More Quad PowerMac G5 Benchmarks

[MacTruck]

I think Apple did this because People like to buy their own, cheaper RAM. This was the customer doesn't feel like they are paying extra for Apple RAM (well, it's not really made by Apple).

Most of apples sales are government, business and schools and almost everytime they just buy the ram from apple. That is why its so expensive and that is why they give you very little ram. Its not to benefit the consumer.

 

[iPoster]

As for consumer vs pro, would you play games on a dual dual-core Xeon or Opteron workstation?

If I could afford one!

 

[GyroFX]

sorry, i don't know much about graphics cards, but can we put in any (PC) based PCI-e card into the G5? or will it not work due to incompatible drivers/software or lack there of...

 

[Kaiser Phoenix]

Yeah I am also in the market for a PowerMac and I was wondering whether you can insert a Geforce 7800GTX card into it, or is that not possible. Apple seems very weak in this area of graphic cards IMHO.

 

[Mord]

no you cant, the cards need different firmware to run with the bios/openfirmware and you can only flash it if the card exists in the mac world, you can probably flash a pc 7800GT, or even a GTX but it would only run with the GT's pipelines at the GT's speed.

 

[faustofernos]

Drool...

We're just dying to get one for our gay podcast, so we can encode video faster, ya know...

I do the Feast of Fools podcast and I'm always snoozing on my poor little G4 867 laptop waiting for that thing to churn away...

 

[Evangelion]

Barefeats is in error in their UT2004-benchmark. they say:

(We included this in the CPU section because,
a) UT2004 is CPU bound, especially at 1024x768 and
b) it reminds us that most games are not aware of multiple processors.
We theorize the gain is due to the 4X cache size advantage of the Quad-Core.)

Quad-core does not have 4x the cache of the single-core. Single-core G5 has 512KB of L2-cache, while dual-core G5 has 1MB of cache for each core. So the core has twice as much L2-cache as the single-core variant has.

 

[Evangelion]

maybe that has more to do with the gpu and how the games are optimized. if games were optimized for dual core g5's and Open GL they probably would smoke a AMD if those games were poorly ported to wintel.

If you compare OpenGL-games on x86 to OpenGL-games on PPC, the x86 wins. It's not due to "they are poorly optimized for OpenGL" since they both use OpenGL.

you can play Direct3D-games on Linux with OK framerates (Direct3D-calls are converted to OpenGL on the fly), so it's really surprising that OS X is so slow on gaming when playing straight OpenGL-games. Apple propably has poor OpenGL-implementation.

 

[Evangelion]

But making a dual proc, dual core Opteron system would cost 2x more than a Quad core Mac. In fact, a dual core Opteron system would cost as much as a Quad core Mac.

I believe the price is less than that. yes, the Quad is a VERY good value for money, but I don't think the difference is something like 2x. Systems from BOXX for example do cost more, but they offer some extra stuff over the Quad (like better expandability).

 

[charleswhalley]

Quad delay

Ordered my beauty minutes after the web site was up and functioning in the UK - Estimated ship date was today. At 5.30 gmt I received the dreaded 'delay on despatch' message from the Apple store. OK only until November 22nd - but after living last years farce with the 2.5 Dual we ordered and waited for 3+ months I am gutted!

Hopefully next week will see the Quad arrive on our doorstep.

 

[fpnc]

Barefeats is in error in their UT2004-benchmark. they say:

We theorize the gain is due to the 4X cache size advantage of the Quad-Core.)

Quad-core does not have 4x the cache of the single-core. Single-core G5 has 512KB of L2-cache, while dual-core G5 has 1MB of cache for each core. So the core has twice as much L2-cache as the single-core variant has.

In a sense, Barefeats is correct. In the 970MP each core has 1MB of cache and the quad-core Power Mac thus has 2 x 2 x 1MB or 4MB of total L2 cache. The single core 970FX has 512MB of cache per processsor and the previous Power Macs only contained two cores (two processors). Thus, the old dual Power Macs had 2 x 512MB of L2 cache (1MB total) while the new quad Power Macs have 4MB total.

 

[sai_digitalle]

Ram Recommendation needed

Sup guys, my Quad G5 is due here on the 21st of this month and i'm going to buy some Ram for it. I've priced Crucial.com and it's $607.00 for 2 sets of 2 GB (2 sticks of 1GB) & Macsales.com is is about $470.00.

Macsales ram is made by Samsung. Do they make a RAM chip? Finally, Please give me your recommendations on places to buy RAM at a great price and great reputation.

Thx,
Sai

 

[Maxx Power]

If you compare OpenGL-games on x86 to OpenGL-games on PPC, the x86 wins. It's not due to "they are poorly optimized for OpenGL" since they both use OpenGL.

you can play Direct3D-games on Linux with OK framerates (Direct3D-calls are converted to OpenGL on the fly), so it's really surprising that OS X is so slow on gaming when playing straight OpenGL-games. Apple propably has poor OpenGL-implementation.

From what I have read in the past, OS X has a poor OpenGL implementation, I didn't really dig into it at the time, but if this turns out to be the case, I'll readup more on it.

 

[Evangelion]

In a sense, Barefeats is correct.

No they are not. They are basically looking at the specs of the single processor and comparing them, when they should be comparing the specs of the core (which matter in this particular benchmark). the processor in Quad has two cores, with each core having 1MB of cache. If they want to do a real apples to apple comparison, they should compare the core on the Quad, to the core on the dual.

In the 970MP each core has 1MB of cache and the quad-core Power Mac thus has 2 x 2 x 1MB or 4MB of total L2 cache. The single core 970FX has 512MB of cache per processsor and the previous Power Macs only contained two cores (two processors). Thus, the old dual Power Macs had 2 x 512MB of L2 cache (1MB total) while the new quad Power Macs have 4MB total.

Since UT is single-threaded, it does not matter how much L2-cache the other core has. UT is faster on the Quad because the app has twice as much cache at it's disposal (1MB as opposed to 512KB), and propably because of PCI-E and faster RAM. Yes, the entire processor might have four times the cache, but since that cache is spread across the cores, and the app only uses one core, what matters is the amount of cache single core has. It has four times the cache, but that cache is spread to several cores, and it has twice as many cores as the dual hase.

If they say that "UT is propably faster because Quad has 4 times the cache", they should then also say "UT is propably faster because Quad has twice as many processor-cores as the dual has". But they can't say just one, and not the other. And in any case, since UT does not use multiple processors, what matter is the specs of the individual core.

 

[ksz]

Macsales ram is made by Samsung. Do they make a RAM chip?
Sai

Absolutely. Samsung is probably the world's biggest DRAM maker and they are frequently at the leading edge of memory design.

 

[aquafina]

Well said...

If they say that "UT is propably faster because Quad has 4 times the cache", they should then also say "UT is propably faster because Quad has twice as many processor-cores as the dual has". But they can't say just one, and not the other. And in any case, since UT does not use multiple processors, what matter is the specs of the individual core.

Well said...finally someone used their brain before they used their fingers.

 

[Mord]

UT does acctually use multiple cpu's the sound is offloaded to the second cpu, however compared a quad to a dual makes no difference, what we should care about is weather the 970MP has a shared 2MB cache or seperate 1MB caches if the former then one core can effectively have 4x the cache of the 970FX.