Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

6 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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%

  4. 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.

  5. 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.