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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.'"
according to PCMAG, the G5 cost $4349 as tested. Using the apple store, i can get that with the 2x1gb RAM modules, superdrive, no bluetooth/wifi, Radeon 9800, and a modem. now, let's configure a similar Dell Precision 650. the review doesn't mention that the Dell has a Radeon VE 32mb, no 56k modem, a 120gb ATA HD (compared with the G5 and its 160gb SATA), and uses DDR266 (compared to the G5 using DDR400, but that can't be blamed on Dell, but the mobo config). According to PCMAG, they were "comparing the results with a similarly configured (and priced) Dell Precision 650 Workstation". Funny how they give the exact price of the G5 and not of the "similarly priced" Dell.
... they don't explain what it is, but they make it obvious that said delay is not experienced on the Mac). According to the story, "on the Windows system, loading the controls often took a minute or more. If these times are added back to the actual test times, both Macintosh computers would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer." They don't make a note of it on the actual benchmarks, just the preface.
as you can see, the Dell is $835 more. now, let's try and be objective, something PCMAG disavowed in their introduction saying they took Apple's claims about the speed of the G5 "with a grain of salt". in other words, the test was designed to debunk Apple, thus throwing objectivity out the window.
IF we were to buy the RAM by a third party, drop the 56k modem on the G5, and leave the default video card (which is still better than the Dell), the system would cost $3188 (RAM is DDR400, 512mb+1gb on pricewatch). The Dell would cost $4057 (again, with RAM from pricewatch). That would make it $869 more.
On top of that, PCMAG admits to not taking into account a certain loading time (for controls
so if anything should be taken with a grain of salt, it's PCMAG.
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.
run windows on that Dell too.
My karma is getting better everyday.
What I want to know is how long it takes to copy a 17 MB file from folder to another.
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.
Shouldn't the slashdot topic icon say G5 on it by now?
"We started [Photoshop testing] with a 59.5 MB test image, but many operations completed too quickly to time...."
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
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.
Remember to keep it simple. With every bit of information you want to add to the piece, ask if it's relevant. Is it acting as filler that you need? Is it making a point or setting up a mark for a kneejerk reaction? Or are you just impressing yourself by seeing your wordcount grow every time you check it? Impact, impact, impact. This is something the British trolls never got and why you could spot them a mile away.
Better luck next time, make sure to keep trying!
And by outperforming top-specked Windows machines on some tests ...
Top-specked? What the hell is that? The same kind of paint specks on both machines?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
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
Yes, it's certainly trolling to suggest that waiting a minute for a menu to pop up could hurt productivity. I just love double-clicking "My Computer" on a PC and going off to make a pot of tea while it loads.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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."
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:
....CPU score increased 40%
....Thread score increased 44%
....Memory score increased 38%
"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"....
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 !
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.
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
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.
is by Celebrity Deathmatch. Nothing like a good fist fight. What they're computers? I guess we'll have to settle for a game of chess then.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
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!
And does anyone realize that Macs don't even run Windows natively? What's the deal with that? What am I supposed to do with that software that I bought at the checkout line in Walgreens?
I mean benchmarks are cool and all, but let's focus on the important thing here: will it be able to run crippled software made by monopolistic theives who want to take over the world?
You crazy Slashdot people sure know how to blow things out of proportion.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
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.
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?