New Power Macs Faster than you think.

[wilburpan]

Originally posted by MisterMe

You are absolutely correct. We should only compare dual-processor Apple computers to other dual-processor computers. Please list your benchmarks for a dual-processor Dell, HP/Compaq, or Gateway personal computer.

The reason I spec'ed the Dual 1.25 GHz Powermac to a single 2.4Ghz Dell machine is that at least according to the http://www.cpuscorecard.com website, these are comparable in terms of speed. Both were given a score of 88-89% (whatever that means).

At the suggestion of onemoof, I went back looked at lower end machines. Comparing a 17" 800 Mhz iMac against a 1.8 Ghz Dell machine (again, based on the http://www.cpuscorecard.com ratings, iMac=55%, 1.8ghz P4=62%), The Dell was actually the more expensive machine: $2,148.00 for the iMac (including 3 year AppleCare Protection Plan), $2,296.00 for the Dell. The base price for the Dell is $699, but once you add in a 17" LCD screen, a DVD/CD burner, and software that corresponds to all the iApps, the price evens out.

You could even take the $148 you'd save by buying the iMac and get a full price .Mac account.

I can print out all the detailed specs if anyone is interested, but trust me -- I am interested in showing that Apple machines are worth their price.

So for "consumer" machines, the iMacs certainly hold their own in price against similarly outfitted WinXP machines. But for top of the end machines, there still is a price differential to be reckoned with.

This makes me feel better -- can't wait for Xmas so I can get an iMac!

 

[mischief]

Originally posted by LethalWolfe



I think I'm gonna kill the next person who uses a stupid car anology...


Lethal

You're right, Cars are a bad comparisson:

Better to compare Trucks.

Macs are like Semi's : the don't rev very high but they can haul a ****load of cargo from A to B.

PC's are like Chevy Avalanche: A nearly useless SUV with nearly every extra but guarenteed to work and look like **** in less than 5 years and always do a half-assed job on all but the basic navigation.

 

[MacCoaster]

Originally posted by dricci
P4s can't go Dual. It's sorta like the G3, it's just not designed to do that. It wouldn't work.

That is what the Pentium 4 XEON is for. So yes, P4s can go dual, in the Xeon configuration.

Edit: Hell, it can do 4-way or more. Quad G4 Macs? In your dreams...

 

[avkills]

64bit

Microsoft has not beat Apple as far as a 64bit consumer OS goes. Name one consumer chip that is 64bit. Thank you. Carry on.

Also, I think NT is limited to 4 processors unless they have updated that recently. Clustering is not the same as a multi-processor machine. Unix scales better than NT, just deal with it. Apple could easily make a rack server that had 16 processors, with a kick arse OpenGL card and teach SGI a lesson. They don't have the market for that though...yet!

-mark

 

[cr2sh]

say what you will...

i learned a few years ago that you can never try to show someone else their mistakes, theyll only hate you for it... at this point its become a disgusting obsession with a lot of mac-junkies to show that a g4 is faster than a pentium. at this point its not, the OS is better, the software is better, the user experience is so much more enjoyable its idiotic to even argue.. but lets face it, head to head, single cpu to single cpu th3y got us beat.

ill agree with everyone though, theres a big-storm coming, and when the g5s with 5megs l3 operating at 2gHz are released in mid-2003... its over... for a while.

ive seen dual AMD systems with both cpus at 1.8, and it is amazing... but so what? im not about to trade speed and windows, for enormous power and osX. i dont play games so theres no edge there...

we're right, we know it, and the rest are idiots (except the gamers and CAD, they know what theyre doing)... but i think the matter has been argued enough already, so let me exit with another thing thats been said FAR TOO often...

give us the g5 goddamnit!!

 

[Cappy]

Re: 64bit

Originally posted by avkills
Microsoft has not beat Apple as far as a 64bit consumer OS goes. Name one consumer chip that is 64bit. Thank you. Carry on.

And your point is? There really isn't a need for 64bit cpu's let alone OS's for most consumers. AMD is essentially responsible for putting the pressure on the industry to move toward 64bit as soon as it is.

For consumers a 64bit cpu and OS is nothing more than bragging rights...at least for a few years.

Originally posted by avkills
Also, I think NT is limited to 4 processors unless they have updated that recently. Clustering is not the same as a multi-processor machine. Unix scales better than NT, just deal with it. Apple could easily make a rack server that had 16 processors, with a kick arse OpenGL card and teach SGI a lesson. They don't have the market for that though...yet!

-mark

I'm not sure where you get your info but keep dreaming. You fail to mention what cpu's they would use. I don't think your going to see current G4's in 16 processor servers ever. It's just not designed to do it. That's not to say it cannot be done...just that it would be a waste of manpower and money to do it and not be very efficient at it no matter the market.

 

[wilburpan]

Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by cr2sh
...head to head, single cpu to single cpu th3y got us beat.

Please reread my post above. According to the http://www.cpuscorecard.com website, an iMac 800 MHz machine is comparable in performance to a 1.8Ghz P4 machine. And if you compare the cost of the iMac to a similarly equipped Dell 1.8Ghz P4 machine, the iMac is actually the cheaper of the two.

This was a real eye opener for me.

 

[cr2sh]

Re: Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by wilburpan

Please reread my post above. According to the http://www.cpuscorecard.com website, an iMac 800 MHz machine is comparable in performance to a 1.8Ghz P4 machine. And if you compare the cost of the iMac to a similarly equipped Dell 1.8Ghz P4 machine, the iMac is actually the cheaper of the two.

This was a real eye opener for me.

Fine, lets just assume that a 800mhz imac and a 1.8gigahertz dell are similar in performance, equiptment and cost... this thread is about speed. i realize the differences in the two chips, and i agree largely with apple that frequency isnt everything.. that aside, intel is still kicking motorola's ass (for the time being).

the g4 cannot beat the p4 in performance, so you drag cost ratios in to muddy up the water.. why? the p4 beats the g4. if you want an imac fine, buy it. but dont confuse yourself by saying 'the g4 is just as fast as the p4...' because its not.

we're all mac lovers here, and a lot of the pc equivalent software to iapps is total crap! ill agree with you there. you get a LOT of high quality software within the max os. (xp doesnt even include a dvd playing app does it?)

the imac is pretty, its more pleasant to use, and it might bench equivalently.. but like i said, toe to toe... the p4 comes out swining at 2.8gigahertz, the g4 is having a hardtime beating that.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: 64bit

Originally posted by avkills
Microsoft has not beat Apple as far as a 64bit consumer OS goes. Name one consumer chip that is 64bit. Thank you. Carry on.

Also, I think NT is limited to 4 processors unless they have updated that recently. Clustering is not the same as a multi-processor machine. Unix scales better than NT, just deal with it. Apple could easily make a rack server that had 16 processors, with a kick arse OpenGL card and teach SGI a lesson. They don't have the market for that though...yet!

-mark

The Intel Itanium. Granted, it's not for consumers per se, but it's still for high-end consumers. Compare that with Power Mac G4s.

NT can do up to 32 processors per machine as of the Windows .NET family.

 

[wilburpan]

Re: Re: Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by cr2sh
Fine, lets just assume that a 800mhz imac and a 1.8gigahertz dell are similar in performance, equiptment and cost... this thread is about speed.....

[snip]

the g4 cannot beat the p4 in performance....

Granted http://www.cpuscorecard.com doesn't really clarify what benchmarks they use, but in their estimation, a dual 1.25GHz Mac beats a 2.4 Ghz P4 by a hair, and is just a little behind a 2.8 GHz P4. Likewise, a 800MHz G4 is very comparable to a 1.8 Ghz P4. The important thing that I see in this ranking is that in perusing the rest of this website, the people who came up with these ratings do not look to be particularly Mac friendly.

Based on this, I would have to disagree with your assertion that "the g4 cannot beat the p4 in performance", unless your only criteria for performance is sheer GHz speed. It seems to me that at the high end, the two chips are at least competitive, and in the middle of the pack, I would say that Macs are a better buy.

 

[theranch]

did you notice...

Correct me if I'm wrong...but, did any of you notice on that site that they gave an A+ rating to the Celeron machine and D & C's to the top 8 in the list? If you click on the colored bar for each system then scroll down the page there is a chart to explain the rating. It's a joke. I wouldn't depend on this site at all.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: Re: Re: Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by wilburpan

Granted http://www.cpuscorecard.com doesn't really clarify what benchmarks they use, but in their estimation, a dual 1.25GHz Mac beats a 2.4 Ghz P4 by a hair, and is just a little behind a 2.8 GHz P4. Likewise, a 800MHz G4 is very comparable to a 1.8 Ghz P4. The important thing that I see in this ranking is that in perusing the rest of this website, the people who came up with these ratings do not look to be particularly Mac friendly.

Based on this, I would have to disagree with your assertion that "the g4 cannot beat the p4 in performance", unless your only criteria for performance is sheer GHz speed. It seems to me that at the high end, the two chips are at least competitive, and in the middle of the pack, I would say that Macs are a better buy.

I wouldn't say that 800MHz G4 would match 1.8GHz. Notice the 1.25GHz they used is *DUAL* processor 1.25GHz. Maybe *DUAL* 800MHzs.

 

[avkills]

64bit

Ok, so Intel has the Itanium, well they have the Itanium2 I guess if you want to get super current, so what! The Itanium is based on a brand new design that looks good on paper, but Intel will be the first to admit it has not performed as good as they hoped.

Sun, IBM and SGI have had 64bit processors way before Intel. So if you say the Itanium is ok for the high-end consumer, then It's safe to say that a Sun Ultra10 or a SGI Octane would also be a high-end consumer machine.

What makes you so sure that a 16 processor G4 machine would not perform, because of the bus speed. What about super high-end servers like the CM5 or the Cray T3D. I seriously doubt those machines have 500Mhz bus speeds, or DDR memory. I know for a fact that the CM5 had dedicated memory for each processor node, and each node had 2 vector units. If you want, I can find out specifics from my brother, who has actually programmed code for it, when he worked at Las Alamos. Whether a 16 processor G4 machine is relevant or not, it could be built and if built right, would be very fast.

So the .NET family is limited to 32 processors huh....Weak, very weak. You can say what you want, UNIX still scales better than Windows, no matter what the flavor.

In my opinion, Microsoft is beginning to die a slow painful death. Everyone is tired of their bull**** and half-assed attempts of secure computing. Everyone always complains that Macs are not open enough, well I think the opposite is true. Apple embraces open standards and even invents and shares them when none exist, while Microsoft shuns and sometimes even steals others work, in a attempt to push their own proprietary formats and stifle progress.

I find it funny that Intel invented USB, but it was Apple that took the leap of faith and pushed it into the mainstream. Apple, in my opinion is the only company thinking "outside the box" and in the end, they will win because of it.

-mark

 

[wilburpan]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by MacCoaster

I wouldn't say that 800MHz G4 would match 1.8GHz. Notice the 1.25GHz they used is *DUAL* processor 1.25GHz. Maybe *DUAL* 800MHzs.

Here's the link to their rating of an iMac 800MHz G4 and a 1.8Ghz P4, which puts the two within shouting distance of each other.

http://www.cpuscorecard.com/sys_premium.htm

 

[wilburpan]

Re: did you notice...

Originally posted by theranch
It's a joke. I wouldn't depend on this site at all.

I fully agree that this site is less than ideal in it's rating system. My points are:

1. Here is, as far as I can tell, a not particularly Mac friendly site that compares the performance of Macs vs. PC's.

2. Based on these ratings, an iMac is actually the best buy for middle of the pack machines.

3. Again, based on these ratings, the top of the line Mac and P4 machines are closely matched in performance.

4. These conclusions are probably more significant in that they are based on data from a site that is not pro-Mac.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: 64bit

Originally posted by avkills
Ok, so Intel has the Itanium, well they have the Itanium2 I guess if you want to get super current, so what! The Itanium is based on a brand new design that looks good on paper, but Intel will be the first to admit it has not performed as good as they hoped.

I simply meant the Itanium family, including both the original Itanium and the current Intamium 2.

Sun, IBM and SGI have had 64bit processors way before Intel. So if you say the Itanium is ok for the high-end consumer, then It's safe to say that a Sun Ultra10 or a SGI Octane would also be a high-end consumer machine.

Sure, okay. Compare the prices. The Itanium solution is much cheaper.

What makes you so sure that a 16 processor G4 machine would not perform, because of the bus speed. What about super high-end servers like the CM5 or the Cray T3D. I seriously doubt those machines have 500Mhz bus speeds, or DDR memory. I know for a fact that the CM5 had dedicated memory for each processor node, and each node had 2 vector units. If you want, I can find out specifics from my brother, who has actually programmed code for it, when he worked at Las Alamos. Whether a 16 processor G4 machine is relevant or not, it could be built and if built right, would be very fast.

Very irrevelant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the G4 wasn't designed to be run in anything more than a dual configuration.

So the .NET family is limited to 32 processors huh....Weak, very weak. You can say what you want, UNIX still scales better than Windows, no matter what the flavor.

Windows isn't designed nor targeted at customers with more than 32 processors. If anyone wanted a 2048-way server, they'd either custom build it and load UNIX on it or have some large corporation develop the computer. It's a lot cheaper clustering 32 high-availablity servers than buying that one 2048-way server. Duh, Windows isn't scalable. It was NEVER designed primarily to be used on 2048-way supercomputers. That's way out of Microsoft's scope and market.

In my opinion, Microsoft is beginning to die a slow painful death. Everyone is tired of their bull**** and half-assed attempts of secure computing. Everyone always complains that Macs are not open enough, well I think the opposite is true. Apple embraces open standards and even invents and shares them when none exist, while Microsoft shuns and sometimes even steals others work, in a attempt to push their own proprietary formats and stifle progress.

Funny that Microsoft pushed the ever-so-slow W3C to standardize further dynamic HTML/etc. technologies to become standard. Of course, W3C can't keep current to allow people to innovate in the web presentation standards. Microsoft is even pushing XML very hard with .NET Web Services. And yes, Macs are closed. Not in software, but in hardware. Maybe you were confused by the definition of Macs being closed. The older Macintosh hardware is so proprietary it's not funny. Recent Macs adopt technology that had been in PCs before, except FireWire of course, because Apple invented that. But the hardware is still proprietary. I don't see that we are able to take off-the-shelf high quality components and build our own PowerPC computers then slap Mac OS X on it. Also, Microsoft indeed is "against" open source, and yet they maintain a "shared source" implementation of .NET for FreeBSD. In fact, it's a very well done implementation -- not that most-feeble-possible-implementation that we thought could possible be.

I find it funny that Intel invented USB, but it was Apple that took the leap of faith and pushed it into the mainstream. Apple, in my opinion is the only company thinking "outside the box" and in the end, they will win because of it.

-mark

Maybe it was Apple and Microsoft (Windows 98) who popularized USB, but you've got to realize this. PCs have had USB a few years before Apple. It wasn't until iMac/Windows 98 (note, same year: 1998) that USB got popular.

 

[MacCoaster]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: say what you will...

Originally posted by wilburpan

Here's the link to their rating of an iMac 800MHz G4 and a 1.8Ghz P4, which puts the two within shouting distance of each other.

http://www.cpuscorecard.com/sys_premium.htm

I stand corrected, however, they are still 7 percentiles apart. So yes, shouting distance. But what would the 55-percentile Pentium 4 speed be? 1.5-1.6GHz? Maybe less?

 

[P-Worm]

Isn't it amazing that no matter what the topic of a thread is about it always seems to degrade into people getting mad at how expensive a Macintosh is? Not to change the subjedt or anything...Carry on.

P-Worm

 

[avkills]

Stuff

Okay, I'll agree with you about not being able to "custom" build your own Macintosh. It has drawbacks and advantages. Mostly advantages in my opinion. Apple has always made systems that perform more predictably. Simply put, the software (OS) and the hardware work better hand in hand. Although Microsoft has done pretty good with XP, it does some neat stuff, but I still prefer OS X. However, even though you can't build your own Mac, it is very easy to add after market upgrades such as hard drives, RAM, PCI cards, etc etc...at least in the towers. Obviously, the iMac is for the person who does not care to go inside their computer, they just want something that turns on and works. Today, most of the hardware is pretty interchangeable.

In the future I'd like to see the hardware makers standardize even more, so maybe all the PCI cards could work in both systems without the need for different ROMS, but that will probably never happen, due to the stark differences in how Apple and Intel/AMD design the MB.

I don't know about the 2 processor limit on the G4. I always thought if the processor supported SMP, then you could go to town.

I never remember seeing any PCs with USB until after Apple released the original iMac. If they did, they sure were not using it much. In fact, they still mostly use the PS/2 ports. Maybe because the PC liked to crash back in the Win98 days. USB was definitely plug and pray for them back then.

I personally don't mind what Apple charges, since they make a product that works. I never go a week without hearing someone crying about something being wrong with their PC and Windows.

-mark

 

[nixd2001]

Originally posted by P-Worm
Isn't it amazing that no matter what the topic of a thread is about it always seems to degrade into people getting mad at how expensive a Macintosh is? Not to change the subjedt or anything...Carry on.

P-Worm

Continuing this brief diversion...

I've seen no attempt to quantitively factor quality into all these price comparisions that get thrown around. The build quality on my shiny doors is better than the build quality on any PC I've personally seen since a really nice Intel (yes, Intel) built PC from about '93.

If there's a desire to compare simply on price, then you might as well use a random number generator - it's too much Apple and Oranges.

I remember the storm caused a few years ago when a number of the UK PC manufacturers admitted that a 5% - 10% failure rate was the rates they operated on. I've just witnessed 3 motherboards out of about 15 go "phut" at work - due to design defects rather than going out of warranty as well. So should I conclude that they're good value for money because they are cheaper?

 

[Cappy]

Re: Re: 64bit

Originally posted by MacCoaster
Maybe it was Apple and Microsoft (Windows 98) who popularized USB, but you've got to realize this. PCs have had USB a few years before Apple. It wasn't until iMac/Windows 98 (note, same year: 1998) that USB got popular.

I'm glad there's someone who remembers that. I find it amazing that so many Mac fanatics are so out of tune with the rest of the world that they never even realized that Win98 came out at the same time and is why USB is where it is. You don't see Apple making claims that they were first or created the USB market. People need to get out more so to speak.

Remember folks Intel developed USB. It was on motherboards for previous years. It was destined to happen. They just needed MS to develop a decent OS to handle it(Win95 2.1 only had partial USB support) and products to take advantage of it. Developers came onboard once they saw MS get onboard with Win98. You wouldn't have seen the iMac USB support you saw if it wasn't for Win98.

Sorry to go off on a tangent but I get tired of people making false claims with misinformation. Remember folks being a fanatic is ok but know your enemy.

 

[Doctor Q]

My personal benchmarking tool is SETI@home.

I let it rip on my 1.25GHz G4 last night and set a record for the MacRumors team: the "Average CPU time per work unit" was a new low: 5 hr 52 min 11.2 sec.

I can see that SETI@home made use of the dual processors because my elapsed time (5 hr 10 min per unit) was less than my CPU time!

Check out the numbers at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_139691.html. My member name is (surprise surprise) "Doctor Q".

 

[barkmonster]

I think they're slower than you think if you're talking raw DSP muscle.

The price/performance of a mac is terrible at the moment but the interface, available software and midi management (especially patchnames) is still way ahead of the PC.

There's a thread on the Protools LE for Windows forum on the Digidesign User Conference where they've put together the best PC for under $800 and tested it in protools LE using the same 5 plug-ins per track test as those of us in the mac forum have performed.

This PC, an Athlon XP2200+ handles 180 plug-ins

The fastest mac currently tested, with an original retail value of $3,499 handles only 135 plug-ins.

Now concidering the mac in question is only running 1 of it's cpus, has a 133MHz FSB to the 333Mhz FSB on the PC and it's less than half the clock speed, it's quite impressive on paper but 4 times the price just for a superdrive, firewire and an OS that doesn't make me puke just looking at it isn't really very good.

A plus point is those plug-in counts will soar in OS X once Protools LE is dual CPU aware and I know any mac I buy will be more than fast enough to handle at least 4 times what my beige G3 can. It's just annoying that when I do get round to getting a faster model a used dual 800 SQ or maybe even a dual 1Ghz QS is the best I can hope for and both are thoroughly battered senseless by a dirt cheap PC.

Mind you, once I've got a new mac I doubt I'll care what those other brands can do. It's the OS that's kept me hooked on macs and OS X looks absolutely fantasic for audio.

 

[{1984}]

i guess everyone knows about the whole "MHz myth" thing...
Reason for G4 processors killing the Pentium 4 is cuz of the pipeline and i'm not gonna bother cuz everyone probably knows...

 

[shadowfax0]

You sure it was 5H and 52M? My friend's single 867 get like 6-7 hours...but any details on how you ran it would be nice too But still, I'm liking that time, about ( about people, about, I swear if I hear about this someone's gonna die...) 5 workunits a day, not bad, not bad at all...