Intel Mac Performance Behind Hype

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Intel Mac Performance Behind Hype

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 20, 2006 @06:21AM from the objective-looks dept.

Barry Norton writes "Steve Jobs, at the MacWorld tradeshow, boasted: 'the new iMac [with] Intel processor is two to three times faster than the iMac G5.' MacWorld (the publication) has been putting the iMacs through their paces. The results are a good deal less impressive than Steve's boast, showing an average performance increase of 10 to 25 per cent while performing a series of everyday tasks with software specially designed for the new systems." Ars Technica had another perspective on the new systems earlier this week.

12 of 444 comments (clear)

Newsflash! by daveschroeder · 2006-01-20 06:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

Company performs benchmarks to show product in best light!

From http://www.apple.com/imac/intelcoreduo.html:

2. Testing conducted by Apple in December 2005 using preproduction 20-inch iMac units with 2GHz Intel Core Duo; all other systems were shipping units. All scores are estimated.SPEC is a registered trademark of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC); see www.spec.org for more information. Benchmarks were compiled using the IBM compiler and a beta version of the Intel compiler for Mac OS.

3. Testing conducted by Apple in December 2005 using preproduction 20-inch iMac units with 2GHz Intel Core Duo; all other systems were shipping units. All of the iMac and iMac G5 systems ran beta Universal version of Modo. All other applications were beta versions.

And since actual application performance has been subjective since the dawn of time, how is this surprising?

I mean, we're talking about a company that said no one wanted flash players until they made one, that no one wanted to watch video on an iPod until they made an iPod that played video, and that said all x86 architecture and CISC processors sucked until they switched to them.

And you know what? All of the above statements had significant elements of truth to them. Apple is doing nothing more than showing its products, accurately insofar as it goes, in the best possible light. Is this the least bit stunning?
1. Re:Newsflash! by Mr.+Underbridge · 2006-01-20 06:43 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I mean, we're talking about a company that said no one wanted flash players until they made one, that no one wanted to watch video on an iPod until they made an iPod that played video, and that said all x86 architecture and CISC processors sucked until they switched to them.
  It seems your tinfoil is successful in blocking the Reality Distortion Field (TM).
2. Re:Newsflash! by Jezza · 2006-01-20 07:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Actually Steve never said that the system was that fast, he was only talking about the chip. He said "the disks are 2 the 3 times as fast" so I don't see why we find it so amazing that the real world performance is lower than the benchmarks. It is always going depend on the application. So an application that spends most of its time waiting for the disk isn't going to see much of a speed up with a faster processor (it'll see a little because it'll move from wait-state to wait-state faster). For a lot of applications this is the norm (described as "disk bound").
  
  What is probably more important (for home users) is actually something Steve side stepped, these new iMac should generate less heat and therefore run more quietly (because the fans won't need to spin as fast/often) for users in a domestic setting this is important.
  
  I think most people who buy Macs (especially iMacs) are not buying it because they think it's the fastest computer around (amazing as it may sound there are other factors in the purchasing decision).
3. Re:Newsflash! by Dzimas · 2006-01-20 07:31 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The Apple site repeatedly proclaims "2x faster. Twice as amazing." Of course, perhaps Steve defined X=0.6?
4. Re:Newsflash! by Andy+Dodd · 2006-01-20 07:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Not all companies go for showing the "absolute best case" benchmark. AMD is generally rather conservative with their performance ratings, and it's pretty rare that third-party benchmarks show an Athlon with a given performance rating having significantly different average performance than the "baseline comparison" CPU (One of the older P4s) running at the same clock rate as that performance rating.
  
  A great example of just how conservative AMD is - The Venice core Athlon 64 3200+ has a 2.0 GHz core clock and 512k of L2 cache, using a 90nm process. Its closest dual-core variant (the Manchester core X2 3800+) has the same core clock, L2 cache per core, and manufacturing process. (They also have the same FSB speed, 1 GHz HyperTransport) Yes, that's right, the dual-core variant is only rated 18% higher than its closest single-core counterpart. (This is because currently, on average, a second core usually doesn't net you much benefit because so many CPU-intensive tasks do all the work in a single thread.)
  
  Apple, on the other hand, is notorious for being overly optimistic in their speed comparisons - They always pick the benchmark which will make the competition look as bad as possible, to the point of even failing to use important performance features of the competition's CPU. (For example, back in the P2/P3 era, Apple constantly marketed their systems as being faster than a P2 or P3 with twice the clock speed - While the PPC did in general perform somewhat better per clock cycle than Intel's CPUs, the difference was not anywhere close to what Apple claimed it to be. The benchmark in question used Altivec on the PPC but failed to optimize for Intel whatsoever - No MMX or SSE was used, despite being available.)
  
  To compare it to my previous example, Apple would have called the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ a 6400+ because it had two cores equivalent to the 3200+.
  
  When it comes to inflated/BS benchmarks, Apple is one of the kings.
  
  --
  retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
5. Re:Newsflash! by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2006-01-20 07:38 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car. You're writing calm, rational posts in a Slashdot zone. Please take your emotion from the glove box and wear it on your head while barking "STEVE LIED." I'll let you off with a warning this time.
  
  --
  "Sufferin' succotash."
6. Re:Newsflash! by Haeleth · 2006-01-20 09:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  So, where are the important benchmarks that show things actually running 2-3 times faster? RTFA: they performed a wide variety of tests here, and the largest performance increase they measured was 1.84x, which is not "2-3x" by any means. And that was for system startup, hardly an "important" benchmark, given that most people I know with Macs use the suspend feature instead of switching the thing right off every night. And the average speed increase on "important" benchmarks, which I take to mean "things people actually wish were faster", was 1.2-1.5x. That's a good figure. If Steve Jobs had said "it's 50% faster", people would still have been impressed. But that's not what he said.
  
  Look, if you go to the Apple Store right now, what you'll see is a banner that says "The 2x faster iMac". Not "The iMac that's 2x faster on artificial benchmarks, but actually only 1.2-1.5x faster in real life because most tasks are IO-bound". Apple are selling this thing as 2x faster, period - and it isn't. Call it lying, or call it marketing, as you wish, but it still doesn't reflect well on Apple.
Well, from what I remember from the Keynote by sgant · 2006-01-20 06:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

Steve Jobs said that he was talking about the processors being faster...and he specifically said not everything is going to be faster like the hard drives and memory etc etc. Just the processors which is why he showed the SPECmarks or whatever this phantom benchmark that, to my knowledge, isn't a free download from anywhere. Or was I the only one that heard him prefacing the results?

Oh well, let the Mac bashing continue, blood is in the water.

--

"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
At least that's one thing that never changes... by TheGuano · 2006-01-20 06:26 · Score: 5, Funny

Despite the switch to Intel CPUs, the time honored tradition of "Apple benchmarks" continues :)
Apples and Oranges by Anonymous Coward · 2006-01-20 06:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

Steve Jobs was reporting improvments in CPU benchmarks, but the article refers to application benchmarks.

The CPU is going to be doing different things from those benchmarks in those applications- and may not even be the bottleneck in any given "real world" task.

Now whether Steve should have demonstrated "real world" improvements is up for debate, but all he presented were CPU benchmarks. He made no claim about application performance.
Re:Errr... by wanerious · 2006-01-20 06:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yep. I have an older 1GHz G4 PowerBook and just received the iMac 2.0 GHz dual-core. I compiled Qt 4.1 for both, and *roughly* (I wasn't paying exact attention to the clock) the iMac compiled the entire library (identical configure options) about 7 times faster than the single G4. About what I'd expect. For my shorter jobs it's also about 6-7x faster. The compiler (gcc) utilizes both cores nicely, as I can see with the system load monitor.
Re:Compiler? by laffer1 · 2006-01-20 07:18 · Score: 5, Informative

Xcode includes 4.0.1 of GCC but apple was using GCC 3.x to compile the kernel in 10.4. Kernel modules are C++, so it wasn't possible to use GCC 4.0 yet. (since GCC 4 tried to be more compliant.. even KDE 3.x didn't compile on it) Apple said they used intel compilers for the testing though I believe on the intel macs and ibm's compiler for the ppc build. I wish they would have used GCC since its more fair in a way. If anything its optimized for the x86 platform more, but its more apples to apples. :)

Only intel zealots would think that an intel chip would be 3 times faster anyway. POWER isn't that bad or Microsoft wouldn't have put them in xbox 360s. Another factor is that the software "optimized" for x86 hasn't been out long. Sure apple's been keeping the old nextstep port alive all these years (it ran on intel and 68k), but making it run and tuning it for the latest pentium chip are two different things.

--
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone