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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.'"

13 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Huh. by avalys · · Score: -1, Troll

    What's that you say? Apple's hype is a little optimistic?

    What a shocker.

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  2. Dell 650 Uses ECC Memory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    and the Dell is generally available now, not just viewable on the web at VA Tech.

  3. Faster Intel processor is available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    At additional cost, the Dell could have been configured with 1 MB L2 cache per processor, to yield an even faster system. What can Apple do for its customers, except to tell them to wait?

  4. Re:objectivity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Wow, you Apple retards won't stop at anything to try to show your overpriced, under-performing hardware is "superior", huh?

  5. Not just Cousin Ned by Amiga+Lover · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's not just Cousin Ned who can built a better machine for half the cost, it's ANYONE who wishes to put a little effort into it. Think about it, a $4,000 computer, or a week's evenings worth of researching parts online to get the same functionality in a PC you've built yourself for under $2500. I know what I and other smart people are going to be doing instead of buying a G5. You can only ignore the basics of economics for so long.

    Apple may have shattered the MHz Myth by providing a dual 2GHz machine that does as much as a Dual 3GHz Pentium based system, but they still have to work on "the Money Myth" which is the myth that people don't want to spend more than they have to.

    Hey. that's not really a myth now is it lall!

  6. mod parent down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Troll

    How is a ranting piece of Mac zealotry Insightful?

    I'm not saying the Mac is slower or trash - it looks like its the winner so far, but geez, why does Mac vs. PC have to be such personal debate?

  7. Mac Trolls by AnusesCheeses · · Score: 0, Troll

    Original as always!

  8. Apple can't die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Apple can't die. As soon as it runs itself into the rocks again, Microsoft will be there AGAIN to bail it out.

  9. bah, why d'you think P3 prices are still so high?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    the P4 is a poorly designed high-mhz piece of shite.

    lower-clocked Coppermine, Tualatin and M all kick its ass. is it any wonder that G5 can do the same?!

  10. I HATE MAC'S by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I need to vent guys and here I hope I find sympathy! I HATE MAC'S

    Today I spent the good part of five hours helping a friend with a titanum powerbook put an 802.11 card in, she bought an apple Airport one. The first amazing thing comes when it doesn't fit in the slot, but a quick call to the apple seller and they tell me it has to go INSIDE THE MACHINE. My friend had opted not to get them to install it as it was an extra $20 fee, so he took it home and I got the job as I'm the "Computer Guy" and can generally help friends and family with there computer problems. I have never seen such a tragedy of design as the TiBook!

    First I had to take the entire thing apart. This if youve been inside a laptop is not an easy trivial task. It needs the batteryu and case to come off, the drive and optical drive to come out, and apples STUPID design inside them mean I had to file away some parts as they were put in without obviously meaning to be taken apart again. Now I know computers are throwaway things nowadays but that's rediculous? We also had to use snips to cut some tiny pieces of shielding off to get to the right screws. I can see why they were charging so much to put the card in, she should have gone with that option! In the end finally I was able to lever up a part of the inside to push the airport card inside and click it in place. But that wasn't enough, an aerial cable then needed to be connected, and getting it out of its holder was another half hour of work where I had to pull the airport card out again!. Finally with it all back together it works. The inside I think is back where it should go. the back doesn't go back on how it should either and I think is a little bent.

    I don't, I really don't, see how Apple can claim to be tops in design. Even my A600 was a dream to work on compared to this and it was pretty compact too!. Why they couldn't put it in an easily accessed slot like normal PC notebooks I dont know. Anyway Ive talked my friend into getting rid of her mac addiction, she will definately be buying a Dell next

  11. G5 vs P200? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I have recently upgraded from a Mac 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM to a new G5 dual 2.0GHz with AGP 8X and PCI-X to help me at my freelance gig where I copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. On the G5 I spent about 20 minutes trying to install Adobe Photoshop 7. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, my iPod will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running Windows 3.1 is faster than this G5 dual 2.0GHz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

    Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

  12. We'll see how long this lasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Arguably, the G4 didn't maintain its supposed superiority over Pentium for very long. With IBM at the fore now and Motorola playing little/no role on the G5, the future might be brighter longer, but Apple still lives with a sole source problem. At least in the X86 world we still have AMD and others to fall back on and to help keep prices down, not to mention all of the X86 programming expertise that exists in the world. Apple could theoretically jump ship to X86, as well, but this seems practically impossible, due to Apple's reliance on Velocity Engine (AltiVec) and the tremendous loss of face that would accompany such a move.

  13. Mac won't let you install almost anything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    "Talk about a tragedy! Dude, my P4 takes like four seconds to install spyware, where my Mac, won't even let me install it at all!"

    There's hardly any software you can install on the Mac. Everyone has left it behind (including the worm authors, but also the overwhelming majority of useful software and fun game software as well)

    "will it be able to run crippled software made by monopolistic theives who want to take over the world?"

    It runs Mac OSX. That sure counts. They've got blunding deals that M$ could only dream of.