PC World: Apple G5 Gets Trounced By Athlon 64

StewedSquirrel writes "PC World magazine has published an article comparing the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron versus Apple's G5 processor, both 64-bit contenders for the title of 'fastest desktop processor.' Apple has made many claims to be the first, fastest and only 64-bit processor for the desktop and workstation market, but (not mentioning the fact that Opteron beat the G5 to market by over 4 months) the benchmarks should speak for themselves. Of note is the 3.2GHz Pentium 4, coming in competitive with the G5, but significantly behind the Opteron and Athlon 64 systems."

Comments

But Linux will suck on both platforms.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gentlemen... I have a confession to make.
I hate Linux.

Don't get me wrong. I love that Linux exists. I love that there is an open source community that challenges the Microsoft monopoly. I think Linus Torvalds has done a great thing for planet Earth. I love that there are thousands of people who are programming free software for the simple joy of it.

I just don't want it anywhere near me, that's all.

I've been studying computers and computer technology for a while. I've taken one course specifically devoted to Linux, and I have had considerable dealings with it since. So, sure, I'm not an expert. But I'm not exactly a novice, either.

First of all: you have to learn all the stupid little abbreviated commands to use it, even if you have a nice clean GUI. There are no exceptions. Want to install that nice free software you just downloaded? Gotta do it from the command line. In contrast, Windows does everything for you. They dumb it down for you. Sure, it's a little insulting, a little demeaning... but I don't have to work at it.

Secondly... the infamous blue screen of death. Sure, I don't get it when I run Linux... but only because the screen of death in question isn't blue. It's more like black. Windows crashes when I try to run eight programs at once. Linux crashes when I close the laptop lid.

And I'm not talking about a little crash. I had to flip the bloody thing over and pull out the battery.

Thirdly... I'm sorry. Linux people are nerds. Now sure, nerds are a good thing... but you're all nerds. If I wanted to deal with a 100% nerd social circle, I'd go to Star Trek conventions. Let's face it... if you even know what Linux is, you're in the top five nerd percentile of the planet.

Fourth... crappy web browsers. Like most of the planet, I use computers primarily for the Internet, and the Internet primarily for the Web. My web access is important to me. I downloaded Mozilla once, just to try it out on my home computer.

It's slower than IE, and doesn't display some sites correctly. That makes it worse than IE. Period.

My dislike (and yes, a certain amount of contempt) for Linux is the main reason I don't like to refer to myself as a computer geek. Yes, I definitely have a lot of geekish tendencies. This website is a shrine to my geekiness. I am very geeky, adjective. But I am not a geek, noun.

Because I don't live on caffiene, I don't play Quake, I don't read Slashdot, and I hate Linux.

The KEY

[krray]

The KEY is: does either the Athlon or Pentium run OS X?

Re:The KEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs are fastar!

No they're not, and here's proof.

But macs are faster at speck, whatever that is!

No, they cheated on the test to make the PC look worse than it is.

But, um...Macs are faster at Photoshop!

Wrong, here's another test to disprove Stevie's secret filter test. They're even slower at Photoshop.

But they say they're faster!

Here the AMD absolutely trounces the G5 and leaves it in the dust.

BUT THE AMD DOESN'T RUN OS-X, W00T IN YOUR FACE PC BOY!

The floodgates are open...

[Anonymous Coward]

A dual CPU G5 couldn't stand against a single CPU Athlon FX-51. Talk about the worlds fastest "Personal Computer".

And before all the Mango zealots start talking about OS-X not optimized for G5 or not yet 64 bit, think also that the Athlons were running in 32 bit on an OS not made by AMD.

Also before commenting on the RAID setup, make sure you compare the results with and without raid to see the effect.

Finally don't bother us with arguments about which apps should have been used or not.

It's just one benchmark and the G5 was trounced. For even more better trouncing of the G5 by the Athlon 64, check the recent German c't magazine.

Re:Shhhh.....!

[DrEldarion]

Wake them? They sit there at night refreshing Slashdot every 5 seconds. You cannot escape them - they are everywhere, waiting for the chance to pounce on an article such as this with cries of "But we get OSX!" and "If you look at it this way, the G5 really is faster!" They cannot be reasoned with. FEAR!

-- Dr. Eldarion --

*cry*

[FatSean]

This isn't bashing. This is letting the Apple FanBoys know that their brief period on top is now over for the conceivable future.

And now, a summation of benchmark article response

[banky]

I'm so glad that someone FINALLY had the balls to call The Steve on his evil marketing ploy. How dare he try to claim that Apple was somehow better, when every Slashdotter knows it's not!

(He won't give us the source for Aqua, see. We installed Red Hat the other day and are therefore qualified to fix all the bugs.)

At any rate: I just wish Apple would go away and stop competing. Trying to improve their hardware and software - and then selling it with such outrageous distortions - is bad, and hurts the industry. It really hurt my ego to think that some Photoshop dork has a better computer than I do. We can' t have that. Everyone knows Apple sucks. Er, suX0rs.

Benchmarks, really! Everyone knows they're crap. ATI had the balls to claim theirs was faster, when everyone knows nVidia rules!!!1! (Or was it the other way around? I forget.) As soon as the benchmarks said nVidia was faster, I threw that piece of crap ATI out of my machine and got the newest GeForce.

*Sigh*

Apple could have always built OSX on x86!

[FatSean]

So don't try and shift the blame, son. Apple backed a loser (G5 is a baby cpu from IBM...they should have bucked up for something with more chest hair).

So there.

You're claiming a point?

[cnelzie]

SGI had 64-bit WORKSTATIONS for YEARS before Apple started marketing their solution as the "First" 64-bit Workstation.

IBM had 64-bit Workstations for Years before Apple started marketing their solution as the "First" 64-bit Workstation.

Sun has 64-bit Workstations for Years before Apple started marketing their solution as the "First" 64-bit Workstation.

Again, what is your point? Apple's marketing department is just as full of crud as everyone else.

BTW, The Intel Xeon was "never" meant as anything aside from being a Server chip, but that didn't stop people from making workstations out of them. UNIX, in general, was never meant as a Desktop Operating System, it was always geared up as being a Multi-User Server based system... But, that didn't stop anyone from making UNIX workstations, even Apple.

I say, if it works in areas that a product wasn't initially intended for, then by all means use it... The main reason behind the Opteron being 'geared' more for Server use is some architectural design differences that equate in higher fabrication and thus higher retail prices... Most 'desktop' users aren't willing to spend that much for a 'dekstop' system.

Again... I am still failing to see your point... (Did you even have one?)