MacWorld's iMac Core Duo Benchmarks Debunked?

madgunde writes "Looks like MacWorld magazine was a little premature in reporting that the new Apple iMac Core Duo doesn't live up to Apple's speed claims. The folks over at MacSpeedZone have done some performance testing of their own that debunks MacWorld's results and shows that the new iMac Core Duo DOES live up to the hype. Not only did the new iMac wipe the floor with the old model in their tests, but using MacWorld's own test methodology would allow MacSpeedZone to conclude that the new Intel iMac is almost as fast as a PowerMac Quad G5. " I see only one way to solve this: Give me one. I'll run WoW on it, and decide.

Comments

WoW not such a good benchmarking program...

[eldavojohn]

I see only one way to solve this: Give me one. I'll run WoW on it, and decide.

I hate to break it to you, but the only lag you'll experience from either setup will probably be server side (depending on your realm). I mean, my P4 3.0 Ghz with 2 gigs of RAM and a 6600GT lags sometimes and runs fluid as real life at others.

Many of the users of WoW have done all they can to reduce the lag on their end. It's time for Blizzard to step up to the plate and use the massive amounts of money we give them monthly to get some better servers. I'm not so good with math but 5,000,000 users paying 12 dollars a month is .... $60 million?

Re:Two possible slashdot headlines from next week

[Spazntwich]

I hear they're going to be bundled with Duke Nukem Forever.

that's all very nice..

[LittleGuernica]

But does it run windows yet? i dont know what it takes to run XP or Vista on it, maybe a bit more cowbell, but i really feel that running a dual boor imac really ties the room together, like a nice rug.. i'm dissapointed in the geek community that no one has managed to run windows on it yet...come on! (arrested development style) maybe i should put out a bounty on the wholoe dual boot thing..o wait...

Nah. I call double bullshit

[nagora]

Look at the tasks that MacWorld tested. They're all real things that real people do all the time. Sure, I could write a Towers of Hanoi program in assembler (I have one here I wrote in Forth, if that's any help) which would "max out" the processor useage and run lots faster on the new machines. But who cares?

In the real world computing tasks are dependant on the system, not just the CPU, and a computer that is 9% SLOWER at exporting an image while resizing is NOT going to deliver Job's promise.

Spare CPU capacity is neither here nor there; the user's experience is the time from clicking "go" or whatever to seeing the little timer/bouncing ball turn back to a regular arrow. Because users can't task-switch every 300ns; they click and wait most of the time.

So, MacSpeed's figures are probably correct but totally academic for most users, and MacWorld's figures are probably well short of the machine's capacity but a much better indication of the user's experience.

TWW