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G5 vs Opteron, Finally

Posted by timothy on from the gracies-v-japan dept.

metfoo writes "It's been months since the G5 and Opterons have been available for purchase. When the G5 systems were first released, many Mac bashers and AMD nuts discredited the G5's performance. They always ended their comments with 'Wait until its compared to an Opteron, then we'll talk.' Well, it's finally time to talk. Barefeats has posted an article comparing the two systems. The G5 line was compared to a Dual 2GHz Opteron and the results are impressive. In gaming, the Opteron system proved to be superior, which is partly due to the superior 9800XT over the base Radeon 9800. The G5 spanks the Opteron in many of the non-gaming tests, except for the Photoshop tests."

2 of 650 comments (clear)

  1. Price? by BWJones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    O.K., hopefully this will put to bed all those folks who cry about Apple computers being so damned expensive. Feature for feature, the G5 is about $600 cheaper than the Opteron. I certainly found this out when I was pricing workstations from Dell and other Wintel manufacturers and the G5's from Apple. I went with a fully loaded G5 and the price delta was $1200 cheaper going with the G5. Plus, OS X is soooooo nice.

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  2. Remarks by internet-redstar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Price comparisation:
    - comparisation of artificially low memory systems as Apples prices are where Apple makes the most on. On the one hand claiming 'we don't want to build ourselves as Apples can't be build, and then going to another store to add memory, just isn't fair when comparing prices.
    - Boot-testing the Mac for performance difference with other the HD is a good thing, but the test in the other direction (booting the PC with the other HD might reveal that the bottleneck is in the other direction).
    - MacOS X is certainly better in 64bit environments than not wanting to run beta software on a system bought for performance.
    - The problem with the Mac is also that the graphics subsystem is already dated. The release cycle of Macs is just too long. When they're first released they -arguably- beat most of the fastest PC's. But the next version is only released at quickest 6 months later, if you compare at that time with latest hardware. Macs just can cope up.
    - I also assume that near the end of the cycle, Apple's profit margins are incredible high. It's a very good marketing tactic to keep hardware and software tied to each other, keeping it all under control.
    - As I'm typing this on my top-equipped 12" PowerBook, I must admit that MacOS X is a good OS and the hardware is very good (this laptop was cheaper than any comparable hardware at the time I ordered it - not any more at the time when it got delivered)
    - And as a rule of thumb, I always say it's better to buy a less expensive system and upgrade it quicker than to go for the fastest and be stuck with it for an extra year.
    - Macs also have a better second hand value, and that shouldn't be forgotten when taking the price into account.
    - But most performance comparisations clearly SUCK because they tend to be optimised for a certain system (because of lack of knowledge of the party), or highly dependent on release schedules of involved hardware or software.