slashdot users can't keep two procs going, the general public has little hope.

Of course, this will not stop me from buying one.. It's just so cool looking... I am just confessing that I realize it is wasteful...

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.

Re:Mixed feelings

[bhawbaker]

do we really need more than 640k ?

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

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.

whew

[McAddress]

that takes care of today's new G5 benchmarks.

now we just have to wait for tonight's SCO update.

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????

[patman600]

The g5's memory advantage won't be a big deal in this test. Each system only has 512 MB of ram. The photoshop file is only 50 MB, so I assume a larger file would cause the difference to increase. I suspect that if the benchmarks were done on much more demanding tasks, such as multi-gigabyte renders, or a lot of muti-tasking, and giving the g5 its full amount of memory, the differences would be more pronounced.

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

[macmurph]

The obvious ways this thing [the G5] should be different are huge memory moves: [snip]...the processor should be able to have multiple floating point commands being processed at once (in addition to altivec).

You are absolutely correct. Look at the benchmarks in this guys Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics caclulations... The 1.8 ghz G5 is more than 3 times faster than a G4 at small memory calculations and the G4 isnt even capable of being tested in the large memory calculations...

And he isnt even testing multiprocessors...or even the faster 2 Ghz G5.

Basically, the G5 and the motherboard its on solve all of the major problems the G4 had.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_fluid_dynamics_be nch/G5_fluid_dynamics_bench.html

Re:Apple did not invent desktop media

[daviddennis]

Nice try. In 1998, when I bought my first Mac, it was by far the best solution for digital video. People with PCs had to suffer through a ton of flakiness just to set up their systems, much less get anything done with them. I was editing video almost out of the box.

Shortly after I got my system, the iMac came up and really introduced desktop video to the masses with the iMac DV.

Back in those days, if you wanted the best computing had to offer, you needed a Mac for video, a PC for work and a Unix box for web stuff. Now you can put all those functions into a Mac and still do well.

These are happy days for Mac fans. It's not the world's most popular computer, but it's by far the best in terms of usability and fun.

D

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

20X speed up on mac addict!!!

[goombah99]

Mac addict shows that in photoshop a G5 with 2Gigs of memory is 20x faster than one with 512MB. While more memory is better always, this probably is showing that g5 can really access is effectively.

Re:20X speed up on mac addict!!!

[drsmithy]

Mac addict shows that in photoshop a G5 with 2Gigs of memory is 20x faster than one with 512MB. While more memory is better always, this probably is showing that g5 can really access is effectively.

No, it shows that as soon as you start swapping, a 20x slowdown is not unexpected.

1.6 & 1.8 single to dual processor upgrade pat

[amichalo]

For me, the major advantage of the G5 is not that it is 64 bit or that it reaches speads up to 2.0 Ghz. For me, it is that there is finally a single chip that can process at the same rate as two G4's (see benchmark results for the 1.6Ghz G5 vs 2 1.4Ghz G4s).

This is important because there is once again - in many years - a single Apple box one may purchase and upgrade as demands increase. THAT IS as long as a single 1.6 or 1.8 Ghz G5 has the option of upgrading to a second processor (of the same clock speed of course).

Does anyone know if this is possible or is the 2 Ghz the only configuration able to support dual G5's? (Can one purchase a single 2.0Ghz and add a proc later?)

Radio shack: You've got questions, we've got Tandys

Re:Window Resizing

[TheRaven64]

Window resizing is non-trivial. For things like spreadsheets, you could just render a larger chunk to an off-screen buffer and clip it correctly for the screen. For most apps, however, you have to calculate the positions of the widgets (which are relative to the size of the window), and then draw them. For this to appear smooth, you must do this at least 25 times per second while the user drags the size. GPU power has very little to do with it except for in special case, like resizing a video clip (which is done entirely on the graphics card).

Optimized G4 vs. Unoptimized G5, remember !

[javaxman]

Let's not forget that these systems are running nearly identical binaries, which, while it seems fair, is not.

The binaries are optimized for the G4. Optimization for the G5 will create quite different binaries which could run _much_ faster on the G5.

While these tests are a great comparison for performance we'll see today, apps compiled with newer G5 optimizing compilers will push the top numbers even a bit farther, as will future OS updates. Users with G5 a year from now might look back on these numbers and wonder why they were so low...

Re:Apple did not invent desktop media

[daviddennis]

I don't know of any widely used operating systems that are NOT bloated. Clearly bloat is what the modern OS consumer wants.

Personally, I love the MacOS X eye candy because it just looks good. I find that it makes me feel better overall, which is a very nice plus if you think about the amount of time most of us spend in front of our monitors.

My company's PowerMac G4/1.25 dual processor and my PowerBook G4/1.0ghz are both very snappy machines, I assume largely due to successful offloading of display tasks to their graphics cards. Is this somehow morally wrong?

I like and appreciate beauty in design, so for me the MacOS X GUI is a big winner now that it doesn't slow the machine down, as it used to in older machines.

D