[Greasyboy]

Before the G5 benchmarks started to appear, I thought that getting a G5 was a no brainer. But it appears that the 1.6 G5 is actually SLOWER in many operations than the dual 1.25 G4.

Here's the problem - with my education discount, I can pick up a dual 1.25 G4 for about $1500, and a single 1.6 G5 for about $1800.

Does it make ANY sense to get the G5? Of course, I'd rather get the dual 2.0, but I don't have $3000 handy.

[rnicoll]

I just wrote pretty much the exact same thing (pretty much), a few minutes earlier. I think it depends a lot on what you're planning on doing with your Mac - are the applications you're looking at running going to use both processors? Are G5 optimized versions likely to be released any time soon? Is memory bandwidth or floating point calculations of particular importance to them?

Anyway, yes, what sort of programs are you planning on running on this shiny new Mac? Are we talking Safari, or Photoshop, or Poser, or games, or what?


P.S. If you are in a position to wait 2-3 months, I would.

[k2director]

The benchmarks you're seeing to date don't tell much about the G5's real performance. Most of the benchmarks have nothing to do with real-world apps that have been optimized to take advantage of the G5. It'd make sense to wait until you can see some of those apps (PhotoShop, Final Cut, Logic, AfterEffects, etc.) go through their paces on the G5 before drawing any real conclusions....

[Brazuca]

I'm also eagerly awaiting the benchmarks, but so far two tests that have been run are seriously flawed.

The Cinebench test isn't significant yet. We have to wait for the programmers to optimize since every other computer it runs for is optimized.

The xBench seems suspicious, since you get varied results each time you run it. You can get a result of 90 one time, and 140 another. I just can't make decisions based on that.

[davecom]

Originally posted by Brazuca:
I'm also eagerly awaiting the benchmarks, but so far two tests that have been run are seriously flawed.

The Cinebench test isn't significant yet. We have to wait for the programmers to optimize since every other computer it runs for is optimized.

The xBench seems suspicious, since you get varied results each time you run it. You can get a result of 90 one time, and 140 another. I just can't make decisions based on that.

I agree about the xBench test.

[gfourdoor]

I know of at least one person whom I respect as a knowledgable Mac tech who says that xBench results are not correct.

The test code needs to be fixed.

[Greasyboy]

Sure, the benchmarks are slow and the programs are unoptimized. But how long do you think it's going to take Adobe to optimize After Effects? Or Macromedia Flash? 6 months? A year? Longer?

If there was a Dual 1.8 I'd get it. But with PowerMacs as they stand, I'm starting to think there's only two deals: the dual 1.25 G4, and the dual 2 G5.

For those who asked: besides the basics (Word, Safari, etc.), I use iMovie, Dreamweaver/Flash, Final Cut, and After Effects. I'll probably start using Macromedia Director this semester; I don't know how fast/slow that is. But I do lots of rendering and need something faster.

[Link]

i will say the dual 1.25 g4.

To begin with the G5 1.6 is a crippled machine, and while you have a much better bus and much higher ram capacity.. you also have a huge problem.

Let's face it people.. it's totally disposable. I DUNNO in that it's hard to say.

Personally I think the g5 would take longer to 'feel old' but the way I see it.

Buy the machine that you can afford to splurge for the video card on. this is one of the biggest deciding factors as it will be a huge factor in games.

[jrod7350]

I think though another thing you're going to have to consider is the longevity of the G5 versus the G4. The early G4's were not significantly faster than the fastest G3's when they first came out in non-altivec apps, but as seen today, esp. will applications like FCP 4.0, you can't even run it on a G3, but you can run it on the most ancient G4 (which is slower than the fastest G3's). So if in the future there's going to be something that Apple writes or takes advantage of in the G5 architecture that is not in the G4, then your up the creek. Also I think it would be wise again to wait till there's more concrete benchmarks from real-world applications, not flawd benchmark programs. From some reports I've heard, the 1.6 G5 is rated higher in RTextreme effects than the dual 1.25, so there may be a lot of things that the G5 is good at in the real world, but the benchmarks don't take appropriate advantage of.

[Hydra]

The G5 1.6 is rated higher than both the dual 1.42 and 1.25 according to the DV RT script run by FCP to rate the horsepower available in each system. As to realworld performance I can't answer as of yet but Xbench should be ignored. I can get numbers that vary by 50% running the test. The overall rating is nice but you have to remember that the disk scores will always be a bottleneck as Disk I/O is one area where speeds don't rise as much between generations, unlike CPU speed.

-Jerry C.

[Anand]

Re-read this article regarding the G5. It was spot-on.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1121736,00.asp

[sleepyrenderer]

Originally posted by Hydra:
The G5 1.6 is rated higher than both the dual 1.42 and 1.25 according to the DV RT script run by FCP to rate the horsepower available in each system.

I'm not sure that that's really a rating. It seems more like a unique identifier, and the new G5 models have the last 3 numbers because they're were just appended to the top of the list. We'll have to wait for some 1.6GHz G5 vs Dual 1.42GHz G4 FCP bake-offs to be sure how they compare.

if (dictget("switches","realtimeVideoFX","cpuclass"," value") == 42)
cpuclass = 17
else if (cpucount > 1 && cpuspeed >= 2000 && cpubusspeed >= 1000)
cpuclass = 16
else if (cpuspeed >= 1800 && cpubusspeed >= 900)
cpuclass = 15
else if (cpuspeed >= 1600 && cpubusspeed >= 800)
cpuclass = 14
else if (cpucount > 1 && cpuspeed >= 1420)
cpuclass = 13
else if (cpucount > 1 && cpuspeed >= 1250)
cpuclass = 12
else if (cpucount > 1 && cpuspeed >= 1000)
cpuclass = 11
else if (cpucount > 1 && cpuspeed >= 800)
cpuclass = 10
else if (cpuspeed >= 1000 && (l2cachesize + l3cachesize) >= 1024 && cpubusspeed >= 166)
cpuclass = 9
else if (cpuspeed >= 1000 && (l2cachesize + l3cachesize) >= 1024)
cpuclass = 8
else if (cpuspeed >= 800 && (l2cachesize + l3cachesize) >= 1024)
cpuclass = 7
else if (cpuspeed >= 1000)
cpuclass = 6
else if (cpucount > 1)
cpuclass = 5
else if (cpuspeed > 500 && (l2cachesize + l3cachesize) >= 1024)
cpuclass = 4
else if ((cpuspeed >= 500 && !ispowerbook && (l2cachesize + l3cachesize) >= 1024) || (cpuspeed >= 733))
cpuclass = 3
else if (cpuspeed >= 667)
cpuclass = 2
else if (cpuspeed >= 550)
cpuclass = 1
else
cpuclass = 0
end if"

[Eug]

Originally posted by Link:
i will say the dual 1.25 g4.

To begin with the G5 1.6 is a crippled machine, and while you have a much better bus and much higher ram capacity.. you also have a huge problem.

Let's face it people.. it's totally disposable. I DUNNO in that it's hard to say.

Hmmm... If 1.6 is totally disposable, then the 1.25 may as well be trash already. "Crippled" in G5 terms can be uber-fast in G4 terms. eg. FSB, memory, etc.

[moki]

Originally posted by gfourdoor:
I know of at least one person whom I respect as a knowledgable Mac tech who says that xBench results are not correct.

The test code needs to be fixed.

While I'm not saying that the xBench code is not correct (it may or may not be, I haven't looked into it), a benchmark certainly shouldn't vary much from run to run on the same machine, otherwise it is not particularly useful.

Regarding the performance of the G5 machines, I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

[frownyfrank]

I'm sure the DP G4 will be faster, being that Apple has had time to remove the debug code from it. Sadly, not the case with poor crippled G5.

[Simon]

Originally posted by frownyfrank:
I'm sure the DP G4 will be faster, being that Apple has had time to remove the debug code from it. Sadly, not the case with poor crippled G5.

This better be 100% pure irony.

[reynard]

First, when you quote $1800, you realize you are getting the Superdrive G5. The combo drive will save you $180.
Now for the price of the G4 dual 1.25. Where did you get $1500 as its price? On Apple's Ed. page it lists for nearly $3000 with Superdrive.

So if you were to buy them both new from Apple the prices I see are:
Dual 1.25 G4-- $2976
1.6 G5-- $1800

On a different factor altogether, finding out which were quieter would be important to me.

[dazzla]

Originally posted by reynard:
First, when you quote $1800, you realize you are getting the Superdrive G5. The combo drive will save you $180.
Now for the price of the G4 dual 1.25. Where did you get $1500 as its price? On Apple's Ed. page it lists for nearly $3000 with Superdrive.

So if you were to buy them both new from Apple the prices I see are:
Dual 1.25 G4-- $2976
1.6 G5-- $1800

On a different factor altogether, finding out which were quieter would be important to me.

You can get the Dual 1.25 for as cheap as $1570 from the Apple store with the 1.6 G5 going as cheap as $1770. That's without Edu.

[jcadam]

Originally posted by Greasyboy:
Sure, the benchmarks are slow and the programs are unoptimized. But how long do you think it's going to take Adobe to optimize After Effects? Or Macromedia Flash? 6 months? A year? Longer?

If there was a Dual 1.8 I'd get it. But with PowerMacs as they stand, I'm starting to think there's only two deals: the dual 1.25 G4, and the dual 2 G5.

For those who asked: besides the basics (Word, Safari, etc.), I use iMovie, Dreamweaver/Flash, Final Cut, and After Effects. I'll probably start using Macromedia Director this semester; I don't know how fast/slow that is. But I do lots of rendering and need something faster.

Wha..? So do you buy a new computer every 6 months? That G5 will have a longer life span. The first time you want to buy an app whose requirements read "G5 or later processor required", you'll be kicking yourself.

The mac is moving from 32-bit CPUs to 64-bit. This is almost as significant as the move from 68k to PPC. Many apps today will still run on a PPC 601 (well, MAC OS X aside), albiet slowly. Most will not run on a 68040. Remember how unimpressive the PowerMac 6100 was compared to the top-of-the line Quadra when it was first released (a LOT of that was lack of software optimization, btw)?

If your a PC user, remember when the 386DX was released? How significant did the move from 16-bit to 32-bit seem at the time? How long was it until nearly every app required at least a 80386 to run? Windows 3.1 barely worked on a 286, preferring to run in '386 enhanced mode', as M$ called it at the time. It gave you access to more memory, etc, etc....

[hyteckit]

Originally posted by dazzla:
You can get the Dual 1.25 for as cheap as $1570 from the Apple store with the 1.6 G5 going as cheap as $1770. That's without Edu.

Sure, if you remove the modem. I got the Dual G4 1.25GHz with the modem, so it's $1599.

[docbud]

Originally posted by jcadam:
Wha..? So do you buy a new computer every 6 months? That G5 will have a longer life span. The first time you want to buy an app whose requirements read "G5 or later processor required", you'll be kicking yourself.

I think we're still several years away from an app requiring G5. Most of the stuff now still says G3 recommended.

I went for the dual G4 and I'm extremely happy with it.
doc