My first G5 encounter

[lem0nayde]

For New Yorkers - J&R has one on display (surprisingly before the Apple Store Soho).

It was a 1.6 I believe - the store was empty, and the Apple portion of the store is pretty removed so it was a perfect enviroment to test the sound issue. I'll tell you, this machine was dead silent. Even with my ear against the front grill, I couldn't hear a thing.

I think the design is gorgeous, personally. Very strikingly different from any computers out there, and it's about time Apple abandoned the glossy bubbly plastic look of the past. It was getting very dated.

I agree with everyone else though - it's a very tall machine. I was surprised by the scale. The employee there opened it up for people to see - the inside is really magnificent up close, such incredible industrial design.

On the down side, and this is a big down side, the machines performance was crappy. Photoshop was sluggish and unresponsive. Granted, I only had a few minutes and I'm not sure how much ram the box had in it.

I have a dual on order, but it's not coming until October - I hope some of the Mac publications get them in their hands before them for review. If it turns out the G5 is a big stinker when it comes to performance, I'll have to cancel my order and stick with my ugly plastic Dual 867 MDD for a while.

Joe

 

[Kid Red]

Ok everyone step back. You won't notice a huge difference between a G4 and a G5 opening mail. Ok, so no, you won't be impressed much launching iTunes. You won't notice much difference without lots of Ram and Panther. 10.2.7 is a hack to get it to run on the G5. Wait for panther, a few apps to be written for the G5 and then lay your first impressions on us.

 

[cr2sh]

Originally posted by Kid Red
Ok everyone step back. You won't notice a huge difference between a G4 and a G5 opening mail.

With twice the clock speed? What is this... intel?
I should see a difference between a 900mhz g4 imac and a 1.8ghz g5...

 

[couch potato]

thats what sucks about living in oregon- IT TAKES FOREVER TO GET ANYTHING HERE. the G5's wont be at our oh so wonderful independent apple store for "a few more weeks"


wow, thats disappointing to hear that the 1.6 isnt much better. has apple blown it again? I hope not, because my dad got a 2ghz on order, and he has his hopes high. Me too, but i feel some doubt coming over me

I think that you wont notice much difference with little apps such as Mail, although it should feel different. As for photoshop- thats too bad it doesnt run much better. I think its because of the lack of ram in the 1.6 machines you guys tried out. yeah, cpu speed makes a difference, but when it comes to opening and running a good amount of apps out there, ram is a key player. with at least 1GB of ram in that 1.6, i bet there would be a great performance increase

 

[cr2sh]

The compusa here has one for sale, a 1.6 with 256... id buy it but "low end model" really isnt my style... im going to hold off for that dual 3ghz.. let alone panther...

 

[G3-Pwnz-G4]

people, wake up.

a dual 1.42 is going to be faster than any 1.6g5. 2.84ghz vs. 1.6ghz. duh. wake up.

 

[cr2sh]

Originally posted by G3-Pwnz-G4
people, wake up.

a dual 1.42 is going to be faster than any 1.6g5. 2.84ghz vs. 1.6ghz. duh. wake up.

There are so many things wrong with this post i don't know where to start...
let's start with... DELETED! (too much sb?)

Your fellow members of MacRumors are awake.
A dual 1.42 isnt the equivalent of a 2.84.
"any" is an enormous word...
I'm not sure "duh" is a valid argument either.

 

[G3-Pwnz-G4]

2 1.42ghz cpus...sooo, mathematically speaking it's 2.84, that's more than a ghz apart. i don't know why people are so disapointed with the speed.

IE, a 2ghz g3, would probably be faster than a 1ghz g4, just by pure speed. same as how p4's ARE faster than g4s (they are...just admit it...) not because they are more effecient but because they just spit stuff out faster.

 

[cr2sh]

Wow, I walked right into that one... I'm a sucker.

I'll just say that i was impressied with the g5 tonight.. the case was dead silent, I'm talking powerbook silent... the rendering I was able to do on it was on par with what I had expected, but this again was a 1.6 with 256... I wasn't stunned nor shocked... it was what I expected. I remember the first time I ever used a g4 for photoshop, the way it generated effects so much faster than my old pc... it was like that tonight, except my old pc was my old g4.
if that makes sense.

 

[Rower_CPU]

As many CPU experts (not me) here will tell you, dual processors does not double the speed of the machine. It's a diminishing return of approximately 80% I believe, and that's only in SMP aware apps/OSes.

So, if we're playing the math game...
1.42GHz x .8 = 1.14GHz
1.42GHz + 1.14GHz = 2.56GHz

So, an advantage of maybe 1GHz, but that leaves out completely the rest of the subsystem (full and faster DDR implementation, faster system bus, faster hard drives, etc). Of course it's still going to depend on the application and G5 optimizations for ideal G5 performance, but saying "duh, 2x1.42 G4 is better than 1x1.6 G5" is a little...oversimplified.

 

[G3-Pwnz-G4]

...well, that may be, but basically, i think it's stupid that people are disapointed that a 1.6ghz g5 is slower than a dp 1.42ghz g4.

jus my opinion....

 

[FuzzyBallz]

Originally posted by tazo
all the apps i tested opened in only a few bounces, while ms word still took a ghastly amount of time.

Hmmm... that's strange, I just did a test by opening MS word and it took half a second. Running a G4 Dual 1.25G w/ 2x512MB PC2700 Crucial, WDSE 40GB/8MB HD.

Excel took 1 second and Photoshop took 5 seconds.

Going over to campus book store now and see if which model of G5 they have.

Update: They have 20 G5 1.6 w/ 256MB RAM at the store and a 1.8 w/ 512MB on display. Opening Word took about the same speed as my system, so I guess the speed's all right. Waiting for the Dual 2.0 to come out though.

 

[G3-Pwnz-G4]

i just tested out a 1.6ghz g5 today. i saw no difference in speed between it and my dad's dp 1ghz g4. then again, my dad's g4 has like 1.5gb of ram, and the g5 had 256mb.

i think that is unbelievably lame. the worst part is there was this hot-shot apple-peon there, who was all full of himself and started actin like a tough guy. with tape on his glasses (honestly). ugh, talk about disturbing...

"hey boy, that's the 's-y-s-t-e-m p-r-e-f-e-r-e-n-c-e-s'. can you say system preferences? it allows you to change moniter 'r-e-s-o-l-u-t-i-o-n'..." and so on and so forth.

 

[Waluigi]

My 1st time

I just got the privallage to see and use a G5 for the first time a few hours ago! The case is stunning, way better then the pictures. The 1.8 model I used was lightneing fast, and was running the latest build of panther. The one thing I found wierd was the size of the apple logo on the right side....it is HUGE! Way bigger then in the video, if I recall correctly. Other then that, I'm even more excited about my Dual...any day now....

--Waluigi