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PC Mag Compares G5 to Xeon

Posted by pudge on from the i-will-take-one-of-each dept.

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.'"

10 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. icon update needed by 1nv4d3r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Shouldn't the slashdot topic icon say G5 on it by now?

  2. Hell, the G5 did better than PC Mag said it did by KH2002 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The G5 did better than PC Mag's quote "generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available." The G5 won 4 of 6 tests; and its wins were mostly by much bigger margins. For Photoshop, they also said that if you factored in the Xeon's much slower-loading controls, "both Macintosh computers would would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer." That would make it 5 out of 6, all but one by big margins, and the one loss was almost a tie. And PC Mag calls that "neck & neck"? The G5 completely dominated in video encoding- with software that's not even G5-optimized yet.

    Another insight was that one of the oft-criticized older Mac G4s beat the Xeon in one test (two if you factor in the controls issue), nearly tied it in another, and wasn't so far behind in two more. Heh.

    1. Re:Hell, the G5 did better than PC Mag said it did by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yea your right. I decided to do the numbers.
      I took all the times for all the tests and got the percentage improvement (it is a negative number if it is slower) over the Xenon. Then I took an average of all the test and I got that on the average the G5 is 15.7122479017% faster then the Xenon. which is not truly a neck & neck race there. I would say if it was less then 5% difference but 15% seems like a good margin. And right now I don't feel like pulling my statistics book from college to check to make sure that this is a statically significant advantage over the Xenon. In case you do their are 6 Data Points with the following values points
      [11.578947368421053, 44.270833333333329, -21.374045801526716, -2.4911032028469751, 38.549618320610683, 23.739237392373923]
      Have a blast.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Re:Of course they are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Then you agree the G5 vs. P4 benchmarks Apple paid for are less objective than the benchmarks PC Magazine conducted.

  4. PSBench by Llywelyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some of the folks in the forums over at Ars Technica has been using PS7Bench (a 21 filter test) on a 50 MB test file. Their results are summarized here.

    It is interesting to note that the G5 performs significantly better on the first 12 tests than on the last 9. The tests it performs the worst on are NTSC Colors, Accented Edges, and Water Color.

    --
    Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
  5. And not even with Panther... by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The G5 in these tests was running 10.2.7. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) will, by all accounts, increase performance even more. For example, from this Bare Feats test:

    "PANTHER PUNCH"
    Meanwhile, here's some data on the speed increase that OS X "Panther" (10.3) will provide G5 owners once it's released. We ran Xbench 1.1 on a G5 1.8GHz with 10.3 beta build 7B49. Compared to 10.2.7 "Jaguar"....
    ....CPU score increased 40%
    ....Thread score increased 44%
    ....Memory score increased 38%

  6. Re:speed no longer matters by solistus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's not entirely true. For some users, the small delays with a slower machine are not a problem. I, however, find myself getting very frustrated at the iBook for being slow, I'm spoiled byt my desktop (dual G4), but even this thing bogs down with regular tasks occasionally. Also, the G5 includes many other speedbumps- HDD, memory, FSB, etc. that are more likely to be noticed by the average user than the insanely fast CPU (not that that hurts either). Also, tasks that are 'resource intensive' are becoming more and more popular. People routinely move huge amounts of data around, compile large chunks of code, play modern games, and other such tasks. My 'real' work (web design / programming) hardly taxes the resources of this system, but my casual hobby uses do quite often. Finally, consider this: Five years ago, a 233MHz G3 could get by just fine. Nowadays, you can't even run X on it (well, you can, if you don't mind waiting a minute to open a folder). The 'basic' functions most people use their computers for are growing more and more system resource intensive.

  7. Do I hear a goalpost moving? by phillymjs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, let's see.

    First, they said the Mac was hopelessly slow. Now we've got the G5's that are more than a match for much higher clocked x86 boxes.

    Then they said the Mac was still too expensive. Now the top of the line G5 costs $3000, and the cheapest Dell with dual 3.06GHz Xeons, when you configure it to match the dual 2.0GHz G5's base configuration as closely as possible*, costs $4372. And that price has actually INCREASED BY $600 since June 28, when I first spec'd out an identical system in a previous discussion.

    Now, they're down to "but you can have the Dell today, you have to wait two weeks for the G5."

    Just give it up already, x86 apologists.

    ~Philly

    *I configured a Dell PWS 450 by selecting two 3.06GHz Xeons, downgrading to 512MB of RAM, upgrading to a 120GB hard drive (still smaller than the G5's 160MB), upgrading to the cheapest drive that could write DVDs, adding a modem, adding a FireWire card, and subtracting a monitor. Components not specifically listed here were left at their default settings.

  8. Why only compare top of the line systems? by Cpt_Corelli · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's face it: most people will not buy a new computer for > $4000.

    It would be far more interesting to see what you can get for different amounts of money. E.g. What is the price / performance for a system for $900, $1000, $2000 and so on. This is where I believe Apple will have a hard time keeping up with Intel based products.

  9. Re:Where are the 64-bit benches? by Ffakr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Aside from SPEC, what would you benchmark with to compare an itanium and a G5?
    The Itanium software list makes that Mac platform look like it's brimming over with available titles.

    Apple isn't even a niche player when compared to Itanium. Itanium and the G5 don't come close to playing on the same field (price, use, target audience) so there really isn't a reason to compare them.

    maybe it would fair if we compared 2 dual processor G5s to 1 dual 900MHz Itanium workstation since that's about where the pricing would come in.

    Opteron is another matter. AMD insists that Opteron is a server chip that does double duty in workstations. With Apple claiming that the G5 is a personal computer (a $3000 dual processor personal computer), AMD is keeping themselves out of contention as a competetor. Once the Athlon 64 hits (tomorrow), Apple will feel more pressure to deal with x86-64 comparisons. Right now, they can dodge on symantics.

    --

    I'm not feeling witty so bite me