Are you disappointed by your G5s performance?
Have any of you guys upgraded to a G5 and been disappointed by its performance?
I've had three friends, who I would describe as "experienced Mac users" comment independently, and without prompting, that their new G5s are really slow.
I have to admit that my experience with G5s hasn't really blown me away, but I'm guilty of sitting on boards like these and reading all about the "next big thing" and generally working myself into a frenzy about the next generation of machines that are going to be released.
It's only to be expected that the machines rarely live up to my unrealistic expectations. But these three friends aren't like that. They couldn't care less what kind of machines they are running. They're all running between 1GB to 2GB of RAM, so that's not the problem.
Just wondering if anybody else has had the same experience with their G5?
I've had three friends, who I would describe as "experienced Mac users" comment independently, and without prompting, that their new G5s are really slow.
I have to admit that my experience with G5s hasn't really blown me away, but I'm guilty of sitting on boards like these and reading all about the "next big thing" and generally working myself into a frenzy about the next generation of machines that are going to be released.
It's only to be expected that the machines rarely live up to my unrealistic expectations. But these three friends aren't like that. They couldn't care less what kind of machines they are running. They're all running between 1GB to 2GB of RAM, so that's not the problem.
Just wondering if anybody else has had the same experience with their G5?
Comments
Originally posted by Relic
It really depends on which G5 they have and what are they comparing it to. I have a G5 dual 2GHz with 2GB of memory and I think it?s pretty fast for what I use it for. However when I compare it to a dual 3 GHz Xeon running Red Hat like what I have at work the Xeon wins hands down on almost every task. I seriously think the problem lies with Panther and not the hardware because the G5 is a hell blazer with a 64bit Linux. Still think Aqua is still to slow, and the finder is a piece of shitt, Hopefully, like I said with 10.3, 10.2 and 10.1, 10.4 will fix many of the issues people have or think they have with the G5.
I think you are right. The benchmarks seem to prove that the G5 has the clout, but for some reason it doesn't "seem" to be making it through to the end user.
It'll be hard to tell what's going on until I can sit down in front of their machines and run Activity Monitor and try and figure out what's going on.
I'd agree that the whole "the next release'll fix it" is starting to wear a bit thin, though.
Many thanks for your reply.
Originally posted by Messiah
Have any of you guys upgraded to a G5 and been disappointed by its performance?
I'm perfectly happy about a single 1.8GHz PM at work. It's mainly Photoshop and Illustrator, and though it has 1.5GB of RAM, Photoshop never opens a 900MB PSD file in a second. And it won't even on a quad 10GHz Xeon. Some miracles just never happen.
I've had three friends, who I would describe as "experienced Mac users" comment independently, and without prompting, that their new G5s are really slow.
I've been working in prepress on Macs since 1994 and I tell you, a G5 PowerMac is the best number cruncher I've seen in real life. It may lose hands down in some crappy-software-driven tests, but it's damn good overall.
The real problem is with specific software. For example, animated gifs in Safari may use any CPU up to 100%, and Novell Groupwise 6.5 may launch for a couple of minutes, but in fact the CPU is busy doing nothing. The Finder is crap, but I thought that's a well-established fact.
It's currently sitting above Photoshop. The machine is idling (apart from typing this).
Originally posted by Messiah
What's WindowServer and why is it chewing up 14% of the CPU time and requires 89.69MB of Real Memory and 273.65MB of Virtual Memory (swapping out to hard disk?).
It's currently sitting above Photoshop. The machine is idling (apart from typing this).
Aqua is your WindowServer, Aqua is a memory hog, Aqua is pretty.
Originally posted by Relic
Aqua is your WindowServer, Aqua is a memory hog, Aqua is pretty.
To be precise, WindowServer, as a separate process, is what is drawing to your screen. The more animated UI elements, the more CPU cycles it is consuming. If there is anything onscreen which constantly updates (even though it may look unchanging), the WindowServer composes these changes in the off-screen buffer and then flushes the buffer to the video card.
With Tiger some of its work will be offloaded to the GPU, if the latter is capable enough.
Originally posted by Relic
Aqua is your WindowServer, Aqua is a memory hog, Aqua is pretty.
Aqua is a look - Quartz is what's offering double buffered windows et al.
Originally posted by JLL
Aqua is a look - Quartz is what's offering double buffered windows et al.
Yeah, I was just making a funny.
Eric
1. The way that Panther draws the screen is fundamentally different to previous versions of the OS. In Panther, each window is draw as a separate layer (similar to layers within Photoshop - and with the same effect in file size). This means that if your screen size results in a 5MB file, then having ten windows open results in a 50MB file an so forth. It's this approach that allows features like Expose. That's oversimplifying the whole process but the concept is the same. If you've got a shitty little graphics card installed then your G5 is going to waste a lot of time paging a lot of that data. Quite frankly its a miracle that Aqua performs anywhere near as fast as it does. This why the G5 doesn't seem much faster than the G4 in everyday usage ? both machines are struggling to keep up with what Panther is demanding.
2. Mac OS X offers proper multi-tasking, which by its very nature, means that the process at the front can no longer hog all the resources (and therefore takes longer to complete).
3. Apple has gobbled up the majority of the G5s horsepower with Panthers implementation of Aqua. So the end user will never "see" the G5s processing power even although they benefit greatly from it everyday. Personally I would rather have had the speed ? but I do use Expose a hell of a lot so I can't really complain.
4. When Adobe Software Engineers realised that the G5 could run various Photoshop processes at three times the speed of previous machines they choose to make those processes three times as accurate. So a G5 will take the same time to complete a Gaussian Blur as a G4, but the result will be three times as accurate. Hence this belief that the G5 storms through Photoshop tasks is almost entirely a myth. It takes the same length of time, but it makes a better job of it.
5. Photoshop still doesn't take advantage of multiple processors or more than 2GB of RAM.
6. Adobe likes to keep their code as "portable" as possible. This means that Adobe apps aren't going to make use of Mac OS Xs more interesting capabilities.
So, basically the G5 is far more powerful that the G4, but it doesn't produce the sort of speed gains that you might expect because Panthers stealing a lot of that horsepower. This explains the sort of comments I've been getting from my friends and my own experiences.
Interesting stuff (or at least I think so)
But really, with plenty 'o memory and a 256Mhz video card I can do most of what I do in real time, so I can't see what else I could be asking for. Faster than real time, I guess, so that I can start accruing bonus years on my life.
Originally posted by Messiah
Well I've had an interesting three way conversation with someone in the know today. I'm not sure if he wants me to reveal his identity or go parading this stuff around, but lets just say that this stuff comes straight from the horses mouth. He doesn't claim to know everything, but he was able to explain a few things to me:
1. The way that Panther draws the screen is fundamentally different to previous versions of the OS. In Panther, each window is draw as a separate layer (similar to layers within Photoshop - and with the same effect in file size). This means that if your screen size results in a 5MB file, then having ten windows open results in a 50MB file an so forth. It's this approach that allows features like Expose. That's oversimplifying the whole process but the concept is the same. If you've got a shitty little graphics card installed then your G5 is going to waste a lot of time paging a lot of that data. Quite frankly its a miracle that Aqua performs anywhere near as fast as it does. This why the G5 doesn't seem much faster than the G4 in everyday usage ? both machines are struggling to keep up with what Panther is demanding.
2. Mac OS X offers proper multi-tasking, which by its very nature, means that the process at the front can no longer hog all the resources (and therefore takes longer to complete).
3. Apple has gobbled up the majority of the G5s horsepower with Panthers implementation of Aqua. So the end user will never "see" the G5s processing power even although they benefit greatly from it everyday. Personally I would rather have had the speed ? but I do use Expose a hell of a lot so I can't really complain.
4. When Adobe Software Engineers realised that the G5 could run various Photoshop processes at three times the speed of previous machines they choose to make those processes three times as accurate. So a G5 will take the same time to complete a Gaussian Blur as a G4, but the result will be three times as accurate. Hence this belief that the G5 storms through Photoshop tasks is almost entirely a myth. It takes the same length of time, but it makes a better job of it.
5. Photoshop still doesn't take advantage of multiple processors or more than 2GB of RAM.
6. Adobe likes to keep their code as "portable" as possible. This means that Adobe apps aren't going to make use of Mac OS Xs more interesting capabilities.
So, basically the G5 is far more powerful that the G4, but it doesn't produce the sort of speed gains that you might expect because Panthers stealing a lot of that horsepower. This explains the sort of comments I've been getting from my friends and my own experiences.
Interesting stuff (or at least I think so)
I dunno, but I'm getting near instantaneous gaussian blurs over here, so hard to see how it could be better.
7. It's going to be a couple of years before the hardware catches up with the software and Mac OS X shows us what it's really capable of...
Originally posted by addabox
I was clever enough to hang on to a 500Mhz sawtooth before upgrading to dual 2Ghz G5. From my perspective (running Illustrator, P'shop, FCP, etc) it's as if aliens came down and gave me tech from the distant future.
Well I guess that you're always going to get that when there's such a difference in the hardware. I should think that someone using a Quadra would also be blown away by an eMac but that doesn't mean that the eMac is a screamer.
So you've made a good point there ? that disappointment/contentment depends on where you're coming from.
I wonder if someone who had used a Dual 1.42GHz MDD would be blown away by a G5 however?
Originally posted by addabox
I dunno, but I'm getting near instantaneous gaussian blurs over here, so hard to see how it could be better.
Glad to hear that you're enjoying it.
Well it depends on the size of the Photoshop file and the distance you're blurring. I'd expect a gaussian blur on a 72ppi website visual to be instantaneous, but I'd be surprised if my G5 could apply a gaussian blur to a 200ppi exhibition system instantly. I guess there are shade in between.
If gaussian blurs are so quick, perhaps that's why the Adobe guys chose accuracy over a speed improvement?
Originally posted by addabox
I was clever enough to hang on to a 500Mhz sawtooth before upgrading to dual 2Ghz G5.
I upgraded from a 333Mhz Beige G3. With all this power, I can't help but run SETI/FAH, iTunes, CPU monitor, and Adium in the background 24/7. Only a few applications slow my G5 down. I notice a difference is when I play Unreal or encode video.
Originally posted by Messiah
Well I guess that you're always going to get that when there's such a difference in the hardware. I should think that someone using a Quadra would also be blown away by an eMac but that doesn't mean that the eMac is a screamer.
So you've made a good point there ? that disappointment/contentment depends on where you're coming from.
I wonder if someone who had used a Dual 1.42GHz MDD would be blown away by a G5 however?
Right, and that I don't know. Although the 2.0Ghz dual machine seems a great deal faster than the reasonably contemporary macs (lamp iMac, alum powerbook, 1.25 single processor G4 tower) that I've done some work on over the past few years.
Originally posted by Messiah
1. The way that Panther draws the screen is fundamentally different to previous versions of the OS. In Panther, each window is draw as a separate layer (similar to layers within Photoshop - and with the same effect in file size). This means that if your screen size results in a 5MB file, then having ten windows open results in a 50MB file an so forth. It's this approach that allows features like Expose. That's oversimplifying the whole process but the concept is the same. If you've got a shitty little graphics card installed then your G5 is going to waste a lot of time paging a lot of that data. Quite frankly its a miracle that Aqua performs anywhere near as fast as it does. This why the G5 doesn't seem much faster than the G4 in everyday usage ? both machines are struggling to keep up with what Panther is demanding.
Yes, it's an oversimplification. IIRC, Quartz keeps one off-screen buffer per window in RAM, but it hardly ever has the size of the whole screen. Moreover, it's compressed. And to say that both G4 and G5 are struggling with Panther's demands is plain wrong. The struggle begins when the CPU usage is over 90-95%. When the load is less than 50-60%, Mac OS behaves as though it's idle, i.e. it has a plenty of spare resources.
2. Mac OS X offers proper multi-tasking, which by its very nature, means that the process at the front can no longer hog all the resources (and therefore takes longer to complete).
True.
3. Apple has gobbled up the majority of the G5s horsepower with Panthers implementation of Aqua. So the end user will never "see" the G5s processing power even although they benefit greatly from it everyday.
4. When Adobe Software Engineers realised that the G5 could run various Photoshop processes at three times the speed of previous machines they choose to make those processes three times as accurate. So a G5 will take the same time to complete a Gaussian Blur as a G4, but the result will be three times as accurate. Hence this belief that the G5 storms through Photoshop tasks is almost entirely a myth. It takes the same length of time, but it makes a better job of it.
Not true. Gaussian Blur on a single 1.8GHz G5 works with insane speed. Make a 100MB file and try it yourself on a G3, G4 and G5. I presume it's the system bus and RAM speed which make such a huge difference between G4 and G5.
5. Photoshop still doesn't take advantage of multiple processors or more than 2GB of RAM.
True. The next version won't either.
6. Adobe likes to keep their code as "portable" as possible. This means that Adobe apps aren't going to make use of Mac OS Xs more interesting capabilities.
True. Not going to shift towards MacOS or PowerPC in general any time soon.
So, basically the G5 is far more powerful that the G4, but it doesn't produce the sort of speed gains that you might expect because Panthers stealing a lot of that horsepower.
Actually, G5 offers 2 major advantages over G4: bus speed and floating point number processing. Bus speed is obvious: moving a lot of data across the computer, for example, video/audio streaming, encoding/decoding, etc. G5's fast FPUs help dramatically with many types of calculations, in particular, in Quartz, because Quartz is based on floating point numbers and WindowServer requires a lot of FPU work. G5 is times faster than G4 wrt FPU.
7. It's going to be a couple of years before the hardware catches up with the software and Mac OS X shows us what it's really capable of...
Just wait for Tiger and see.
Originally posted by costique
Just wait for Tiger and see.
Yea, I hope so for another 120 bucks.