iMac G5 vs Intel iMac - Macworld

g0gie said:

http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index.php

-interesting...

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This is very interesting. Real world benchmarks showing a 15% (+/-5%) improvement of Intel iMacs (2Ghz) over G5 iMacs (2.1GHz) for most tasks. Not the 2x Apple claims (but then did anyone really take that seriously? Most impressive to me is Rosetta running tasks at about 50% of the native speed. That is really not bad at all.

All in all this speed bump is respectable. If you are upgrading from a three year old Mac, even non-native apps will run significantly faster.

So, iMac G5 owners shouldn't feel bad about this upgrade. Even if you only run native apps, it's not like the intel Mac blows it out of the water.

And, if you run non-universal apps, you would probably need to be replacing a G4 at, let's say (OK I'm guesstimating here), 1.33GHz to get a decent speed bump.

I agree that we shouldn't expect to see their 2-3x improvement in real life use. However, their numbers were accurate and correct but only with respect to SPECint_rate_base2000 SPECfp_rate_base2000.

256mb per core v 512 per core - not fair i tells ya

If you heavily (actively) multitask, the second core will bring you more than a 15% improvement. If not, then it may not. Really, I think that's a lot of what it boils down to. Lord knows Finder can use it's own CPU...

Interesting report, but I believe that the iMac with the Intel Core Duo processor is capable of much faster performance. Some other websites have found the iMac with a 2GHz Intel Core Duo to perform near dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 speeds. Who knows for sure...

NeuronBasher said:

If you heavily (actively) multitask, the second core will bring you more than a 15% improvement. If not, then it may not. Really, I think that's a lot of what it boils down to. Lord knows Finder can use it's own CPU...

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Ya, when multitasking, you should see more than just a measly 15% improvement.