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Better Business Bureau Targets Apple's G5 Ads
deathazre writes "The Council of Better Business Bureaus has suggested Apple Computer withdraw its claims of the world's fastest, and first 64-bit, PC after a complaint by Dell. However, even having one of their ads banned in the U.K. didn't stop them here in the States."
Apple has already stated the ad has run its course and it will be 'mindful' of the request in the future. Meaning we've already made out on that one, better luck next time :)
You are aware that those numbers are usually LinPack numbers, not just theoretical specs, right? the Xbox probably does run at 80 GFlops in some theoretical sense, when you consider the graphics chip. But, that won't translate into LinPack numbers. The Apple supercomputer, on the other hand, actually has a LinPack score worth mentioning.
I have a G5.
For my code, it's faster clock-for clock than a Xeon, and (usually) slower clock-for-clock than an opteron. Benchmarks can be made to say just about anything, but I bet the G5 is the fastest thing around for some people running their software.
To date, Apple has not released a 64-bit OS for the G5, and not only has not announced any intention to do so, but simply avoids admitting this to be the case. Think what you like, but even if you think "64-bit" doesn't mean "a single application can access more than 4 GB of RAM", you certainly have to be perplexed by the sense in which Apple claims to have "broken the 4 GB barrier", given that their latest OS provides your app access to the RAM just the way an Intel-based 32-bit system can.
Since there is not 64-bit OS for this machine (although Linux is very close), I cannot prove that my G5 has 64-bit hardware, tho I guess I believe it.
I will now accept my troll-mod, since I have posted this atrocity in an apple.stlashdot.org story.
The BBB is nothing but a protection racket for businesses that traditionally garner lots of complaints (e.g. door-to-door sales, home improvement, predatory lending) to avoid escalation of a large number of complaints to people who would actually take some enforcement action.
The BBB is esentially useless after the fact if you've been screwed, but I personally check any local tradesman, etc. If I see a "blemish," knowing how easy they are to avoid, I do no business with that company. It's the same kind of due diligence as checking Google for references to a mail order company before you place an order.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
sigh... Photoshop has been 64 bit enabled since the G5 was introduced, Finalcut followed suit shortly after the introduction, and AfterEffects will no doubt be discontinued in the very near future, since Apple will clearly be pushing Shake (64 bit).
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
"performed the multi-processor "Rate" benchmarks with hyperthreading DISABLED" because the PC ran faster with them disabled. You're just trolling.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
They are now working to get 2 terabytes of IS.
Micron or Falcon Northwest shipped an Opteron gaming machine targeted at home users. This was the first 64-bit personal computer and most benchmarks showed the opterons faster than the G5, so the G5 wasn't the fastest, wasnt the first 64, it really wasn't anything but the best Mac you could buy.
Actually, the 533 MHz Xeon bus means a dual Xeon system is likely memory bound for a lot of video tasks, which are bandwidth-critical, or a mix of bandwidth and CPU bound. Single-processor P4 is a lot faster than Xeon for video decoding, for example, since the bus is 2/3rds faseter. Dual G5 and Dual Opteron provide way more bandwidth per processor than Xeon in dual configurations, and so win for a lot of media processing tasks.
My video compression blog