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Opinions on how fast Dual G5 2.5Ghz is...

I

iBunny

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 15, 2004
1,254
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ok, I know this is all personal opinion and I am somewhat in a biased forums, however, its because of you guys I purchased, and replaced my pc with an iBook for the time being.

Anyway, I currently own a iBook G4 1.33Ghz, 14', 768MB Ram, Combo Drive OSX.3.7

There are times, even when doing simple tasks, that this machine slows down... not to a crawl, but a noticeable slowdown in general performance. No games are played except StarCraft and WarCraft II :)

I am not looking to jump right into a Dual G5 system, however I would like to gather some opinions on its performance. Dual G5 2.5Ghz, 1GB + Ram systems, and a good High End Video card.... compared to what I have. Now there will be a great boost going from the iBook to a Dual G5. But is it really notacable? and are say the Dual 2.5's alot faster than a single 1.8?

Thanks
 
Yes, they are faster. Much faster. Go to an Apple Store or CompUSA and play with one yourself and you'll see. Add some RAM and a better video card, and you have a screamer. Barefeats.com has some info on it as well. Lots of benchmarks.
 
The boast you will see is amazing. The things i do on school's eMac that basically put the sytem on hold don't even make the DP2.5 G5 break a sweat......

I have a G5 DUAL 2.5/2 Gigs RAM/NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL/250 HD/AP/BT/23" Apple Display :D :D :D :D
 
What kinds of things re you doing that cause slowdowns? I used my sisters iBook 933hz wit h640mb ram ofen, and never have any real slowdowns doing 'normal' stuff... iPhoto 04 is kinda slow, butI hear it's that way for everyone... it even pays UT2k3 and WC3 very well, which suprised me.

So, I'm curious, what specifically do you have troubles with on yuour iBook?

Rob
 
Simple answer: if you want to use a Mac, it's currently the fastest one there is. It's certainly the fastest machine I've ever used... and with enough RAM, a WD Raptor it's pretty sprightly.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
What kinds of things re you doing that cause slowdowns? I used my sisters iBook 933hz wit h640mb ram ofen, and never have any real slowdowns doing 'normal' stuff... iPhoto 04 is kinda slow, butI hear it's that way for everyone... it even pays UT2k3 and WC3 very well, which suprised me.

So, I'm curious, what specifically do you have troubles with on yuour iBook?

Rob
Click to expand...

At any one given time, i am always on AIM and Yahoo (now Adium) iTunes is always on, Limewire is always Downloading, I am surfing multiple web pages (like 5 or more) - and always keeping some open for later reading that i dont want to navagate back to. Most of the Time i am saving pictures from the Internet. Now, together, the iBook does all of this at the same time perfectly. But when I go to open something like a big word file or play with excel and even a Internet stream movie via VLC or WMP (with the rest of the previsouly mentioned open) I come to a crawl and i get a spinning colored ball for about 20 seconds. Also, Some web pages I go to, and some forums I visit that have lots of pictures and animated gifs, Usualy between 25 - 50 MB worth of pics, while downloading, the system gives me a spinnning colored ball for about 10 - 45 seconds depending on the size of the page i just navagated to.

But I can really live with that, I just wondered if I would notice a performance increase for what I do, with a Dual G5 System. And I am in the Marine Corps, far away from all, so I do not have the opportunity to play with a system. I bought this iBook out of blind faith and a little help from these forums.
 
Yeah, I can do all that stuff on my 1.5 Ghz Powerbook. As the proud owner of a Dual 2.5Ghz G5, I can say that it is F***IN fast...fastest machine I've ever used...but what do I go to the Power Mac for? Video editing (by which I make my living) and games (when I have the time). It crunches HD and uncompressed video like noone's business (except mine :cool: ) and plays games like a damn speed demon, especially with a nVidia 6800. But for what you're doin, you can get away with the Mac Mini, go for an iMac G5 or a Powerbook...save your money for other stuff. That's if you're ONLY doing the things you said you're doing.
 
iBunny said:
At any one given time, i am always on AIM and Yahoo (now Adium) iTunes is always on, Limewire is always Downloading, I am surfing multiple web pages (like 5 or more) - and always keeping some open for later reading that i dont want to navagate back to. Most of the Time i am saving pictures from the Internet. Now, together, the iBook does all of this at the same time perfectly. But when I go to open something like a big word file or play with excel and even a Internet stream movie via VLC or WMP (with the rest of the previsouly mentioned open) I come to a crawl and i get a spinning colored ball for about 20 seconds. Also, Some web pages I go to, and some forums I visit that have lots of pictures and animated gifs, Usualy between 25 - 50 MB worth of pics, while downloading, the system gives me a spinnning colored ball for about 10 - 45 seconds depending on the size of the page i just navagated to.

But I can really live with that, I just wondered if I would notice a performance increase for what I do, with a Dual G5 System. And I am in the Marine Corps, far away from all, so I do not have the opportunity to play with a system. I bought this iBook out of blind faith and a little help from these forums.
Click to expand...

Have you ever though that using Limewire, its writting to the disk of all the pics and the website you are going to, as well as opening a large file, and reading from the disk. As well as iTunes reading from the disk for music files. This can be very intensive just for the hard drive let alone the Processor.

You have a lot of stuff being switched back and forth between the hard drive an RAM too with all of this stuff running. Get X Resource Graph and see how your computer is doing when this stuff is going on.

http://www.gauchosoft.com/xrg/
 
Blue Velvet said:
Simple answer: if you want to use a Mac, it's currently the fastest one there is. It's certainly the fastest machine I've ever used... and with enough RAM, a WD Raptor it's pretty sprightly.
Click to expand...

Does a Raptor help? I am think of buying one....
 
You're also being slowed down by all those writes because the drive is only 4200rpm where as most desktop machines have 7200+rpm drives. This does make a huge difference.

I am on an iBook G4 1ghz and it slows down like yours does when doing a lot of disk activity.
 
Notice that most of these replies are from people who are comparing some older system, like your ibook or a G4 system, to the dual 2.5. Of course the speed leap is incredible. A dual G5 1.8 will get you subjectively most of that speed boost, especially for what you do, and at a fraction of the cost - especially if it's refurbished like mine. I went from a G4 800 imac to a powerbook G4 1.33ghz to a single processor G5 1.6 to my current dual 1.8 in less than a year (changes made for other reasons than speed alone). I really couldn't want any more speed than I have now, unless I started rendering 3D day-in day-out.

Save some money and get the dual 1.8 or 2.0
 
yay a dual 1.8 for surfing the web, listening to itunes, downloading from limewire, chatting with people and opening word documents...

that's way overkilled!! a nice little emac or mac mini would do this job as well as the powermac!! seriously...what would he need a dual 1.8 for? for the stuff mentioned above?? nope!
 
I just mentioned the Dual 2.5 because I would rather have the best now, so it lasts longer in the future and if i ever wanted to do something that was intensive, i would have that option becuase my computer would already be the fastest there is.

But I Understand your reasoning about the hard drives. Is it worth it to investigate and spend the money / time to get a 7200rpm HDD and install it myself in my iBook?
 
I went from a G3 iBook 800mhz and a P4 (400FSB) 1.7GHZ desktop to a DP 2.0GHZ PM and I have to say I love it.

Much like you I'm not sure if i need all that power now, but its comforting knowing this thing will last me a long long time if i need it to.

iBunny said:
I just mentioned the Dual 2.5 because I would rather have the best now, so it lasts longer in the future and if i ever wanted to do something that was intensive, i would have that option becuase my computer would already be the fastest there is.

But I Understand your reasoning about the hard drives. Is it worth it to investigate and spend the money / time to get a 7200rpm HDD and install it myself in my iBook?
Click to expand...
 
All I really want is a computer that opens Photoshop instantly.

Not in 10 seconds. Not in 2 seconds. Blink, it's open.

And it needs to do that with a million fonts installed and a butt-load of styles in the styles palette.

Even if I'm launching Photoshop by opening a doc at 600 dpi with 18 layers.

Why does this matter? I don't really know, but waiting 5-10 seconds for Photoshop really gets on my nerves and I dream of instant gratification.

So, can a dual 2.5 do that?
 
SuperChuck said:
All I really want is a computer that opens Photoshop instantly.

Not in 10 seconds. Not in 2 seconds. Blink, it's open.

And it needs to do that with a million fonts installed and a butt-load of styles in the styles palette.

Even if I'm launching Photoshop by opening a doc at 600 dpi with 18 layers.

Why does this matter? I don't really know, but waiting 5-10 seconds for Photoshop really gets on my nerves and I dream of instant gratification.

So, can a dual 2.5 do that?
Click to expand...

Why not just add a bit of extra RAM to your system and leave Photoshop running all the time?
 
oingoboingo said:
Why not just add a bit of extra RAM to your system and leave Photoshop running all the time?
Click to expand...

This makes perfect sense, but my dream has been built over years of staring at the list of developers that appear on the Photoshop splash graphic.

For so long, I have envisioned the day that I would no longer be tempted to decipher the pronunciation of Seetharaman Narayanan while waiting to do something productive. When meeting graphic designers, I always want to ask them if they know who Seetharaman Narayanan is and attempt to guess the speed of their machine by their level of familiarity.

It is a stupid dream, but I want it nonetheless.
 
SuperChuck said:
All I really want is a computer that opens Photoshop instantly.

Not in 10 seconds. Not in 2 seconds. Blink, it's open.

And it needs to do that with a million fonts installed and a butt-load of styles in the styles palette.

Even if I'm launching Photoshop by opening a doc at 600 dpi with 18 layers.

Why does this matter? I don't really know, but waiting 5-10 seconds for Photoshop really gets on my nerves and I dream of instant gratification.

So, can a dual 2.5 do that?
Click to expand...

No computer can .... It is in Photoshop's nature to startup slow
 
For so long, I have envisioned the day that I would no longer be tempted to decipher the pronunciation of Seetharaman Narayanan while waiting to do something productive. When meeting graphic designers, I always want to ask them if they know who Seetharaman Narayanan is and attempt to guess the speed of their machine by their level of familiarity.
Click to expand...

:D

That is hilarious!!
 
SuperChuck said:
For so long, I have envisioned the day that I would no longer be tempted to decipher the pronunciation of Seetharaman Narayanan while waiting to do something productive. When meeting graphic designers, I always want to ask them if they know who Seetharaman Narayanan is and attempt to guess the speed of their machine by their level of familiarity.
Click to expand...

hahaha, damn - I feel that way some times. I actually always wondered if there was a simple pattern to the name listing or if it was random...

And did you launch Photoshop to look at Narayanan's name for correct spelling or did you do it from memory?

D
 
Nothing is overkill of you do a lot of multitasking. I like, for example, to write DVDs, seed torrents (legal ones of course :), listen to itunes, watch Gforce visualizer in a small window, and work with word or excel, all at the same time and still have it be fast. A dual G5 with 1.5+ GB Ram is ideal. SOmetimes I want to play Halo while doing several of the above.
 
oingoboingo said:
Why not just add a bit of extra RAM to your system and leave Photoshop running all the time?
Click to expand...

yeah ... i usually leave mine open. :) i can see how long it takes to open when i get home.

my dual 2.5 kicks the **** out of my 1Ghz PB. :D

it's the fastest computer i have ever used ... i do lots of audio and video and it's able to keep up with everything i throw at it. except for those occasional weird lock-ups with whirling fans at full blast. :eek:

the dual 2.0 is best balance of power ... the dual 1.8 is the best deal for most users.


TheGimp said:
Nothing is overkill of you do a lot of multitasking. I like, for example, to write DVDs, seed torrents (legal ones of course , listen to itunes, watch Gforce visualizer in a small window, and work with word or excel, all at the same time and still have it be fast. A dual G5 with 1.5+ GB Ram is ideal. SOmetimes I want to play Halo while doing several of the above.
Click to expand...

when im running a bunch of **** (Photoshop, Illustrator, Live, Reason, iTunes, Safari, P2P, Quicktime, Mail, etc) ... i'll pop open RTCW and play MP with all settings on high/full/best with absolutely no slowdows. :D :p


peace.
 
Mr. Anderson said:
And did you launch Photoshop to look at Narayanan's name for correct spelling or did you do it from memory?
Click to expand...

Thankfully, my machine is fast enough that I had to launch and refresh my memory. If you could spell it without launching, I feel your pain.
 
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