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First Impressions of Intel iMac Core Duo
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ksgant said:
Or curing cancer with folding@home?
http://folding.stanford.edu
(NOTE: not Intel-ready quite yet.)
Good idea. Where can we ask?arn said:
I'd like to know the comparitive time compressing a 1-2hr iMovie onto a DVD image (in iDVD).... anyone in a position to know?
i was listening to TWIT's podcast recorded right after the keynote...and they argued a bit about benchmarks and speed tests and leo laporte commented that it "felt" faster, to which everyone agreed. it's not "scientific," but i understand what he means. when i played around with the MB Pro, it "felt" fast...at least for day to day things, that's good enough for me.
but i agree - i want some real world tests of handbrake conversions, mp3/aac encoding, etc. supposedly, iSquint's latest version is a universal binary that converts to mpeg really quickly. that's the kind of info i want, not necessarily benchmark stuff.
but i agree - i want some real world tests of handbrake conversions, mp3/aac encoding, etc. supposedly, iSquint's latest version is a universal binary that converts to mpeg really quickly. that's the kind of info i want, not necessarily benchmark stuff.
Anyone who knows Steve Jobs and follows Apple's history knows that OSX was built for Intel. Why would a company keep a secret like this for 5 years? It's all about building everyone up, then suprising them and I fell for it.
Time to say goodbye to Xbench?
XBench has never been a particularly reliable or consistent way of benchmarking a Macintosh. The wacked-out user interface scores are highly suspicious, and are almost certainly an indication of something not working quite right in the UB version of XBench rather than the Intel iMac being mysteriously slow at displaying the GUI, while lightning fast at all sorts of other tasks.
As others have suggested, perhaps something like a scripted suite of benchmarks using common software like the iLife suite (using a freely downloadable standard set of photo, video and music content) would be a far better indication of system performance than Xbench. There are also benchmarks like PSBench (for Photoshop) and Cinebench for professional-level applications.
So could the launch of the Intel Macs be a good time to bid a not-so-fond farewell to Xbench forever?
XBench has never been a particularly reliable or consistent way of benchmarking a Macintosh. The wacked-out user interface scores are highly suspicious, and are almost certainly an indication of something not working quite right in the UB version of XBench rather than the Intel iMac being mysteriously slow at displaying the GUI, while lightning fast at all sorts of other tasks.
As others have suggested, perhaps something like a scripted suite of benchmarks using common software like the iLife suite (using a freely downloadable standard set of photo, video and music content) would be a far better indication of system performance than Xbench. There are also benchmarks like PSBench (for Photoshop) and Cinebench for professional-level applications.
So could the launch of the Intel Macs be a good time to bid a not-so-fond farewell to Xbench forever?
When you put your computer to deep sleep, there is no big difference to fresh boot. HDs and fans have to spin up as well.Evangelion said:
The other components couldn't care less about booting. The failure of a system does not happen more often during start up than during normal use. One of my customers I have already for more than 5 years in a row and I am buddies with the system administrator. They have quite a few PCs and servers running. Some of them 24/7, some of them only a few hours a day. So I am witnessing what is going on there.
Statistically component failure there occurs not more often during start up than during normal use. Of course a component blows-up, when it had a problem already before when starting up the computer. So how do we define a failure?
But what I definately noticed is that the fans become pretty noisy after a while when the computer runs 24/7. First, the bearings wear faster when having the computer on 24/7. The spin-up for a fan doesn't matter much, it is all about the hours the hours of operation. Second, the fans collect dust over the time which makes them more noisy as well.
Personally I am still waiting for a computer in my posession to completely break down. From the beginning (starting in 1985) I had single components in my computers which didn't last long, but the overall systems lasted pretty much "forever"... means until they got retired by me.Evangelion said:
My oldest system at the moment is a highly customized G4 Quicksilver from 2001. It's still in a very good condition and when I changed or added components, it was never because of failure, but because of making the overall system faster.
We will see how long my new G5 quad will last...
And what did this keyboard cost back then when even regarding inflation? You get what you pay for. You still get keyboards like this, but they cost a fortune of course. You won't get it for 10$. And in most cases an expensive keyboard doesn't make sense for the average user. With a rate of one keyboard every 2 years it would take him several years to reach the break-even.Evangelion said:
It may be a waste of resources, but as long as raw materials are that cheap it just doesn't make sense economically.
But it makes sense to switch of your computer when you are not using it. Leaving it on costs you several dollars per month and wastes energy which causes extra pollution. Estimated 1 kWh a day of wasted energy makes 365kWh a year. One liter of gasoline produces about 9.75 kWh of energy. So it equals 38 liters of gasoline. But 1kWh per day is already a low estimate. It is probably way more than that... And don't forget, it is just how much energy is in 38 liters of gasoline. You could never produce 365kWh of electricity with it. The average efficiency of power plants in the US is about 33%. So you better think of 114 liters of gasoline... or 31 gallons.
Interesting calculation, isn't it? Especially since we are reminded of the limited resources we have on this planet on a daily basis again it should be everybodies responsibility to use them wisely...
groovebuster
There's something very hokey about the start up comparison video. My iMac (700 Mhz G4) and my iBook (500 Mhz G3) both start up more quickly than the G5 iMac in the video and my dual 2 Ghz G5 PowerMac at work starts up about the same speed (maybe faster) than the Intel iMac. I'm not sure what to make of that. I think there is something wrong with the G5 iMac in the video.
Might be... depends on how long your booting takes and how much the maximum power consumption is. Deep sleep also uses elictricity. 300W for 30 seconds is still less than (e.g.) 5 Watts for 8h! So it definetely makes sense to completely shut down a computer during the night.beatle888 said:
300W/3600sec*30sec=0,0025kWh
5W*8h=0,04kWh
Deep sleep is only for convenience. As you can see it only would make sense regarding the absolute power consumption when you would have it in deep sleep for less than 30 minutes...
groovebuster
Just done a second test and it was virtually identical at 88 seconds, not sure how would delay is caused by having 2 users. I would also add my computer is very slow when the screen saver comes on and you come back to the machine, it seems to pause for about 10 seconds then I get the spinning ball for a period!!!! Apart from that everything else is great.
beatle888 said:
The "extra" energy used in booting over running a computer normally is the extra power needed to spin up the disks and fans and charge all the capacitors initially. This takes the about twice the power as keeping them spinning.
However, when you wake a computer from sleep then it also has to spin up everything again so in essence it uses the same power but just means you get to a usable interface quicker.
Now that means you take out the power needed to spin up everything in both cases as it is for all intents and purposes equally. That means you are left with the energy taken while the computer is booting up and you can't use it versus the energy used all night while the computer is sleeping. For instance the energy needed to charge a cap is less than the energy over time needed to keep the cap charged all night (Cap's are quite lossy).
I'd hazard a guess (from how much my battery goes down in my iBook over night) that sleep mode is more wasteful than turning off the computer.
RAM access slots
That is not true.
iMac G5 iSight: one RAM chip 512 MB onboard, one free RAM access slot,
maximum RAM 2.5 GB
iMac Intel: two SODIMM RAM access slots, maximum RAM 2GB (or 4GB??)
HTH,
ijbond
Macrumors said:
Based on Macintouch's impressions as well as this user's post:
- ...
- ...
- Same RAM access slots at bottom under removable panel as the iSight G5 iMac
That is not true.
iMac G5 iSight: one RAM chip 512 MB onboard, one free RAM access slot,
maximum RAM 2.5 GB
iMac Intel: two SODIMM RAM access slots, maximum RAM 2GB (or 4GB??)
HTH,
ijbond
