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PC Mag Compares G5 to Xeon
zpok writes "PC Magazine did a comparison between a dual 2.0-GHz Power Mac G5 and an equally expensive Dell Precision 650 Workstation running dual 3.06-GHz Xeon processors. Their conclusion: 'we see that indeed the G5 is generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available.' But of course 'our cousin Ned can build you a better'un at half the dough.'"
The same criticisms of the Apple propaganda organs that always say that the Macs are faster also applies to the PC propaganda organs saying that PCs are faster.
Objectivity, wherefor art thou?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Many pc morons fail to realize that their single processor P4 they built themselves for under 1k is nowhere near the dual processor G5 in performance. They bring up things like Dell's 350 dollar computer and how much cheaper pc's are, ya they are cheaper but you get what you pay for. for 350 you get every possible corner cut everywhere in that pc and it will most likely require another 500 at least to get it to respectable speeds. When comparing prices/computer, you need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Shoot the xeon processor, the most comparable to the G5 in terms of performance, is like 800 a chip or some ridiculous price, so start configuring guys, hit up pricewatch and try to make your system 200 bucks cheaper than the g5.........then also try to sell your system for 60% of what you paid for it 2 years later..........and finally try to add in 1 year of no questions asked award winning support..............and tell me what you get.......nothing....because you can't get that on pc's. I just sold my 2 year old 867 Mhz quicksilver for 1,000 on ebay, no monitor included. I paid 1600 for the thing........so i basically rented a mac for 300 a year for 2 years. Get with the program folks, and get a mac.
I know you hate all the hype and think they are overhyped, etc. Well believe the hype, and then some
-yet another satisfied mac user
Despite what many people here on /. like to imply, the Apple benchmarks were about as close to objective as you're gonna get.
Keep in mind, as well, that 10.3 is not up to release version yet. The G5 is running on incomplete software, and, at almost $900 less, still outperforms the Xeon, even with the questionable objectivity of the study. I think it says a lot that a magazine aiming to trash Apple and claim the superiority of PCs is unable to get more than a tie with their unfair methods.
Don't neglect the fact that the Dell 650 uses more expensive ECC memory, for increased reliability. Is any Apple product even capable of using ECC memory?
With the fact that they were giving the text to debunk apples claims and to come up with a comparable system. Is actually a good review. Could they have done things to improve Mac performance or make the tests more fair, probably. But there were things that they could probably do to the PC side to improve performance. But the fact that PC World was a hostile reviewer and they said it is a tie. Is a really good review for apple. But benchmarking PCs vs Apples is always tough because they were engineered for different jobs as shown in the results. So if you wanted a glowing PC review you subtract the benchmarks that Apple won. If you wanted a glowing Apple Review then you take out what the PCs shined in.
I don't tend to follow benchmarks I use what seems like it is good for me, A difference in milliseconds doesn't effect me that much because normally I cannot type that fast.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For most of the stuff that most people do most of the time, today's machines are hugely overpowered, and whether the top-end G5 or the top-end Wintel machine wins the benchmark race hardly matters at all.
Sending e-mail, writing reports, editing web pages, and 98% of what we do as software developers can be done with equal speed on a dual-processor G5, a G4-based iMac, or a G3-based iBook. Same goes for the Wintel world. Speed matters a little more if you're crunching a truly huge spreadsheet or running a filter on a large digital image. And speed really starts to count when you're editting video or running a large simulation. But most people don't run large simulations or edit video most of the time.
Those that do a lot of video editting, etc., generally do it for a living, and the speed improvements are so important that the price differential usually isn't a problem. Time is money and all that.
please mod parent way up. very interesting stuff. I am noting that a single-processor 1800Mhz G5 is neck-and-neck in performance with, but slightly lower than, dual-processor 2200Mhz Xeon.
in all benchmarks i've seen, it is becoming clear that while the G5 processor itself is a dramatic improvement, the overall motherboard rearchitecture entirely designed around high bandwidth for data flow is most definitely paying off. IMHO this overall architecture, beyond the mere CPU, is what will keep paying-off in the long-run.
The intel-based chips have been stuck around 3Ghz for a while now and my guess is a key reason has to do with heat dissipation and power consumption issues which could render dramatically faster clock speeds unsafe for your averagely-cooled machine. And this brings me to one main draw-back of the PC world: since so many components are independently architected, built and assembled by such a wide variety of vendors, no single component, and especially the CPU, fits as part of one consistent, overall hardware engineering vision. The intel chips weren't designed with efficient power consumption in mind in the first place. They were designed to sustain high clock speeds. period. MMX was an after-thought answer to Altivec. Most PC manufacturers have always grossly architected motherboards and enclosing cases without ever putting as much thought as Apple did with the new G5 architecture.
Apple defines the requirements of every single component that goes into their boxes. They will find vendors that meet those requirements. From the processor-maker, to the heat-sink, to every single fan, to the hard drives.
My guess is there is plenty of room for that G5 processor clock speed to grow. And when it does, the superior architecture of the enclosing case and all motherboards subsystems will both enable this clock speed growth and dramatically increase its performance boosts pay-offs.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Only if the time you spent researching products, buying them, waiting for them to arrive and then spent in building, testing and debugging are of little or no value to you. Then, yes, it's cheaper.
Myself, I have better things to do on my time off than research computer part prices, that's why a well-built factory machine will always be my choice, be it Windows or Mac OS. YMMV, of course, that mihgt be what you consider fun.
And remind me again: What happens when it breaks down? (and it will). Who takes care of that warranty?
It's called TCO. There's more to the cost of a machine than just the nuts and bolts used to put it together.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
On the other hand, the parent post was simply expressing his opinion. He thinks that eskimo232's post does not deserve to be modded as "insightful". And he has a right to think differently. He even acknowledged that "[the Mac] looks like a winner so far".
If moderators don't agree with him, that's OK, leave him alone. But modding him as a Troll is unacceptable, and yes, a despicable example of zealotry.
By the way, I finally bought a Mac on Saturday (a new 15" PB), my first Mac in five years. It's sad to see that some of us, Mac users, are in fact Mac zealots.
Sure you can always build a pc alternative for half the price but one never thinks about the number and frequencies of viruses and worms that hit the pc's and just how much time is lost hurdling these regular debacles !
You forget, the Xeon machine has dual 3GHZ processors. The G5 has only dual 2 GHZ processors. Combining the processors of each machine, there is a 2GHZ advantage on the Xeons behalf.
I'd say it's far from "optimistic" hype and more towards "holy aluminum shit, batman" hype.
my 2 cents
The review begrudgingly acknowledges that the G5 is "generally as fast" as the Dell, but the performance table suggests the G5 is much faster than that. The G5 bests the Dell in 4 out of the 6 tests. While the G5 is more than twice as fast on one test, the Dell wins by an unnoticable 2.5% for one of its wins.
Its not surprising that PCMag is a sore loser because they are afraid of losing subscribers to Mac magazines.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Obviously you are new here. The Mac zealots abuse the moderation system. They mod pro-apple posts up, anti-apple post down. It is really pathetic.
I try to moderate pro-apple post down, just to even things up a little. That post would have been a prime target.
While they did acknowledge that "Current users can download 64-bit plug-ins or upgraded versions of [Photoshop]," they also suggest that they didn't use the Adobe G5 plugin for the test: "the PowerPC G5... will continue to run 32-bit applications (like those in our test suite)."
I guess they were trying to make the test "fair" by not using code optimized for the G5?
By taking percentages, you have assumed that each test is of equal relative weight. This runs the risk of oversimplification.
For example, if computer A does task 1 in 1 second, and computer B does the same in 1.1 second, then B is slower by 10%. If A does task 2 in 5 minutes, and B does it in 6 minutes, then B is slower by 20%. If you simply take the average, then you'll show that B is slower by 15%. However, if you add up the times taken over the two tests (5m + 1s versus 6m + 1.1s), B is slower by about 20%. If task 2 is something you do a lot, then the performance difference is even more significant.
In your particular case, the actual percentages appear to range from -2.5% to 44%. It's probably not a good idea to simplify this to just 15%.