Pondering Benchmark Testing
I was gaussian blurring something for a window ad a few minutes ago and I got to thinking...The 150 pixel gaussion blur only took a half a second on my G4 Dual 1.25 with 1.25GB Ram running Panther. I though for a minute and then took the same image and maxed out the twirl filter. Another half second later it was done. 5 years ago I would have had a progress bar come up and maybe a 30 second wait. 30 seconds down to .5 seconds is not bad. That's progress.
I then looked at the new G5's and noticed under the graphics heading in the specs it shows 3D renderings. The point of this post is this... It seems typical graphics use in terms of speed has moved into a position where business use once was. A G4 350 with 256MB ram was probably a perfect machine for someone who just uses word. No lenghthy waits, and no progress bars for simple stuff. Typical graphics use is no longer enough to prove the speed of a new computer. Now it seems like it's all about rendering 3D or compressing video.
So while I say yeah I do want a new G5 what I have now is pretty good. I think's it's as fast as I always hoped... at least for graphics.
I then looked at the new G5's and noticed under the graphics heading in the specs it shows 3D renderings. The point of this post is this... It seems typical graphics use in terms of speed has moved into a position where business use once was. A G4 350 with 256MB ram was probably a perfect machine for someone who just uses word. No lenghthy waits, and no progress bars for simple stuff. Typical graphics use is no longer enough to prove the speed of a new computer. Now it seems like it's all about rendering 3D or compressing video.
So while I say yeah I do want a new G5 what I have now is pretty good. I think's it's as fast as I always hoped... at least for graphics.