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Apple's Dual 2GHz By The Numbers
mallumax writes "ComputerWorld has an exciting review of Apple's Dual 2GHz machine." An excerpt: "It's clear from two weeks of testing that Apple's new Power Mac G5 dual 2-GHz machine is the fastest thing the company has ever produced. And while you can debate benchmarks until eternity, it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side."
come to the other side of computing... join us... don't be afraid!
Esoteric reference.
The G5 is great, but it doesn't hold a candle to my Powerstack 5000.
Maybe because it's processor is based on this bad boy.
Tcd004
Stories like this appeal to the geeky "need for speed" undoubtedly ramoant at /., but offer little insight into real consumer thought/need.
That said, this is pretty cool; not cool enough for me to switch to Apple, but cool.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
"it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side."
Doesn't anything somewhat stable meet or beat anything running windows?
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Yea! Go Tux! He's just so dead Tuxy.
and i'm sure slashdot intends to.
So, to what productive end do we expect this particular slashdot thread, perhaps the third or fourth on the subject of the G5's supposed speed, to go?
After seeing benchmarks for the G5, I'm actually considering switching to Mac, which I once thought to be a mortal sin (or is it still?).
I certainly can't think of a better desktop machine that the majority of people are familiar with and yet kicks out that kind of performance. Then again, why should I care if anyone else can figure out how to use my machine?
Did this guy actually test anything????
The entire article is full of startup times.....
My xt booted faster then his setup which needed almost a minute is surely must beat anything apple has....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
That's assuming, of course, that the price is half-way reasonable. Anybody have news on that front?
-a
a question: how does this compare to a intel's hyperthreading processor.
any benchmarks on that?
When comparing against a hyperthreading (HT) processor, do you count a HT CPU as one or two.
Linux kernel sees HT CPU as two, so SMB kernel has to be used.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
New processor is faster than its predecessor.
Did any of you moderators click those links? LOL!
It's no more expensive than a similarly configured high end PC.
Ah, a common mistake. Most people forget that OSX is also shiny AND lickable, besides just being blazingly fast.
But that has always been the point about the latest and greatest - most people don't need it because the software that is sold in volume today is designed to work adequately fast on the hardware that is sold in volume today.
It is only the people that are pushing the edge that need the top end stuff. The rest of us will buy it at 1/2 the price in 18 months time.
It's a dichotomy, all this power, and yet so little of what could benefit from it, is actually availible for mac (I'm speaking high level plugins such as Mental Ray [for 3dsmax], which are x86/Windows binaries, only.)
... *hmm*
There is only so much power you can throw at photoshop, and to a lesser extent video editing applications. My AthXP-1800 machine is perfect for photoshop, and nothing takes longer than 15 seconds - with video it's still a concern (and one that is lessening, or being moved to dedicated hardware), but the question is - without an industry like gaming, which demands an up-to-date-system (*cough doom3 cough*), why do apple insist on trying to have the fastest, and not instead focus on widening their compatibility, which is their real enemy.
-Gwala
#!/bin/csh cat $0
And while you can debate benchmarks until eternity, it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side.
/. clearly has an agenda to push. Why waste our time like this?
Well, uh... what?
I mean, maybe I'm just "debating benchmarks" here, but how do you pull the above statement out of the linked article?
On the G5, Photoshop launched in 8 seconds, and relaunched in 4. Yes, 4. On the Dual G4, it launched in 24 seconds, and relaunched in 12.5. And on the Powerbook, Photoshop was ready to go in 25 seconds the first time around, and in 17 seconds on relaunch.
Yes, but what of it? This has nothing to do with Windows, Windows Desktops, or even anything non-apple. It compares the G5 to other, older Apple products. Unsurprisingly, the *new* Apple product beats the *old* Apple product. And clicking a stopwatch, and measuring how long launching a program takes, or how long a reboot lasts isn't that much of a "benchmark".
And, just to give you an idea of the technical competence of the reviewer who wrote the article, check out this snippit:
One final note: I whined in my first review about the G5's weak Airport wireless signal. Several readers promptly (and pointedly) wrote to ask if I'd installed the Apple-supplied external Airport antenna. I had not.
I'm sorry. The article is lousy, and the clown who submitted this article to
Did your XT run Os x?
Why hasn't someone benchmarked this? Or at least why would apple not publicize this one? I would think apple could use a benchmark with very large datasets that would show the G5 with 8GB Ram and a Dual Xeon with 8GB Ram(using PAE). The G5 would clearly kick the $#!t out of the Xeon in this case.
The fact that the G5 can handle more ram without resorting to the PAE b.s., is a clear advantage and I think Apple should market that a little better.
Yeah, and I'll get to experience a dual-G5 when that Brinks truck turns over in front of my house, spewing dollar bills everywhere. Is it just me, or does Apple hardware seem outrageously expensive? I can get a great spiffy new Dell box, or build my own machine, with some nice x86 (possibly even a 64 bit proc) for a hell of a lot less money, and be happier with two mouse buttons!
Try pricing out a comparable machine from Dell (w/ dual 3GHz Xeons). You'll see that the Dell is significantly more expensive than the G5.
Wooohooo....
Power to the people!
e"'( Why am I still working on an old text-mode terminal?
fortune is my favourite linux command
thats that.
The review didn't (unfortunately) seem to compare the dual-proc Mac to a PC, so the "meet or beat" claim is simply conjecture on the part of the story submitter.
However, it's a reasonable bet (given that a 2Ghz G5 isn't competitive with a top-of-the-line P4) that the submitter intended a multi-proc Mac to be compared to a single-proc PC. Comparing a dual-processor system to a single-processor is ridiculous (and I'm not talking about price concerns, either).
The overwhelming number of times when there's a bottlenecked task, it's a single CPU-bound thread. Having multiple processors will provide only nominal benefits. Apple putting multiple processors on-board won't *hurt*, except in the wallet, but it's not going to give Quake 3 double the framerate. Most raytracers support multiple threads of execution when rendering or can be hacked up to do so (even if, like PovRay, they require multiple processes to do so). Very few pieces of 2d software (video, still, etc) can benefit from multiple processors, however.
The claim should be "this system is faster than Apple's older systems, and worth a look for Mac users". Comparing one of Apple's systems to x86 boxes on a CPU horsepower or bang/buck metric not only isn't particularly favorable to Apple, but doesn't make much sense.
May we never see th
I got the chance to play with the mid-model (single 1.8 GHz) G5 and it is VERY fast compared to the older models (roughly about the same if not faster than the previous top model). The owner of said machine (a video editor) uses it as a front end for some of his editing work mainly because he wanted a Mac to use for the interface. The back end is comprised of two large SGI's and dozens of linux boxes (all AMDs).
The best tool for the job. My hats off to Apple for a great machine.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Well ok it is a fast machine but what is the price performance marks for this vs the fastest alienware box. I am willing to bet that the alienware box smokes the pant's off of it for price vs performance. Not only that but the alienware box looks even cooler.For myself I would go for the amd64 alienware box which has a rather attractive case and price.
Got Code?
Oh ferchrissakes, quit trotting out that lame old story about how macs are more expensive. They are actually CHEAPER than most of the PeeCees that they're benchmarked against. Macs now have a better price/performance ratio than PeeCees. Sure they sent out a high-end unit for review, just like all the other manufacturers. But the new G5 units are way cheaper than similarly performing Windoze CPUs from Dell, IBM, etc. Sure you can put together a piece o'crap whitebox for less, but what you won't be getting a seamlessly integrated hardware/software solution.
Of course it's the fastest ever, CPU speeds are increasing all the time. If I go out and buy a new AMD CPU it'll be the fastest ever....for about 2-3 months.
Plus there's the "it beats anything on the PC market", erm quad CPU Xenon? it's a PC ain't it? where do you want to draw the line?
Macs are cool but speed doesn't convice people to buy a computer, the price often does. Mac users were once ridiculed for knowing very little about computers, however I think this isn't true these days. Mac users know enough about computers to be able to choose between a computer running Windows and a Mac.
If you must have two processors to compete with a single processor something is wrong, plus they never include the cost of the EQ and the shitty components apple uses, I am sad to say this is why I never buy name brands in the first place (sure if you are a huge company and you want 1 hour service times you will go with dell/etc) but comon who wants crap inside there pc's... Have they tried matching it with a Dual Zeon Board? ... This is basically what I'd put it up against since the price is the same.
You speak authoritatively as an owner and user of a G5, OS X, and one buttoned mice, right?
Or are you *imagining* everything about a Mac without having used it?
GPL Deconstructed
This is they type of thing that shouldn't make front page. Its good for the apple section but not front page. It is only a good article for apple users (which I am). But then you get all these ppl saying 'so what' which if you aren't a apple user, is true. This article doesn't give hard benchmarks, and specifically says that. So when ppl come in here and say my xxx boots quicker then that, all I have to say is, So what? This isn't meant to compare different platforms, just Macs.
You prick. And don't forget to make it a capital "D" next time. Show respect for the best. Just because you are a stupid Mac user that can't grasp Debian doesn't mean that it isn't the best.
It's just fast fast fast.
and
"All this speed will set you back $4,198 at the Apple Store..."
Sorry, but it obviously doesn't beat the price of a comparably suited MS Windoze PC. Why do people keep trying to compare apples and lemons, anyway?
Because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Bash MS and get a free front page article. Limited time offer, operators are standing by now!
Hah. It cost me about $1100 to buy a dual motherboard, two Athlon MP 2000+, 1GB of ECC DRR RAM, a Lian Li case and an Enermax supply.
None of the above components are cheap, and still the price isn't near what you said. Of course the hard disk, CD drive, video and sound cards aren't included, but I'd have to fill the case with drives and buy the most expensive video card to get near that.
Of course mine isn't 64 bit, but I didn't see Opteron motherboards being sold anywhere when I was buying the components.
Christ, you must have the patience of a saint.
Neither did the pc he was comparing the g5 with...
They basicly said 'it boots osx faster then other apples, it must be better then anything intel has'
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
"Apple, since the G5's introduction in June, has touted the new chip's processing power in numerous comparisons with Pentium 4 machines, and rightfully so. It'll pretty much hand every other computer its proverbial hat and keep on crunching data without breaking a sweat."
That got a chuckle.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
While the tech guys who might actually need such horsepower will have 5-year-old boxes.
Face it, having such a box on your desk is like having a 4WD in the driveway that has never had mud on it.
Yes, but we've got all the best movies, music, and fashion. And in the end, isn't that what counts?
Not only that, but I happen to like having more than one mouse button. Fight the mono-button tyranny!!!
Give it up already. Buy a Mac, sell the mouse on eBay, and buy a new one for $20. Logitech makes very nice ones. Microsoft's have improved since their optical mouse was first introduced. Just to be different, I bought my last one from IBM. Seriously, quit whining. If you can afford a Mac, you can afford a third-party mouse to go with it.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Given that I already run GNU/Linux, switching hardware would not be a big deal; all the software I currently run would work. If TCPA and Palladium become a reality and don't implement something like the EFF's suggested Owner Override, I probably will switch to a G5.
I've seen online stores where you can buy a dual-boot GNU/Linux and MacOS X system, but is there anyone that will sell a GNU/Linux only (or a no-OS) Apple system?
cool article but very short on useful information. we've already seen benchmarks, we've already heard specs, we already know it's fast.
from the article:
The obvious conclusion: The Power Mac G5 is a stellar machine for anyone who will be using it for serious processing work. If you're simply surfing the Web and editing the occasional digital picture, it's overkill, of course. One of the single-processor G5s or even a Dual G4, which Apple still sells, is more than enough for those tasks.
and the only conclusion they come to is what they themselves describe (and what i would describe) as 'the obvious conclusion'. yep, sure is obvious. is anyone buying a g5 for yahoo games and tetris anyway?
ok, there's probably one of you but...
And where in the article did he compare the boot-up time of a G5 and a PC?
By the way, are you claiming that your XT booted Windows XP in less than a minute?
I'm sure it's the fastest thing Apple has ever produced. But it's a far cry from the fastest thing on the "Windows" side of the market. And I'm willing to bet that the faster things on the IBM PC side are more affordable as well.
But, welcome in earnest to the multi-gigahertz fold, Apple.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
No, it doesn't.
But the facts clearly show that debian sucks like an Electrolux.
In fact, a variety of household tests have proven debian to suck better than even a mighty Dyson.
Plans are now afoot to market debian as a household cleaning device - and thanks to the GPL, even the very poor can afford to keep their homes dust- and dirt-free. (Assuming they can afford dirt, which is, after all, worth more than debian.)
Only a fool equates quality with price.
OpenOffice totures every PC I touch. The new version 1.1 still takes around 10 seconds to load on my Overclocked Gentoo box (An athlon XP 2000+ overclocked from 1.2Ghz to 1.67!) Has anyone tried OpenOffice on the 2Ghz G5 yet, and how fast is it?
More and more every day, this site seems to be just a copy of OSnews.com. I can't tell you how many times I see a story posted there first, and within a couple of hours the same story with the same wording is posted here. What gives? We don't need two sites being copies of each other.
This is why nobody else thinks your Transformers watch is cool, either. I'm sorry, but every "cool" PC case I've seen reminded me of the infamous "Homer Car" from the simpsons. I would rather hide my computer under the desk than actually flaunt something so awful. Sharp industrial design is not gluing some fins and flashing lights on the same old box, then spray-glossing it all to a high sheen. Please throw Apple this bone, at least.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
So buy one of the cheaper ones, the 1.6 or the 1.8 single proc boxes.
They're comparably priced to a similarly specced pee cee, but they run OSX not Windoh!s
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
on that high horse! :)
Hm... This article is a bit misleading
I just recently got a Sager Laptop (for any who haven't heard about them, check out PCTorque.com for some outrageous laptops)
Here's the specs:
P4 3ghz HT
1 gb RAM
Radeon 9600
Two 60gb 7200RPM HD's in RAID 0
I have Photoshop 7. It launched in 4 seconds off cold boot. Relaunched in 2.
WinXP boots in 20 seconds, loading just about everything I have (Gaim, Kazaa, TV studio (it has a TV tuner), antivirus, etc). If it weren't for RAID initialization, the entire computer would boot in under 30 seconds.
It can run a good game of BF1942, all settings up on highest, while playing a DVD on another monitor, and downloading various things off Kazaa.
True, the laptop was about $2800, but hey, it's a LAPTOP. Try getting an apple laptop at that price that can compete with mine...
...but real-world app tests have shown that the dual 2GHz G5 beats Dell's cheapest dual 3.06GHz Xeon sytem, both in performance and (when configured identically as possible to Apple's base 2GHz dualie) in price.
In fact, Dell's current price ($4372) on the comparison machine has gone up by $600 since late June, the first time I configured one-- but even back then, Apple beat them by hundreds of dollars.
And don't bother playing the "I can build it cheaper" card-- you cannot fairly compare a manufactured system with one that you cobbled together with the cheapest parts you could find.
~Philly
What a disappointing article. His "speed" tests consisted of the ridiculously unscientific "boot time" test and application launch tests. Lopped on top of that were hand crafted Photoshop and Bryce "tests" which verify that the dual G5 kicks the crap out of the 17" G4 and 1.25GHz PowerMac. My 12" Powerbook is faster than the Lombard I bought in 1999. Yay.
What about running real stuff like FCP's Compressor or Maya's mental ray renderer plug-in? Maybe even a After Effects render speed. Using iMovie to test anything isn't very fair to the people who would buy a G5. They're not using iMovie to work on SD video. Photoshop users aren't using a bunch of filters picked at random.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Why waste our time like this?
I think it has something to do with the banner ads at the top this page.
Let's all take a nice deep breath, and remember that this is simply yet another offering, in a huge selection of products; that these products are different in many ways, for many people; that purchasing one or more of these products is not indicative of your mental health, penis size, sexual orientation, or anything else... okey?
G5 fast, mmm, nice G5. Athlon also fast, mmm, nice Athlon. I want both, for different reasons. They are not mutually exclusive.
(As for all the 'so fuckin' what' posts; this is Slashdot. No one made you click More.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
...is all the Mac haters who used to say "yeah, the Mac is cool, but I need something a little faster than 1GHz, like my IntelAMDAthlonXP 5500MHz box. You should see how FAST Explorer pops up on that puppy!!!1111"
Now that Apple has a arguably *fast* machine, they've switched back to complaining about the price.
I guess those folks just go between price, speed, and the number of mouse buttons, in circles.
I think the Macs are great machines and reasonably priced. My 500MHz iMac is perfectly usable and sits aside my 1.8GHz P4 Linux box with pride. The iMac cost me $1300 and the P4 cost around $1400 (I bought all quality components like Intel mobo, Antec case, 1GB Crucial RAM, etc), and it was purchased about 2 years after I got the iMac, and didn't even come with a monitor, so I think the iMac was a good deal. *shrug*
I don't know or care precisely how fast the G5s are. I just know they are fast, well-designed machines with a beautiful operating system and tools (have any of you ever written a program using the apple devel tools? I had a harder time taking a shit this morning!!) and they are worth the few hunder dollar premium.
Well, of course.
If you're comparing Apple to a standard "build from cheapest parts by yourslef" PC then of course it's going to be more expensive.
Home brewed beer is cheaper than a pint in the pub.
Thats the true test! Can it beat my Water cooled overclocked Dual Athlon-64FX51 with RAID-5 20K SCSI drives using LFS with kernel 2.6.0-test-7-mm with 3dnow2 extentions enabled?
On the big list of priorities, those are at the bottom. They are useless preoccupations that distract from the important things in life.
Cheap case, no support...nothing pre-installed... not a valid comparison. Build it yourself versus well designed, supported and warranted by a major company is comparing Apples and Oranges... Invalid comparison
Configure a Dell similarly and you'll see it IS competitively priced.
Food for thought:
Back in the 386 and 486 days, I was in the 18-month upgrade cycle, simply cause my comp couldn't run the latest and greatest apps. Now, I am currently using a computer from 1999 - a p3-500. And, I have no immediate plans on upgrading. I consider myself among the power users -- graphic design, MSOffice, many programming suites, even an occasional game. And ya know what? It all works like a champ. Tell me, what's the reason for upgrading? So Photoshop loads in 4 seconds and not 20? Obviously, a new system would be NICE, but I don't really NEED it like we used to (new version of windows wouldn't run, office would crash, etc).
Before you answer with "To play games!" Please note that you can buy a brand spanky new Gamecube for $99 now. I will never play games on my PC again at that price!
Obviously this also doesn't apply to video editting as that needs every drop of power you can get it.
Lian Li cases aren't cheap. Support--all the parts you order wil lbe under warranty for differing amounts of time. Nothing preinstalled--I've already got everything I want to isntall, why pay more for stuff I've already got?
Build it yourself vs well designed supported etc etc blah blah blah? No offense, but if you really think someone who knows how to build a computer is getting a better packaged deal from Dell or wherever, you're dead wrong. For speed, stability, etc, buying the best quality components can't be beaten.
"And while you can debate benchmarks until eternity, it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side."
Yea..except in price.
My Windows95 box boots in under thrity seconds and it's on an AMD K6. Take that!
HA! You have clearly never experienced the joys of what is better named Apple-don't-Care. I've had more luck seducing a brick wall. Seriously.
Perhaps not double, but Quake 3 is SMP-aware, and does see a significant frame-rate boost from dual-processor Mac boxes.
Startup and reboot
Er, yes, great. You do that what, once a day? And so are you telling me that by shaving 20 seconds you will now make the decision to sit and stare at the screen during the remaining 55 seconds of bootup rather than grabbing a beverage, finishing your sandwich, or going across the room to talk to someone?
Application launch times
Ok, yes. Again, wonderful. And so with your 512MB to 2GB of RAM you don't suppose you will just leave your email client and productivity app running?
Photoshop manipulation
"Rotating the picture took 2 seconds on the G5, 3.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 5.5 seconds on the Powerbook. Applying the Gaussian blur (which, in essence, turned the photo into a blurry blob), took 4 seconds on the G5, 5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 8 seconds on the Powerbook. And applying the Pointillize filter took 3 seconds on the G5, 4.5 seconds on the Dual G4 and 9 seconds on the Powerbook."
Ah yes. Wonderful. I'm astounded at the practicality of testing operations which, "turned the photo into a blurry blob". And you shaved on average just over 1 second! Great googly-moogly!
Oh, and then we rinse and repeat for iMovie manipulation.
People, this is an absolutely unconvincing, entirely uninsightful article.
The G5 may be great, but all this article leads me to believe is that Apple users are about as detached from reality as a PC gam3r d00d pissing on about how Quake 3 runs at 178 instead of 172 FPS on their $2000 penis extension.
Say it isn't so.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
A benchmark of a Mac....
NOT done by apple.
wdd
Reading some of the comments I've come to the conclusion that they just don't get it.
Despite the review, the point of a Mac is not the horsepower (and comparing completely different CPUs using gigahertz is just stupid).
The point is: Macs and OSX just work and they're beautiful! If you don't value quality then you won't value a Mac.
But please, don't bore the rest of us with your attempts to justify sticking with an inferior product.
"Yeah my Ford Ka is just as good as any Ferrari - it can do the same speed in town AND does more miles to the gallon! That means my Ka is better than a Ferrari!".
The difference is at least the Ka owner pays a lot less for his car. The pee cee users PAY THE SAME PRICE and get an inferior product ! Got to love Michael Dell and Bill Gates. And people say Apple is great marketing company.
Edward
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I used to upgrade systems every 18 months or so, even when I was a poor student. But since I got my 1.3gz Athlon years ago, I've never found I'm doing anything that made me want something faster. Software has got a lot better and I updated my video card and that's it.
This Mac sounds cool much as a dual Opteron or a dual AMD64 or dual PPC970 future IBM or dual Intel whatever but just like I'm not offroading every day in my car, I'm not doing graphics rendering or making movies on my PC.
These days, I'm much more worried about noise, heat and power consumption of my PC (and associated costs) and I've been wondering if it makes more sense to start focusing on these things instead of raw speed.
ie. the Hush PC with no fans at all that also looks like a component (http://www.stayward.com/onlinestore/hush.html)
After all, all the heat that comes out of your system translates into a number of costs
(1) lower likely MTBF for the hot component
(2) increased direct power drain by the component
(3) increase power required to run fans and air conditioning to compensate for the heat
(4) higher psychological stress induced by mechanical noise and higher volumes of music etc. to compensate
As millions of households/offices own a PC or multiple PCs, what would an across-the-board power reduction result in re power availability and HVAC concerns?
For these reasons, a system that is quiet, cool and stable would be cheaper in the longterm for initial cost, ongoing power costs, MTBF issues and psychological relief.
Via doesn't seem quite up to the task. Maybe a PPC970 running Linux?
Half Life 2? Way to try to bolster your agrument by including a game that's not even out for Windows machines yet.
RTCW? Yup.
C&C Generals? Yup, coming soon.
Halo? Yup, soon.
Sim City 4? Yup.
Civ III? Yup.
In conclusion, you need to take a break from the gaming and check your facts before you post. Otherwise you come off looking like a dumb shit when someone like me comes along to easily prove you wrong.
~Philly
How indeed? By copying the complete first paragraph of the linked article. The quote you criticise is right there in the article. The author promised to publish more test results in the near future. Kind of a sleazy tactic (and a guaranteed second /. frontpage). I don't disagree with your criticism of the article, but the submitter did not pull anything out of thin air and might not have a special agenda.
You seem to have confused "best" with "worst". Maybe I should re-read your post considering this new information.
It is funny how you posters always assume that people are referring to throwaway cheap assed components when they mentions how much cheaper a PC is.
I can get a top of the line PC with the best parts and it will still be more affordable then what I would have to pay for a Mac with a equal or similar configuration.
Actually, considering the lousy IPC of the P4 I'm pretty sure the 2GHz Xeon is nowhere near as fast as the 2GHz G5.
2GHz Opterons on the other hand, speedy and 64bit.
Even as a proud owner of an Inspiron 8000, the Sager NP8890 is an obscene notebook. RAID? TV Tuner? 12 lbs?! Might as well be SMP (it does have HT). I don't see the point of a battery in that sucker, whats the point besides as a builtin UPS.
What's sad is that you'd post this article speaking in such an authoritative tone when you clearly haven't taken the time to so much as glance at any of the benchmarking that has been done. Think of all the impressionable children reading that!
;)
The Dual 2Ghz G5 is usually benched against a Dual 3Ghz P4. That means the G5 is running at the equivalent of 4Ghz and the PC at 6Ghz, and the Mac still outperforms it.
It's sad that a PC with processors running half again as fast as the G5 can't keep up with it.
Or wait for a port or use VPC or program a compareable program yourself.
I think that's what the parent was trying to say. They didn't. Yet they asserted since it's the fastest thing to boot Mac OS X, it must be better than Intel.
For those not in the know, this known as a "logic fallacy."
These prices are from newegg.com
2.0 GHz Opteron $810 each (model 246)
Newegg didn't have any dual Opteron motherboards. Their single CPU motherboard was $240.
These alone will put you back $1860.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
My friend has an ibook and often i have to struggle with her to find a software tool for the mac to do something for which there's almost certainly an abundance of windows tools somewhere on the net that'll do it automatically. Ironically even linux often had more options and essential software than the mac; i usually get her to download a linux tool that's been ported to os x. It's nice to have so much processing power but unless there's plenty of software the mac will be limited to running a specific function such as movie editing or photoshop, for which again there's more on the windows and what makes it even worse is that recently software makers, such as adobe, have been abandoning the mac; it just won't be a good machine for general desktop use, there aren't even many mac games. This is really such a niche machine.
If i had such a machine i'd install linux. But again, i'd rather have one that'll run both linux and windows. It seems unnecessary to abandon all the desktop apps in the wintel world.
Seriously.
X11 on a dual CPU box kicks the arse of a single CPU box, even when the X server itself is single threaded. Why? Client/server architecture, on a single CPU box it context thrashes between local client applications and the X server.
So if you run Linux with X11, go for a dual. You *need* it.
See, now I've given you an excuse go persuade your boss to buy one. You can thank me later.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I'm curious how it'll perform against the new AMD 64 chip. I'd love to see a comparison with a comparable dual processor AMD 64 chip.
I am right in saying this is the newest mac available.
I am right in saying, an Athlon 2200+ is NOT the newest AMD chip available.
Why are they making a big deal about stuff starting up so quickly? Internet Explorer starts is seemingly less then a second. Mozzila Firebirds is just over 1 second. Photoshop 7.0 starts in 4 seconds for me.
As for the tests, rotating a 33.3 meg image took about 4 seconds. Gaussian blur, a horrible 15 seconds. Same time for the Pontilize.
My point? The application starting launch time thingy doesn't mean anything. The only real reason the G5 scores higher is because it uses a SATA drive (If im not mistaken)
Yes it does to better in Photoshop. But thats comparing it to a 2200 Athlon, which came out in Quarter 2 of 2002.
I know of more people in the last year to 18 months that abandoned Linux as their desktop for OSX. I am one of those because at the end of the day, I like Photoshop much better than GIMP, and the ablity to develop PHP/MySQL apps on my iBook and still have powerpoint is exactly what I need.
I do come from a video/graphics systems admin background. I worked during college part-time at a friend's father's architecture firm where they had a small 24 unit ALPHA rendering farm.
Now I do indy technology consulting, mainly to small businesses and video firms. I had a number of clients switch to PC's (Dell's mainly) in the last two years because the hardware costs were so much less, however they quickly found out that programs like Premeire suddenly crashed a lot more and the time in lost work was far greater than what it would have cost for a mac. ALthough this was mainly due to Adobe Premeire 6 generally being a piece of junk, not really windows itself.
I have one customer that is going to order the dual G5 after 10.3 is shipping. He is semi-retired, but does some commercial and wedding video work. He has a six year old G3 400 with 1GB of ram to run Final Cut Pro and he has upgraded X.2 and some of his rendering output times are 6 hours. No big deal to him, clicks render, goes out the back of his house onto his boat and goes fishing the rest of the day. Well, the local apple store was flying a specialist from apple over FCP and DVD studio pro and we were in the store and had my client's last video, which took about 4.5 hours to render. We imported the file from a DVD onto the new G5 with an enhanced version of FCP and then on a single 1.8Ghz G5 and the difference was about 15% for the same footage in favor of the dual compared to the single G5 and about 1/3d of the time that it took on his G3.
Granted configured with a new 23" HD and 17" flatpanel, the dual box is about $15,000 with all the software he needs as well. Add in about another $3000 for upgrades over the next 5 years in software and and the new box he will be buying is cheaper that his old G3.
Now granted, in video production, you can spend $20k on a mac and it will do just about anything you want, or you can jump and spend $250k on an Avid. Even dedicated editing boxes are $3500, so this industry will & must spend the money and for many graphic/video firms, that 15% difference means 15% more money because they can turn around and start the next job that much faster. Couple the increase in turn around with the prices some of these firms charge, that can pay for a couple dual G5's real quick.
Then finally, there is TCO. Most small wedding video/indy video companies I know of tend to hang on to their equipment for a long time. I know a lot of people that purchased G3's and still are using them because they knew a year ago that the G5's were going to be out, so they decided to wait. Some have already purchased the G5's and have been extremely pleased with their purchase and the dramatic increases in speed. Another video company in town switched from their Casablance/Kron editing tools to FCP on G5's and after about a month, their turn around times for videos has gone from about 14 days to 7 or 8. Many of their editors are full time college students and FCP is what is being taught in the classrooms, so the cost of time in retraining was extremely low. Now they purchased Single 1.8Ghz boxes with 2GB of Ram, but it seems to be more than enough for them.
So will the average "user" need dual processors...um, no, but there are those out there were it such high end specs can be usefull and profitable.
I have to admit that I was not a fan of Apple until a year ago and bought this iBook. The main reason why I switched was I wanted something that worked and thus far everything has worked perfectly and I have no complaints.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
RTCW? Yes, I play regularly.
Halo? Yes, about a month behind the PC version
Sim City 4? Yes
Civ 3? Yes
Granted anyone who just wants to play games for cheap has no need for a Macintosh. But you could also argue that they don't need a PC either (get a console).
I agree that there is a lot to be said for compatability: it gotten a lot better in the past few years.
Sanity is not statistical.
it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side.
Uhh, Windows doesn't make computers, nor does Microsoft...
poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side
Oh, so if this isn't an Apple computer I am using, then it must be a windows computer.
Who posted this story? Bill, is that you?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Just wonder if anyone out there actually buys things because it's "The Fastest" computer available. The Fastest Computer changes at least every month, plus most of us can get by with significantly less the the fastest. Not to mention that people always argue over just what it is fastest at.
Personally I look at MIPS / $$ and my $400 machine with maxed out ram does everything I could want super cheap. Even doing a full build every few minutes doesn't keep the CPU at 100% for more then a few seconds. I still have a computer shopper I keep for the "Blazing Fast 386 Systems!!!" cover. It helps keep things in perspecitve.
I've talked about this with my friends and the only thing that is going to make us upgrade our systems is going to be Doom III. Until then we buy cheap computers and just stick them around the house where needed.
But the new G5 units are way cheaper than similarly performing Windoze CPUs from Dell, IBM, etc. Sure you can put together a piece o'crap whitebox for less, but what you won't be getting a seamlessly integrated hardware/software solution.
;))!
Uh, so a computer build from scratch using the same parts (or better) than the Dell counterpart, is a "piece o'crap"? Why is this exactly?
Oh, and I got a newsflash for ya: Dell computers aren't born assembled. Believe it or not, Dell PCs are built by buying the hardware, jacking up the price, and, gasp, assembling them! Just the same as doing it yourself (but without the price jack
Dell's computers aren't more "seamlessly integrated" than any other PC built by someone who knows what they are doing.
- Houdini
Why is this "Insightful"? He didn't give a single price comparison nor did he point to a link that does.
I priced out a top-of-the-line Dell (which is slower than the mac) and a top-of-the-line Mac. Here are the results.
Mac: $3395
Dell: $2917
Of course this doesn't include the fact that you get better case design (aluminum/super quiet) with the mac. Nor does it reflect the Unix based OS that you get with the Mac.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Does anyone else find the comparison of an apple computer to an opposing operating system, silly?
Perhaps you missed the rather large part of the article where he timed several photoshop filters, iMovie clip transitions, and Bryce rendering.
Whoops! I guess you missed the bullet points on the speed of various application tasks.
That's what game consoles and Windows is for. Doing actual work involves a better machine. Can your PC run the various mac-only software out there? nope. What's your point? That's why I own both platforms.
He tested the transfer rates of the HD that apple is putting in their G5 computers. It's pretty nice apparantly. It beat the Seagate in my AMD 1800+ by a whole second on the initial load of Photoshop! (The AMD beat the G5 by a 25% when loading from RAM though...)
I should cobble together a G3 with a SCSI RAMdisk and let him load Photoshop on it a few times. With luck, he'll trade me his G5 for it!
Granted, Apple isn't all neon lights and windows and crap like that, but Am i the only one who thinks the G5 case looks like a cheese grater?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Have you ever noticed that the people who make insults based off homosexuality are still waiting for their balls to drop?
if u want to get locked into a proprietery closed source os. ill wait till yellow dog runs on it then i might think about it. apple types only care about photoshop but the new gimp devel version kicks ass and u dont need $5000 of cpu to run it
The G5, architecturally, is much more similar to an Opteron (64bit and 2.0GHz) than a P4, and a dual Opteron setup has been seen/measured to be superior to a 3.2GHz P4.
Points to consider:
G5 more similar than not to an Opteron
Dual 2.0GHz Opterons are equiv or slightly better than a 3.2GHz P4
Software can still be tuned for the G5 (plus IBM's autovectorizing XLC compiler)
G5 possesses Altivec, which is more effective, in general, than the P4's or the Opteron's SIMD offering
So considering I've never used either, but knowing what I do about the architecture, I expect the Alienware to perform slightly below the dual G5, for only $1k less. This is comparing a $4k machine with a $3k machine. If you strip out the ram to base levels, it's $2,999 vs $2,766, so you only save $233 and you get slightly less performance.
GPL Deconstructed
In the current Linux Format magazine (an UK mag), there's about a half page about IBM prepping a blade version and a rack-mount version of PowerPC 970 (or whatever they're called exactly)-based machines. They run Linux or AIX. I know IBM has always had POWER-based workstations, but these are supposed to start at $4k for 4-way systems. The idea to to bury HP and Sun, but this would be the first (practical) alternative (to Apple) PowerPC you can buy. And with all the good karma IBM's been accumulating with its defense of the GPL...
You're missing the point -- most Apple customers are people who do not wish to assemble their own computer from parts. Apple is not marketing their products to the technological kit-crowd. So comparing Apple's turnkey product to a do-it-yourself system is pointless.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What they don't say is that a single G5 can actually be slower than a comparably clocked G4.
TechTV's own Leo Laporte has mentioned this before on air.
I think that the G5 is great; if money started falling off of the trees in my front yard I would buy one without hesitation, but this article is just poor; no question about it.
Cripes man, it's only one page.
The submitter titled the story, "Apple's Dual 2GHz By The Numbers"! Well, I'm just pointing out that this is an awfully poor excuse for a "by the numbers" technical performance review of a processor.
Are you suggesting otherwise?
Yes, I'm having a little fun with the last line, but seeing the blatant agenda this story submission is pushing while failing to deliver on the evidence, I don't have any second thoughts about it.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
...it certainly appears poised to meet or beat anything now out on the Windows side.
Why are the 2 camps always debating Windows vs. Mac. That's like debating high octane gas vs. a sports car. I know that the two are monopolies, and people like to defend their respective masters, but wouldn't it be more logical to debate hardware vs. hardware? I haven't looked at the raw benchmark data, but wouldn't a 4 way P4 xenon box running a version of linux optimized for scientific workstations be able to keep up with a dual G5?
Oh and don't press the eject button on your CD-ROM drive when your playing a PC game, you might get a blue screen or even worse, you have flip the switch off then on on your machine to get back to Windows. And be sure to 'recycle' your files, afterall, we don't want that landfill filling up. I just hope Windows 95 will stop saying there's no CD in the drive when I click retry. Point here, use a newer Mac OS before saying something trollish.
On the G5, Photoshop launched in 8 seconds, and relaunched in 4. Yes, 4. ....
... And clicking a stopwatch, and measuring how long launching a program takes, or how long a reboot lasts isn't that much of a "benchmark".
--snip--
Fantastic!
Oh, wait. My homebuilt computer with an AMD 1800+ and 512MB of DDR, which is probably worth about, what, $500 today?, and running windows XP, starts photoshop in 8 seconds. And it's over a year old. And it didn't cost $5000 when it was new.
God. I thought photoshop was the raison d'etre to move to Mac. I thought it was "well you can't play games or use most software, but at least we have photoshop, and it's faster" was the whole 9 yards for a Mac. Now that I hear that, I'm glad my pocketbook is $4500 richer.
Now that I think about it, I think my Used honda accord cost less than a dual G-5.
Fast computer, but, 1.) too expensive, and 2.) these benchmarks mean jack shit.
~Will
sig?
Just for the record, Photoshop launched in 7 sec. and relaunched in 3 sec. on my laptop.
.....
P4 2.53 GHz
1 GB RAM
2300 $ 10 months ago.
And last time I checkeck, my laptop cost less than his bulky desktop system and way less than his PowerBook
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
Since when does super quiet beat completely silent? Well, considering when I first got to work on a new Dell I accidentally turned it off because I thought it already WAS off, I guess super quiet is a short term benifit. Maybe Dell just needs a brighter power indicator.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
But who really cares about boot times? My sister hasn't turned off her iMac in months. My iBook is always on and instantly wakes from sleep. You don't reboot a Mac nearly as often as you would a PC.
-
absolutely not, different processors....the 2 gig G5 is more comparable to a 3 gig xenon
The new G5 runs at 35 decibels. What does the Dell run at?
And I forgot one other thing. I was comparing a SINGLE 3 Ghz Dell to a daul 2 Ghz Mac.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
For a group of users that prides itself on alternative operating systems, its simply hilarious that you cling to the old stigma that Macs are slow and overpriced.
OS X is far superior to any Linux GUI and definitely has a lot more going for it overall than Linux. Now when Apple produces machines that might (hard to tell from the somewhat shoddy article) be faster than what you have currently, you don't have to get so agitated about it. Yeah, the article is pretty flawed. But at least try to reconcile the fact that the Macs might be faster than a PC right now. Then you can follow up with endless rants about how ObjC sucks/one button mice suck/Apple sucks/other reasons that only make sense to you.
Let me guess... You just upgraded to a G5 running BSD-based OS X from an older mac running an older version of MacOS. Congradulations! You are now using a mordern operating system capable of basic multi-tasking!
Just don't ask how long Linux or even Microsoft users have been able to do the same thing. It will probably depress you.
How do you know that? Apple's third party hardware program was really taking off because many people loved Apples but couldn't afford them.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Startup and reboot
Agreed - A fairly pointless test all things considered.
Application launch times
This is even more pointless. Does the load time really depend much on processor power? Surely the CPU spends most of its time waiting for the data to get from the drive to main memory. Load times are affected by most of the components that make it a computer (including graphics card to a small extent), as well as software version, and fragmentation of the disk.
Photoshop manipulation
Now you're being too hard. Many image processing operations take a very long time. If you have to do a lot of operations, even a second can be a long time and a lot of people do work with macs to manipulate very large images. A lot of times. Waiting those 2 seconds can make it seem like a very long time.
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html
Note: The Athlon CPU speeds are the actual MHz, not "+" numbers
I wonder if smp machines could ever get cheap enough to compete with the latest, greatest uniprocessor machine? Assuming it hasn't happened already, would it change the market all that much?
Translation: "Macs don't have many games." Unfortunately for you, there are entire markets of software that (get ready for this) have no entertainment value whatsoever! What essential commercial software out there is completely unavailable for and has no open-source alternatives for the Mac? Macs have Office and plenty of software that can run under the X11 environment. In reality, there is very little Windows software out there that either isn't available for the Mac or does not have some sort of Mac equivalent.
given that a 2Ghz G5 isn't competitive with a top-of-the-line P4
Where've you been? A single 2GHz G5 easily beats a single whatever-the-fast-one-is P4, and finishes so close to a Xeon that it's essentially too close to call.
The overwhelming number of times when there's a bottlenecked task, it's a single CPU-bound thread.
Wrongo, dimwit. The "overwhelming number of times" (speak English much?) it's I/O. Your computer spends more time waiting than it does working. This has been true for years and years now.
Apple putting multiple processors on-board won't *hurt*, except in the wallet, but it's not going to give Quake 3 double the framerate.
Is this a metaphor, or are you just an idiot? You know that Quake 3 isn't CPU bound, right? You also know that nobody gives a flying fuck about Quake 3 frame rates, right? I mean, you do realize that the people who hang out in apple.slashdot.org actually do this for a living, and are more interested in Final Cut Pro or Logic performance than silly games. RIGHT?
No, but that is his point... The article says that the Mac on test boots faster than previous Apples, so must be faster than the fastest x86 box. At no point does the article actually COMPARE the two, except in the closing statement...
Learn to fucking read.
You're so right, because there's just no way for you to download thousands of UNIX utilities and run configure, make, and make install, and have it run on OS X.
And aside from the command line, there just aren't any software products, just as you say. Basically, with Macintosh, you get a word process, e-mail client, browser, and that's it!
And there's really no hope of that ever changing, what with the crappy, hard-to-use development enviroment Apple has released for their platform, and the total indiffernce from the developer community regarding the platform.
It's a wonder more people don't share the "insight" you do.
Thanks for the enlightenment!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Nice comeback, how about a "YOUR MOMMA" joke for an encore?
oh man, like 3 years ago your argument would have been ROCK SOLID. fortunately, since the switch to OS X -- macs have become a lot more compatible. a mac can compile and run almost any software that will compile and run on your average x86 unixoid box. there is also a pretty large user scene -- so your average win32 freeware/shareware app is going to have some sort of suitable equivalent on the mac side. so really, the macs just have trouble with win32 apps, with no mac counterpart. but then factor in virtual PC... sure, it's not as fast as a real pc, but it's more than adequate for programs that dont require heavy processor and realtime interaction (such as a first-person-shooter). i used to strictly use x86 machines, favoring linux but using win32 when i had to. OS X has very effectively bridged the gap between consumer and open-source OS -- and there's less "crap to put up with" [time-consuming tweaking to linux systems, or typical win32 bullsh*t]. though i still use win32 and linux on a regular basis at work, Mac/OSX has become my preferred platform for everyday computing.
Benchmarks aside, does the GUI of OS X still lag? What CPU speed is necessary on the Mac side in order for the GUI to be as responsive as Windows?
The Lian Li case cost about $120, more or less the same for the power supply.
Besides, at the risk of getting offtopic, this computer is the best designed one I ever used. For once, I have a computer that doesn't crash for strange reasons. Previously I had problems with the VIA chipset, SB Live sound card, and with some BIOS settings it didn't even boot.
The time I invested in selecting the components has more than paid off. Of course it's somewhat slower than the Apple one, but if I had the money for the Apple one, I'd just upgrade the CPUs to 3000+ or whatever is the fastest MP available, buy a second identical box, and still have remaining money to buy say, a decent UPS.
Tyan Thunder K85 (S2885)
1GB (2x512) DDR333 (ECC, registered)
2xOpteron 246 (2GHz)
DVD-R/RW/CD-R/CD-RW
160GB S-ATA HD
Radeon 9600 PRO, even 9700 Pro
(misc. retail tower case/supply, optical mice, keyboard...)
Windows XP Pro, and by having a copy you can get the 64-bit beta if you sign up.. or
Redhat WS, or maybe GinGin, which is free.
All this for less than the base price of $3000, and it's backwards compatible with your older stuff for IA32.
it's not much less, but if they're going to compare the speed or feel of a G5 to anything, it has to be AT LEAST to a rig like that.
The trouble is having the same apps with AMD64 support to compare speed of photoshop filters, etc. If that's the basis they want to compare across.
Anyway, there's a bunch of apple haters here talking about how much more it is, and who could afford that.
But the G5 is a huge leap. it really is, deal with it. It's got fucking DDR400 out of the box.
AND YET! For the same price, there's competetion. Where are the _fair_ benchmarks between two equally equiped setups?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
"You're so right, because there's just no way for you to download thousands of UNIX utilities [gnu.org] and run configure, make, and make install, and have it run on OS X [sourceforge.net]. "
And these are all available for the PC, along with many times more apps you just don't have for the Mac (applications you just run, without a kludgey configure/make process).
"And aside from the command line, there just aren't any software products [apple.com]"
There are some, just not many. Go to download.com or any other place where you can compare the software side by side.
"And there's really no hope of that ever changing, what with the crappy, hard-to-use development enviroment [apple.com]"
Yes, it is a development environment shunned by most programmers.
"It's a wonder more people [dvorak.org] don't share the "insight" you do."
You mean more than the 90% who agree with me that Mac's do less and are harder to use as a result and thus choose something else? I'm satisfied with this high percentage.
"Thanks for the enlightenment! "
You are so welcome.
Don't make me mod you up by using logic and balance!
Well, in Apple's case, this "speed bump" was needed much more than the incremental speed increases seen every few months on the PC side.
Apple was lagging at least a generation behind the PC competition in system bus speed, RAM architecture, and processor power.
The whole debate of "can the new G5 beat the latest PC offerings?" is more of a side issue, only popular with the usual publications that are more interested in graphing benchmark numbers than real-world usability. The REAL reason the new G5's are so significant is that they boost the Mac back up to a competitive level - where everything works at the speeds users are used to seeing.
(If you work in Photoshop 7, or even Microsoft Office on a PC at work, you expect at least comparable performance of those applications on the computer you use at home. Apple was slipping on delivering that. Now they're not.)
so what? on my old mac OS X was horribly slow. I bought a PC again. Now they sell machines fast enough that the OS doesn't feel like a Yugo anymore, but it's horribly overpriced. someone tell me again why I should buy one of those please? Wait, forget it. I hated the UI of OS X and the laughable one button mouse, it doesn't matter really.
Here's the link to their Apple resale site.
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
And clicking a stopwatch, and measuring how long launching a program takes, or how long a reboot lasts isn't that much of a "benchmark".
According to Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design textbook, "Time is the measure of computer performance: the computer that performs the same amount of work in the least time is the fastest." (Page 58, Second Edition).
Of course, just because it's the fastest doesn't mean it is the one YOU should buy, but I think the standard of 'performance' is execution time.
Of course, you CAN have an equally equipped machine if you're willing to go shopping.
You can do a lot better for a few hundred over $3000 too, like by doubling RAM, or getting the 9800 Pro.
It gets much cheaper if you compare an Apple 1.8 to the dual Opteron 244 (246's are disproportionally expensive)
Also Monarch Computers will sell you a dual Opteron workstation, if you want it built and shipped. They're priced about the same (a little more expensive).
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Morons? Nope. This calls for meta-mod 'Ironic'.
What did you really expect from CompuFluffWorld anyway? As far as I've been able to tell, they're just another one of those thrown together publications they give away for free to anyone working in I.T. who's willing to answer 6 or 7 page long surveys about all the aspects of their business. (EG. The publication is primarily a carrot hung over people's heads to collect data on I.T. and corporate spending habits.)
I'm not saying they don't occasionally have a good article. (They do.) But for real serious performance reviews of systems, I'd look elsewhere. These guys generally write watered-down summaries of things, digestable by middle-management.
(In this case, the author even admits he had to be told by readers to hook up the supplied wi-fi external antenna! He couldn't even be bothered to read the instructions after having poor wi-fi performance, yet you think he's going to give you a thorough set of benchmark tests?)
Also, comparing load time is more a benchmark of disk speed, and loading the second time would more than likely have pulled it straight from the disk cache, especially on a machine with 2gig ram..
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
It's clear from two weeks of testing that Apple's new Power Mac G5 dual 2-GHz machine is the fastest thing the company has ever produced.
Wow! That's really surprising. Nobody could expect that. After all, why the high-end new generation machine should be any faster than the low-end or older generation machines from the same company? This guy really did his homework, it took him only two weeks to discover this oddity.
The big problem with the dual and higher Xeons is that they're limited to a shared 533 MHz bus. For the wide class of memory-bound problems, the G5 will sweep the floor with them, since each processor has its own 1000 MHz bus.
My video compression blog
I'm not so sure about that. I ran some very quick informal tests (with other apps running in the background and such) of Photoshop and some other things that are comparable to the article's tests. My single-processor, 32-bit 2gHz P4 (2+ years old now) either matched, came very close to matching, or in some cases even outperformed, the dual-processor G5. (i.e. Photoshop takes 9 seconds to start for the first time, 4.5 seconds subsequent times). That's with all the G5's beautiful fast memory and cache and 64-bit eliteness. I'm pretty certain that if there were comparable startup-time tests that I could perform on my Linux machine, the disparity would be even more glaring. Hey, even my battered 600mHz Celeron laptop with only 128 MB of RAM comes alarmingly close to the times posted in the article. As someone who owns both Mac and PC hardware, the only conclusion I have ever been able to come to is that even outdated PC hardware beats the newest and best from Apple when it comes to things like startup times and application response times.
On top of that, Gabe Newell is a big Mac fan - the only reason the HL1 port started was because he pushed it.
Now that OSX is a viable platform, I'd be very suprised if he didn't port HL2+Steam over.
I don't think that IS the point.
The point is that you can't have it both ways--ie, the article can't say "fASTER THAN ANY PC" only to then qualify it by saying "well, compared to a similarly priced pc, bought from one of these three companies, and only storebought configurations. That is illogical.
Apple has always, consistenly, lined their product up against the most expensive first-line PC Clones. It's the only way they can compare price-wise.
Back in the day, they always compared their prices to those of the pricey Compaq boxes that nobody, anywhere, bought outside the corporate 'office machine' market. Everybody I knew at the time was running high quality (because everybody got to consider and rate each individual component that went into them) white box clones. Most people I know still are. 'Compaq' prices have dropped. So have Apple prices, for that matter. Just like all other prices in computer hardware. End result: Apple boxes are still just as over priced.
A Good Intro to NetBS
supercomputer that was just built using ll00 of these things? See http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/30/1838222.s html?tid=137
Virginia Tech was building the machine in September and their goal was to make it into the top 10 on the www.top500.org list.
The deadline for the next release of the top500.org list was October 1, 2003, anybody know if Virginia Tech was successful in building/benchmarking the machine?
Well, I'm typing this on the new 1.33 GHz G4 17" PowerBook. I've got the same RAM and graphics card. You win on drive speed (I've got a single 5400 rpm). On a large but not complete set of tasks, your faster processor and memory bus will make it faster. Price was roughly comparable (a few extra $100 on my end).
:). And can use it in my lap without getting scalded. And when I open the screen, the machine is fully awake before I can get the lid all the way open. And the battery can last for 3+ hours. And its' certainly a lot lighter and thinner than yours.
But I run rings around you in Final Cut Pro
And I can't tell you how long it takes to boot, since I never have to reboot it. Once for the 10.2.8 update.
My video compression blog
For fuck sake, you have a game console for that sort of stuff.
"My sister hasn't turned off her iMac in months. My iBook is always on and instantly wakes from sleep. You don't reboot a Mac nearly as often as you would a PC."
That depends on what OS you are using on the PC, I run Linux and very rarely need to reboot and it has no problem waking up from the sleep mode(its called Lock Screen in Gnome).
After paying for the computer he had no money left for all that expensive software you want him to benchmark.
Unfortunately, VirtualPC won't run on the new G5s ... yet.
-glynor
Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.
The new G5 from Apple is more than merely "fast". It is a workstation in its own right. In "Byte of the Apple", "Businessweek" notes that the new Macintoshes are, in fact, UNIX workstations. The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations.
Steve Jobs, if he had any sense, would be marketing these machines as workstations instead of mere personal computers. With 64-bit processors, these machines are fully capable of handling engineering workloads like Verilog, HSPICE, fluid-dynamics simulation, etc.
Right now, a tidal wave of Linux-on-x86 machines is drowning Sun Microsystems in the workstation market. It sure would be nice to see a G5 take some market share bled from Sun Microsystems. In fact, it would be ideal to see a Linux-driven G5 take market share.
I agree that the article's idea of technical numbers is laughable.
Here are some application benchmarks that include the dual G5. For a lengthy discussion of each, head over to Ars Technica's battlefront forum... I believe each has its own thread.
Photoshop
Lightwave
After Effects
Cinebench
As you can see, the G5 is certainly competitive with the fastest x86 offerings.... better at some things, worse at others. I personally find this pretty amazing for such a new chip; I think the situation will only improve as developers further optimize for the G5. The promise of 3Ghz systems within a year (recently reiterated once again by Steve Jobs, who is usually very secretive about future products) is exciting as well.
I think the situation will be the same for the Opteron, which unfortunately just doesn't seem to be in enough hands to be tested thoroughly yet. I expect it to make a big splash, but to take some time to fully realize its potential as well.
I'm always startled to see people getting excited about three-digit price differences between base machines for things meant for the video market.
I'm building a HD editing/compression system. When you add in storage, displays, audio, etcetera, even a cheap setup makes a $500 difference pretty tiny.
For my needs, I'm shaving THOUSANDS off by going Mac. Why? Xserve RAID. I can get 2.5 TB for about $12K, that's fast enough for 1920x1080i60 at 10-bit uncompressed capture. I haven't been able to find anything that's close to that price performance on Windows.
This is an edge case, granted. But for anyone who bills by the hour, a few hundred bucks in a system that's going to be making you money for a couple of years is nothing - like a quarter a day. Downtime for one tech support incident could eat up the entire differential.
My video compression blog
Period.
Yes, you're right. Dell does not manufacture their computers, in any meaningful sense of the word. That's one of the reasons why Dell's quality and customer satisfaction are below acceptable norms.
Let's look at this two ways. If you don't buy a Mac, you buy a Dell or something comparable. You pay the same price or a bit more.
If you don't buy a Dell, you build it yourself from parts. You end up paying not just a little more, but CONSIDERABLY more, once you add up the dollar value of your time. Of course, if you have more time than money, then by all means, spend the weekend putting parts into a Fry's case. Most people do not have more time than money. For most people, it's just the opposite: money is precious, but time is much more precious.
Dells are FAR better values than computers built from parts, and Macs are FAR better values than Dells.
With the G5, Apple is finally competitive on speed with Intel/AMD. It's not "supercomputer" performance, but it's a little faster than the P4 and probably comparable to the AMD 64bit offerings. It's also still somewhat more expensive, although Apple's prices are more reasonable now than they used to be.
If our time is so valuable, then what the hell are we doing posting to slashdot?
Yeah, but if you tried to specifically copy a 17 MB folder from a server, then you would have been really screwed.
Or so I hear.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
No, in reality the vast majority of PC software has no Mac equivalent.
This is true. I tried to get "Windows XP Tutor" from the Video Professor guy who's on TV all the time and they don't have it for Mac.
I bet all their other super high-quality software is PC-only too.
FTA:
One final note: I whined in my first review about the G5's weak Airport wireless signal. Several readers promptly (and pointedly) wrote to ask if I'd installed the Apple-supplied external Airport antenna. I had not. I did. And it took care of the problem. Even when setting up the easy-to-use-Mac, it always pays to read the manual.
OK so this guy couldn't RTFM and then bitched about a "crappy product" (obviously not the case) and we're supposed to think his very vague (counting fingers style) timings are some kind of "benchmark"?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
"It is just comercial shrink wrapped crap that comes one size fits all."
No wonder the stores don't sell Mac software. They'd have to have a PC section, a Mac OS 8 section, a Mac Os 8 Quadra section, a Mac OS X section, a Mac OS X Dual G5 section, etc etc etc...
You'd have a Babbage's the size of a Wal-Mart to contain all the sections.
"Think of shrink wrapped software as ease of use for the drooling luser."
Translation = ease of purchase and installation is something that is not desired. No wonder hardly anyone chooses macs.
"Windows XP Tutor" that runs on MAC?? Good point.
Out of curiosity, I just launched Photoshop on my windows machine (1700+ Athlon XP- 512 Megs Ram - Ultra-100 7000 RPM HD - Windows XP Professional).
Total time to launch? 4 Seconds.
So, the new Dual G5 2 Ghz's launch at the same speed as my Quasi-Old Athlon box. Granted, I wouldn't mark performace by how long it takes an application to launch, but those are the numbers in an apples to apples comparison.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
"Is pure speed enough? What factors are most important to 'real' consumers?
/., but offer little insight into real consumer thought/need."
Stories like this appeal to the geeky 'need for speed' undoubtedly ramoant at
Well the worm has certainly turned. Now Macs are too focussed on speed? Too powerful for the average consumer?
Apple just can't seem to catch a break. I think what we have is a population that is just too afraid to eat crow. Just because your sh*t is warm and comfortable, doesn't mean you have to sit in it.
true story though..
I got a 1.3ghz, running windows xp
when I copy over the network from my pb12"
the winxp computer slows like a dog.
7200rpm maxtor in the xp
5200 rpm whatever in the 12".
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Yeah I agree.. the author wasn't particularly interested in scienti -
The G5 may be great, but all this article leads me to believe is that Apple users are about as detached from reality as a PC gam3r d00d pissing on about how Quake 3 runs at 178 instead of 172 FPS on their $2000 penis extension.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Mod up parent!
It is pathetic. I'm very happy with my 3ghz P4... it just screams, and it was under $1200.
MAYBE the G5 is faster. But for $6000, NO THANKS!
Then I'm not buying one any time soon.
While the Opteron might be great and all that, and as an AMD fan I'll almost certainly buy one at some point, they just came out and are *way* overpriced. Besides, even if I had the money, and the need to buy such a machine, I still probably wouldn't. Losing a $150 CPU (more or less the price of one of mine) of course sucks, but it's affordable. Breaking a $810 one though...
And given the prices you quote above I'd probably get better preformance by buying two dual boxes. My dual motherboard was about $240, btw.
Heh, I have use Mac OS, thanks, and if you're getting blue screens with Windows you're either using an ancient version or you have shitty hardware.
I've used Mac OS many more times than I wish I had. What I said may have been a troll, but it's all true. Try learning some keyboard commands some time, you can get work done faster. Then again, since you're probably already afraid of the command line, you're probably too afraid to take your hands off the mouse too.
The Sun Blade 2000 has been shipping for over a
year in 8Gb configurations - and I'd be willing
to bet it would eat a G5's lunch on anything
memory bandwidth constrained; be interesting to
see where it sat relative to G5 in price/
performance terms, too.
My Mac shuts down 95x faster than a Windows machine. Therefore its processor is 95x faster.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
> Nor does it reflect the Unix based OS that you get with the Mac.
UNIX UNIX UNIX
It might be the fastest and it might be UNIX, but it still has the gayest, most unintuitive, most non-keyboard-centric user interface ever designed. Oh, that and the fact that there is no longer a start/apple menu so all you applications are crammed onto a long bar at the bottom with no text description.
"I for one welcome our new cheese grating overlord."
If I want a Linux box, I am free to choose both OS and HW vendor from plenty of sources. If I want a Windows box I have only one OS vendor, but lots of hardware vendors to choose from. If I want a Mac, I have only one OS vendor and the one and same HW vendor.
I am sometimes heard complaining about the defacto monopoly MS has in personal computer issues, but compared to Apple users HW/OS choices, Windows users situation actually looks better.
Note that I don't dislike OSX/Apple as such. It's a polished product. But, I won't leave one monopoly for an even bigger lock-in.
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
granted. I wasn't thinking of Linux folk and should have made myself clear. I personally used Linux for years. Just those poor windows bastards don't know what they're missing. :)
-
I don't know about you but Windows XP consistently gets sluggish when copying large amounts of data (>5GB) on my Dell Inspiron 8100. I do agree though that OS has a bigger impact than the hardware for being responsive. In fact, my iMac 17" at home running OS X is much more responsive than Windows XP is on faster hardware. Just goes to show you how much Windows sucks, but we knew that already...
"The deluded are always filled with absolutes. The rest of us have to live with ambiguity." - Aristoi, Walter Jon Willia
The Dell SILL beats the mac.
Get your facts straight, you mac idiot.
If you spend your time building computers you don't have time for posting insightful comments on slashdot.
That's why time is valuable.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Photoshop benchmark
Phillip
what notebooks based on g5s?
Geeze... this hardly warrented Flamebait... you made perfectly valid points, the 'benchmarks' here show nothing to suggest that this mac is faster than ANYTHING else... it just doesn't even try to, what a pointless article to link to.
It just shows that Slashdot editors will link to ANYTHING Mac related.
If you want think different" (run an application outside of the most common uses), you would be forced to ditch the Mac.
All you PC users are like sheep.
If you want to think differently, you program your own software. At the very least, you compile it yourself.
"The point is: Macs and OSX just work and they're beautiful!"
I wish we could pass a law so that people like you wouldn't be allowed to use computers.
That would make everyone... both PC and Mac users... feel better.
It was a TRS-80.
"I told you not to be so stupid, you moron"
- Ben Stern
Duron 1.3GHz, nForce1 mobo, 512meg DDR, UDMA66 HD, running WinXPPro... Photoshop (Academic cheapo license) launch time 10 secs, relaunch time 4 secs.
System cost about $300, around 18 months ago.
(and yeah, it's cheap and cheerful. It does fine for my fairly meagre needs though.)
Guess I won't be buying a Mac anytime soon...
maybe, but there's also lots of hot artsy chicks.
That's funny....I have actually shutdown my XP laptop twice since I built it(two security patches). Last shutdown was over a month ago. And I have never, EVER had a blue screen, lockup, or system freeze since this system was built (Jan 03')...
Why would a G5-linux machine be ideal?
It's been a long time.
While these G5 systems are expensive for consumers, that really isn't your market.
Your parents should look at the consumer lines. The eMac starts at just $799. I'd probably toss an extra 256 MB stick in there, but you'll still have a complete internet/productivity machine, with monitor, for ~$850.
Sure, you can get the cheapest Wintel machine for less than that, but if you're providing technical support, it's probably worth a little of their money for them to have a machine without BIOS messages and effectively immune to viruses.
My video compression blog
"And, just to give you an idea of the technical competence of the reviewer"...
Ok, so the guy didn't RTFM. That makes him stupid, I guess. We all here always RTFM, just as we RTFA, always. Cause we smart, yeh...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I think his point was that comparing things like boot times and application start times is not an equal measure of performance. Linux boots faster on my 400mHz box than Win XP does on my 850mHz machine. In order to actually compare performance the exact same task must be done by each, such as the application of a specific filter in photoshop, or creating an MPEG-4 video from an MPREG-2.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
" If you want to think differently, you program your own software. At the very least, you compile it yourself."
hmmmm. I thought programmers had to write the program, not any Mac user who wanted to follow the company's slogan. Really puts the lie to the "ease of use" claim.
"All you PC users are like sheep"
No, we just tend not to be easily fooled by the "buy it because it is blue" campaigns.
I'm sure he meant G4s. Or he's making stuff up, maybe.
I agree, im sorry to see this modded down like that. It wasnt a +5 comment or anything, but him talking about an old 500 dollar computer beeing almost as fast as a new 5 thousand dollar one.
I thought the fact that his honda accord was cheaper than this computer kind of funny even.
Sorry i dont have mod points man i would have tryed to fix it a bit
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Yes, but no Battlefield: 1942, for example. Sigh. All the same I love my G5, but I wish I could completely replace the PCs in my house -- but as a gamer, that won't happen at least for a while.
I have to agree on the startup times of photoshop 7... I have access to a couple of machines running xp and photoshop 7 on 7200RPM 8Mb cache hard drives and they all startup approximately the same time, but when I start it on my raid0 stripping array of IDE drives i get dramatically faster startup times...... (eg, the cpu has jack to do with startup times, neither does memory size or speed. except on 'cached' startup...
Im sure most of you will claim that under no condition will you shop at best buy. Having said that. Im sure while you were in there last you would have noticed that Macs are taking over. Its Mac everything. iPods,iMacs,G5,G4, ect... There is even a seperate software section now. I was just currious if you guys think that the new arrangement with best buy is going to help Mac buy some market share. The sales people tell me they are selling like hotcakes. Personally i would love to see mac gain some share...then let the clones in.
made me take a look at OSX. I had tried Linux but did not have the time to devote to really learning it. After talking with a Apple rep at CompUSA and a few people I knew who were using Mac's I ended up buying a g3 iMac. I was the right price, and if I didn't like it it seemed that they were still fetching a good price on ebay. I did end up selling it but now I own 2 macs. One 17" fp iMac and a 12" powerbook. MS Office X and Toast were the only programs I needed to buy since everything else I needed was already there. As for the price, I don't think that the prices were too high considering the software that comes with these Mac's.
Once again, Apple proves they're just full of marketing hot air.
RTFA, you tool. Apple had nothing to do with which tests were run.
The Sun Blade 2000 has been shipping for over a year in 8Gb configurations - and I'd be willing
to bet it would eat a G5's lunch on anything
memory bandwidth constrained
Would it? I don't know what the design of the Sun Blade 2000 is, but the G5 is no slouch in the memory/bandwidth department...dual independent 1GHz FSB busses, dual channel DDR400 RAM, HyperTransport linking the I/O to the rest of the system. What is the memory subsystem of the Blade 2000?
New quieter fans for those? I swear I read that you could exchange the fans for an updated quieter one. I might be mistaken.
You can choose your shell to use in OS X... I think it' just under the terminal prefs...
And I've used PCs all my life, until about 4 months ago, and OS X took something like 2 days to get used to.... I haven't turned on my PCs except to get some files from them since i got it.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
A dumb move. Apple already markets their stuff towards professionals who need the beefiness of a workstation-quality platform. To overemphasize the workstation market would require that they cease to market the new boxes as consumer level computers.
OS aside, the only real difference between a workstation and a personal computer is the price tag and power. At just over $4K for the configuration tested in the review, you're talking about a lot of money for a PC. But the people who only need a box for home know that they can shop near the lower end of the scale, and the ones who are doing serious work know what they're getting at the top end.
I was just saying the other day how much my G5 notebook was like a portable Unix workstation. It's not as cool as my G6 notebook, though. I think of that as my portable TIME MACHINE.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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.
Hey, you get flames when you troll. But why else would I fuck anyone else but you, when you take it faster, harder and deeper than other beyaches?
The problem is from what I understand Mac OS X hasn't been compiled or optimized for 64 bits, it is still running in 32 bit mode. This is why Jobs has the sense to not market these as 64-bit workstations. There's no doubt that these are fast machines and great computers but until the software running on them actually takes advantage of the 64 bit processor these are no different than running Windows or Linux on the new Athlon64 in 32 bit mode (granted you can run Linux in 64-bit mode now and MS has some betas out than run in 64-bit mode as well but you could also run the 32-bit versions of both if you wanted).
Just to add my redundant opinion. I've used lots of fast machines, and all the Macs in the last few years, and numerous very fast PCs, and I've owned a dual-CPU system for years (6 years, 2 systems), and let me tell you all:
The G5 is FAST. The dual 2GHz is a monster, so fast that very often for reasonably complex task, I'd ask myself if it had done it since no progress bar even appeared on the screen. It's faster than any other Mac or PC I've used so far, and it's even faster running on 10.3 beta.
Oh it's not cheap. But if you consider the better OS (it comes with a UNIX BSD-based OS), the excellent FREE iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD) for which I have yet to find equivalents on any other platform for less than mounds of cash, the sleeker design, longer life (don't deny it, I've seen it again and again, Macs are still usable after 4 years and more while PCs often see their end of life around 2-3 years), and higher resell value, as well as a nice, affordable extended warranty with excellent customer service (Apple won the latest consumer evaluation in that regard), you get back the additional money in better performance, better productivity, and longer usability. After 3 years, when the extended warranty runs out, you can seel your computer for a resonable amount and get a new one, or keep it as a secondary backup unit that can still do useful work.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
The G5 is a nice processor and apple's dualie a great machine, but these "tests" are not exactly conclusive by any means. They're freakishly amateurish.
Its nice that the machine is more reponsive (given the author's configuration) than his older machines (also given the author's configuration), but there are faaaaaaaar too many variables left unaccounted for these numbers to be good for anything except a group hug.
Having just said that, there really needs to be a universal cross-architecture testing benchmark for user-oriented statistics! Spec doesn't quite cut it, since you can cheat and your average user has no idea what the score means anyways. Lmbench is nice, but I think linux/unix/solaris-only, and for your average joe the OS he/she is going to be using with the machine should be part of the test.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Steve Jobs, if he had any sense, would be marketing these machines as workstations instead of mere personal computers.
There's loads of reasons why it won't happen, but I always thought that Apple should have bought SGI.
It'd be a huge engineering task, but having a consistant Unix with a good UI from laptop, to desktop, to machine room would be excellent, and SGI would give Apple the entree to research/corporate data centers they lack now, as well as some industrial-strength computing power they don't have now. This would give Apple a huge unified market in visualization.
The time for this would have been a couple of years ago when OS X was being developed so that it could have been developed for both platforms (and stuff from SGI merged into OS X). It's probably too late for it to be meaningful now.
The other option would be a merger/takeover by Sun. It's a poorer fit, though, as Sun is more datacenter/DB than visualization, but it would give Sun the ability to market a complete alternative solution to MS, including a really good end-user desktop.
Whenever I posit this, most people say "Apple's doesn't want to be a business/corporate platform". This may be true, but long-term its easier to see Apple's CPU development being less dependent on the good graces of a third party as well as having more compelling high-end computing driving their CPU development.
There's also nothing that says Apple should stop their consumer/botique marketing or market niche -- it would be important to a $UNIX+Apple company to keep the consumer/end user desktop viable, and staying in that market makes that happen.
It'd be good for "big Unix" as well, since Sun and SGI can't offer the lower end of the spectrum to the customers and end up bouncing off of MS-centric operations at a lot of places. With a total package that extended a viable, well-known platform to the desktop, their server offerings would get a better advantage, as well as giving them better lower end server offerings in Xserve variants.
Hey, news break for you jackass, WINDOWS DOESN'T MAKE HARDWARE!
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Hmm, wrong crowd getting defensive, I think. On all the real tasks he gave it a twin processor 2 GHz machine was roughly twice as fast as a 1 GHz single cpu machine.
Wow. Not.
no fortran compiler? did you do 0 research at all? in about two minutes i found g77 and Computation Tools 4.0, so there are probably more out there.
couldnt find any speed difference in 3 days? it sounds like you gave each group a day a piece. given that your developers didnt have any experience with the platform, im not surprised you couldnt come up with anything.
and as for your preference for FVWM...well...im sorry. its not 1981 anymore.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
no fortran compiler? did you do 0 research at all? in about two minutes i found g77 and Computation Tools 4.0, so there are probably more out there.
Oh yes, and g77 compiles fortran 90/95 code, does it?
couldnt find any speed difference in 3 days? it sounds like you gave each group a day a piece. given that your developers didnt have any experience with the platform, im not surprised you couldnt come up with anything.
You'll be surprised by the number of mac zealots in the house - particularly the pulsar group. If anyone would be able to get the best performance out of the machine, it would be them.
and as for your preference for FVWM...well...im sorry. its not 1981 anymore.
Nice troll.
Show me something as configurable as fvwm? Just because it is 10 years old (not 22), doesn't mean it is any less functional than something more "modern". Just because it doesn't hog CPU and memory doing useless eye-candy shit, doesn't mean it is not as good a WM. To the contrary - it never crashes, it does exactly what I expect a WM to do, it doesn't make work harder than what it ought to be (ie, it suites my habits very well - the virtual pager is the best virtual pager any wm has come up with, most others are seriously lacking).
I expect my computer to do work, not look pretty, or like a windows box on steroids.
"What essential commercial software out there is completely unavailable for and has no open-source alternatives for the Mac? "
Let me see, just in the area I work,
Working Model 3D, aka Nastran 4D
ADAMS
MathCAD
Automotive Signal collection and analysis suites
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on engineering 3D solid modelling (IDEAS, Unigraphics, Catia et al), but note that Rhino doesn't count.
To put that into perspective, I could use the Mac OS as a text editor, web browser, Excel, and email. My AMD 400 MHz can and does manage that quite comfortably.
What I want to see is a P4 and a G5 dropped from a ten story building and see which survives better. I think the G5 will, with its Aluminum body and all. Or shoot them from a cannon and see which travels farthest. The PC might win that one since it is smaller.
Nice to see Apple putting out parts this fast. Not that I'd buy a dual G5, or anything at that price (I'm a cheapskate DIYer), but I have to admit, there's some impressive technology in that box. Still... am I the only one who really wants to see a dual G5 compared to a dual Opteron? That'd be as close to apples to apples (no pun intended. oh, God, NO PUN INTENDED) as you could get. No sense in comparing a dual G5 to Intel space hea-- err, Xeons.
Ok, let's dispell the smoke and mirrors:
Case 120
Pwr 120
CPUs 600
Ram 200
HD 150
DVD 200
Video 400
OS 200
Mobo 200
Kybd/mouse 100
This puts the total at: $2290.00
This assumes you buy XP Pro as an OS. You can go Linux and save, but then, you can't do as much with Linux.
It takes me an average of 3 hours to build the PCs I build, plus and hour for an OS install. This involves careful mounting of the mobo and referencing the manual for any jumper settings, etc. I've built quite a few PCs in the past, although I'm sure someone that builds them every day and do it faster.
Add $200 for build/install labor, bringing the total to $2490. That's $509.00 less than the Apple System, although you'd need to spring for another hundred to add 512megs more RAM.
I call that pretty comparable.
Not only that, it's one stop shopping. If you build a PC, you invariably shop the net for the best price, meaning any problems involve lengthy ship times and multiple vendors, some of whom are more cooperative than others. One stop shopping brings peace of mind in that aspect many people prefer.
Macs aren't just for people that don't know squat about computers. While I'm certain I know less than many here, I'd lay odds have more knowledge and experience with computers than over 50% of the people that read slashdot. And yet a seasoned computer veteran like me likes Macs. Go figure.
I run all operating systems. I'm not foolish enough to believe that one tool is the best for every job. And Macs certainly aren't the best for everything. But they are for many things and the new G5 is excpetionally powerful, not to mention, reasonably priced in a bang for the buck manner, despite the typcally uninformed posts saying they can build a less complete, lower performing system for less.
DUH! I can also buy an iBook for less.
Wrong again. Apple has always lined up their Pro models against the expensive Wintel pro models. Apple lines up their low end iBooks and eMacs against the whiteboxes. In both cases, the Mac is not overpriced compared to the competition in its category.
Yes, a G5 might seem overpriced to someone who only needs an iBook, just as an Alienware box might seem overpriced to a college student who can only afford an eMachines crapola box.
Eh, some of us consider Mac OS X inferior to Linux. I run Linux on my Powerbook G4 because I couldn't deal with Mac OS X. That said, I love the notebook itself. It's of incredible quality. But, if you're a person who doesn't like Mac OS X, I can't see justifying the extra cost for a G5 workstation.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Why not benchmark against Sun/sparc and rs/6000 systems? That's the real competition right now, not Win32 boxes. I'll bet that a dual G5 has a better price/performance than any of the sparc workstations, and maybe a better one than the low-end rs6k boxes.
SUN STORE MODELS STARTING AT:$7,595.00
that is the cost. I think the Apple one "beats" it.
and most likely "meets" it in the performance catagory.
I was more referring to the idea that running Linux on G5, of all the superpowered supercomputer chips and Sledgehammers and Merceds of the world which Linux has been ported to, why is the G5, presumably running on Apple hardware, the ideal?
It's been a long time.
You notice this is apple.slashdot.org? Prepare for the onslaught of -flamebait!
Yes, and was I the only one who thought that the boot times for the G5 were pathetic? That article was practically gloating about the G5's 55 second boot time from chime to desktop, which really isn't all that good. Sure, its a decent improvement over the G4, but it still falls far short of the 35 seconds that it takes my 2.5Ghz homebrew PC to boot Windows XP. And I only paid $1,100 for that system 6 months ago.
This article was comparing Apples to Apples (both literally and methorpically!), but Timothy seems to think that it also somehow proves that the G5 is better than Oranges, too.
Anyway, please show me some reputible benchmarks comparing a $4,000 Mac to a $4,000 PC if you want to convince me to switch. Otherwise, please don't waste my time with biased advertising.
I actually thought that was the best part of the article, the author admitting he was a doofus.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
i recently installed yellowdog 3.0 on an old bondi blue 233mhz/160mb imac. i was amazed at how zippy and quick it is. OO.org loads in about 20 seconds, moz in about 7. now, this sounds slow, but running jaguar on it was quite frustrating at times. now, i konw jaguar is optimized fo rthe g4, and even though it runs well on my 700mhz ibook, it is not the fastest os. i do like os x, and love apple's x11. i lose little. but i think my next purchase, a 15" PB (when i get my masters in the spring) will dual boot, or just run linux with MOL. my only concern is that i haven't found a good jdk for linux ppc. maybe IBM has one.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
mister troll, absoft sells a f95 compiler for osx. nice try.
Obviously someone was not paying attention in their computer arch classes back in the day. Points a through f
a.PPC is a much cleaner ISA than x86, FP performance is superior undeniably, anything using altivec will maul the pc equivalent
b.Apples motherboard designs allow for much higher throughput to the PCI bus
c.64-bit goodness at a lower cost than AMD or Itanium, right now show me 2ghz dual 64 bit proc system that is cheaper than Apple's
d.OS X has programing frameworks and RAD development tools that beat the bloody piss out of anything MS offers or linux has.
e.Apple supports the whole widget, if you have ever worked in IT you'll know how convenient this is
f.OS X has fewer vulnerabilities than windows or linux
Answer this why do people spend big money on suns which specbench so much slower than Intel chips, hmm. The PC architecture is a toy, it could be offered up as how not to design a system look at the insane complexity of the machine code. Yes PC's with linux are a very good option for many things but it does not change the fact that Apple has a good product. It is time to admit that this is a useful product and is needed by some people. You sound so defensive and childish the G5 is a serious machine there is no need to attack it.
How many times do I have to read this stupid trolling post? I must have read this at least ahhhh.... once before and it was bloody annoying then too.
1. Your keyboard complaint is stupid. I'm using an iBook running Linux to type this and the last time I found myself inconvenienced by the keyboard was never.
2. Buy a fucking 3 button mouse you goddam sissy girl bitch.
3. Apple market their cool stuff to cool people, not sulking, single button mouse lamenting, keyboard intolerant turds like you. I bet they're sticking with the current design specifically to discourage you from buying a Mac. I bet they wouldn't sell you one anyway.
4. Fuck off and die.
5. Bitch.
Now wash your hands.
He he he That was a great war
Sager rules!...............obviously
This should not have been modded as flamebait. I disagree with zerocool, some of his info is not up to date, but he's basically being truthful. Hopefully, he'll get a nicer car sometime soon. Honestly, the G5 dual is too expensive for me at the moment as well. If I was back doing fcp/ae work for pay, it wouldn't be too expensive. But for just fucking around, I don't NEED a G5. However, when my mac lust wins out sometime next year, it's nice to know I'll be able to score a refurb for a good price.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Does sunblade run any high end film/video software? Will it run AE or Commotion?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
FLAIMBAIT?
...
Since when is truth flaimbait?
Posting an review on slashdot that claims that the G-5 is fast because it boots into photoshop in 8 seconds is flaimbait.
This is just pointing out the flaws in your article.
Sometimes I hate slashdot
~Will
sig?
The point is that you can't buy MacOS X Server hardware from more than one vendor.
Therefore it's proprietary. If companies wanted proprietary, they'd buy Sun, not Apple.
Thanks, dude.
I was kinda pissed to see this modded flamebait. If it hadn't been modded in any way, I would have been ok with that, but, damn.
Posting a review of the G-5 which claims that it's fast because "it starts photoshop in 8 seconds" is flamebait. Pointing out that a year-and-a-half old computer, worth $500, can do the same thing, is not flamebait.
Now, notice that I didn't say "the G-5 is not fast". I'm sure it's fast. All I wanted was some meaningful benchmarks.
I go to Virginia Tech, and even our cheezy college newspaper had a rundown on the dual 2ghz G-5, cause we're the assholes that bought 1100 of them to cluster. It says they do 14 teraflops or something. Even that was more useful than this.
~Will
p.s. made you a friend.
sig?
This makes no sense: the dual G5 has PC3200 with two dedicated 1GHz buses, faster than anything you're likely to find from Dell. So how does a machine with better throughput have worse performance?
Methinks PEBCAK.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
That was a Dell not a SAGER and please stop the silly comparisoms of course I can use it on my lap were talking about computers here not ice-creams. Thats why they call it a laptop and not a book or ibook which should stay in the library with its quiet fans on a shelf preferably low down in the kiddy section or maybe Sci-fi.
I obviously can't read. Quote please.
And having other companies sell machines that run mac OS helps Apple how?
The clones were killed for a reason - because cheapos buy cheap kit, not premium products, like Apple macs.
Apple does not sell to the do-it-yourself crowd, because they don't want to save *you* money, they want to make it.
Welcome to the tyrany that is slashdot. Where everyone knee-jerk mods what they don't want to hear and then stick their nose up at it and call it tripe.
The funny part is, if I was to round all those zealot mods up and kill them all *I* would be the one that goes to jail.
The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations.
No such thing, yet.
I have discovered a wonderful
Get off your high horse.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
All you PC users are like sheep.
And you use a Mac. Wait, Steve Jobs is talking... ooo... I gotta get me one of those G5's! Because it's all nice and fast. Benchmarks, longer bars, higher numbers! It's soooo much faster than those lousy PCs! Look 64-bits! Let's all buy one!
Don't get too close to the cliff.
You're comparing an OEM solution (the G5) to your homebrew setup. Of course you can buy more in parts when you're designing, building, and supporting it yourself. As has been shown several times in the past, the dual G5 system compares very closely in price to a dual Xeon system from Dell.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
sir i want this apple computer so please send me this computer and complet information by book and cd,s in my address 131-d angoori bagh scheme no:1 baghban pura Lahore,PAKISTAN 54920 Thanks
no
IIRC, Q3 is "SMP-aware" in that the sound system runs in a different thread than the rest of the game. Not a significant chunk of the processing, especially with hardware mixing...
May we never see th
A single 2GHz G5 easily beats a single whatever-the-fast-one-is P4, and finishes so close to a Xeon that it's essentially too close to call.
Remember NASA? They were benchmarking a custom-written PPC app for fluid dynamics. It was hand-tuned to exploit AltiVec for floating-point vector computations. It showed that an equivalently-clocked G5 ran about 30% faster than a P4. If this is what you're going on, I'm laughing. The instructions-per-cycle on a processor means nothing -- P4s run at a significantly faster clock. The problem is that the fastest G5 available on-market runs at 2.0 Ghz, and the fastest available P4 on-market runs at 3.2 Ghz. So the G5 loses if we measure by absolute fastest possible speed. Perhaps we should use a value metric instead? The best bang-for-the-buck you can get in a G5 from Apple is their $1999 1.6Ghz model. If I pick out a new P4 desktop at Dell using the Apple price as a guide, I can get a 3.0 Ghz desktop for less, which runs about half again as fast as the Mac...*with* a monitor, which Apple doesn't include, plus a bunch of other goodies, for over a hundred dollars less.
Wrongo, dimwit. The "overwhelming number of times" (speak English much?) it's I/O. Your computer spends more time waiting than it does working. This has been true for years and years now.
Heh. All right, you're right -- I wasn't very clear. I was thinking of long-running tasks (which *are* generally CPU-bound), not simply browsing through your filesystem -- the latency there isn't going to kill anyone. Trust me, you don't want to change the competition to I/O latency rather than CPU speed -- OS X is an extremely heavy RAM consumer, and Apple charges a notoriously high premium on RAM.
Is this a metaphor, or are you just an idiot? You know that Quake 3 isn't CPU bound, right?
It certainly was on my computer when I played it. I'm sure it's possible to build a system where that's not the case, but given that the rate of graphic chipset speed increases significantly outpaces that of CPU speed increases, that's a pretty weak claim you're making if you're considering an ordinary old computer.
You also know that nobody gives a flying fuck about Quake 3 frame rates, right? I mean, you do realize that the people who hang out in apple.slashdot.org actually do this for a living, and are more interested in Final Cut Pro or Logic performance than silly games. RIGHT?
You do realize that the majority of people on apple.slashdot.org (or any slashdot subdomain) are under 20 and care more about games than Final Cut Pro, right?
But, hell, since I've made assumptions to favor you all the way through here, I'll do so again. We'll go with your DV folks -- want to read their opinion? Apple's PR people are full of it WRT performance.
That doesn't mean that the G5 systems are bad, as I pointed out above. They're a great choice if you use Macs. But claims of them stomping x86 boxes are simply not true, and folks simply repeating false claims that Apple's made are not doing anyone any favors.
May we never see th
Last time I looked, Sun computers had the same issue as Apple boxes do, though more so -- they aren't remostly performance/price comparable to x86 boxes. With Sun boxes, you're paying for a system that you can get good support for, certain high-end features for, can easily migrate to more expensive systems from Sun, and are likely to be pretty reliable.
May we never see th
According to the Department of Commerce, you can only export four 2 GHz G5 machines to places like China until you need to get special permission.
:)
So the top end G5 is about 1/4 of a supercomputer. Now if they counted the GPU performance as well, it might be 1/3 of a supercomputer or even 1/2 in a double-headed configuration
because if you're not developing software for NASA, there is NO REASON to use a fast computer. Those pesky end users who want to run OS X on the fastest currently available hardware should just climb back into their BMW's and drive back to Soho!
Out of curiosity, how many times a day do you post to Slashdot from your high priced UNIX workstation?
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Thanks! Say, does your OS have any sort of compatible spell check application?
Please keep in touch, and let me know when you guys finally stop gettting your machines repeatedly cracked by all those script kiddies out there! They say it's only Russian Roulette if you're Russian!
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
...that's just how it is, you're new here, aren't you?
for exactly the same reason. :/
Grow up. Everybody has a right to buy and config whatever the hell they want to - and I think a dually G5 looks a hell of a lot better than anything you could cobble together out of parts from COMP USA....
"Windows XP Tutor" that runs on MAC?? Good point.
You are not the smartest bear in the forest, right?
"Sends other UNIX boxes to
"My PowerBook G4 is now running every major UNIX app that we had on our Suns, AlphaStations, and SGIS - and running them faster."
"ComputerWorld has an exciting [1]review of Apple's Dual 2GHz machine."
Personally, I'd prefer a review of an exciting machine than an exciting review of a machine.
I agree. However, as the pundits in the Sun groups on Usenet keep pointing out, Apple still doesn't put ECC memory in these things. If the dual G5 had ECC memory, they'd probably shut up, and might even come down off their high horses and buy 'em.
Remember NASA?
Remember Genentech? A 1 GHz G4 runs BLAST twenty times faster than a 3 GHz P4. For every example, there's a ball-busting counter-example.
I was thinking of long-running tasks (which *are* generally CPU-bound)
How do you define "long-running task?" Desktop PC users aren't running CFD jobs.
OS X is an extremely heavy RAM consumer, and Apple charges a notoriously high premium on RAM
Who buys their RAM from Apple?
You do realize that the majority of people on apple.slashdot.org (or any slashdot subdomain) are under 20 and care more about games than Final Cut Pro, right?
Wrong. Take a fucking poll. Slashdot may be a hangout for rich kids with too much free time, but apple.slashdot.org isn't part of it. Now, if you're referring to the fucking trolls--of which you are one--then yeah, they're children who think computer games are "the bomb." But... uh... who cares?
We'll go with your DV folks -- want to read their opinion?
Hee hee. That article has been debunked six ways from Sunday. You're fucking hilarious.
But claims of them stomping x86 boxes are simply not true, and folks simply repeating false claims that Apple's made are not doing anyone any favors.
Except that the claims ARE true, and that Apple DID NOT make them, initially; Apple just repeated what an independent lab found to be true.
What particular pathology is driving you to ignore FACTS?
Plenty of real world benchmarks/application information can be found over at Macintoshian.n Topic/page?a=fr m&s=50009562&f=8300945231
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/Ope
You seem to have confused "best" with "worst".
Honestly, is that what passes for witty in your neck of the woods? What a shame, that.
Here, let me give you an object lesson on insults in the vein you were aiming for. Something a little like this, perhaps:
You seem to have confused "your opinion" with "something I could give a shit about".
There now. Isn't that better? Of course it is. One day you'll understand that this is for your own good.
The problem is that the fastest G5 available on-market runs at 2.0 Ghz, and the fastest available P4 on-market runs at 3.2 Ghz. So the G5 loses if we measure by absolute fastest possible speed.
Oh, come on - I don't really believe that Apple has caught up with PeeCee's quite yet but you know very well that MHz is not equivelent to "absolute fastest possible speed" becuase processor design is so much more complex than that - To make a very simplified example which has a "faster absolute possible speed" a 3GHz machine that processes 1 instruction per cycle or a 2GHz machine that processes 2? Or a 3GHz machine with a deeper pipeline that requires 10 stages to produce a result or a 2GHz machine that only requires 5? In both cases of course the 2GHz* machine has a MUCH faster "absolute possible speed". This is roughly the situation between PowerPC and X86 - the processor designers for the PowerPC have tended to favor slower chips that do more in each cycle, while the X86 designers have always preferred to go faster but do less. While it may not be *quite* the case when comparing the 2GHz PowerPC and the 3GHz Pentium or Xeon it is as far as I can see pretty darn close. Apple (or more accurately IBM) have definetly gotten themselves back into the ballpark after several years of falling further and further behind.
*(Pretending a myriad of other factors doesn't enter into the equation)
my only concern is that i haven't found a good jdk for linux ppc. maybe IBM has one.
Blackdown makes the one I use on my Yellow Dog box. I don't know how hardcore it is -- I only use it for my undergrad CS programming assignments -- but it seems nice enough to me.
--saint
Because it's all nice and fast. Benchmarks, longer bars, higher numbers! It's soooo much faster than those lousy PCs! Look 64-bits! Let's all buy one!
A perfectly sensible reason to buy a Powermac G5, if you ask me.
The notebooks based on G5s are, in fact, portable UNIX workstations
:)
I don't think there is such thing yet
When was the most recent high end model any computer manufacturer has made _not_ the fastest and greatest?
I like to read three year old (or even older) computer magazines and see how blazingly fast the computer we consider old today was seen as at that time.
I bet we will never see a pulitzer prize winner from the computer press!
In the era I am talking about, Apple didn't HAVE a 'Pro' line to differentiate. I am talking about back when Apple was hyping, say, a Mac IIci and comparing it to a Compaq Deskpro 386. Both were overpriced salesman-boat-payment boondoogles.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Besides, IMO, while adding -support- for ECC memory would be nice, it would be bad business for Apple to actually have ECC memory preinstalled (beyond possibly as a CTO offering), as that would drive up the prices for everyone and would be detrimental to its primary markets.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
You buy at really expensive places. An Athlon MP 2000+ when I bought it was about $150 each. RAM cost me $70 for a 512MB *registered ECC DDR* module. I can get a hard disk for $100 or less. A $400 video card is way overkill, I use a GeForce 2MX. Very good cards can be found for $200. My motherboard did cost $270 though.
Btw, $4198 - $2490 = $1708, not $509.
You end up paying not just a little more, but CONSIDERABLY more, once you add up the dollar value of your time. Of course, if you have more time than money, then by all means, spend the weekend putting parts into a Fry's case.
This is a rediculous argument. Here's a little fact for you, your time is worth nothing. Unless building a computer somehow prevents you from doing work, you're not wasting "billable hours" building a computer on a saturday afternoon.
Do you hire a maid because she makes less money than you do and you "save" money by not doing it yourself?
Of course not, because your time is worth nothing outside of the 9-5 workday.
Shame to the moderators for not reading the article before marking your post as "Insightful", when the very phrase you object to lies in plain view.
I don't know what's with you Apple users. I've been sitting at this dual G5 trying to copy a 17 Meg file for... holy fuck was that fast!
Ok, I get it now.
Here's a little fact for you, your time is worth nothing.
Maybe your time is worth nothing; mine isn't. Every minute I have to spend diddling around with a screwdriver or a nutdriver or a device driver or whatever is a minute I can't spend with my wife and our daughter. It's a minute I can't be outside. It's a minute I can't spend lying on the beach. It's a minute I can't spend in a museum, or cooking a meal for some friends, or playing touch with my next-door neighbor and his sons, or going to a Sox game, or riding my bike, or watching reruns of The Simpsons on my TiVo.
My time is worth a lot to me. When the opportunity presents itself, I happily trade money for time.
Do you hire a maid because she makes less money than you do and you "save" money by not doing it yourself?
As a matter of fact, yeah. We have a maid service come through once a week, at $75 per visit, to straighten up, clean the bathrooms, and vacuum. Because that's one job we don't have to do ourselves. We happily trade money for time.
Same thing with this computer. I bought it at the Apple Store last year. When I got it home, it was out of the box and running in about five minutes. It's worked perfectly ever since. Time for money. It's a bargain.
YOUR time may be worth nothing to YOU, friend. Don't presume the same to be true for others.
"If I want a Mac"
...
By that I meant "If I want a Mac with MacOS". I thought that was obvious, but obviously not.
Newsflash, I can install Linux/BSD on almost any windows box too, if you are going to read it that way.
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
"If I want a Mac"
By that I meant "If I want a Mac with MacOS". I thought that was obvious, but obviously not.
Newsflash, I can install Linux/BSD on almost any windows box too, if you are going to read it that way.
.
---
The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
I was going to say the same thing.
I didn't assemble this machine myself, I got it from Cyberpower, short a few parts I didn't need or already had lying around from old systems (CD drive, an extra HD). It's NOT top of the line, I know, but some cheap upgrades I'm working on now are helping out. Now, I spent $532 on this. $433 before shipping.. For everything but the monitor and the CD drive. I have no DVD burner, this I regret...But, you know what, I have the bill here. I'll copy this over. Some of it is crazy. I know. I so reccomend Cyberpower...
This is exactly what the bill says. And it's what I have, and it's what I paid.
$0 Leadtek K7NCR18D NForce2 MB
$0 EVGA GeForce4 MX440 64MB
$351 AMD XP-2100+
$0 256MB DDR
$10 Maxtor 60GB HD
$0 CPU fan
$0 Case fan (x2)
$35 SBLive! 5.1
$0 3.5 Floppy
$0 Black ATX Medium Case
$0 PS2 Mouse (silver)
$0 PS2 Keyboard (silver)
$9 Fan LED's (Heh. Heheh.)
$9 Mechwarrior 4 (Hey. I like it.)
$0 1-Year Onsite Service
That totals at $433. This was in February of this year. Oh yes.
Here's a really beefy MC9 rig (3+ TB, RAID-5, 5 zones, 75MB/s sustained stream).
Da Blog
I see. So you're saying that Macs were overpriced way back in the 1980s, but now they're not. Thanks for admitting your data is 20 years out of date.
I withdraw my previous remarks. Back when you say Apple didn't have a pro line, they had the MacIIcx through the IIfx, and they also sold the MacPlus models. They had clearly differentiated pro and consumer models. And they were all price competitive with PeeCee models in their target niche.
Apples hardware is STILL overpriced, within it's market segments. Their 'consumer' hardware is priced significantly higher than other 'comsumer' hardware. You never see an Apple machine priced competetively with the cheap boxes at WalMart. They'd never be able to even penetrate the WalMart-level market and maintain their margins.
Similarly, their 'professional' line has to be compared to the more expensive 'professional' lines to be competetive.
They can't compete in the white-box market, and they definitely can't compete in the home-builder geek market. Their only means of competing there is putting on airs of snobbery, etc.
This hasn't changed. Same as it was 20 years ago. 20 years ago, though, they had teams of lawyers actively driving anybody out of their market, i.e. the Apple II cloners. Hell, a few years later they tried to own the whole GUI concept, until they got smacked back to reality in the courtroom.
It's probably not possible for Apple to ever be price competetive. They've just got too expensive a business model. It's too dependent on effete designers and the most expensive marketing agency they can buy.
A Good Intro to NetBS
way less as in 600 bucks more?
Like anyone can even know that
maybe it has something to do with the G5 costing 3000 bucks, not 5000
Like anyone can even know that
You mean you can get a G5 laptop for $1700? sign me up :P
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
As for the $40, well, once I tested the configurability and the really, really, really cool Vis Studio IDE, I registered the shareware edition faster than any other software I can recollect. If the price is a sticking point, go with the earlier MJ8, which has a free edition with most of the functionality.
Da Blog
Now that wee Macintosh users are k3wl Linux hackers, I feel comfortable in posting this request for help.
I downloaded the first 10.3.8 update and it fucked up my 233-MHz grape iBook and now I can't get iLife to work. Would somebody tell me how I can get it working again?
Also, even though I *AM* a k3wl Unix hacker now, could you explain it in terms of which icons to click on, instead of that icky command line interface?
Thanks,
"Tron"
Google is your friend, my friend :)
Here are a few OSX-compatible bar-code readers. Check both the search results links and the sponsored links at the top and to the side, you might get lucky there too :)
What prompted me to do the search is that i know there had to be some solution out there for macs, because all Apple stores' cashier terminals are iMacs linked to a barcode *and* digital-credit-card processors. Cool huh? :)
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Did you get the G6 with a 23" screen or the big one?
Acually application load time is somewhat relevant in demonstrating the effects of, NOT the CPU, but rather, the overall I/O susbsystems architecture. Same for booting.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
So you don't think it says anything about human folly that this guy made a post saying 'but it doesn't hold a candle to these thingies here!' and putting two links to silly and amusing parody sites, and then was immediately marked as insightful and informative, when that was obviously the exact opposite not only of wht he actually was but of what he was actually intending?
*woosh* (Wow, all in one breath.)
Note that I make that last distinction because it is still ironic if someone makes a post that is 100% false and someone marks it as informative and insightful, even if he DOES think it's true. It's just that it's partly his fault too.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
A top of the line mobo runs about 150-200 and this was a dual proc, so I estimated about 200.
512k of lifetime warranty, reputable brand RAM runs about 100.
A reasonable size HD that is SATA (same as the Mac's) isn't under 100.
The Radeon 9800 is about $400, the card in the Mac.
Sure, you can drop the price by going with fly by night RAM companies, smaller, slower drives and an inferior video card, etc, but I say again...
For comparably equipped systems, it's price competitive to go with a Mac.
I benefit every time someone buys a Mac before they're fully stable. (So does Microsoft, which is unfortunate.)
:-)
Why? Because I'm going to buy a G5 in six months.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
So your claim is that if one company has a competitive advantage over another, then it automatically instantly wins and all of its competitors go away?
Additionally, are you somehow claiming that speed doesn't give you any competitive advantage at all?
I revise my claim. Dumb *and* obnoxious.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
What you originally said was If I want a Mac, I have only one OS vendor and the one and same HW vendor. Newsflash: Your post was highly unclear and highly unsucessful if this many people understood it. If it's obvious to you what you meant, it's not so obvious to others. Question: If you install Linux/BSD on a "windows" box, do you still call it a windows box?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Which aren't Apple numbers, by the way.
According to the ones I've seen, blast runs approximately an order of magnitude faster on a single G4 1.25 than it does on a single Pentium IV 2.8. Now, I don't know about the Xeons, but I'm going to hazard a guess that they aren't much different. So you'd need ten 2.8 Pentium IVs to match a G4.
Now, you might say that these numbers are wrong. I say in turn, I haven't seen anyone claiming that they're wrong except you. Have you run tests? If so, did you use the BLAST app that Apple provided, since it's been heavily altivec-enhanced (to match the vector-enhanced Intel versions)?
If so, show me your numbers.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
A valid point, except for two things.
One, MacOS 8 (circa 1996, so don't even compare it with Win98) and 9 are much more stable and pleasant network citizens than Windows 95 and 98, in my experience (having run three different networks, two corporate and one university, in the last ten years). (And the dramatic majority of machines in a corporate environment are certainly able to run 9 anyway. Which is definitely a better citizen than 8 is.)
Two, the earliest machines that run MacOS X are vintage 1997, and despite some griping from a few people here and there, I can tell you that on my vintage (early) 1998 beige G3 300 mhz (upgraded to 512 mb RAM), it runs *just* *fine*, including the internet sharing, web site-hosting, file serving, DNS, and a number of other server tasks, plus checking email, web browsing, etc. (Admittedly, I do my dev work, and my IT admin work, from my 400 mHz TiBook). So maybe comparing an OS that your vintage 1997 machine can be *comfortably* upgraded to, and Windows 98 (which is all that some similarly-aged machines can run with any reasonable level of performance) is not so irrational as you claim.
And yes, I know that 10.3.0 won't support the beige box. I don't know if I'll buy a new desktop then, or just continue using 10.2 on that machine and just upgrade my laptop.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
One thing that is missing that I would like is bandwidth throttling and on-the-fly lower-bitrate transcoding.
Da Blog
55 seconds? And that's supposed to be fast. My desktop boots up in like 25 seconds. And I can play games. Silly apple.
I blew $3,000.
Why?
Because I really love the Apple operating system, and it's the best in the world, especially if you're a Unix geek who also likes doing arty stuff like video editing and compositing.
Because I'm working on some projects requiring heavy compositing and special effects, and I really wanted to have the most powerful Mac I could find.
Because the aesthetics of the Mac make me happy and make me enjoy work, and life, more. This is more important than one might think; considering all the time I spend in front of the screen, and the value of that time, it's well worth the bucks to get a computer I really like instead of one I don't.
Hope that helps.
D
The only benchmarks I've seen are from PC Magazine...
Here is a page listing about a dozen different G5 benchmark examples...
http://www.titleofsite.com/archives/000042.html
The PowerPC 970 supports a bridge mode that allows minimally modified applications (photoshop uses a plugin) to take advantage of some 64 bit features, such as accessing more than 4 GB of memory.
The Athlon64 may offer something similar, but unfortunately, the marketing jargon associated with both chips is impenetrable at the moment
http://www.applelust.com/oped/amc/archives/print/a 030718.shtml
Stop trolling here and put your facts streight.
What specifically more usable with OSX that I cannot get with Windows or Linux? I have asked that question many times to Apple zealots and the only answer was: "it's more usable. period. no comments." Personally, I use all three (Win2k, OSX and Linux/GNOME) and haven't find anything more usable in OSX. Some details are even annoying.
What specifically makes you to think that the developement using OSX is faster than using Windows or Linux? I don't see that development shops (telecom, web, java, databases) have recognized OSX and moved to it. Personally, I develop on all three (Win2k, OSX and Linux) and I face most of problems on OSX (lack of dev tools, slow with Java, lack of database libraries), rather then on Windows and Linux.
So, stop trolling and put you facts here. If have any. In what I doubt.
Less is more !
I will personally eviscerate the next rube who complains about freaking mouse buttons. I am serious. This is the most moronic argument against a platform that I have ever heard. Macs come with stupid mice. Big deal, so do most PCs. Toss them in a drawer, spend 30-50 bucks and buy a nice optical scroll mouse with 5 buttons, plug it in, and SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Exactly right. Many people that whine about Macs and other OEM machines being too expensive enjoy the process of putting machines together as much as actually DOING anything with those machines. Analogous to car hobbyists who spend lots of time in the garage messing with carbs, valves, suspension, etc. all supposedly in the name of having a higher performance vehicle - which they will then use to cruise around town impressing other motorheads and using all that high-performance gear to race from stop light to stop light.
People who need a van, taxicab, or truck to actually DO something want to spend as little time messing with the vehicle as possible. Analogous to movie editors, book publishers, etc.
For some reason, many people seem unable to separate those who enjoy messing with the computer for its own sake from those who never want to mess with the computer but need a computer to get their work done. Both are valid markets. Apple is aimed at the latter group.
- Jasen.