G-5's 1.6 arrived at my office today - Page 6

What a disappointing result on Cinebench. I AM MOVING TO DELL!

Serious. I use Cinema as my 3D app. Honestly when I saw the posts from the Maxon guys in Postforum I was kind of bummed to be told that the Dual G5 (even used a Cinebench that recognizes G5) still can't beat the fastest Xeon.

After seeing the demo of PS, Mathmetica, Logic, etc etc....even Renderman benchmark I really expect to see the same magnitude of speed boost in Cinema/Cinebench - much faster than G4 and even faster than PC....

Cinebench is indentical to the Cinema application. It loads all the real projects created by users and run the rendering, fly-thru etc to test the hardware performance.....pretty much that the performance on Cinebench will be the same on the Cinema application.

Looks like I better to wait for 3GHz G5 to come..... or buy couple of cheap PCs

Anyway....would be curious on how Maya and Lightwave run on G5 (of course if they are optimized)

Well, when that time comes around, you will be "needing" 4 GHZ.

I know......but I always looking for the price/performance thing. If the dual 2GHz is selling for $2500 US I will immediately go out and buy one

The reason PEECEE fanatics love to point towards cinebench, is because Maxon won't optimize for any specific chip (like SSE2 and Altivec)

The reason this is good for the P.C. side is simply because SSE2 sucks and can't hold a candle to altivec. Lightwave got something like a 50% increase in performance using altivec ... not much of a difference with SSE2 though.

As well, Cinebench must be the most useless benchmarking tool since it really only applies to people who actually use the software .001% of users (as well as only during rendering for that matter)

As someone else pointed out ... in most mainstream apps like photoshop, logic, blast, mathematica the G5 just creams anything on Intel.

Moreover, it's a Mac with soon to be Panther which is an interface experience that no PC can approach. This benchmark crap is a lot of hooey.

BLAST Gene Sequencing and Mathematica "mainstream Apps"? ;-) Oh puh-leeze!... Wolfram would be most happy if it were so i bet!..

Anyway. I have a great feeling that people will be using After Effects 6.0 to compare G5 and other PCs

I have read somewhere that mentions Adobe has done a lot of optimization to P4 processors.

If a PC beats G5 in AE then we will see another tide of "Mac sucks" "The sky is falling" thing

Getting back to the original point of this thread (someone actually owning a G5), either I've missed it, or no one has yet mentioned this thread at SpyMac with quite a few pics of a G5 from the Stanford computer store being taken out of the box. All looks nice and real. Unfortunately, the guy says there is no Panther coupon in the box. But there are keyboard and mouse pics !

There are usually generic update coupons in the CPU box, not a specific one. Based on previous OS updates, I'm absolutely, positively (almost) sure that an update for Panther will be available via a free DVD at an Apple store or through the mail for $19.95. I believe this was the case with Jaguar for people who purchased OS X /CPUs just prior to the update to Jag.

Yeah, I wonder if the guy missed the Up-To-Date coupons. That's what I'm hoping. I remember using those coupons to bless my PowerBook 1400 with the "power" of OS 8.0.

Having Lightwave for both the Mac and PC, you're not the only one who is curious!

As for Adobe, they can keep their Premiere, I'll be starting out life with Final Cut Pro4.

I want to know by how much the Dual G5 creams my Athlon 1.4 gig!

Leonis, we'll have to see some Lightwave benches to see what's up with the whole Cinebench thing. Some guy from Maxxon on Arse(hole? Just kidding folks...British joke...Our humour is very anal...) is claiming even with optimisations, the G5 is looking at rendering performance to a 2.6 Pentium 4? I don't think that can be right.

My side bet is that a dual 2 gig G5 is going to 'hurt' a Pentium 4 3 gigger on Lightwave. Newtek seem to be quite good at squeezing power out of Macs. All told, the G4 stacked up pretty well vs Pentium 4 considering the mhz gap.

So, an unoptimised dual 2 gigger might trail a Pentium 3 gigger in a PC biased/optimised test...or two. Guess that means the G5 isn't optimised. Panther and the latest compilers aren't quite here and it will take more than a week after shipping for people like Newtek and Maxxon to optimise for the G5.

But. We knew that, didn't we? Hands up all those people who aren't happy with a machine that is (unlike the G4) actually going to get faster once those optimisations come?

Reiterate, by the time we've finished moaning about a computer we all wanted to ship early! (Hey, go back and read the boards prior to WWDC...some estimates were for 2004!) ....then we'll be on a dual 2.5 and by then, Intel's 3.4 won't have a chance.

200 mhz for them? 200mhz.
500 mhz for us? 1000mhz in G4 performance, at least in terms of fpu!

When Panther and the G5 has settled down? I'll be buying the world's fastest computer. (Give or take what AMD 'Boxx' machines are doing. But are they going to be able to reach 500 mhz in speed hikes between now and Jan'? I think a 2.5 gig G5 dual will run any 'Hammer' very hard.)

Leonis, I'm beginning to think you're right. Rev B is look odds on...

Lemon Bon Bon

PS. I'd like to see how things stack up when, WHEN we have Bryce, Lightwave, Photoshop, Macworld Speed Tests (for overall system performance...), Several Game tests and if the Apple tests can be replicated once Panther arrives.

We may have to wait until late October until the controversy becomes a clearer issue.

By then...we'll have 80 'What will be at Macworld San Fran..? threads to take our minds off the 'hype.' And then it'll only be a few months wait until Apple south paws Intel to the jegs...with those 2.5 G5 duallies!

My 2 GHz dual G5 is on order, and I just upgraded my PC to a 3.2 GHz P4 / 800 FSB with 2 GB DDR400 RAM, so I'll do my best to benchmark the two against each other in several different ways and post the results when I get the G5!

I'm sure THAT will go over well, regardless of which machine comes out ahead...

-- Mark

In my line of work, AE is just as important if not more than Photoshop. I NEED that to run fast. But I did see a benchmark where a dual G5 was twice as fast as a dual 2.66 Xeon, so my hopes are up.

At least AE6 can use both processors.

some famous(sort of) after effects desinger already showed that the g5 is going to blow the p4 away. it (the g5) was already faster only running 10.2.7 and the old AE 5 which where not dual proc aware.

do a search in this forum for "orphanage"

they are the losers who made the psuedo ad about them switching to PC since AE was so much faster on there then the mac.

one problem. the ad failed to mention the fact that AE did not see dual procs.

i hope they enjoy their PCs...

slower AE AND viruses!

This is the thread, correct?

Don't know about AE yet....but VIRUS! Gotta love that



My only question is if AE 6.0 is optimized for G5 or not. I only know the optimization (and SMT support) for the P4 is very heavy....but I don't think the optimization will be as heavy for the G5 since Adobe has moved a lot of their video app resources to the PC side.

If AE still performs like "crap" on the Mac I predict we will see Shake LE selling for the same price (or even lower) of the AE production bundle.

Another if here. IF Adobe release a 6.01 update with "heavy" G5 optimization and the performance on G5 is far greater than PC.....we will see another thing. This thing is those PC magazines will only load version 6.0 (unoptimized version) on the G5 and run the same 6.0 on PC (which is already heavily P4 optimized) and show PC is faster than Mac, etc etc etc.... This sounds anal but it has happend before

The benchmarks I saw showed the Dual G5 doing pretty well, especially considering the lack of optimization.

Trust, my friend. Apple won't dissapoint us.

I would guess AE (and other Video apps) perform great on the G5! If in spite of all logic it should not, then it's definately entirely Adobe's fault! ;-)

Cinebench is great in itself, but 3D rendering is by nature compute-intensive but not very bandwidth-intensive!

AE (and other video apps) are VERY bandwidth-intensive, and bandwidth on the FSB is something where the G5 really kicks PC-ass! 7.2GByte PER CPU is simply unmatched, the P4 Xeon reaches max. 6.4GByte/s for TWO CPUs (and i think that's even only a theoretical maximum not considering overhead like the G5s 8 GByte/s!) and the Athlon only 3.2GByte/s per CPU (dito, theoretical maximum)!

Bandwidth was something that was IMHO lacking much more than GHz in the G4, and something that PCs really excelled in in the past few years, which is why so many pro-Video-Solutions (stuff like Realtime-compositing, e.g. 844/x by Media100!) were released for PC!

Well, the G5 was basically BUILT for this kinda stuff, its FSB that scales directly with CPU-MHz, the bidirectional Bus! Floating power also comes in handy in 3D, but i'm pretty definate the busses mostly idle there.
If we read the signs correctly applying some logic Apple has built a machine that can do stuff on really fat videostreams in realtime! Just imagine Shake or FCP pumping the streams from RAID through Hypertransport-connected I/O (3.2GByte/s) through the CPUs (upstream 4Gbyte/s), the CPU doing some stuff with it (think SIMD, think Altivec!) and then sending it back (downstream 4GByte/s) onto the AGPx8-Gfxcard (2GByte/s!) and you just get a slight idea what will be possible with this monster! ;-) Realtime-Stuff on huge Data-Streams you never thought would be possible or that demanded a really costly Inferno, Flame or some other badass throughput SGI before!

THIS is the G5s very strength! A very clean and efficient MoBo-Architecture with a huge potential! Plus it just happens to have a CPU that's pretty damn good in Floating point and packs a very very heavy punch compared to a few MIPSes in an SGI! ;-)

Forget the benchmarks and all the apps that are out today! It's fine that they'll be alot faster, especially with some tweaking! But the real interesting things will be the future programs the G5 (and only the G5!) WILL MAKE POSSIBLE!
It's a great thing we don't have to wait for these programs to benefit from the G5, cause we already can with what's out there, but I'd definately say the future is very very bright and exciting indeed! ;-)

In fact the presence of Luxology on the WWDC gave a hint! Their new program could just be the first generation of what i'm talking about, and Apple really wants to establish the G5 as an SFX-Workstation, and SFX-People are also the ones that can DEFINATELY make use of 64bit, e.g. in regards of color precision (they work in a totally different quality than "normal" TV-Stuff!) and many GBytes of adressable RAM, which is why they liked SGIs (64bit!) in the first place! ;-)

Here's a "benchmark" for the rest of us. A guy over at spymac who has a 1.6 G5 has this to say...


Repeat, A single 1.6 G5 w/256 RAM is "noticeably snappier" than a MDD G4 dual 1.25 w/1.5gigs RAM! Should I repeat that again?

Reference 1

Reference 2

Reference 3

Edit to add third link.

If you can find a government employee to "sponsor" your purchase, you can get a Dual 2Ghz without Superdrive and without modem for $2494.

Is that good enough?

Unfortunately I don't know anyone working for the governement

Also....I need superdrive cause I have already got tons of DVDs of my project backups.....

Just curious, did the original author of the thread ever really bench or take any more photos of his G5?

All of the people with G5s have been really quiet, even on the Spymac forums where it is obvious that someone really does have a 1.6 machine at their house.

Why the silence guys?

Alright, here's the deal: I went to the U of A bookstore today to check out their 1.6GHz G5 on display. All I can say is, this is the fastest Mac I have used (yet). I'm sure my opinion will change once my dual 2GHz system comes next week. Every app launched in one bounce or less, with Aqua being VERY snappy. (I know, this isn't the best benchmarking method, but it works for everyday use.) There is literally NO lag with Aqua and feels exactly like OS 9. (FINALLY!) This is what the OS X experience is supposed to be like, even though it's been close to perfect with the G4-based systems.

Like the old saying goes, "Dont knock it 'til you try it!" Go to a store and try one for yourself. It's similar to picking out speakers: you can look at the tech specs all you want, but what it comes down to is, you should pick out the speakers that sound best to YOU, not what you think you should be getting.

If you already have tons of DVD backups, you already have a superdrive, right? You could probably transfer it to the G5 without much trouble. If you needed to use it on both computers, you could buy a cheap FireWire case.

Sorry if my questions have been covered..

What's the noise level?
Can you find me the fan make/model? The one which cools the G5 processor.

Thank you.

[edit]: Looks like Apple loves the aluminum material.. they use it for the G5 heatsink again vs. copper heat-pipe on the dual G4/1.42 tower.

Richcigar has been AWOL since he opened the box and unpacked his 1.6 G5 at Yale in the Financial Services Department of the Divinity School. There is no explanation for his absence. He promised a lot of reports that he simply has never made since then.

WARNING. Do not skip the modem. It may be your only way to the internet when your broadband goes down. Plus Panther inclueds FAX which you will also need the modem for. Also you should BTO Bluetooth for $50 if you want to avoid a USB solution later. BTO Combo drive as you can buy the SONY DW-U10A (Apple's new SuperDrive model) for less than $200 from any number of resellers. $188 is the current shipping price. That will continue to drop over time. That way you get a G5 compatible Combo drive out of the deal FREE that you can put in a FW case when you put the SONY SD inside.

So that's Plus Bluetooth ($50) Minus SuperDrive ($200) for

List - $2849

academic/government total of $2564 - 10% off

developer of $2279 - 20% off

Plus your local sales tax

You're assuming that the purchaser (a) has a dial up account, or dial up included in the broadband account and (b) doesn't have an external modem.

This assumes you have any interest in sending or receiving faxes.


The USB solution will probably be cheaper. Plus, with the USB solution, you can put the dongle anywhere. Since the antenna for the builtin solution is connected directly to the case, won't the case block the signal in some directions?


Do you get iDVD if you BTO the Combo drive? You didn't with early Superdrive-ready G4's, though I think this has changed.


But with the discount, you only save $180 by removing the superdrive, so it's no longer worthwhile unless the external combodrive is worth $8 + cost of external enclosure to you.

Government prices are the same as educational (actually $1 more), not developer.

richcigar:

PLEASE! Use Gaston on your G5 and tell us what it says (no other programs running ofcourse!) when you use the "run benchmark" setting in the pulldown menues!
fps and seconds to complete!

Me and the author are most anxious to know! ;-) It's from my knowledge the only benchmark that has been optimized for the G5 so far!

Thanks!

Is there a page where we can compare benchmarks using Gaston?

Currently My powerbook 800Mhz can do:

fps: .15
total time: 6.456s

Be interesting to see how it stacks up against some other machines. BTW, is it also available for Intel/x86?

For reference, my Powerbook 867 (256MB RAM) clocks in at

0.18 fps
5.683 secs

I'm also very interested to see how the G5 stacks up outside of the RDF...

Maybe they just shipped out 2 so they could say they are shipping.

Maybe because all the people that got them have no time to post between their spasms of orgasmic delight.

For more Gaston-Scores lookhere

Gaston makes heavy use of Altivec (3.5 times faster than without! Try running it on an iBook!) and Dual-CPU (extremely close to Factor 2! Yes, 2, the main loop runs in the L1-Cache! ;-)
And no, it doesn't have any ugly DSTs and DCBZs, the Author profiled it using SHARK, so it *should* run great on a G5, but we won't know until someone actually tries it! ;-)

Current known top score to beat is a Dual 1.25 G4 clocking in at 0,47 fps, 2,143 s

And no, there most likely won't ever be an x86-version, as the author is quite a Mac-Fan and prolly won't want to mess with SSE2! ;-)

A guy over at Ars reports 0.27 FPS for the Gaston Benchmark, with a SP 1.6 gigger.

Which is a pity, as from your description it would probably show the G5 as considerably faster than top of the line PC's.

My Dad works for the government in Canada, does it also apply in Canada? Where can I see it on Apple.com or .ca? Thanks

Edit: Judging by another post, I can't get the Governement discount with the Education discount anyway?

Is someone going to host richgars pics...or don't we want to see them