“Apple’s new 64-bit Power Macintosh G5 is aptly named: it has power to burn. Mac and *NIX users who can afford these machines will find them to be much faster than the Power Mac G4s they replace and at least as fast as any PC you can buy or build today.” Read the review at NewsForge.
NewsForge Review: The new Power Macintosh G5
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This “intro” to G5 stuff over n over just gets boring…
Bring on the G5 TiBooks I say!
-magg
“Bring on the G5 TiBooks I say!”
They’d have to bring BACK the TiBooks first…
the good stuff is coming early next year
including the new monitors.
as it stands today, though, the dual 1.8ghz g5 is the best value dual processor machine around. apple should get kudos for keeping the price down vs. the xeons and opterons.
I believe it can be of some interest for those who haven’t played with one of these machines yet, and those who haven’t read such reviews yet.
And others as well can find something interesting in that article: I personnally had no idea of the existence of (4-legged) Australian Sheperds. And no, I am not joking.
Mac and *NIX users who can afford these machines will find them to be much faster than the Power Mac G4s they replace and at least as fast as any PC you can buy or build today.”
Emphasize being on “afford”. Try again when they are selling a 2GHz box in the same pricerange like a Dell *yawn*.
I can barely wait for when the dual 3Ghz comes out. Then we are going to blow more fish out of the water. I wonder if they will keep the line being on single processor and then two dual processor computers. That would be the best way to go, make the low end a 2Ghz single, then dual 2.5Ghz, and a dual 3Ghz, at the prices they are at now. Then the Pentiums will have to do a little catching up. I just hope more games come out soon, like good ones, like Half-Life, those are the only thing I miss from having my PC. But Ages of Empire II and C&C Generals will help me keep me over for all the rest to come.
I have setup a G5 at work and they are nice machines. If you have a Dual G4 over 867MHZ it may not be worth upgrading to anything less than a Dual G5 however.
The single 1.6 and 1.8s are good performers but by no means the top of the line in performance. In every other way they are bettter than the G4s. The pricepoint of the 1.6 got better but may still be expensive for most people.
Overall they are great machines but the singles are not worth getting if you already have a fast Dual.
I wish Apple would bring back duals across the line for the PowerMacs like they did with the last gen G4s.
The rumor mill says that the 3GHZ PowerPCs will be 980s with significant architectural changes. Until its out its just rumors.
Gee, I can buy a dual processor Dell for under $6000 but I can buy a Mac for $800. Alien Skin computers cost in the same same range but I can build a computer for less than $600.
Have you complained lately about the overpriced computers, other than Macintosh with bad comparisons. Please, stop the FUD.
Does anyone know when (or if) MS is going to support the G5 under VPC?
By early 2004 (Jan or Feb), if the grapevine is right.
…but so are most of the new mac’s.
I was messing around with some at the store yesterday (big mac store in the mall) and I’m in love with the speed! They had digital cameras hooked up so you could mess around with images and it was crazy fast!
When I clicked on the hard drive icon the file browser opened instantly.
I went home and set KDE up to look like Aqua but on a 2ghz amd, it just wasn’t the same…
KDE isn’t as fast as OS X because XFree86 is slow.
And XP blows OS X out of the water in terms of speed, especially with small things like browsing the hard drive.
But I still cant afford one. Comeon Apple, bring the prices down so even us students can actually buy one!
I’m a student, and I have one. Apple does education discounts, and that helps. If you’re desperate (like me) for more discounts, you could always look at their refurb store and get some pretty good discounts, normally around 35% on very decent machines. That’s where I got my Powerbook 12′ from, and I’ve got no complaints.
And XP blows OS X out of the water in terms of speed, especially with small things like browsing the hard drive.
Eh… I have only a dual 867 running Panther and I see no slowness browsing the hard drive compared to 2000 or XP on a faster computer. The only “lag” I ever get using the Finder is that it generally doesn’t update a Finder window until after you click in it.
a dual G5, I was saving for a brand new high-end dual proc computer of some sort for a while, initially thinking either Xeon or Opteron, and then Apple unleashes this – as soon as I saved up the last bit of money I bought the Dual 2 ghz model with a 250 gig HD (I bought a second 120 for data and swap), Radeon 9800, and bluetooth – the rest was standard. Its not my first Mac, but its my first new Mac purchase since the original bondi blue iMac came out in ’98. I hadn’t actively used a Mac as my main macine in a good long while, and the last I used OS X was the Public Beta before I accidently killed my iMac (don’ ask…). With only 96 megs of RAM and a lowly 233 mhz G3 the thing was a slug with PB OS X, yet Panther is lightyears better.
Okay, all that aside – is it fast? My f*cking god yes! My PC is a nearly two years old dual Athlon MP box running Slackware and XP, and although not as new its no slouch either. The G5 spanks it in every conceivable area. I run SETI@Home whenever its possible, and the G5 cranks out units like no ones business – typically an hour and a half or two it seems per unit. I need more RAM, I’m already bumping my head against the 512 meg ceiling and while the thing actively swamps alot it never ceases to be responsive – thank god for the BSD VM. Once I accidently left SETI running while I launched and played Unreal Tournament 2003 and while the framerate was lower, it was very very playable – it didn’t “feel” slow, merely slower – until I realized what I had done and then was astounded.
Compiling apps from source is wicked fast compared to my PC and Linux. I cannot wait until Linux has full native support for it, I’ll carve out a partition for it on my second HD. Next week I want to buy another 2 gigs of RAM, that outa improve things even further…also having it swap to a second HD helps too, noticably so.
I love this box, I rarely boot my PC anymore. Wow…its been a few weeks now and I’m still stunned and in love with it.
OK ive asked this 3 times before but no one ever awnsers.Maybe this time.
How long does a cold boot take for OSX 10.3 with a dual G5 2GHZ system?
Who Knows?
http://www.theapplecollection.com/design/macdesign/pBookG5.html
How long does a cold boot take for OSX 10.3 with a dual G5 2GHZ system
My response would be: who cares? The only time you ever need to boot an OS X machine is when restarting after an OS update. When you’re not using it you put it to sleep, and when you start using it again it takes literally 2 seconds to wake up (and that’s my old laptop… maybe the G5s are faster).
“And XP blows OS X out of the water in terms of speed, especially with small things like browsing the hard drive.”
i use xp everyday and hate it, it lags at times and full of viruses. So how can you make a statement like that, have you used Panther? I highly don’t think you have.
G5’s are much cheaper than the Boxx and out perform them.
Hmm…didn’t I read somewhere about the UK charging Apple with fraudulent advertising about claiming to be faster than any PC out there?
I’m afraid any real comparisons, price and performance wise, out there need to be made against a dual opteron linux based racehorse. Any other comparisons are pretty meaningless in my book.
I personally wouldn’t mind getting a hold of a dual G5 to test it for speed, but I’d much rather spend the money buying and building a pair of dual opertons configured up the way I want them.
This is my obligatory “why buy a g5 when I can build a PC the way I want it?” post.
We have a G5 1.6GHZ and it takes 32 seconds from the time you restart it for it to get back to the desktop. Classic takes another 12 seconds so you could say that it takes about 30 seconds to boot up. I don’t know about a dual G5 2GHZ.
My dual G4 1.25GHZ at home does the same thing in about 90 seconds.
“And XP blows OS X out of the water in terms of speed, especially with small things like browsing the hard drive.”
Another uneducated and uninformed troll post.
I was fortunate enough to test drive a G5 1.6 GHz PowerMac w/512 Meg of RAM here at a local store in New Zealand.
I was impressed by the build quality of both the machine and OS X 10.3.
In terms of its performance though, while it was fast, it didn’t subjectly look any faster then my dual Athlon box here at home once I started up some programs and took a look in TOP.
I did notice however that the PM’s ATA drives and fast buss sped up load times of programs dramatically.
All and all, it appears to be a great box, but for the price Apple is charging, I still can justify a purchase.
There is one main reason why people may prefer a G5 over a PC they’d built themselves : noise. I have a Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz); it’s fast but if I knew it would be noisier than a vacuum cleaner, I would have bought either a laptop or an entry level G5 (unless the reviewer lies when he says they’re silent).
Though I’ve disconnected the Northbridge and video card fans, the stock Intel heatsink is so noisy I’m considering buying protective gears for my ears. Now I understand why some vendors rely on catch phrases like “Hear yourself think” to attract customers.
The main beef I have with the G5 is its weight. At 40 lbs, it’s a back breaker.
“How long does a cold boot take for OSX 10.3 with a dual G5 2GHZ system?”
Well, I can’t say for a G5.
But my G3 900MHz upgraded Yosemite Power Mac with a 7200 RPM 8MB cache 120GB Seagate and 768MBs of RAM does a cold boot in approximately 55 seconds.
Another reason: time. It takes time to build the PC, and even more time to acquire the knowledge to do so and keep current with it. Charge yourself $100/hour for this, and the cheap DIY PC suddenly becomes a substantial bit more expensive. And you still got no warranty on the system as a whole.
Thanks, Steven, for mentioning the noise factor: it’s one example for the fact that there other important criterias for choosing a PC than just (GHz+GByte)/Dollar.
sweet thanx for the response! Sorry for asking over and over again but everytime I read a review for the new G5 systems I never hear about boot time.
Steven
That’s what third-party heatsinks are for. The stock ones are a lowest common denominator.
Macs are simply not flexible enough. There are just several types of Jobs-blessed configurations available, a if none of them fits you, you’re out of luck. Want a second hard drive or more then 1 gig of memory? You need to buy a G5 to get that. Want a machine with monitor that can be moved to different machine (*cough* VESA mount *cough*)? Pay for powermac, you cheapskate! Meanwhile, in an ugly PC world, everything is available in any combination you want, and no company intentionally places roadblocks on your way if you want to work with dual monitors on a machine with budget CPU.
Apple feels just like a monopoly wannabe – they aren’t a monopoly, nor would ever be, but they use all those nice incompability and bundling tricks as if they are one.
The G5 has 1.2 GB of RAM and my home system has 768MB. Otherwise both systems are stock.
Another reason: time. It takes time to build the PC, and even more time to acquire the knowledge to do so and keep current with it. Charge yourself $100/hour for this, and the cheap DIY PC suddenly becomes a substantial bit more expensive. And you still got no warranty on the system as a whole.
First of all, assembling a machine is nowhere close to $100/hour. Unless you assemble a machine with no tools in the middle of Alaska, in winter, while walking both ways uphill.
The second thing is that it’s a hobby. I like messing with hardware. If I spend an hour riding a bike or swimming, I don’t “charge myself” the rates of a professional bike racer or swimmer. I do it just for fun. So why should a computer be different?
Apple feels just like a monopoly wannabe – they aren’t a monopoly, nor would ever be, but they use all those nice incompability and bundling tricks as if they are one.
You have it backwards. A monopoly will have enough marketshare in a product that the returns on an extensive product-line are justified. A monopoly also needs to be all things to everyone or else it risks losing its monopoly when another company comes along to fill the void.
A smaller company that is trying to grow needs to pick some product lines it thinks will have wide reach and aggressively push those. If Apple doubled the number of computer models it carries it would simply double its R&D spending without appreciably impacting its current marketshare. Most of the sales of the new models would likely cannibalize existing model sales.
That’s cause with OS X, boot time is largely irrelevant. As previously mentioned, there is no reason to shut down your machine. I shuttle my PowerBook G4 from work to home. When I leave the office, I close the lid and it goes to sleep. When I get home, I hopen the lid, the PowerBook instantly pops awake (within 2 seconds) and automatically discovers the encrypted 802.11b network at the house. Same story when I bring it back to work.
With OS X, there really is no need to ever shut down your machine, so boot time has essentially been made irrelevant.
It’s fine for you to consider computers a hobby….so long as you realize that you are in an entirely different market from the vast majority of consumers (and a market that Apple is not trying to capture).
wrong question, either ask:
1. Why buy a Dual G5 instead of buying a nice dual Opteron from BOXX?
2. Why build a dual G5 instead of building a dual Opteron?
Question number two is irrelevant, because building your own G5 from parts isn’t possible.
So if your intent is to build your own Personal Computer…then you should freaken build it. and quit asking dumb questions as there is no “build your own g5 from parts” option.
If your intent is to get a good quality machine for around $2000…then I would look at Apple, BOXX, (insert your favorite workstation builder here).
ppl r stupid. as usual.
First of all, assembling a machine is nowhere close to $100/hour.
Since we’re talking about ones personal spare time here, $100/hour is actually a pretty low rate.
The second thing is that it’s a hobby.
For some people, yes. But for lot others, it’s not. And that doesn’t mean that the latter are doofuses, just that they have other priorities (for example going swimming and biking instead of fudging with hardware just for it’s own sake).
And this applies to PCs and Macs alike.
Steven “The main beef I have with the G5 is its weight. At 40 lbs, it’s a back breaker. ”
That is why they have handles, do you don’t need to bend all the way down to get under it, just need to pick it up.
You have it backwards. A monopoly will have enough marketshare in a product that the returns on an extensive product-line are justified. A monopoly also needs to be all things to everyone or else it risks losing its monopoly when another company comes along to fill the void.
No, you have it backwards
. Monopoly can affort to sit on its arse and wait while customers have to adapt their tasks to company’s product lineup (as opposed to reverse process in normal market). Meanwhile, in a competetive market you have to cover every weird combination of customer needs, or else that specific customer would walk away somewhere else.
It’s fine for you to consider computers a hobby….so long as you realize that you are in an entirely different market from the vast majority of consumers (and a market that Apple is not trying to capture).
As a matter of fact, they seem to have started moving towards computer hobbyists. The best evidence of this is the BigMac cluster that Apple fans remind us about. This cluster is essentially a big hackjob done by people in their spare time. Seems somewhat similiar to me
No, you have it backwards
. Monopoly can affort to sit on its arse and wait while customers have to adapt their tasks to company’s product lineup (as opposed to reverse process in normal market). Meanwhile, in a competetive market you have to cover every weird combination of customer needs, or else that specific customer would walk away somewhere else.
I guess it depends on whether that monopoly plans to stay in business very long and what the barriers to entry are. In a market with high barriers to entry you may be correct.
However, in a competitive market a company doesn’t NEED to fill every possible consumer need. Such a company only has to fill the needs of some customers – enough, that is, to maintain its place in the market (or achieve its growth goals).
As a matter of fact, they seem to have started moving towards computer hobbyists. The best evidence of this is the BigMac cluster that Apple fans remind us about. This cluster is essentially a big hackjob done by people in their spare time. Seems somewhat similiar to me
Va Tech went to Apple not the other way around. Because of the success of the project Apple has started pushing this use of the G5 but they weren’t the instigators.
But, regardless, this hardly falls into the hobbyist category
“As a matter of fact, they seem to have started moving towards computer hobbyists. The best evidence of this is the BigMac cluster that Apple fans remind us about. This cluster is essentially a big hackjob done by people in their spare time. Seems somewhat similiar to me
”
Wrong on all accounts. People build DIY sytems to save money weather they want to use the highest grade or lowest grade components to begin with.
BigMac has its own building, network and high speed backplane. Just the fact that they could do it with G5s and bench high on linpack using less MHZ and fewer processors is something to consider.
You can’t compare BigMac and DIY home systems not even close.
Both are sometimes saving on quality to gain perfomance (non-ECC memory, only desktop reliability features – for example, no dual power supplies, etc).
Both are done by enthusiasts and volunteers (students with screwdrivers, working for pizza).
Yes, the scale is different, but the essence is the same.
“I shuttle my PowerBook G4 from work to home. When I leave the office, I close the lid and it goes to sleep. When I get home, I hopen the lid, the PowerBook instantly pops awake (within 2 seconds) and automatically discovers the encrypted 802.11b network at the house. Same story when I bring it back to work.”
I do the same with my pb. I never need to shut it down. In fact, I left work last Friday with the battery fully charged and forgot to pull it out when I got home. It sat asleep in my backpack all weekend. When I got to work today I was sure it would be dead but it still had over 50% of the battery left. I was amazed. I have owned multiple PC laptops and none of them have ever been able to do that.
Jesus, people in the computer industry are overpaid.
“Jesus, people in the computer industry are overpaid.”
A lot of lawyers make $500 an hour. There are some law firms that actually charge time by the minute. $100/hour is fairly inexpensive for skilled labor. Heck, a lot of plumbers will charge more than that.
“There is one main reason why people may prefer a G5 over a PC they’d built themselves : noise. I have a Pentium 4 (2.4 GHz); it’s fast but if I knew it would be noisier than a vacuum cleaner, I would have bought either a laptop or an entry level G5 (unless the reviewer lies when he says they’re silent).”
You can get silent PCs too (eg, check out http://www.quietpc.com/ ). I’ve seen one of these in operation, and you can’t hear a thing.
“Another reason: time. It takes time to build the PC, and even more time to acquire the knowledge to do so and keep current with it. Charge yourself $100/hour for this, and the cheap DIY PC suddenly becomes a substantial bit more expensive. And you still got no warranty on the system as a whole.”
I just phone up the local PC shop 400 meteres from my house. They ask me how much I want to spend and give me the options. Two hours later the machine is custom built for the price of parts only. I can pick it up or they will deliver it after 5pm for free. I get a parts and labour warranty and if there are any problems they will repair the PC the same day.
New G5’s are wickedly fast machines indeed. End of story. If you got some cash to burn,credit card balance to overdraw or you just plain filthy rich, equip yourself with one of these babies. It will make you fall in love with computers again.Bit like in those C64,Amiga days.
Cheers
The important point is that I was putting a value on spare time.
If you have only two or three truly free hours per day – how much is that time worth if you have to spent it on something you don’t want to do, something not-fun?
I just phone up the local PC shop 400 meteres from my house. They ask me how much I want to spend and give me the options. Two hours later the machine is custom built for the price of parts only.
Sorry, such a PC no longer qualifies as the DIY kind we were talking about. It may have been custom-built, but it wasn’t built by you yourself – you just ordered it.
“Sorry, such a PC no longer qualifies as the DIY kind we were talking about. It may have been custom-built, but it wasn’t built by you yourself – you just ordered it. ”
So? Someone was complaining that a custom-built PC means you have to spend time on it, and the above post points out that this isn’t true.
The point is that you can build a PC to whatever specifications you want, and this is true whether you literally do it yourself, or get a shop to do it for you. When buying a standardised product from a large company (be it a brand-name PC, or a Mac), you have nowhere near as much control.
So? Someone was complaining that a custom-built PC means you have to spend time on it, and the above post points out that this isn’t true.
That someone was me, and I was talking about a PC built by the owner himself. Not custom-built by somebody else, but built with his own hands.
And the sentence triggering my response can be found in the post by Steven, Title ‘Re: Why buy a G5 instead of building a PC’: There is one main reason why people may prefer a G5 over a PC they’d built themselves.
Again not ‘custom-built’, but ‘built themselves’.
“Hey, I put new tires on my wheels! Well, actually it was Tire World, but I told them which tires to use, so you could say I did it myself!”
http://www.alienware.com/review_pages/review_template.aspx?FileName…
Ouch! look @ the conclusion
We’re surprised at how thoroughly the PCs clobbered the Macs in this test.
I am surprised by the vehemence of Macoholics swearing that
Macs are the fastest. IT IS NOT! G5 has reduced the pathetic performance of the G4s. G5s may run SETI faster but nearly every test the single Athlon FX clobbers the single processor G5, but in many cases the dual G5s too.
who says building computers isn’t fun. That is what I do to wind down from the day. There isn’t anything like building something from scratch and having it work (or not work and find out what the problem is). Would actually like to build cars, but that is way to expensive.
Funny how people say that the Mac community is so biased but this comes from MacWorls magazine and if you’ve been awake the past few weeks a lot of good press and benchmarks have been coming from PC journalist and PC oriented websites.
Another thing is that the AthlonFX was released AFTER the G5s were released. What else do you expect AMD to do. Release a processot slower than the G5? DUH.
Guess what? Apple will ship machines next year that will be faster than the current crop of systems out at the time. And guess what? AMD and Intel will release processors that will be integrated in systems that will be faster than the second generation G5. And guess what? Apple will release systems will be faster than that?!!? It keeps going on and on. Whats the mystery here?
Keep in mind that Intel and Apple are in the black, AMD is not doing so hot. I hope Opteron and AthlonFX will turn that around. Their processors are also are under priced. Not exactly a recipe for success.
> Another thing is that the AthlonFX was released AFTER the G5s were released. What else do you expect AMD to do. Release a processot slower than the G5? DUH.
Ahh…the AthlonFX maybe afterwards but the opteron wasn’t.
I believe BOXX was actually shipping dual opteron servers and perhaps even desktops before anyone received a G5 system.
AMD’s processors got out later because some very large shipments of processors to customers building large processing clusters. On the flip side I believe Mac might have been in the same boat with the G5 cluster.
And even so, the processors (Athlon64 and G5) were released likely within weeks of each other which may make your argument technically correct but effectively meaningless.
Apple has lagged forever and ever. The main reason for that is because competition is so hot between AMD and Intel. Both companies are being forced to innovate at a heightened pace, especially in squeezing the absolute most performance out of their production. Apple in its niche market isn’t forced to innovate quite so fast, and their processor manufacturer isn’t pushed by the same forces as the aforementioned two.
However, the G5 does have the nice advantage of running at a fairly low wattage and fairly low temperatures. However, I wonder what power consumption and heat generation of an Athlon64 at 1.4 or 1.2 GHz is.
IMHO likely reason why the G5’s can’t run at 3-3.5GHz right now is because IBM can’t afford to or isn’t interested in ferretting out every last MHz out of their production process.
Apparently one of my earlier posts was whacked as “abuse”.
Therefore I found and posted the official complaint link.
http://www.itc.org.uk/itc_publications/complaints_reports/advertisi…
shows that ITC in the UK did declare Apple’s ads claiming Apple as “the world’s fastest, most powerful personal computer” as misleading.
http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/
3
Virginia Tech
United States/2003
X
1100 Dual 2.0 GHz Apple G5/Mellanox Infiniband 4X/Cisco GigE / 2200
Self-made
10280
17600
4
NCSA
United States/2003
Tungsten
PowerEdge 1750, P4 Xeon 3.06 GHz, Myrinet / 2500
Dell
9819
15300
5
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
United States/2003
Mpp2
Integrity rx2600 Itanium2 1.5 GHz, Quadrics / 1936
HP
8633
11616
6
Los Alamos National Laboratory
United States/2003
Lightning
Opteron 2 GHz, Myrinet / 2816
Linux Networx
8051
11264
As you can see a 2200 cpu 2 Ghz G5 cluster is faster (10.28 Tera flops) than a 2816 (8.051 tera flops) opterons at 2 Ghz cluster and faster than a 2500 3.06 GHz xeon cluster . I think the top500 list is more credible than macworld/pcworld.
Mac world is owned by PCworld after all and there have been many discussions here on OSAlert that have disected the mac/pcworld benchmarks and found that they are biased to say the least.
As you can see a 2200 cpu 2 Ghz G5 cluster is faster (10.28 Tera flops) than a 2816 (8.051 tera flops) opterons at 2 Ghz cluster and faster than a 2500 3.06 GHz xeon cluster . I think the top500 list is more credible than macworld/pcworld.
Only if you’re planning on building a super computer, otherwise, the top500 list is pretty much useless. Sorry, but if you’re a desktop user, benchmarks of desktop apps are the most useful to you.
“Only if you’re planning on building a super computer, otherwise, the top500 list is pretty much useless. Sorry, but if you’re a desktop user, benchmarks of desktop apps are the most useful to you.”
Not if you want to measure raw processing power and bandwidth. Well macworld’s comparison of completely usesless apps, other than photoshop, doesn’t count much does it. The G5 trounced or was comparable to all the systems on Photoshop benchmarks. The only app truly cross-platform in the whole benchmark suite from mac/pcworld.
“Not if you want to measure raw processing power and bandwidth. ”
Are you saying that Opteron has poor processing power and bandwidth?
The Lighting Opteron-based cluster is crippled by running in 32-bit mode. From my 3 minutes of googling, it appears that Infiniband if faster then Myrinet, and that might be yet another factor for lower scores of Lighting cluster. I don’t think one should draw any conclusions from benchmark score difference between BigMac and Lighting.
I just phone up the local PC shop 400 meteres from my house. They ask me how much I want to spend and give me the options. Two hours later the machine is custom built for the price of parts only.
“Sorry, such a PC no longer qualifies as the DIY kind we were talking about. It may have been custom-built, but it wasn’t built by you yourself – you just ordered it.”
I could build it myself…I have built PCs before…. but if they are willing to build it for free I’d be silly to do it myself. BTW It usually takes less than 1hr to build a PC.
Windows has a bad habit of slowing down after longterm usage. Initially after a fresh install Windows is generally quite fast, but add some apps, lots of files, and use it for a while and it starts to get sluggish in a hurry. It has always been this way since Windows 95, I do not recall this issue with 3.x. It strikes me as bizzare that Windows users are conditioned to thinking that reinstalling the o.s. is “normal,” a Windows guru buddy of mine likened it to changing your oil in your car…I’ve never felt the need to reinstall Linux for performance reasons, or classic Mac OS when my iMac still worked. Something screwy is going on with Windows, reinstall it and problem fixed. Ugh. Mac OS X might be slower in some areas, but – for me at least – its consistent in its performance, as is Linux/BSD. I can load it with apps and files and so far, no noticable drop in performance in any area. Panther really is nice, some areas are still slower then they outa be – but it is responsive for me. Mind you I have a dual G5 box, but still. Considering all the massive lifting Quartz does its amazing its as fast as it is. Mac OS X is faster in many areas that matter to me over XP, networking throughput is noticably higher and like a good unix I can juggle multiple intensive apps dandy without choking it. There is no “choppiness” with OS X for me.
I could not have said it better! XP multitasking sucks big time. After less than a day using apps demanding a lot of RAM and CPU XP slows down to a crawl. The only cure is to reboot. And these are high end machines exclusively using apps like Maya, Photoshop etc. no hacks or shareware installed.
Using the same apps on OS X is a totally different experience: no lag switching from one app to the other and after one month no loss of performance.
There is no question that multitasking in OS X is vastly superior to XP. I think that a lot of people a just using their computer to play games or surf the web and they don’t realise this problem. OS X is not for everyone I suppose but its Unix underpinning shine through.
Just a comment about the ‘reinstall’ issue,
i just bought my father a new ibook g4 and after the inital osx first run setup completed i was unable able to play compact-disc’s (while other media would mount w/o a problem). I called apple tech support and they said they have seen this issue before and i should reinstall the os ;=] (the reinstall fixed the probem btw)
beside’s that small problem the ibook is great! (esp for my dad who has never touched a computer before)
-greg
“The Lighting Opteron-based cluster is crippled by running in 32-bit mode. From my 3 minutes of googling, it appears that Infiniband if faster then Myrinet, and that might be yet another factor for lower scores of Lighting cluster. I don’t think one should draw any conclusions from benchmark score difference between BigMac and Lighting.”
The G5 cluster is running 10.2.7 which is not 64 bit either, what’s your point? Are you sure that linpack is a bandwidth bound workload?
Regardless. Even if infiniband is 10 GB /sec the PCI X 133 Mhz bandwidth maxs out at < than 1 GB/sec. Where as myrinet is 2+2 Gb/sec full duplex. PCIX being the bottle neck here. So I seriously doubt that the interconnect has too much to do with the numbers, it might a little but enough to make 2.2 teraflops, i doubt it. Anyway the opteron cluster has 616 more cpus.
How about the Xeon based cluster running 32 bit with 316 less cpus and the same interconnect as the opteron cluster? it is faster isn’t it.
The MacWorld/PC World tests were unbelievably bogus, testing software that runs slowly on any Mac (I mean, really… Microsoft Word and Adobe Premiere (no longer made for Mac… Come on! If you suggested that cross-platform tests should include Filemaker and iTunes, you’d be laughed out of the room.
Most every other benchmark that I’ve seen suggests that a DP 2 GHz G5 will cream an Athlon, a Pentium IV, or a DP Xeon, and be slightly faster than a dual Opteron.
I know these tests will be considered bogus… They are from Apple. But see what a G5 can do on optimized software….
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
“That someone was me, and I was talking about a PC built by the owner himself. Not custom-built by somebody else, but built with his own hands.
“And the sentence triggering my response can be found in the post by Steven, Title ‘Re: Why buy a G5 instead of building a PC’: There is one main reason why people may prefer a G5 over a PC they’d built themselves.”
If someone’s advocating PCs because they make a good DIY pasttime, or so you can brag about having built them, then I agree that this is an advantage that would appeal only to a minority of people.
But Steven also said “I’d much rather spend the money buying and building a pair of dual opertons configured up the way I want them.” You can still configure a system the way you want it, whether it’s built by you personally, or someone following your request. Other people in the thread have also said things suggesting that it’s the customisation that’s the useful advantage.
Of course, there are reasons why one might prefer an off the shelf standardised system (eg, less risk of driver problems, not enough technical knowledge, things like tech support), but I’m not sure the time factor (or noise, as someone else suggested) comes into it. And indeed, you could just as well buy a brand-name PC instead of a Mac in this case. The point is that you have the choice, which evidently matters to a reasonable number of people.