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G5 much faster than MacBook? ( riddle )

maxvamp

maxvamp

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 26, 2002
600
1
Somewhere out there
I have some theories here, but I wanted to run this scenario past the good folks on this board to see what thought people have on why this happened...

I have these two machines:

PowerMac G5 Quad w/ 6 GB memory and WD 400GB HD

MacBook Black - stock with 2 GB memory




I took a video I was compressing for the web, and did a quick and dirty edit in iMovie. When finished, I exported both to H.264, same settings.

The PowerMac took ~35 minutes, the MacBook took ~140 minutes.

Why?

Max.
 
- The hard drive of your MacBook is only 5400 rpm, but, more important, you forgot to adjust the Energy Saving levels of your MacBook to "Highest" and you're running on the battery.
- It's warm outside, your laptop has decided to play it down and hibernate instead of melting all components inside.
- You're accessing the iMovie file from the MacBook on the PowerMac with an AppleTalk RJ-45 connection that you took from your previous Mac Plus.
- Your edit was so dirty that your shiny black iBook is reluctant to work on it.
- You pressed "Enter" only after 115mn of waiting.
- Your MacBook is an iBook that somebody painted black and sold you with a benefit of 600%.
 
dynamicv said:
I'm looking for the humour in your post.





Still looking....
Click to expand...


Why? I have seen from others where there have been claims that the Intels were so much faster than the Quad G5s, and I just have not seen that to be true.

I know from experience that it is generally not fair, all things given, to compare two such machines, but I was hoping someone who stands by the 'My MacBook will kick the crap out of a Quad G5' crowd would explain such results.

To be fair, I find both to be excellent machines, and love both of them...


Nothing funny here... But if you want a joke... There were these two poodles..One says to the other.....

Max.
 
Not being funny, I just can't see any reason why a Quad G5, with it's 1.25GHz system bus, faster hard disks, four cores rather than two, three times the RAM and a dedicated video card wouldn't kick the s**t out of a MacBook when the PowerMac was optimised to be a video workstation in the first place.

I would doubt those that say the MacBook wins every time. The CoreDuo is better than the 970MP at a lot of things, but video compression isn't one of them.
 
I don't think anyone in their right mind would claim the MacBook is faster than the quad, though there have been benchmarks to show the MacBook is just as fast/faster than the 2.0 PowerMac.
 
Well, Maybe I was just stiring the pot..

I know of at least two members that would make claims of how poor the G5 is but they are most likely trolls.

I will say this... I am no longer the least bit concerned I bought too soon.

I needed a Powerful Video editing monster, and it looks like that is what I got. I personally doubt the MacPro will be that much faster... so I am good for another 5 years....

And dynamicv, I cannot agree with you more. Thanks for confirming I am not nuts.

Max.
 
And well, additionally, I agree with the technical side: the PM is a professional machine, where all parts (not only the G5/Intel) are put together for professional results, whereas the MacBook is a versatile laptop; a faster Intel CPU alone does not guarantee faster treatment, especially of heavy data like movies.
 
Ah OK, just putting your mind at rest. No worries. There's nothing in the current Apple range, Intel or PowerPC, that touches your PowerMac config for performance. The Quad is still the fastest Mac by a long way.

Come the WWDC next month however, that may change ;) :p
 
Well, if all things were equal, would anyone care to speculate if the first Intel Pro Mac could keep up with / beat the Quad?

Stevo will say yes...<grin>

Max.
 
maxvamp said:
P.S. Mods, is there a way to close this thread before the trolls come.
Click to expand...

Okay, this must be the humorous part. You want to close the thread before "the trolls come" yet your posts are close to trolling/flaimbait. As it5five said, there are a number of comparisons showing MBP running toe-to-toe w/dual 2.0 G5's, and if you assumed people were talking about the Quad, well, that's your mistake.


Lethal
 
LethalWolfe said:
Okay, this must be the humorous part. You want to close the thread before "the trolls come" yet your posts are close to trolling/flaimbait. As it5five said, there are a number of comparisons showing MBP running toe-to-toe w/dual 2.0 G5's, and if you assumed people were talking about the Quad, well, that's your mistake.


Lethal
Click to expand...

- Wasn't meant to be a bait for trolls, but to discuss / confirm that this is the way it should be.

- No Assumptions, I have been told by at least two members on this board that the QUAD was slower than the Intels. ( very clearly ). I disputed this with them, but now I feel I have proof, and wanted to confirm with others that were / are knowledgable.

- Finally, in your waverform monitor, your black looks really noisy from the image. Sync looks good though...

Max.
 
Arnaud said:
- The hard drive of your MacBook is only 5400 rpm, but, more important, you forgot to adjust the Energy Saving levels of your MacBook to "Highest" and you're running on the battery.
- It's warm outside, your laptop has decided to play it down and hibernate instead of melting all components inside.
- You're accessing the iMovie file from the MacBook on the PowerMac with an AppleTalk RJ-45 connection that you took from your previous Mac Plus.
- Your edit was so dirty that your shiny black iBook is reluctant to work on it.
- You pressed "Enter" only after 115mn of waiting.
- Your MacBook is an iBook that somebody painted black and sold you with a benefit of 600%.
Click to expand...

:D :D :D :D :D

The MacBook, and 600 MHZ iBook did seem to be running at the same speed...

Max.
 
Actually, the core duo beat the WORLD record for SuperPI. At 3GHZ it beat the record of a 7GHZ P4; and it is also faster than the Pentium E.E. and the FX-62; but still, this a laptop computer with a slow HD, less ram, and integrated graphics like everyone has said. Also, you're minus a processor. So let's recap: slower HD, less ram, no dedicated graphx, only 1 processor.

PS: a quad core conroe will kick the $#!@ out of a quad g5. The core duo is a LAPTOP hd w/ minus a good HD, there is no reason it should even be THAT close. The core duo is THE BEST processor you can get right now (desktop or laptop) until conroe comes out. The core duo spanks everything.
 
You honestly can't expect a Laptop to beat a G5 PowerMac.

If there had been quad core G5 Laptops, the MacBook would still beat the hell out of it...
 
Conroe is a dual core chip that cannot be used in multiprocessor configurations. Therefore a quad configuration is kinda impossible. Woodcrest on the other hand, will be another story.
 
One reason the Quad is faster is you used iMovie (QT basically) export - I'd assume QT is much more optimized (as of today anyway, may/will change in the future) for Altivec (PowerPC) as opposed to SSE3 (Intel).

You could compile x264 on both machines and then compare encoding times for h.264, and I bet the MacBook will do better (x264 has lots of Intel optimizations).
 
live4ever said:
You could compile x264 on both machines and then compare encoding times for h.264, and I bet the MacBook will do better (x264 has lots of Intel optimizations).
Click to expand...

Well, he already mentioned encoding in H264 in his first post, didn't he ?
But I am curious about the size of the original file, also - to know how much had to be encoded.
 
maxvamp said:
Why? I have seen from others where there have been claims that the Intels were so much faster than the Quad G5s, and I just have not seen that to be true.

I know from experience that it is generally not fair, all things given, to compare two such machines, but I was hoping someone who stands by the 'My MacBook will kick the crap out of a Quad G5' crowd would explain such results.

To be fair, I find both to be excellent machines, and love both of them...


Nothing funny here... But if you want a joke... There were these two poodles..One says to the other.....

Max.
Click to expand...

Actually, you're wrong. All intel macs are faster than G5 except Quad for now.
 
supremedesigner said:
Actually, you're wrong. All intel macs are faster than G5 except Quad for now.
Click to expand...

A MBP or imac will run about even with a dual 2.0 G5. A dual 2.5 or 2.7 will thrash the intel soundly, esp. if you give it a 10k hard drive, fast video card, more RAM, etc.
 
Arnaud said:
Well, he already mentioned encoding in H264 in his first post, didn't he ?
But I am curious about the size of the original file, also - to know how much had to be encoded.
Click to expand...

~11.5 GB From DV. Went to H.264 which ended in a file ~7 GB

Max.
 
maxvamp said:
~11.5 GB From DV. Went to H.264 which ended in a file ~7 GB
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks. That's relevant too, as the rest of the machine will have to support the transfer of the data before and after it gets processed by the CPU. In that case, 11.5 Gb is already quite bulky, your HDD is slow (5400rpm) and not so big either, like a 120Gb or something?

Mmm, not that it matters, but did you really end up with a 7Gb H264 file in the end? For the web? :D
 
Well, It didn't end up on the web. I am now transforming it to MPEG-1 and later, I'll try SWF. I am reluctant to do a SWF due to Qualty. Size might force my hand though..

Max.
 
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