Ars Technica Reviews Intel iMacs

Milton Waddams writes "Ars kick off what I'm sure will be a torrent of reviews of the of the new Intel iMac. Overall it looks like it's a bit faster than the iMac G5 and a bit slower than the PowerMac G5 dual core. I'm sure it will surprise many slashdotters to find out that Jobs' statements about the new iMac being twice as fast as the iMac G5 as being slightly over optimistic. AND it doesn't run Windows...yet..." I'm still waiting for the most important benchmark: frames per second in molten core combat.

Comments

Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[Space cowboy]

To be fair, Steve's statements were absolutely 100% accurate (assuming the figures are accurate, which I expect them to be). For that benchmark, the intel machine is 2x-3x faster. If anyone really expected them to provide not-the-best-benchmark-results, can I have some of what you're smoking ? And I have several bridges to sell you too...

My point is that the story write-up makes it sound like SJ is lying, and he's not. He's just presenting the best set of benchmarks he can, which is pretty much what I expect from the CEO of the company...

As for the multimedia-style benchmarks presented in the review, I think you can expect those to improve as Apple gets its collective head around SSE3. I would have thought the G5/G4 implementations would have been altivec'd to hell and back, and SSE doesn't have the immensely useful 'permute' operation, so the transform operation will have to be rewritten to SSE's strengths - I doubt that has happened yet...

Simon.

Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[AKAImBatman]

You've really just shown your bias haven't you? Absolutely 100% accurate, oh, unless they're not accurate.

I think you've missed his point. This is a common industry practice used for just about every piece of hardware and software on the market. To single Steve Jobs out for this practice rather than accepting it as the "norm" shows a distinct anti-Mac bias.

Steve Jobs may not have been lying, but he was most certainly being deliberately deceitful.

It's hard to be deceitful when it comes to something as nebulous as benchmarks. Every benchmark you run will tell a different story. The result is that you can pull a variety of different conclusions from the benchmarks depending on how you spin it. Given that Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, we can expect that he will spin the benchmarks positively. On the flip-side, we can expect that the Mac haters will spin the benchmarks negatively. The ones to really listen to are the moderates who tell us whether we're generally being delivered what we're promised or not.

Re:Benchmarks, accuracy, and choice

[pi42]

This isn't entirely accurate -- most people can tell the difference between 25fps and 60fps in a computer game, while they can't on a film or video. I believe 3dfx released an infamous demo back in the day with a spinning cube at 30fps and 60fps and you could always tell the difference.

What's the difference? Video and film have motion blur, which makes for smooth transitions between frames whereas games display things in discrete frames with no blur whatsoever.

Ever tried waving your hand underneath a strobe light going at 30 cycles/sec? That's 30fps yet the motion still looks strange, since it's like you're seeing discrete frames and not continous motion burred between frames.

Re:Why?

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

But what about if someone wants to run games (and perhaps other software that runs only on Windows) *and* still get the superior OS/apps found in Macs? Why should they be forced to buy two computers just so that they can preserve their "entire Mac experience"?

Shut up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you heard? It's cool to hate Apple now. It makes you '1337.

Anybody who says anything remotely positive about Apple, or especially about Steve Jobs, is a "fanboy." You don't want to be called a fanbody, do you? Then get with the program. Talk about how cheaply you can get a Gateway that's just as good as the new iMac or something, and insist that Woz is the only person who ever had anything to do with Apple worthy of any respect at all.

Oh... and maybe Tog, if you are a UI nerd.

amount of ram in benchmark

[DietFluffy]

What is the significance of arstechnica benchmarking the 3 macs with the following ram configurations:

iMac Core Duo: 512MB
iMac G5: 1GB
PowerMac G5: 4.5GB

Wouldn't such a large difference in the ammount of ram have a significant impact on benchmarks?