MacBookPro vs Dual 2.0 GHz G5 ?
I currently have a dual 2.0 GHz G5 tower, with ATI Radeon x850 XT video card (see specs in my signature). I'm beginning considering a new MacBookPro (Intel core 2 duo, 2.33 GHz, with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 ), with 3 GB ram and the 7200 rpm 100 GB drive. How can you compare the two machines ? Will the MBP be faster than the dual G5 in all operations ? I'm doing lots of graphical and OpenGL 2 stuff, so the video card is important to me. Any opinion ?
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App emulation isn't as bad as it used to be if you can use the OX X 10.4.8 patch that just came out, which appears to be pretty impressive. MacWorld noted significant performance improvement for Photoshop CS2 in a recent article. For comparison, CS2 running in emulation on a C2D iMac gave the same speed an 2.0 iMac G5 running natively. That's very impressive emulation performance, in my opinion. In comparing like-for-like in terms of # of processors and system type, the Mac Pro Quad is only 17% slower emulating PCS2 than the G5 Quad runs it natively.
And what about OpenGL apps ? I'll use the MacBookPro mostly for OpenGL apps (3D modeling, presentations in the classroom, etc).
There you are talking about x1600 vs x850XT. The x850 can be faster than a 7600GT so I really doubt that the MBP will be equal on the graphics part. From using the interactive benchmarks at tomshardware.com I reckon the x1600 is about half the speed of the x850.
However, if you are doing graphics development, the Intel Macs now support multi-threaded OpenGL, which can give up to double the graphics performance. I imagine that will come for the G5s. I'm not sure but I don't think it's currently available on the PPC whereas it was included in 10.4.8 with the Intels.
In terms of CPU, they should be pretty evenly matched. One big thing I'd consider is that you can run Windows stuff on the MBP and some of the most graphically beautiful games ever made like Half-Life 2. That runs at max but without FSAA and 4x AF.
Also consider that it's easier to carry a MBP to a presentation than a G5 tower. I've discovered that myself because my work did a presentation using a G5 as the G4 powerbooks couldn't cut it and carrying a G5 over 6 blocks ain't easy even with two guys. Not to mention the displays too.
The downside you have to consider is that you can't just put a new card in the MBP when you reach its limitations. If it was me, I'd trade the G5 in a second because I just love the Intel Macs and having the portability when doing presentations as well as running all the Windows stuff is too good to pass up. Not to mention having better compilers and better updates because Apple will be concentrating hard on their Intel products more than their discontinued PPC lineup.
Also consider that it's easier to carry a MBP to a presentation than a G5 tower. I've discovered that myself because my work did a presentation using a G5 as the G4 powerbooks couldn't cut it and carrying a G5 over 6 blocks ain't easy even with two guys. Not to mention the displays too.
Just as a side note, I would have used one of those luggage dollies (a.k.a. two-wheeler) to haul it around, with appropriate padding, of course. Maybe those disappeared from the market when most luggage started including wheels. I bought mine a decade ago.
I almost used it for that purpose, when I was going to bring it in for what I thought was a faulty network port, but the problem disappeared.
Hmm, it's not enough for me then. I need something significantly faster in graphics and OpenGL. I'll wait for another year before buying a portable computer. I'm not in a hurry, so I can wait.
So, according to you guys, the MBP wont be much faster than the dual G5, just about the same performance, maybe a bit faster in some operations and slower in some others ? Is that it ?
No, that's not quite it.
Something CPU-bound and Intel native should be faster on the MBP. Something CPU-bound and PPC native will take a slight performance hit, and anything GPU bound will be significantly slower.
In a year's time, on a MBP, anything CPU-bound will be much faster, but GPU-bound stuff will probably still be slower than what you have now.
The problem is this : I teach astronomy and I'm using Celestia (a fully OpenGL astronomy app). For the moment, I'm using some cheap portable PCs in the classroom (school's PC's), and really, they sucks miserably. The dual G5 I'm using is my home system and (of course) there's no question I'll bring it to the classroom. I can still teach without a new system, for the next year or so, but it's frequently a pain in the ass. I will have to buy a MBP in a year of two.
well, you're not going to see anything even close to x850xt-like performance in a macbook pro for a couple of years at the very best...
O MY ! I thought that that technology was evolving faster than that !
O MY ! I thought that that technology was evolving faster than that !
It is evolving quickly but laptops still have constraints that are difficult to get around. The main ones being temperature and power consumption and they partly go hand in hand. Apple has it worse in this respect because they have design to consider too so not only do they have to keep stuff cool, they have to do it with a 1-inch thick enclosure.
The closest you'd get to the kind of performance you need in a portable form would be an Alienware machine:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2008138,00.asp
But as you can see, they have heat and battery problems to get round too. I don't think Apple will ever be in the market for those kind of laptops I'm afraid.
If you need an upgrade for around the price of a MBP, you might want to try a Mac Pro with a Geforce 8800GTX like someone on this forum did:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=3045457
17" MBP = £1900
lowest Mac Pro + GF 8800GTX = £1950
What would be ideal for you is if Apple made a cube with the ability to hold an 8800 card. This is what I'd love to see at MWSF. An aluminium cube with a single quad core Intel CPU with a 16x PCI-e slot. Priced around the same as the iMac.