NusuniAdmin:
Yes but if you want to get technical ... The g5 is faster. it has dual processor.
Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
The G5 is expected to have a 90 NM release then maybe a 65 NM, which will increase clock speed but lower heat.
Hmmm, you know, all the important processor makers plan on doing these migrations.
The g5 is only rev 1 dude, trust me the prices will go down, it is true with any computer on the market.
Yeah they'll go down on Ebay, but Apple isn't gona lower their prices much, they never do.
P4 is pretty old now. Released in what 1998 or 1999? Their just about getting ready for a next generation processor but who knows...the only good intel tech is the centrino.
You mean
the Pentium M I'm sure, since Centrino is a stupid marketing name for the package including the P-M, Intel wireless networking, and perhaps some other stuff.
The xeon's controller sux, if you have ever used a quad 3 ghz xeon you know wut i mean, it really only seems to use 1 processor and is extremely sluggish at times.
There is no quad 3ghz Xeon, the fastest Xeon (an "MP") that can run 4-way is 2.8ghz. But honestly who gives a crap about Xeon, why don't you confront the issue head on and consider a quad Opteron, the 64/32-bit x86 chip that is
always ignored by people trying to put the G5 on a pedestal?
ffakr:
You are comparing two very different machines though. The Mac is a dual processor machine with loads of bandwidth, optical audio in/out, fw400 and 800, and PCI-X
The Mac has the same bandwidth in most places as those P4's do, the only edge is in the PCI-X vs PCI department (remembering of course the the P4 only needs one FSB cause it has one processor).
It has support for 8GB of ram and it will likely take 16GB of ram when compatible memory becomes available.
And so do Opterons, especially the dual Opterons with quad memory channels.
Now I understand your take on this... You were just trying to show that you could get more goodies for less, but that isn't really fair is it, considering you aren't starting from the same base. I'm sure the options at the Ferarri dealer cost a lot more than the options at the Chevy dealer too.
Hey if a Corvette outperforms a Ferrari, when only a fool buys the Ferrari (unless its about image).
PCs have the advantage that you can replace the motherboard in any ATX standard case for around $100 and get a fairly nice new board. But... there is a huge premium to be paid of you want to upgrade to a cutting edge dual processor PC. You pay an 'smp tax' to upgrade to an Opteron 2xx or Xeon. You pay twice as much or more for an SMP motherboard.
Anyone willing to build their own dual-CPU PC can beat Apple's prices, the only expensive dual-CPU's PC's are the ones coming from Dell and such. The Tyan K8W mobo-of-doom runs $500 and about $1000 for two 2.0ghz 2-way Opterons, about $200 for 1GB of reg-ecc DDR-333 to fill it's 256-bit wide memory interface, $400 for the 256MB R9800 pro, $200 for a nice case, $100 for a super PSU, $100 for nice heatsinks, $200 for a DVD-R, $400 for some nice SATA hard disks, $600 for some 17" LCD... I'm thinking this costs about $3600. (Give or take a couple hundred.) That's a 64/32-bit machine, has more PCI-X slots and more bandwidth (in every way) than the G5, has an additional old 33-32 PCI slot, can hold and cool 4-6 drives in addition to 4-6 5" bays (depending on the case). It's not that I don't like the G5, BTW, its just that some realism needs to be dished out.
Well I guess this comes down to market. The people who really need more than 500 GB of space probably aren't cost concious enough that they can't afford a storage server or a FW800 RAID cabinet.
I think you're trying too hard to defend Apple's position.
You can't possibly seriously argue that the G5 isn't crippled by the current compilers and unoptimized code.
Its no more crippled than the P4 was, or that the Opteron still is. The P4 was not only poor at running legacy code, but it had an expanded ISA to use, unlike the G5, which isn't too bad at legacy code, and has no expanded ISA. In 64-bit mode the Opteron has twice the registers to use vs older x86 chips. Of the three, the G5 was apparently the least divergent from its predecessor; about the only compiler-level optimization is to reorder the code thats already there.
Apple is claiming some of the functions in their pro apps are 55% faster. The Cinebench scores went up by something like 35%. xlc is producing code that is up to 70% faster than gcc 3.3 and xlc is still in beta.
"Up to ... up to ... up to" ... meanwhile, in the real world you're gona see much smaller gains.
I'm firmly confident that we'll see a speed up that rivaled the increases that G4 owners saw as graphical apps were optimized for Altivec. The 970's architecture is significantly different enough from previous designs that there is a LOT of performance to be wrung out yet.
And I'm firmly confident this will not happen. AltiVec optimization was a one-time gain and the G5 has nothing that revolutionary to add. Its a very nice chip and can be quite fast, but I don't see any software miracles coming.
j/k I have 2 hd's in my current beige g3 (i am upgrading soon....i hope) 1 is a 8 gig ata 66 (5400 rpm), the other is a 60 gig ata 133 (7200 rpm). I have about 60 games on the computer all on my 60 gig (for obvious reasons) and i still have about 25 gigs left, and i have about ten tousand songs on it as well.....Please explain how you need 3 hd's....DO you use it for work as well?
