PC World: Apple G5 Gets Trounced By Athlon 64 1063
StewedSquirrel writes "PC World magazine has published an article comparing the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron versus Apple's G5 processor, both 64-bit contenders for the title of 'fastest desktop processor.' Apple has made many claims to be the first, fastest and only 64-bit processor for the desktop and workstation market, but (not mentioning the fact that Opteron beat the G5 to market by over 4 months) the benchmarks should speak for themselves. Of note is the 3.2GHz Pentium 4, coming in competitive with the G5, but significantly behind the Opteron and Athlon 64 systems."
uhm... (Score:3, Insightful)
if you're going to compare workstation class chips, compare the freaking workstation class chips...
Re:uhm... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Opteron 140 and 240 series are workstation-class chips. Put an Opteron or two in a box with a bunch of hard drives--it's a server; put it in a box with a $1,000 graphics card--it's a workstation.
Re:uhm... (Score:3, Insightful)
So therefore, to have a dual processor AMD64 workstation, you'd need an Opteron. Case closed.
Re:uhm... (Score:2)
That said, the important thing to compare is the relative price of the systems. There have been several cases where various Mac-oriented magazines have trumpeted "Mac beats PC", but in the performance tests they have tested the Mac against a PC costing less than half of its value. That said, this test is actually pretty good. From a quick search, the Alien
Re:uhm... (Score:3, Informative)
Bzzt. The POWER4/POWER4+ is most certainly not the same as the G5. Consider the G5 the stripped-down, workstation version of the POWER4.
- A.P.
Re:uhm... (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to compare the high-end though, you can do that too. I'm very certain that AMD would GLADLY compare a $5745 Opteron server to a $5745 Power4 server any day of the week.
FWIW, check out the SpecW
Point being? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You're claiming a point? (Score:4, Informative)
You're MISSING a point (Score:5, Informative)
The POINT is that Apple never marketed the G5 as the fastest workstation. All Apple marketed the G5 as was the a) first 64-bit desktop (and if your definition of desktop differs from "a pre-built box from a well-known company that an ordinary human might buy", that's your problem, not Apple's), and b) the fastest desktop around at the time.
Saying, "Ooh! Ooh! New computers have come out! There are benchmarks against computers Apple wasn't talking about! The G5's not the fastest! Apple LIED!" is just plain dumb. Of course faster computers will come out! Apple isn't dumb enough to think or claim that their first-generation G5s will always be the fastest, and anyone who thinks they were claiming that is dumb.
And does anyone else see the possible conflict of interest with PC World running these benchmarks? Now, note that I'm an Apple fan. However, I won't completely believe any benchmarks that are done by anyone with an interest in seeing either side win. And it would probably be best if both computers were running something neutral, like a Linux or a BSD. Does anyone really believe these benchmarks are any more fair and unbiased than Apple's own???
Dan Aris
Re:You're MISSING a point (Score:3)
Um, it says earlier that the Mac benchmarks were performed by MacWorld (the sister magazine of PC World)
Re:You're MISSING a point (Score:3)
In the blurb beneath the benchmark table it says that the Mac benchmarking was done by MacWorld. I don't read either publication, so I don't know how biased they might be, but it seems to me that the MacWorld folks would want the Mac to look good.
Re:You're MISSING a point (Score:3, Interesting)
AMD does not distinguish between desktop and workstation in their product lines, while Apple does. The reason is that one is a system vendor and the other is a CPU vendor . In order for Apple to be correct here, every system vendor in the world has to unilaterally declare that Athlon64s and Opertons can't be put into desktop
Compatibility Issues? (Score:5, Interesting)
"But upgrading to XP 64 could mean giving up functionality without getting much in return. In fact, XP 64 looks like a throwback to Windows past: Its interface mirrors that of Windows 2000 or even Win 98. Microsoft has not disclosed what else will be in the OS, so it is possible that you'll still get most of XP's other features.
XP 64 won't have the 32-bit XP's support for DOS apps at all, nor will it run 16-bit apps (but it should have no trouble with 32-bit software). More important, 64-bit drivers for common hardware, such as printers, will be scarce when the OS debuts."
In moving from a Dual 1GHz G4 (Quicksilver 2002) to a Dual 2GHz G5, I have yet to find any software incompatibilities - everything works just fine.
This may change once my copy of Panther shows up, but my printer and other hardware continue to work for now.
Re:Compatibility Issues? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Compatibility Issues? (Score:2)
Sating that XP64 is a 'throwback' when the only version available is the first beta that doesn't have any useful device drivers, doesn't run directx or even
Anyway the first thing anyone does when they install XP is switch off all the crappy eye candy and go back to the Win2000 'throwback' look because that was actually useful.
Re:Compatibility Issues? (Score:5, Informative)
Off Topic Warning: Slashdot just gave me a message I've never seen before: "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 31.0)." So in order to fix this problem, I bring you... "TEXT ADDED TO DEFEAT LAME FILTER". You'll know it when you see it. You can thank the dipshits constructing the lameness filter for the added content. When will you fucks realize that tampering with posts only hampers comments? If the moderation system is not sufficient to the task of cleaning up slashdot, improve the moderation system, don't make end runs around it.
You think that's bad. You should look at the current state of today's 64 bit XP [microsoft.com] on itanic. As per microsoft technet [microsoft.com], it's missing just about every goddamn feature:
Re:Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, convincing "management" to let me run anything but Windows on a "company" machine is an exercise in futility.
Re:Windows? (Score:2)
Re:Compatibility Issues? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the limitations AMD put into the AMD64 series is that when you put the processor into long mode (64 bit mode) it no longer supports virtual real mode. The virtual real mode is how windows supports DOS apps. So in this way, it really is the chip, not windows, that is preventing DOS support.
That said, I don't see why they can't support 16 bit windows apps. That support is still there in the chip. I suppose you can always dual boot into 32 bit windows, and then you do get DOS su
Re:Compatibility Issues? (Score:4, Interesting)
Having said that few people need a full 64-bit OS and Panther is aimed squarely at consumers. I expect 64 bit pointers to come eventually, but it is probably better to stick with 32 bit pointers and keep better compatibility.
And, let's be honest. Most people running the Athalon-64 will be using it just as a fast Athalon running WindowsXP.
Retest with Panther (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Retest with Panther (Score:2)
Re:Retest with Panther (Score:2)
Re:Retest with MORE THAN JUST Panther (Score:4, Insightful)
>--
I have been a long time reader of PC World, and have much respect for your magazine. However, I am yet to see a more abject review than the "64-Bit Takes Off" what was presented in your November 2003 Edition.
Let's start with the choice of Microsoft Word. Undoubtedly a widely used piece of software, and Microsoft incredibly allowed Office v.X for the Mac to receive a number of features that the Windows version is yet to receive. There is, however, one thing that Microsoft will not allow Office for the Mac to achieve; and that is performance parity. To add to this, much of the codebase of Office v.X is left over from the good ol' days of MacOS 9 - reflected in the fact that Office is still a Carbon app. So, although Office on the Mac is extremely widely used, it's of dubious use as a means of comparing performance between processors. Unless, of course, all you do is Office and it's not presently running fast enough for you.
Next. Premiere. This is what stunned me. There is a reason that Premiere doesn't work very well on the Mac. This is because absolutely nobody who does video editing on a Mac uses it. Period. Final Cut Pro wipes to floor with it; not only in functionality, but performance also. Of all the ways you chose to benchmark the G5s, this surprised me the most.
In the Quake test, the Mac was hamstrung by the fact that it only had a 128MB video card in it. I also may be wrong in making the assertion, but doesn't the 256MB ATI 9800 Pro run at a faster clock rate than its 128MB cousin? This would account for quite a performance differential. Despite the fact that Macs aren't really known for games, no other computer with a 128MB graphics card beat it.
The next test was Photoshop. This is the one app you benchmarked in which some 64-bit optimisations have taken place for the Mac, and is also an app that many people use on the Apple platform. In this test, the G5 beat everything on offer from the x86 world by quite a handy margin.
What makes this even more impressive is that the G5 system you benchmarked is running on a stop-gap operating system release from Apple. OS X 10.3, codename Panther, has been specifically designed to take advantage of the G5's 64-bit CPU structure; it's out in barely a week.
I would certainly be interested to see a re-run of the tests, if you think that this feedback is valid. Cross-platform benchmarks are notorious for being difficult to standardise; I do, however, believe that if done properly they can be both useful and interesting.
-- james
Innovation really exists (Score:5, Insightful)
sort of true (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why Apple shoots them selves in the foot with this speed BS anyway. Seriously I like my iBook for many reasons, but speed isn't one of them (because it's slow - although seems as fast as many PC laptops for some reason), but I'm willing to put up with a little drag to h
Re:sort of true (Score:2)
Interesting, because I can think of many reviews that I've read that ran benchmarks on WinXP (32 bit)... And IIRC, that's a desktop OS. I have it on my Laptop, and Win2k is a desktop OS too right? The Opteron can run that too... wow!
Re:sort of true (Score:2)
Yes it is. People seem to forget Linux was developed to be a desktop OS. Being a server was second.
Secondly, it's being used by regular people, now, today. I know them. These are the same people that didn't know how to do things on Windows, and while they still don't know how to do things on Linux, they think it's more fun.
Re:sort of true (Score:2)
Of course I could get more or less the same out of a high end PC "Centrino" laptop on points 1 and 2. But even then the PC-laptop often ends
Shhhh.....! (Score:3, Funny)
The Benchmarks speak for themselves? (Score:5, Insightful)
This does nothing to benchmark the capabilities of the chips -- just the capability of the chips to run non-native apps.
Go back to your lives, citizens, nothing to see here...
idiot (Score:2)
And AMD should profit MUCH more from 64 bit than g5:
G5 runs the same, only in 64 bit (more memory/cache bw required)
K8 gets twice as much registers.
Re:idiot (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, there are proven benchmarks that show that the opteron indeed runs faster, though due to the many differences between the
SPECint SPECfp (Score:3, Informative)
2Ghz G5 - 840
Opteron 146 (2Ghz) - 1291
SPECint base2000
2Ghz G5 - 800
Opteron 146 (2Ghz) - 1170
SPECfp rate2000
Dual 2Ghz G5 - 15.7
RackSaver RSN-1164/op (1.8 GHz Opteron) - 22.5
SPECint rate2000
Dual 2Ghz G5 - 17.2
RackSaver RSN-1164/op (1.8 GHz Opteron) - 24.0
These numbers seem to back up the PCWorld tests.
Surprised by single CPU keeping up with dual CPU (Score:2)
Re:Surprised by single CPU keeping up with dual CP (Score:2)
I didn't see a detailed description of the Opteron system, but I suspect that it had two processors, as it beat the Athlon 64 FX-51 in most tests, despite having slower memory and a lower clock speed.
Re:Surprised by single CPU keeping up with dual CP (Score:2, Insightful)
So they're basically pitting ONE G5 against ONE Athlon64 in the other tests.
But this is not the only incoherence with this test. Using a Classic, unsupported application like Premiere instead of the native After Effects ? Testing a Mac's performance in Microsoft Office ? This is a joke.
Trounced? With this kind of comment? joke... (Score:3, Insightful)
The dual-G5 sparkled in one main area: our Photoshop test, which it completed in 18 seconds, or about 17 percent faster than the Aurora's 21 seconds. The 1.8-GHz single-chip G5 ($2999) trailed at 27 seconds.
Elsewhere, the Alienware earned top marks, performing particularly well in the Premiere QuickTime test."
======
>>$200.00 is nothing and no direct testing comparision is funny.... This is pure marketing hype.
Re:Trounced? With this kind of comment? joke... (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to be as fair as possible. However, it was usually difficult or impossible to get matching optical drives (as in SuperDrive), and many models not only didn't offer Gigabit ethernet, they didn't offer Ethernet *at all.* They had modems, though. Optional (I didn't add them, so they'd cost you extra.) Good grief.
So lacking some of the features that the G5 comes with standard, the Athlon-based PCs came in more expensive. Same old game on the "PCs are cheaper" front. The Athlons may be faster, but they'll cost you.
Now how is that for fair? "Faster costs more money." That sounds like reason to me. You can have a really fast processor, but at the expense of giving up a few things you might want in order to be productive. Like the internet.
Re:Trounced? With this kind of comment? joke... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they always claim the Macs are expensive, and it always turns out to be exageration at best, straight out nonsense at worst.
They also like to print a bunch of marginally meaningful numbers to woo the masses, while leaving out the most important ones - like MTBF for instance. Can't have anyone getting the idea that they could keep a working computer in place instead of buying a new one every year, can we? Who cares if the G5 will still be working after the AMD chip has burned itself to a crisp? You're
Re:Trounced? With this kind of comment? joke... (Score:2)
Eh, I'm still buying a G5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Eh, I'm still buying a G5 (Score:2)
Apple G5 Gets Trounced By Athlon64 (Score:2)
And as for the dept:
from the os-x-doesn't-run-so-hot-on-athlon dept.
should be:
from the os-x-doesn't-run-on-athlon-at-all-dept.
Sheesh, and people complain about apple's BMs (Score:5, Insightful)
Word- It's Microsoft, no shit it's going to be faster on windows, who would have guessed that?
Premiere - The video app that sucks so hard on mac that Adobe stoped making it. Try the same functions on FCP and watch it come out a few times faster.
Quake 3 - A game, 'cause you know macs are what everyone uses for gaming, and developers spend just as much time optimising their mac versions.
Photoshop - The only relavant and fair app they bothered to test, and the G5 is noticablly faster than any of the Athlon 64 systems, beaten only by the Opteron.
And
Re:They didn't even do Intel vs AMD right (Score:2)
This is a joke of a benchmark (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look into this more closely: the PCWorld team tested only four applications, one being Microsoft Word, FFS, and another being Premiere, which is no more supported on the Mac, runs in Classic and is leagues behind Final Cut Pro in terms of performance, as anyone with a clue in Mac video processing will tell you. This alone qualifies this comparison as biased in my book.
Where is the After Effects test ? And where is the Mathematica test ? Did you only know that any G5 will trounce an Athlon 64 in these apps ?
Also, looking at the results, I can hardly call it "trouncing the Mac". Only one in the four apps make use of the 2GHz' second CPU (Photoshop), and dutifully the G5 beats the PC in this test, and the scores in the other tests (not counting the Premiere's joke of an application) are not even that far apart.
Lies, damn lies, statistics, advertisements and benchmarks.
Re:This is a joke of a benchmark (Score:3, Interesting)
Ars Discussion of Athalon-64 vs. G5 [infopop.net]
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from benchmarking Word for Mac against Word for Windows of all things, what does this actually prove? That Macs don't run software as well as Windows does when it comes to software that has been available for Windows longer? I'd be more interested in a price comparison between the systems.
No software-RAID setup on the Mac? Why RAID on the other machines?
Seems kind of one-sided.
Re:What? (Score:2)
> Seems kind of one-sided.
See how there are two entries for the Alienware Aurora? Now read the note at the bottom:
"Most of the PCs used dual, RAID-striped hard drives; the Apple systems did not. We retested the Alienware Aurora with the 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro card and without RAID for more-direct comparison with the G5 systems."
I think that's being pretty fair, personally since it appears that the point of the article/benchmarks wa
Premiere is a worthless benchmark. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to do a proper test, you'd use a crossplatform product that runs equally well on both platforms and is highly optimized for dual processors, like Discreet Cleaner or Combustion.
There's only one benchmark I can think of that is more worthless than Premiere, the "MSWord scroll test." For some stupid reason, some benchmarkers think it's a useful test to see how fast the can scroll to the end of a long Word document with the arrow key. Unfortunately, Word has a delay loop built into the scroll function, it even changes the delay loop depending on the speed of the CPU. The results are totally useless.
In Memoriam of Alpha (Score:5, Informative)
both 64-bit contenders
Both the G5 and the AMD64 are great chips, but they really only represent the intrustion of 64 bit computing in the popular consciousness, not the actual beginning of 64 bit computing.
Compare their performance with the last Alpha chip, development of which was cut off years ago, and tell me again how the best is being brought to us.
Even as Intel picks the carcass [theinquirer.net] of Alpha to revive the still-born Itanium series, the killed off Alpha chip line has performance that embarrasses HP into covering it up [theinquirer.net].
"Uh.." (Score:5, Funny)
[excerpt:]
DMN: Now, you're saying it's the first 64-bit desktop machine. But isn't there an Opteron dual-processor machine? It shipped on June 4th. BOXX Technologies shipped it. It has an Opteron 244 in it.
Rubinstein: Uh...
Akrout: It's not a desktop.
DMN: That's a desktop unit.
Akrout: It depends on what you call a desktop, now.
---
S
Re:"Uh.." (Score:2)
I fully expect them to launch the 'first' 128-bit home machine a year or so after everyone else has them.
Re:"Uh.." (Score:2)
Doesn't it?
Unscientific (Score:5, Informative)
So this is how we benchmark two different platforms these days?
For everyone's information, I should not have to point the following out, but here we go... the benchmarks were taken from the following apps -
Quake III, developed on, and for, x86 over 5 year period of programming research and enhancement. Later ported to OSX in a week by OmniGroup.
Word, developed on, and for, x86, by the developer who also wrote the operating system running on the PC's. Ported by MBU to OSX.
Photoshop, Adobe develops Photoshop in a very balanced way for the two platforms, and these are the results for this test -
Fastest 50MB image = 17 seconds, G5 = 18 seconds
Fastest 150 MB image = 47 seconds, G5 = 51 seconds
The final test was a Premiere rendering, where almost all the systems tested did the job in 3 or 4 seconds. The fastest was 3 seconds, the G5 did it in 4. This is Premiere which no longer exists as a current ongoing product for OSX.
Does anyone see just how biased and unscientific this all is?
Oh, and I didn't mention that most of th PC's had double the graphics memory, and had RAID as their primary storage.
This article is FUD.
-Nex
Re:Unscientific (Score:3, Insightful)
Which affected what, exactly?
and had RAID as their primary storage.
The Opteron didn't. Many of the other systems did, but excepting the incredibly inane Word benchmark it doesn't appear to have affected anything (as to be expected). It's not like they were playing with any really huge files -- the 150 MB Photoshop test can be held entirely in memory after all.
As best I can tell they bought these systems with the criteria of h
Re:Unscientific (Score:2)
You have to admit that this article is nothing short of ludicrous
-Nex
32-bit versus 64-bit INSTRUCTIONS?!? (Score:2)
How delightful that PCWorld has chosen to make things nice and easy to read for any small children who might happen to accidentally read this article! It's a pity that actual facts and content had to be discarded to make this poss
Another Worthless Benchmark (AWB) (Score:3, Interesting)
It's too bad that no rigor is applied to 99% of the benchmarks that are applied.
Raw CPU benchmarks like SPEC end up being compiler tests rather than processor tests.
"Real-world" app tests like this one are better, but only if the apps used are representative of apps used by the person reading the benchmark. They are not a realistic measure of holistic system performance.
Adobe Premiere? Come on! Does anyone on the Mac use that at all anymore? Is it even OSX native? Since Final Cut 1.0 came out 2+ years ago, anyone who considered that dog Premiere deserves what they get. Isn't there a better editing package on the PC, or is the Mac just that much better for video editing?
Microsoft products should be excluded from benchmarks on Microsoft's OS. Of COURSE Microsoft optimizes performance of their apps on their OS more than their apps on other OSs. That test is pointless.
The Quake test would be valid, except as many people here have pointed out, it's a 32-bit app, so it's not using any of the 64-bit capabilities of these boxes. When we get a native, 64-bit version and can compare it to two boxes with the same ATI video card, then it will be a valid test.
Where's the Matlab and Mathematic benchmarks.. (Score:3, Insightful)
These benchmarks are a bad joke. My pentium II or Athlon box runs Word pretty fast.
System comparison, not processor comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Their tests are largely I/O-bound and video card related, too. It's a system comparison, not a processor comparison. If you have different I/O or video card, you'll get different results.
So who has the faster processor? Who knows. I suggest you buy the system you like the most.
My unbiased test results (Score:3, Insightful)
The P4: Very very fast.
Opteron: Super fast.
Dual G5: Really really fast.
Athlon 64: Totally fast.
Dual Xeon: Nice 'n fast.
Telling results! Unfortunately since I have put so much effort into accurate, impartial analysis of the test results, and participating in all the arguments with disbelievers and naysayers, I have not had a chance to get any work done for months. But who wants to use CPUs for productive tasks anyway, when it is so much fun to sit back and watch them "trounce" each other!
Fairness (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to compare the performance of CPUs with different ISAs, then you need to have the benchmark source code to compile it to the target ISA. This also brings the performance of the compiler into question but there's just no other way to do it if you want to compare CPUs with different ISAs.
One benchmark that people in the industry use to measure relative CPU performance across different ISAs is the SPEC benchmark. Just about every single computer maker from Dell to HP to Sun have submitted scores. Apple has not. This is in an of itself very telling. What is Apple afraid of? I'm hoping IBM releases a computer based on the G5 so that we can get some idea of the SPEC performance. Apple seems to believe it has something to lose by submitting a SPEC score.
Don't like SPEC? Please suggest some other CPU intensive applications to benchmark that have source code and publish your results.
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Well-done GUI
MS Office, for those lovely proprietary file formats.
Next time I'm in the market, I'll be shopping hard for a MAC.
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
You can get a MAC with those specs. If you're gonna run benchmarks, run them with at least partly equal hardware specs.
One thing does stand out however - the specs of the alienware machine and the ployware machine are not that much different according to that table. So why is one behaving so differently?
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Computers/OS's/Programming Languages/editors are tools. Use the one that best suits your needs.
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Did you read the article? Like... you know, the benchmarks at the end? The system that won the most benchmarks, the "Polywell Polystation Two", had "only" 128MB of graphics memory and no RAID, just like the Apple.
If you read the article you'd also see that they tested the Aurora system with 256mb vid mem/RAID *and* with 128mb vid mem and no RAID. The difference in results was very small.
Als
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
Re:Not one reason to go with Apple then (Score:2)
And why should I even want OS X?
Where else can you find an OS that can run a great video editing package like Final Cut, can run Photoshop, etc., and can also run all of your favorite *nix apps, natively?
Right now, OS X beats Linux's best desktop. That won't be true forever - just one more reason for a big enough hard drive to dual boot - but it's true right now. And as for Windows XP, all it really has going for it at the moment is a gaggle of software.
Exactly (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Exactly (Score:2)
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
every year it's, "Linux on the desktop has made huge improvements in the last year," but it never quite gets there.
use OS X for a week or two and you'll see what i mean.
Re:Exactly (Score:2)
But just because Linux has made huge improvements, doesn't make it great. It's no where near OS X.
And I don't know why the parent was marked flamebait. It's a good point. What good is a CPU if there's nothing good to run on it.
Re:The KEY (Score:2)
If that is the key, then why isn't THAT what Apple is trumpeting when they make performance claims ? If that is the key, why isn't THAT what Apple zealots have been trumpeting recently when talking about G5 performance ?
Re:The KEY (Score:2)
No, but both of them run Linux...
Re:The KEY (Score:2)
so macosx is the thing that defines it's a 'desktop computer', as in 'fastest desktop computer'? man, i've been so dumb, i thought that the fact that i could buy it and place it on my desktop and use for office apps&etc meant that it was a 'desktop computer'(no matter what os).
yeah flamebait, but it doesn't change things, apple advertises it as the fastest desktop computer, and first 64bit desktop cpu too... which they aren't, no matter if they're the fastest things to run macosx on.
Re:The KEY (Score:2)
alas, it's Jobs' way or the highway...
Re:The KEY (Score:2)
I would think that if you hacked NT4.0 Workstation, it would run Windows quite well - just not a modern version.
Lol you're believing an article (Score:2)
BTW here's the full story without clicking through 8 pages [pcworld.com].
Learn to format PC Mag (aka pull your head out).
Re:ATHLON64 FX != Athlon 64 3200+ (Score:2)
My 286 9Mhz CPU is also a GREAT CPU. Its good for my musium of computer history. Unfortunately it is not GREAT where speed is concern. So lets stick to speed when the article is talking about speed alright!
Re: Sizable Difference (Score:2)
And from the standpoint, the only reason anyone would pick the Mac over the PC would be OS X.
Re:ATHLON64 FX != Athlon 64 3200+ (Score:2)
Re:Can you imagine (no joke)... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, it's not as simple as recompiling a few things at the "higher layers." All of Apple's partners would have to port their applications as well. Porting apps is not as simple as you'd like to think--see the OpenOffice port to OSX.
Second, moving to commodity hardware of x86 would turn Apple into just another software company. Apple very much is a hardware company and its the marriage of that hardware with exceptional software that makes their advocates voracious in their support.
AMD has nice stuff but if Apple were to use their processors they would be proprietary and for use by Apple only. The processor would be designed and built from the ground up for Apple--sharing next to nothing with AMD's other offerings.
So for now, let's just be happy that AMD and Apple both have cool stuff.
Re:Can you imagine (no joke)... (Score:2)
Also the Opteron is a server and not a desktop oriented chip. Databases still run on Unix/Mainframe because they need large file and memory access. Again Microsoft/AMD/Intel want to change this by offering the same benefits on cheaper intel hardware.
Re:Can you imagine (no joke)... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Exactly. Show me where I can buy an AMD64-based home computer at the mall, which gets the same kind of results as we're seeing in these benchmarks, and then you can say that you've beaten Apple.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
On the other hand, there aren't many malls that carry Apples, either. I know of one mall in my area that has the so-bright-it-makes-your-eyes-hurt Apple Store.
Well, you ought to move, then. There are three Apple stores within 30 minutes of me, as well as 4 CompUSAs that sell G5s, and a Microcenter, and that's not counting the handful of Apple resellers that have survived Apple's retail anchluss. I've never seen a 64-bit AMD box at a retail store.
The Alienware boxes do look good, for Wintels. If I wa
Re:How Tested (Score:2)
And the articled did say they used 1 GB DDR 400 RAM.
Re:How Tested (Score:2)
Well, me, for starters - but of course, you're asking Slashdot readers. We're the kinds of guys who know that even our in-car computers should have RAID, since the environment is tough. But besides, anybody who'd shell out the money for an Opteron is probably a Slashdot reader anyway....
Re:How Tested (Score:2, Interesting)
out side Photoshop (which the Mac won hands down) the rest of the apps are plain stupid choices.
Re:How Tested (Score:2)
Shouldn't that be "comparing Apples and Lemons"
Re:not very good benchmarks (Score:2)
This isn't intended to be a CPU test, which are faily useless in any case. This is a system test - thats why they're testing Alienware desktop systems. What exactly is not "real" about this test? If I'm encoding Quicktime video, it will complete twice as fast on my stock Alienware machine as it does on my G5.
Re:Respectable stats... (Score:2)
I'm sorry - call me steadfast if you must, but I refuse to settle for a Clippy that is dead but still alive at the same time.
Re:Apples & Apples (Score:2)
Also I'm sure the Slashdot community doesn't want to replace their buggy insecure crap with secure, bug-free crap that has no real use outside of video editing or playing Quake 3. If they wanted that, they'd be using Linux.
Re:benchmarks speak for themselves? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Look closely, the benchmarks are rigged (Score:4, Informative)
When reading my analysis, bear in mind that an average person with a stopwatch has +/- 1 second margin of error per test, so anything within two seconds is considered the same time.
Also consider that most machines spin down their hard drives when not in use, leading to up to a five second stall. Because there was no aggregation of multiple tests, tossing out any outliers in the process, these test results are basically useless, but you can consider them to have a +/- 12 second margin of error.
Finally, bear in mind that my analysis is extremely biased. Please look at the facts yourself and make your own decisions. Do not blindly accept my opinion as truth, as doing so doesn't do anyone any good.
Analysis of results:
- Render test: all times identical.
- Quicktime test:invalid (see below).
- Photoshop 50 MB test: tie between Polywell 2 and dual G5 for first place
- Photoshop 150 MB test: tie between Polywell 2 and dual G5.
- Quake tests: invalid.
- MS Word tests: invalid.
Reasons for invalidation of Quicktime test:- If two machines with similar performance suddenly show more than a factor of two difference, this almost always means that only one processor is being used on the slower system due to differences in the software used.
- The test is poorly described so that it cannot be reproduced. There is no "Quicktime format". Quicktime is a wrapper movie for any of dozens of formats. QuickTime has different default codecs in different versions. I doubt Premiere installs the same version of QuickTime that most Mac OS X 10.2 users would have installed (thanks to Software Update), thus there is a good chance they were using different codecs in this test.
- According to the QuickTime API docs, your application has to be modified to take full advantage of multiple processors when compressing images. Since Premiere for the Mac was last updated not long after that support was added in QuicktTime (as best I can tell), odds are very good that it does not use the new APIs, while recent Windows versions almost certainly do.
Reasons for invalidation of MS Word test: factor of four difference clearly indicates that software is not comparable across the two platforms. The results are beyond any sane person's ability to accept from nearly equivalent machines running even remotely similar code.Reason for Quake test invalidation: this should be dependent on graphics card performance, not CPU performance. The G5 beat all but one configuration with an equivalent video card. This one configuration inexplicably was about 50% faster than all the other configurations. Since at least one machine in each 128M speed class uses 8x AGP, it is safe to assume that there are substantially different versions of ATI's drivers being used in these tests, rendering any results meaningless in terms of the performance of the machine itself. The most likely (but hard to prove) interpretation of these results is that the G5 performs slightly better than any Athlon64 when given an equivalent video card, and that the one machine is either mislabeled or has a newer version of the ATI drivers than the G5 and the other 128MB PCs.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.