G5 first impressions...what's your's?
I'm typing this at the Northshore Mall Applestore, on a spanking new G5 1.8. The keyboard is GREAT. Stop pissing and moaning, it has a very tactile feel. And the G5 itself...photos do it no justice at all. Period. This is absolutely beautiful. Graceful curves, a REALLY nice tone of the metal, and I love how the drive door slides directly downwards.
Photoshop is extremely impressive (what took a noticeable 4 minutes on my friend's G4 550 with 1.5 MB RAM took an instant on this standard 1.8 G5), and the general feel of the OS is nice and snappy.
And it's very quiet- the fans were whirred softly in Photoshop, and in Finder use, they were inaudible. The strange thing was that the actual "crunch, crunch" of the processor was slightly audable, something that the G4 towers kept quiet. But that crunch really let's you know that the G5 is really doing something.
And for the clincher...this store has 1.8s and 1.6s IN STOCK! I'm picking one up on Saturday or Sunday.
How about your first impressions?
Photoshop is extremely impressive (what took a noticeable 4 minutes on my friend's G4 550 with 1.5 MB RAM took an instant on this standard 1.8 G5), and the general feel of the OS is nice and snappy.
And it's very quiet- the fans were whirred softly in Photoshop, and in Finder use, they were inaudible. The strange thing was that the actual "crunch, crunch" of the processor was slightly audable, something that the G4 towers kept quiet. But that crunch really let's you know that the G5 is really doing something.
And for the clincher...this store has 1.8s and 1.6s IN STOCK! I'm picking one up on Saturday or Sunday.
How about your first impressions?
Comments
The test will be when I get my dualie.
I am hoping to get that by maybe November sometime or whenever Apple deems me worthy of it.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
I did not know processors made crunching noises. Really??!
I might be wrong in identifying that it was the processor and not some other component, but they make this kind of low-frequency click. It's very apparent with the iBooks and G3 iMacs.
Originally posted by Placebo
I might be wrong in identifying that it was the processor and not some other component, but they make this kind of low-frequency click. It's very apparent with the iBooks and G3 iMacs.
...HD, CD/DVD and Fan. Nothing else will make noises. Oh, the LCD backlight can hum.
Processors have utterly no moving parts.
I have both Macs above and it's the drive's actuator and arms kicking in as the heads seek data. The slight whine is the platters spinning and the motor that spins them.
Maybe highly overclocked processors make a hum, but not clicks.
Originally posted by johnq
Processors have utterly no moving parts.
Well, there are electrons moving in the processor. Maybe Apple is that good - good enough to have electrons make noise.
Seriously, it's probably the hard drive heads you hear.
I liked the case. I REALLY like the inside. In fact when I get one, I want to leave it sideways on my desk so I can see the insides. Seemed plenty fast. Resizing a window still had some lags but I don't give a rat's ass about what seems to me to be a trivial issue.
On a releated note, I just read this nice little piece of info. at Barefeats.com:
"PANTHER PUNCH"
Meanwhile, here's some data on the speed increase that OS X "Panther" (10.3) will provide G5 owners once it's released. We ran Xbench 1.1 on a G5 1.8GHz with 10.3 beta build 7B49. Compared to 10.2.7 "Jaguar"....
....CPU score increased 40%
....Thread score increased 44%
....Memory score increased 38%
Add this to what I read a few days ago that IBM's new XLC (I think it's called XLC) compiler results in some big speed gains.
Not trying to throw this thread off topic but these two improvements along with the G5 specs (and nice hardware) should make for some super speedy systems.
Its why I ordered a G5.
The performance is only going to get better and better.
Some of the ones crying about early test results will be screaming happily in a not to long of time.
I am certain of it.
I must agree that photos do not do it justice. I was not impressed with the looks of the case until I saw it in person.
It's much, much better in person. And as stated by sc_markt, the inside is really impressive. It is unbelievably clean inside the case. No cables going every-which-way.
It's BIG and H E A V Y. I actually didn't play with it too much besides the required disrobing to check out the naughty bits inside.
These guys at my store were very cool, however. They said I could bring in a CD of the programs that I use (simulation and molecular visualization), and try it out. I will definitely do that this next week, I think, especially if I can recompile them using xlc and xlf from IBM. That will give me a real good idea of how fast these things are, and some hard numbers I can compare across a wide range of machines (G3, G4, Sparc, UltraSparc, MPI-enabled, etc). I'm particularly interested in how it crunches numbers and renders high-quality graphics images (ImageMagick and/or netPBM for those in the know). The most exciting news I heard all week was that the G5 has an on-chip square-root function. This is very very very big for us science-types.
A severe limitation will be the display graphics --- it had the 5200 FX (anyway, the stock GPU). I would never consider getting anything but the 9800 Pro GPU. Moving a few ten-thousand very-high-resolution atoms and ribbons around the screen will make short work of most graphics cards.
They also had a few available for immediate purchase (though I didn't find out which --- I'm sure no Dual 2.0s).
Originally posted by machem
I got to check out a 1.8 at Arden Fair Sacramento tonite. They only had 512M in it, and when I told them they should put more in, they made the excuse it had to go in in pairs. Whatever.
The G5 RAM does have to be installed in pairs. It's kind of like RAID 0 for RAM: the processor has two banks of RAM, on two seperate busses, feeding data in one coherent stream, effectively doubling bandwidth. It's a brilliant idea.
The machine was a 256 MB, 1.6 Ghz unit with tons of stuff loaded on it. Looking at top indicated that the machine was paging in and out as there was no free RAM available. This is the main reason people believe the machines are slow.
But they are. Yes, I said it. I have been testing B749 on a 1Ghz powerbook and a 933 G4 tower and both those machines run rings around the new G5 running 10.2.7, There is no comparision. 10.2.7 makes the G5 run like a slug - but exactly what was stated in the eweek article about the "smeagol" build.
Would I but this machine - yes - and I have one on order (educational institution
I really want to see how the dual 2.0 feels.
Originally posted by anand
The G5 should only ship with 10.3. Nothing else. If this required waiting until December -well that is what they should have done.
Somehow I doubt that Apple's sales would have soared if they kept the MDDs in the stores.
Originally posted by anand
I just saw a G5 at my local compusa. It is an amazing looking machine. Much nicer than the last MDD machines. Very consistent with Apple's pro image.
The machine was a 256 MB, 1.6 Ghz unit with tons of stuff loaded on it. Looking at top indicated that the machine was paging in and out as there was no free RAM available. This is the main reason people believe the machines are slow.
But they are. Yes, I said it. I have been testing B749 on a 1Ghz powerbook and a 933 G4 tower and both those machines run rings around the new G5 running 10.2.7, There is no comparision. 10.2.7 makes the G5 run like a slug - but exactly what was stated in the eweek article about the "smeagol" build.
Would I but this machine - yes - and I have one on order (educational institution
I think the reason why the machines where slow, was 256 MB. Smeagol is not the perfect os for a G5, but i don't see how it can manage to make a G5 slower than a powerbook.
I have ordered three G5, and even for the small 1,6 my retailor told me to add more ram, so i added 512 MB for this one.
For the server and my personal computer (1,8 and the dual 2) they said that 512 was not enough and it will be better to add 512 MB more RAM for a total of one Ghz.
I wonder if the G5 needed more Ram than the G4 to work at full speed ?
Very nice. The case is smooth to the touch. The handles are thinner - but no sharp edges. Couldn't assess the noise level in a big store. The saleperson was demoing the unit playing eight quicktime movies all at once. Not really a metric that's relevant to my intended usage. There was steady stream of people milling around the unit - making it difficult to experiment. I intend to go back again later when it is not crowded.
The only disappointment is that I couldn't walk out the store with one.
Originally posted by Powerdoc
I think the reason why the machines where slow, was 256 MB. Smeagol is not the perfect os for a G5, but i don't see how it can manage to make a G5 slower than a powerbook.
I have ordered three G5, and even for the small 1,6 my retailor told me to add more ram, so i added 512 MB for this one.
For the server and my personal computer (1,8 and the dual 2) they said that 512 was not enough and it will be better to add 512 MB more RAM for a total of one Ghz.
I wonder if the G5 needed more Ram than the G4 to work at full speed ?
That was a major reason. On top of the small amount of Ram, they had things like FCP, iMovie, iDVD, Cleaner, Soundtrack and other apps open. Talk about page-outs!
But I rebooted to clear things up. My comparision is between a 1 Ghz powerbook running the 10.3 beta (7B49) and a 1.6 Ghz G5 running 10.2.7. There is no comparison. The powerbook with 10.3 blows it away. The point is, just imagine the performance of the G5 with 10.3! That is when we really we see its true power.
Originally posted by anand
That was a major reason. On top of the small amount of Ram, they had things like FCP, iMovie, iDVD, Cleaner, Soundtrack and other apps open. Talk about page-outs!
But I rebooted to clear things up. My comparision is between a 1 Ghz powerbook running the 10.3 beta (7B49) and a 1.6 Ghz G5 running 10.2.7. There is no comparison. The powerbook with 10.3 blows it away. The point is, just imagine the performance of the G5 with 10.3! That is when we really we see its true power.
You might be right on that logic. G5s are the main attraction in the Apple Stores, so therefore they usually have over 10 highly demanding apps running at once.
Originally posted by Placebo
You might be right on that logic. G5s are the main attraction in the Apple Stores, so therefore they usually have over 10 highly demanding apps running at once.
Yeh, and with such little Ram - it is a mess. It really is a beautiful machine. Very clean and modern looking. A work of art.
I must agree with everyone's comments on the case. It's MUCH better in person. It's just beautiful. Big too. They had the door locked (with a tie) so I couldn't open it. All in all I'm hopeful, and looking forward to test driving the dual 2ghz.
Cheers,
John