iMac Core Duo reader report

[ciparis]

After picking up my new 20" iMac on Saturday afternoon, I've had some time to get some good usage in and get a feel for its performance. Some notes so far:

This thing is Quiet. If there is any ambient noise, I can't hear the machine. If the room is completely silent, I can hear a faint, low frequency hum from the bottom front of the machine if I'm close to it. Very nice. Easily the quietest non-handheld machine I have ever owned, Mac or PC (including PowerBooks). My Thinkpad T43 is the only thing I can hear right now, and I'm typing this on the iMac.

Monitor spanning works great. I connected a Gateway FPD2185W 21" widescreen to it (which matches the native 1680*1050 of the iMac) and it's a great combination. No problems with running out of video RAM on the stock 128MB X1600 yet --- Dashboard and Expose are silky smooth. The mini DVI adaptor is the same as the one for the 12" PowerBook, so it's probably already in stock at your local Apple Store.

WoW was able to install from the CDs, launch, and patch just fine. It runs under Rosetta (until a universal binary patch is released later this month), and the GPU performance is promising, but I don't want to comment on overall performance until I upgrade my RAM (512MB is not enough for this).

Safari is brilliant. General browsing feels faster than my old Dual G5 (w/6800 Ultra), and this iMac feels as snappy on non-Flash sites as my PC (AMD 64 X2, 7800 GTX 512MB). On the WoW Support site, if I'm not watching closely when making a selection in the forum drop-down box, I don't even see the page refresh -- it just loads instantly. Flash sites aren't quite as fast, and I think the reason might be that the Flash plugin is probably running under Rosetta for now.

It looks like I got a bad DVD drive; it reads CDs just fine, but it fails to mount DVDs (including the system DVDs, which I was amused to have to point out to the late-night Apple support people after they suggested I try to run Hardware Test from my original system discs. Waiter, taste the soup!). This will probably require a return for replacement. Pity. The drive is identified as PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K05: Firmware Revision: Q523.

I'm a developer, so I needed to get Eclipse up and running for my java projects. After a quick patch of swt, it's looking good, and seems zippier than I've seen it run on any Mac. Java on these machines is a universal binary -- and it's fast. I'll be doing some compiling later today (hopefully) so I should have direct comparisons of ANT builds.

Photoshop, once launched, seems fine. Not super snappy, but not noticeably laggy either. Launch is a bit slower than usual on native systems.

Startup of the iMac is fast. From the chime to the login window takes 15-18 seconds (assuming you have the machine set to not log in automatically).

[jasenj1]

Thanks for the report. I hope to be joining you soon in tasting of the new iMac goodness.

- Jasen

[MajorMatt]

I heard a reason why browsing is snappier on a PC and now a X86 Mac is that websites check for intel tags and somehow it is faster?

Have you encountered any PPC apps that wont launch?

[JonE]

I must have got a bum LCD, the lower left corner of my iMac 20" has an enormously huge backlight leak. Time to take it back already.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by MajorMatt
I heard a reason why browsing is snappier on a PC and now a X86 Mac is that websites check for intel tags and somehow it is faster?

Have you encountered any PPC apps that wont launch?

Architecture, speed, and compiler are the main reasons for improvement I'd say. No broken apps so far (knock on wood)...

I did check to see if the iMac could handle Centrino-spec DDR2/533 RAM. No go darn. Unusual for an Intel chipset to not handle slower RAM, but not at all unusual for Apple so I guess that's about what one would expect.

[ciparis]

A teaser about java performance doing ant builds from Eclipse (using Java 1.5.0 on both machines):

Compiling 92 java files and building a schema for MySQL.... iMac Core
Duo (2.0 GHz, 512MB RAM) vs. IBM Thinkpad T43 (2.0 GHz Pentium M, 2GB
RAM, power set to max performance):

iMac: 5 seconds
IBM: 8 seconds

..this is after repeating the task several times on both machines.
Very reproducible.

Building MySQL in a terminal session (trying to make a native build of MySQL), during "make", both cores were pegged for at least a couple minutes solid (I was browsing at the same time, performance was very good), and the fan speed never increased.

[ciparis]

I found my first misbehaving app: Yahoo Messenger. It launches and runs fine, but eventually it turns into a runaway process, chewing significant CPU for some period of time before crashing.

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac OS X
Version 2.5.3 (Build 1062)

(ps: MySQL native build was a success. Wahoo!)

[PB]

ciparis, thank you for sharing your experience. I would like to ask you to run some non-native older games. For example Return to Castle Wolfenstein. How does it run under Rosetta? fps, resolution, whatever you can report. Or how about UT2003, if this is not too much to ask?

[Nautical]

Originally posted by MajorMatt
I heard a reason why browsing is snappier on a PC and now a X86 Mac is that websites check for intel tags and somehow it is faster?

On a more constructive note, I think what you're talking about is the NetBurst architecture that was marketed by Intel as an accelerator for The Internet(s) despite the fact that it wasn't. Besides, the new MacIntels use a line of processors which are not built around the NetBurst architecture anyway.

[PB]

One MacInTouch reader reports that the built-in iSight camera in the new model works now with iMovie (previously it required QT Pro or other USB-aware software). ciparis, or anyone else, could you confirm this report?

[ciparis]

Originally posted by PB
One MacInTouch reader reports that the built-in iSight camera in the new model works now with iMovie (previously it required QT Pro or other USB-aware software). ciparis, or anyone else, could you confirm this report?

It does. The camera icon on the front panel includes "Built-in iSight" as an option in the drop-down box.



UT 2003 was playable with Rosetta (at reduced settings) but on the slow end of that range. I'd say 20-30FPS, though I have forgotten the command to show the fps. I had to turn off quite a bit to make it work reasonably well, not knowing which options are CPU-affecting items and which aren't (meaning it could probably be made to work with better options if you figure out which ones you can get away with).

[FotNS]

Here are some questions I am curious about:
What's in the /usr/standalone/i386 folder?
Does it use a zero boot method or does it boot from a file as with PowerPC and open firmware?
Is there a snag key combo to go into EFI like apple-option-o-f did for open firmware?
Is there some sort of setup utility where you can set the date/time and other options independent of the OS?

[Xool]

I'm super tempted to replace my Dual 2 GHz G5 tower with a new high-end iMac. Maybe I just want to buy buy buy!

ciparis, mind if I send you the AAC file I used in my MacBook Pro tests so we can compare how well the new iMac encodes AAC files?

[ciparis]

Originally posted by FotNS
Here are some questions I am curious about:
What's in the /usr/standalone/i386 folder?

code:

---

/usr/standalone/i386 michael$ ls -la
total 224
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jan 4 07:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Jan 3 22:10 ..
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 113780 Dec 25 01:56 boot.efi

---

...that's a binary file, cat is semi-useless with it. Though it did dump some ascii error codes...


[Anders edit: The test screwed up the formatting. The text is in my post below as a .txt document uf anyone is interested]

Originally posted by FotNS
Does it use a zero boot method or does it boot from a file as with PowerPC and open firmware?
Is there a snag key combo to go into EFI like apple-option-o-f did for open firmware?
Is there some sort of setup utility where you can set the date/time and other options independent of the OS?

I don't know what the first part means (sorry ). I haven't found a key combo, though the basic ones (single-user, option for boot volume select, reset pram) all still work, though the boot selection looks different (different icons than OF had). I haven't found a setup menu despite lots of key-mashing.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by Xool

ciparis, mind if I send you the AAC file I used in my MacBook Pro tests so we can compare how well the new iMac encodes AAC files?

Be my guest it's a mac.com address (same name as forum id).

[a_greer]

Originally posted by ciparis
I found my first misbehaving app: Yahoo Messenger. It launches and runs fine, but eventually it turns into a runaway process, chewing significant CPU for some period of time before crashing.

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac OS X
Version 2.5.3 (Build 1062)

(ps: MySQL native build was a success. Wahoo!)

I had that happen on my G4 once, same version, so it may be non-rosetta-specific.

permission repair seemed to fix that...but it was in 10.4.3

[FotNS]

Originally posted by ciparis
I don't know what the first part means (sorry ). I haven't found a key combo, though the basic ones (single-user, option for boot volume select, reset pram) all still work, though the boot selection looks different (different icons than OF had). I haven't found a setup menu despite lots of key-mashing.

Zero-boot refers to the method bios PCs use to load. Bios does not understand file systems so it has to load a boot loader by its sector pointer on the master boot record. EFI, like open firmware has the ability to look inside file systems and load binary files.
Maybe the key combination to get into the efi shell is something like apple-option-e-f-i?

[Anders]

As noted above

[ciparis]

Originally posted by a_greer
I had that happen on my G4 once, same version, so it may be non-rosetta-specific.

permission repair seemed to fix that...but it was in 10.4.3

Tried that, still crashes out after a little while. Time to try Adium or something else...

[halse]

can you do a verbose boot (command + v) and tell us what you see? you should end up in safe mode (command line) and then you just might have access to the NVRAM

[sunilraman]

good stuff ciparis ...some interesting benchmarking going on here as well: http://www.macaddict.com/forums/topic/76536/1

[fredash]

Ciparis, Thank you very much for all the info you shared.

I am also a developper and i plan tu buy a new iMac CD in a very near future.

As i'm working in Eclipse, and as i am interrsted in using SWT, could you tell me if the current version for Eclipse, 3.1.1 is working well on the iMac CD ?

If not, could you tell me what should i do to let Eclipse runs as a universal binary on Intel ?

LAST Question : you said you gave patched SWT a little and that it's running fairly well, could you share this info please ?

Thank you very much in advance,

Fred.

[PB]

Originally posted by ciparis
It does. The camera icon on the front panel includes "Built-in iSight" as an option in the drop-down box.

Cool. Thanks for that.

UT 2003 was playable with Rosetta (at reduced settings) but on the slow end of that range. I'd say 20-30FPS, though I have forgotten the command to show the fps.

OK, I will tell you what I remember. You bring down the console using the tilde ( ~ ) key. Then you type the command:

stat fps

followed by 'enter' of course.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by fredash
As i'm working in Eclipse, and as i am interrsted in using SWT, could you tell me if the current version for Eclipse, 3.1.1 is working well on the iMac CD ?

It runs very well -- I'm pleased. It's been left running for over 24 hours now with a project (200+ files) open, and it still is snappy and responsive. To get it running required using a patch posted to bugzilla, which just replaced one of the files. The file link is here, and to use it you just delete the current swt carbon file (with a similar filename) in the plugins folder, and drop this one in instead. That's the only native item in Eclipse (SWT) -- the rest is Java, and Java on these new machines is already native x86. I'm using Java 5 (you still have to manually switch CurrentSDK from 1.4 to 1.5 to do that, though both JDKs are installed so it's just a symlink change). There is an eclipse-mac group at google, which is great for getting support and sharing tips.

[fredash]

Thank you very much for your info.
Do you use DREAMWEAVER on your iMac CD ?
Does it run well ?
Thanks, have a nice day.
Fred.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by fredash
Thank you very much for your info.
Do you use DREAMWEAVER on your iMac CD ?

I don't use Dreamweaver very much at all, so I can't compare it to other platforms. It did launch just fine, and seems to be performing at a usable speed. Not what I'd call snappy, but I've never called Dreamweaver snappy

I was able to make a few pages, do some split window coding, make a spiffy CSS page... all seemed quite workable, although It could be better.

[ciparis]

Some World of Warcraft screenshots running under Rosetta. Most of these shots were with settings middle to high quality (generally also with 2X antialiasing), and all were at the native iMac 20" resolution of 1680 * 1050. Running under emulation is doable and entertaining, provided you avoid lagfest areas.


high-ish frame rates in some places, but...


it can get pretty low in Lagforge


nice image quality


gates of Ironforge

[sunilraman]

whoa. the rosetta stuff looks quite workable

[ciparis]

Originally posted by halse
can you do a verbose boot (command + v) and tell us what you see? you should end up in safe mode (command line) and then you just might have access to the NVRAM

I did this, and it booted in text mode (with lots scrolling by), but it still ended up at the login screen very rapidly.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by PB
Cool.

OK, I will tell you what I remember. You bring down the console using the tilde ( ~ ) key. Then you type the command:

stat fps

followed by 'enter' of course.

Ran UT 2003 Demo, the football match, most options set to low, max screen size (still only 1024). Average frames were in the 20s-30, occasional peaks to 40+, firefights mostly getting mid to high teens. Not really something I'd play alot with that performance (as someone who used to admin the OGL Instagib ladders for UT back in the day :o), but fun for some fragging.

[PB]

Originally posted by ciparis
Ran UT 2003 Demo, the football match, most options set to low, max screen size (still only 1024). Average frames were in the 20s-30, occasional peaks to 40+, firefights mostly getting mid to high teens. Not really something I'd play alot with that performance (as someone who used to admin the OGL Instagib ladders for UT back in the day :o), but fun for some fragging.

Some pretty good work here ciparis, thanks!

[fredash]

Thank you Ciparis for the successfull DreamWeaver Test.

Could you just tell me which version of DreamWeaver you have tried and if you tested it with 512 Megs of RAM ?

Thanks in advance,
Fred

[ciparis]

Originally posted by fredash
Thank you Ciparis for the successfull DreamWeaver Test.

Could you just tell me which version of DreamWeaver you have tried and if you tested it with 512 Megs of RAM ?

Thanks in advance,
Fred

It was the latest patch for Dreamweaver MX 2004, and it was tested with 1GB (2*512).

[sunilraman]

i am assuming just for clarity here that Dreamweaver MX 2004, latest patch, is still a PowerPC app running via rosetta... anyway good work mate.

[ciparis]

Originally posted by sunilraman
i am assuming just for clarity here that Dreamweaver MX 2004, latest patch, is still a PowerPC app running via rosetta... anyway good work mate.

Yep, PPC. I don't hold any hope of ever seeing an MX 2004 app run natively, much as I wish otherwise. But that's a good reason for me to get MTASC running on my new iMac, so I can compile flash from there instead (which I have to do alot of).

[FireDancer]

I have to say after a few hours with my 20" Intel iMac I love it. I just sold a 2.0Ghz 20" G5 and the Intel iMac feels much snappier. The biggest difference I've noted so far is in handbrake. H.264 encoding on the G5 was slow while the Intel iMac is basically encoding in real time. From a FPS perspective the Intel iMac is ~4-5X faster encoding @ an average of ~25 FPS while my G5's average was ~5-7 FPS.

I was initially worried that it may seem slower than my G5 due to less optimized software/OS but it feels pretty refined.

I can imagine the level of optimization will go up dramatically over the next few years.

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by FireDancer
I have to say after a few hours with my 20" Intel iMac I love it. I just sold a 2.0Ghz 20" G5 and the Intel iMac feels much snappier. The biggest difference I've noted so far is in handbrake. H.264 encoding on the G5 was slow while the Intel iMac is basically encoding in real time. From a FPS perspective the Intel iMac is ~4-5X faster encoding @ an average of ~25 FPS while my G5's average was ~5-7 FPS.

I was initially worried that it may seem slower than my G5 due to less optimized software/OS but it feels pretty refined.

I can imagine the level of optimization will go up dramatically over the next few years.


wow. please post your settings you used for ripping that was giving about ~25 FPS in h.264.

handbrake h.264 uses x264 AFAIK which comes from a strong x86, sse2, sse3?? tradition...

[sunilraman]

nevermind, handbrake has that report on realtime h.264 conversion from DVD on intel iMac:

http://handbrake.m0k.org/
http://download.m0k.org/handbrake/im...2006011800.jpg

[sunilraman]

OMFG thank you so much fireDancer for mentioning handbrake. i just saw they had just released a windows version. i tried it. it is FAST (30FPS on my AMD64 3000+ 1.8ghz ), EASY TO USE, and produces some nice encodes. and you can play the file in QUICKTIME. believe me, there is nothing like this in the windows world (avisynth, command line x264, and all sorts of other hacky madness......)

[ciparis]

Hmm. What are some good handbrake settings to use for some tests? I'm also curious about a perfect PSP setting for, you know, when I'm not *cough* testing.