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PC World: Apple G5 Gets Trounced By Athlon 64

Posted by timothy on from the os-x-doesn't-run-so-hot-on-athlon dept.

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."

4 of 1,063 comments (clear)

  1. Innovation really exists by weez75 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    G5, Athlon64...any way you go it's an alternative to Intel. I think the importance isn't which is quicker but that they both offer serious alternative solutions to Intel which forces everyone to innovate. Both companies deserve credit for working toward better solutions for customers.

    --
    Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
  2. The Benchmarks speak for themselves? by gunnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So they compare 32-bit apps running on a 64-bit AMD chip to 32-bit apps running on a 64-bit G5 and conclude that the AMD chip is much faster than the G5.

    This does nothing to benchmark the capabilities of the chips -- just the capability of the chips to run non-native apps.

    Go back to your lives, citizens, nothing to see here...

    --
    Life is short: void the warranty.
  3. Sheesh, and people complain about apple's BMs by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did you look at the apps they compared the G5s and the Athlon64s with?

    Word- It's Microsoft, no shit it's going to be faster on windows, who would have guessed that?
    Premiere - The video app that sucks so hard on mac that Adobe stoped making it. Try the same functions on FCP and watch it come out a few times faster.
    Quake 3 - A game, 'cause you know macs are what everyone uses for gaming, and developers spend just as much time optimising their mac versions.

    Photoshop - The only relavant and fair app they bothered to test, and the G5 is noticablly faster than any of the Athlon 64 systems, beaten only by the Opteron.

    And /. calls this a trouncing?

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
  4. This is a joke of a benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I cannot believe this is taken seriously on Slashdot.

    Let's look into this more closely: the PCWorld team tested only four applications, one being Microsoft Word, FFS, and another being Premiere, which is no more supported on the Mac, runs in Classic and is leagues behind Final Cut Pro in terms of performance, as anyone with a clue in Mac video processing will tell you. This alone qualifies this comparison as biased in my book.

    Where is the After Effects test ? And where is the Mathematica test ? Did you only know that any G5 will trounce an Athlon 64 in these apps ?

    Also, looking at the results, I can hardly call it "trouncing the Mac". Only one in the four apps make use of the 2GHz' second CPU (Photoshop), and dutifully the G5 beats the PC in this test, and the scores in the other tests (not counting the Premiere's joke of an application) are not even that far apart.

    Lies, damn lies, statistics, advertisements and benchmarks.