MacWorld mag G5 speed tests

[The Shadow]

I agree with you Mr Maui.

It'd be pretty unlikely that someone who paid full price for a 1.42 a few months back, if indeed they did want to upgrade, would go for the bottom of the range SP1.6.

So it's all a question of the end users circumstances.

Having said that, I've got an older G4533 and I am waiting to see if the mid range PM goes Dual next year (and whether Apple responds to criticism of only one optical drive) before I upgrade next year some time.

Cheers to all.

 

[sjk]

Originally posted by The Shadow
I agree with you Mr Maui.

Me, too.

I wish benchmark results consistently provided more thorough descriptions of the testing conditions on each system. For these MW tests can we assume they were all run from a generic software environment without any other applications running besides the default Unix daemons in the background? Some baseline for comparison purposes is often incomplete or missing.

 

[reflex]

Originally posted by Abstract
Jezus, whoever bought a single proc PM got ripped!! Seriously, what a joke. They aren't worth the money. There's little improvement over a dual 1.42GHz, if any at all. I'd hold out for the duals, and ONLY the duals...

The one (arguably big) advantage that the single G5 holds over a dual G4 is that it's a 64bit cpu. Right now that doesn't mean much, but in the future there will be a 64bit version of OSX, which will probably take full advantage of it. The scores will likely be different then.

 

[windwaves]

simple take

If you have a dual G4 mac 1ghz or above, there is hardly any reason to upgrade to a single g5 mac. Only a Dual G5 2Ghz Mac would make sense.
So I am happy to see that as far as I am concerned my G4 Dual 1.25 piece of junk still holds its own, performance wise, v.s. the G5's except for the dual, their top of the line.

So, these g5 ... much hype about nothing, in my view, since only one of the new Mac really is a significant improvement over the previous PM G4 line up - again, on a performance basis. Possibily they have solved other issues, like the pathetic. ridiculous, never ending noise problems (with 999 fans in the box!).

Anyhow, lets see what Rev B brings us. I am ready.

 

[windwaves]

Originally posted by reflex
The one (arguably big) advantage that the single G5 holds over a dual G4 is that it's a 64bit cpu. Right now that doesn't mean much, but in the future there will be a 64bit version of OSX, which will probably take full advantage of it. The scores will likely be different then.

Of course, but these are hypothesis, nobody really knows/understands how this 64bit implementation will effectively translate into higher performance in real world apps. And so, it sounds to me completely meaningless to make a 64bit argument TODAY. What does it mean to say to someone who buys a computer: " the processor is 64bit architecture (wow !!!!), however there are no apps that really are aware of that; there will be in the future and we <expect> improved performance ???
I guess this means, if you must buy today of course it does not really matter; however, for those considering to upgrade from recent Macs, there is very little incentive to do so. Just wait and see.

 

[The Shadow]

Everyone seems to be making good points.

I would just add that it's all hypothetical to me because in addition to performance issues, I cannot upgade untill there is a PC emulator that will run on the G5.

Hopefully this will get solved soon.

Cheers.

 

[Genie]

Yeah- I agre the dual 2 is the only one I wanted to spend a bunch of money on right now.

I'd like to wait for Rev b, but who knows how long it will be before those actually ship, and whether the pricing will be as cool as the Dual2G is.

 

[windwaves]

I'd expect revisions to be quicker, Not that Apple won't do the same mistake again (announce when they don't even have a clue when they can ship), but it will be quicker. Again, it depends on your current system. My Ice Cracker (dual 1.25 FW800) will do for a while longer.