Lots of stuff on Anandtech about the poor memory performance on the Intel chipset.
Looks like the Xeons got killed by the G5 in Word in their tests.
Might be an interesting machine when/if the motherboard chipset/ memory performance issue is looked in to.
I think part 3 of their review will be telling, paring the machine up to XP machines in a variety of tests.
Also from the Anandtech review (the reviewers conclusion actually):
The Mac Pro is pretty much everything the PowerMac G5 should have been. It's cooler, quieter, faster, has more expansion and it gives you more for your value than the older systems ever could.
From a performance standpoint, running OS X, the Mac Pro is truly Apple's fastest system by a long shot. Some of the performance advantages over the PowerMac G5 aren't enormous, but then you look at situations like iPhoto, Xcode or Final Cut Pro where the G5 is just put to shame. Rosetta performance is just about as good as it gets, the only real solution to that problem is for Adobe and Microsoft to hurry up and release updated software. Unfortunately since Apple isn't really a favorite of either company, it's not like greater than usual amounts of resources are being thrown at releasing new products specifically for the Mac platform.
The Core 2 also seems to be far faster than the G5 in the FCP comparison of this review. The 2.66 Ghz Pro (with the dual cores disabled to ensure balance) performed 60% better than the dual G5 system. Even the 2 GHz Core 2 model outperformed the G5 by a wide margin (and judging from the fact that the dual and quad configs had the same performance, I would wager that having quad cores makes no difference in this benchmark).
But it's not faster. Slower actually than the G5 at some apps. What's everyone looking at anyway? I'm pretty unimpressed. Other than Adobe's usage of cache (AE is a cache lover and will use all of it, hence the faster performance).
The only apps it is slower in are non-universal apps that haven't been optimized, once these become universal, you can expect it to be FAR faster than the G5 (seeing how it evens out or beats the G5 already).
But the actual xeon processors are only as fast as the G5 processors. Look at the average specs... the 2.66 machines are only a teeny bit faster than the G5s except in a few apps like filemaker. But not in the biggies like Final Cut Pro where it actually appears that mhz for mhz the G5 is a faster machine hands down!
That would be a very biased and inaccurate analysis of the comparison. Firstly, only a few benchmarks were used, its useless to discount all the benchmarks where the Core 2 are far faster and than put value only on the ONE benchmark where it is a bit faster (and even that particular benchmark is doubtful in accuracy given the fact that other reviews place the Core 2 as FAR faster in FCP) without any real reason. Secondly, the MHz to MHz comparison is useless as frankly, the core 2 architecture can scale far higher than the G5 as far as clock speeds go. Even the 3 GHz specification is barely pushing it and it shows in the fact of the significantly reduced power draw and heat dissipation in comparison to the G5.
I have to say, I actually expected the woodcrest results to be better. It really shows that the G5 was years ahead of the competition.
Besides FCP, Woodcrest beat the G5 by 30-80+% on every universal benchmark, thats a VERY wide margin when comparing ANY architecture over the past 2-3 years (just look at how much the performance of the G5 has developed over the years, upgrading to woodcrest would be comparable to upgrading to a 3.3-4 GHz G5). Barefeats own past comparisons showed that the 2.6 GHz Opteron was faster than the G5 in the majority of the benchmarks. I think at most, it can be argued the G5 was even with its competition.
Does anyone seriously believe games today will show any significant improvement on a Mac Pro?
There will be MASSIVE improvements over the G5 powermacs certainly.
😀
It was just the performance was dam quick I just wasn't sure if there was an Intel version out or not, either way that is killer performance.
Yep, or right now, you could also run a PC version of CS2. As far as relative performance goes, a 2.6 GHz Opteron system beats the 2.5 GHz G5 quad by about ~16% in the
barefeats photoshop comparison, a 3 GHz Core 2 beats a
2.8 GHz Athlon 64 by 20+%. Hardware-wise, there really is no comparison.
Summary:
I think everyone has to remember that Apple took a HUGE PR risk by switching to intel and that it would be foolish to think that they didn't have a VERY GOOD REASON for doing it. As much as RISC is loved here, there really is no compelling reason to think that the G5 architecture stands much of a chance in this comparison. Furthermore, it is foolish to assume that a "up-to-date" G5 would fare any better, firstly because IBM has never stopped developing the G5 (its primary usage was IBM blade servers after all) and secondly because the Core 2 architecture as it stands now isn't being pushed to perform at its maximum levels. In the end, arrogance and pride has never helped anyone, its time to let go.
