New Intel iMacs tested vs G5, Jobs was way off the mark

[SPeedY_B]

the whole G5 thing was stupid - they made the G5 sound like an amazing chip that was going to destroy the world, where in actual fact it just wasn't as big as they made out.

Now I have used a G5 iMac, and I have to say it isnt all that damn amazing. It felt slower than my Sempron machine in doing the usual day-to-day tasks.

You must of used a pretty crappy machine then. I'm not saying that G5's are amazing, but the last one I used was pretty snappy.

 

[Son Goku]

the whole G5 thing was stupid - they made the G5 sound like an amazing chip that was going to destroy the world, where in actual fact it just wasn't as big as they made out.

Now I have used a G5 iMac, and I have to say it isnt all that damn amazing. It felt slower than my Sempron machine in doing the usual day-to-day tasks.

It's all about marketing, and marketing claims. Now that Apple is switching over to the use of an Intel processor, one can well expect that the PPC processor won't be marketed in the same fashion...

 

[SPeedY_B]

Not to (piss on any bonfire/fan any flames)* but it appears the benchmarks may have been off, and the claims are true.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/26/2038249&

from the numbers-always-lie dept.

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.

http://www.macspeedzone.com/html/hardware/machine/performance_in_the_raw/06/1_23.shtml

Personally, I'll reserve judgement until I have one in front of me.


*Note: delete as appropriate

 

[Mastershakes]

That was a really bad comparison.

I liked his comment about playing WOW.

They omitted any software that is non Apple.

 

[X-Istence]

That was a really bad comparison.

I liked his comment about playing WOW.

They omitted any software that is non Apple.

Ehm, okay. Now lets see, what apps outside of those from Apple are universal binary yet? Ehm, none? Okay, now let's compare natively run binaries on Windows, to those that run on Wine using Linux. It does not work.

 

[Xie]

Now lets see, what apps outside of those from Apple are universal binary yet? Ehm, none?

AdiumX is.

 

[Tuffgong4]

Who cares!?!!?!?! I need me one of those MacBooks!!!

just kidding, but I seriously want one really bad, I'm going to be a switcher! well dual user (desktop = Windows, laptop = MacBook)

 

[Son Goku]

Ehm, okay. Now lets see, what apps outside of those from Apple are universal binary yet? Ehm, none? Okay, now let's compare natively run binaries on Windows, to those that run on Wine using Linux. It does not work.

Ya know...not a native on Windows vs. Wine comparison. But in one case I'm aware of, Einstein@home (it's one of them distributed computing projects, in this case to look for gravity waves as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relitivity) gave better run times with the Windows binary run on Linux under Wine, then the Linux compiled binary had. It also left a few project participants and fellow crunchers wondering wtf, and asking the team for the scientific study when they'd be rectifying this situation...

http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=3652

This is the most recent thread illustrating this, though it's been a point of quandry, and developer effort to try to optomize their Linux version, for quite some time. The discrepency was more in the past...

Thanks for the reply.

I have done some testing of wine vs native linux on hardware that I happen to have installed myself. This consists of two older P4 socket 778s and three athlons of various speeds & types. On my hardware, the new native linux E@H came pretty close on the P4s (but did not quite reach the wine speed), but was still clearly slower on the Athlons. Enough slower that I decided to stay with wine, at least on the Athlons...

It's happened, and in the minds of crunchers who want to bolster their credit scores for processing WUs, it can be a pestering one at that

 

[NetRyder]

Ehm, okay. Now lets see, what apps outside of those from Apple are universal binary yet? Ehm, none?

AdiumX is.

http://www.osnn.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80961

...

 

[X-Istence]

NetRyder: What I meant were the amount of apps that one could benchmark with. Photoshop is not a universal binary, so using it to do benchmarks is not a good way to do it.

 

[Xie]

Benchmarks are silly anyways .. real use is the only way to test for ones self. That way you can tell if all the flaws in the Duo are going to hurt you or not.

 

[SPeedY_B]

Definitely, real-worl tests are the only way, benchmarks are bull****.

OS X on Intel is a new thing also, so even the universal apps aren't going to be optimised as some of the PPC applications are.

Still reserving judgement until I have one in front of me, though.