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AU_student_iceBook · Aug 29, 2003, 11:24 AM

I just went to my local compusa to see if they had the G5 yet. Sure enough they did, and there was no one around, so I got to play with it for about 20 minutes.

It had only 256mb of ram, so you must remember that X is a ram hog and this machine will perform much better overall with more ram installed. (I ran top in terminal and the poor thing is paging out all over the place)

BounceMarks:
iDvd-3 bounces
iTunes- 1 bounce
Safari- 1 bounce
iCal- 1 bounce
sys pref.- 1 bounce
iPhoto- 1 bounce

Not only did everything stop bouncing fast, the programs were actually usable nearly right away.

iDvd was very responsive while switching themes with motion on. (Better than the 1.25G4 sitting right next to it)

iTunes-
Visualizer were consistently at 60fps, which isn't bad at all.
Ripping- I brought an audio cd with me to try out the G5. It was set to encode at 128k/AAC. (The current stock standard for iTunes)
It only got 10-11x. I found this to be very disappointing, seeing how my iMac 800 gets 8x.

The system bogged down easily enough with iTunes playing, visualizers going, top running in terminal and the cpu monitor running.

Remember, the ram was crap, so all of this is probably better if the machine has more ram.

My overall impression was that the machine was good (and I am sure the Dual will be great), but if you are planning on buying the 1.6 or 1.8, DON'T do it.
OSX just benefits too much from the second processor. I know that so much of the G5's have been redesigned to remove bottlenecks and they truly are the better machines, but I think for any serious work (especially video) it would be better to buy the dual G4 (1.25) than the single 1.6 or 1.8.

These are all my opinion, so don't get too mad. I am just trying to post information I thought would be useful. Let me know if you have any questions.

StiZeven · Aug 29, 2003, 12:05 PM

Did you re-boot the G5 before you did the 'bounce' test to make sure that no programs were already in RAM giving the impression that they load fast? If so, how fast did it start up or re-boot? I should run down to the 5th Ave CompUSA to check it out.

cenutrio · Aug 29, 2003, 12:49 PM

Compressing songs to AAC format seems very slow for a G5 (even for your iMac 800.

My PBti 400/384/40 GB 5,400 does 6-7 regularly

AU_student_iceBook · Aug 29, 2003, 01:05 PM

Originally posted by StiZeven:
Did you re-boot the G5 before you did the 'bounce' test to make sure that no programs were already in RAM giving the impression that they load fast? If so, how fast did it start up or re-boot? I should run down to the 5th Ave CompUSA to check it out.

I didn't reboot the machine. Most of the time that have login passwords and I didn't want to get an employee over to help me login. You know?
But, I want to know how fast it boots too.

kupan787 · Aug 29, 2003, 01:25 PM

Originally posted by cenutrio:
Compressing songs to AAC format seems very slow for a G5 (even for your iMac 800.

My PBti 400/384/40 GB 5,400 does 6-7 regularly

The thing is you weren't really testing just compressing, but ripping and compressing. The CD drive speed is slow, so it can't feed the data to the compressor as fast as an HD can. If you really want to test, copy a few aiff files to the hard drive, and then convert to AAC. How fast does it go then?

But what I am still more interested in is mpeg2 encode times? How long does it take to go from DVD to a DivX file? Render in FCP? Copy 4 GBs of files between two drives? Framerate in Urban Terror?

Busemann · Aug 29, 2003, 01:51 PM

My MDD 1.25 Ghz encodes at over 20X so the 1.6 Ghz G5 should at least equal that.

geekwagon · Aug 29, 2003, 03:17 PM

Originally posted by Busemann:
My MDD 1.25 Ghz encodes at over 20X so the 1.6 Ghz G5 should at least equal that.

But do you have a superdrive or the combo drive? Remember that the superdrive is a much slower CD reader than the combo.

I have both in my MDD 1.25 and I usually get about 22x off the combo and about 11-12x on the superdrive.

mac freak · Aug 29, 2003, 03:26 PM

In that case, wouldn't 11-12x be the LIMIT of the superdrive, regardless of CPU?

juanpacolopez · Aug 29, 2003, 04:00 PM

Originally posted by mac freak:
In that case, wouldn't 11-12x be the LIMIT of the superdrive, regardless of CPU?

Actually... yes

Ripping/encoding of audio (at least in iTunes w/ AAC) is almost entirely limited by the speed of the drive.

Honestly, you WON'T see that much difference between even a single G4 (1Ghz+) and a 1.6Ghz G5 in this area.

Now, if we're talking about encoding mp3 from wav or aif source material on the HD, it's an entirely different story. I'm eager to see how fast the G5 can run a huge aif through LAME @ high quality VBR... THAT will be a test of the G5's prowess. My Ti does this at about 4.5x+/- depending on quality settings... I'd love to see that up to around 20-30x (which is entirely possible I think, on a G5).

DBvader · Aug 29, 2003, 04:04 PM

i have a 52 X connected to my Dual 867, and i seem to only be able to get 9X at 192 AAC

RooneyX · Aug 29, 2003, 04:57 PM

Apps launch real fast but this is because of the SATA hard disk interface more than the CPU.

Busemann · Aug 29, 2003, 05:54 PM

Originally posted by geekwagon:
But do you have a superdrive or the combo drive? Remember that the superdrive is a much slower CD reader than the combo.

I have both in my MDD 1.25 and I usually get about 22x off the combo and about 11-12x on the superdrive.

I have the SuperDrive. Its at 24X, but the G5's is 32X. The drive shouldn't be the bottleneck

cowerd · Aug 29, 2003, 06:01 PM

Apps launch real fast but this is because of the SATA hard disk interface more than the CPU.

Disk throughput on current SATA drives is almost exactly the same as ATA133 drives. Why would apps launch faster because of this?

blackbird_1.0 · Aug 29, 2003, 11:14 PM

are they gonna re-release the 1.6? after apple fixes it?

11011001 · Aug 30, 2003, 12:49 AM

Originally posted by cowerd:
Disk throughput on current SATA drives is almost exactly the same as ATA133 drives. Why would apps launch faster because of this?

Exactly.. drives, whether they have SATA or ATA still are not as fast as these interfaces. The bottle neck is the drive it's self, not the interface.

Busemann · Aug 30, 2003, 06:15 AM

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
are they gonna re-release the 1.6? after apple fixes it?

Why fix something that isn't broke?

Cadaver · Aug 30, 2003, 06:43 AM

iTunes encode-off-CD is a horrible benchmark. It's totally limited by drive speed. In addition, just because an optical drive is listed as 24x read or 36x read doesn't mean it's capable of audio extraction at that speed. The PC users post about this constantly on boards such as the AnandTech forums.

Many of the PC utilities such as Nero and EasyCD have a function to test audio extraction speed - not encoding to MP3 speed. Not sure if Toast does this; the iBook I'm using right now doesn't have it installed.

Busemann · Aug 30, 2003, 07:01 AM

If you want to test encoding speed, use an AIFF file from the hard drive.

Eriamjh · Aug 30, 2003, 08:01 AM

I have the DVR-105 superdrive in my DP800 and it can encode MP3s at 14-16x. I haven't tried AAC because my entire colelction is already encoded and I have nothing left to encode.

12x seems a little disappointing, though.

The Placid Casual · Aug 30, 2003, 09:55 AM

CD extraction is totally dependent on the 'Digital Extraction' (or some other very similar term) rating of the drive...

When you buy a drive these days, it has the main speeds listed in large letters, but usually in the small print has the audio extraction rate. This can vary *very* dramatically between the different types and brands of drive.

Peace,

Marc

P.S. You can't even compare the G5's Superdrive to other Superdrive equipped Macs speeds, as they have up to now had the Pioneer drive in them.

The G5 uses a new Sony unit that supports DVD-RW et all... Differences are to be expected.

goMac · Aug 30, 2003, 09:32 PM

Um, my Powerbook gets around 10x-11x rip (162 aac) and it has a superdrive (32x iirc). The aac encoder is optimized for Velocity Engine, and the G5 has week Velocity Engine compared to the G4. Could that be it?

k2director · Aug 31, 2003, 01:13 AM

Just for the record, I tried out a g5 1.8 at the Apple Store in Los Angeles (The Grove). It had 512megs of ram, and I had it do all the following simultaneously:

Play an edited video from iMovie
Play a Quicktime trailer at high bandwidth
Play an iTunes track
Play iDVD's tutorial via the Preview mode

It did all this without dropping any noticeable frames, and maintained responsiveness in the Finder. I was happy.

As a side note, a friend tried out a G5 1.6 at Apple's Pasadena store. It had 256MB of RAM and apparently was stuttering and pausing (spinning rainbow) to the point that some customers walked away thinking it's an unperforming machine. It's bothersome that Apple doesn't stock all of its floor models--particularly the top-tier professional workstations--with enough ram to do them justice.

juanpacolopez · Aug 31, 2003, 10:22 AM

Originally posted by goMac:
Um, my Powerbook gets around 10x-11x rip (162 aac) and it has a superdrive (32x iirc). The aac encoder is optimized for Velocity Engine, and the G5 has week Velocity Engine compared to the G4. Could that be it?

To settle this once and for all...

The G5 doesn't have a "weak" altivec unit compared to the G4... it's just different.

While the G4 has separate issue queues for each type of vector operation (permute, simple int, complex int, and fp)... meaning that you can execute any of those instructions at any given time without waiting for another instruction of a different type to be dispatched; the G5 has only 2 issue queues, one for vec perm and one for the rest.

This has the POSSIBILITY of introducing latency. However, as software is properly modified to work around/take advantage of the different design, it shouldn't be much of an issue. Take a look at this excellent Ars Technica article:

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/ppc970/ppc970-7.html

That's the page that discusses the altivec unit in depth.

Like I said earlier... ripping to mp3/AAC is NOT limited by the processor at this point (at least an iTunes rip), even on a G5 with it's "slower" altivec. Again, I'll wait to see a VBR LAME encode, that will be a good test of CPU prowess.

RooneyX · Aug 31, 2003, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by k2director:
Just for the record, I tried out a g5 1.8 at the Apple Store in Los Angeles (The Grove). It had 512megs of ram, and I had it do all the following simultaneously:

Play an edited video from iMovie
Play a Quicktime trailer at high bandwidth
Play an iTunes track
Play iDVD's tutorial via the Preview mode

It did all this without dropping any noticeable frames, and maintained responsiveness in the Finder. I was happy.

Even a 500Mhz Pentium III can do that. The slowness has always been down to the OS not the hardware. Apparently Panther will make everything snappy and makes old hardware feel reborn, the speed they should have been exhibiting when they came out.

The display model at The Grove is a 1.6Ghz G5. Their 1.8s were presold and they since recieving their stock this week they've only had a 1.6 on display and a single 1.6 for sale.

k2director · Aug 31, 2003, 02:45 PM

Actually, I don't believe any Pentium can run iTunes, iDVD, iMovie and the Finder.

Plus, the G5 I played with at The Grove was indeed a 1.8. First thing I did was look under About This Mac.

RooneyX · Aug 31, 2003, 03:36 PM

Originally posted by k2director:
Actually, I don't believe any Pentium can run iTunes, iDVD, iMovie and the Finder.

Doh! You know what I mean!

Plus, the G5 I played with at The Grove was indeed a 1.8. First thing I did was look under About This Mac. [/B]

That's odd. I've been there three times in the last few days and it was a 1.6.

midwinter · Aug 31, 2003, 04:19 PM

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
I have the DVR-105 superdrive in my DP800

Do you have any problems with kernel panics with that drive? I've recently started experiencing them if I leave a DVD in the drive long enough for the drives to sleep.

Immortal K-Mart Employee · Aug 31, 2003, 04:33 PM

Bounce-marks. Gimmie a friggin' break

alvinkoh · Sep 1, 2003, 02:36 AM

Originally posted by mac freak:
In that case, wouldn't 11-12x be the LIMIT of the superdrive, regardless of CPU?

my superdrive does 17-18x regularly on my dual 1.42, so i don't think its just the drive speed. i think the cpu still plays a part.

kenty · Sep 1, 2003, 03:06 AM

It's interesting that you said you got 60fps on itunes visualliser.. I was in an apple store today with the 1.6GHZ G5 and it maxed out at around 18fps full screen.. granted it was a 23" display but I seriously thought it could do better than that.. it had 1.25gig of ram as well...

bernt · Sep 1, 2003, 05:46 AM

Originally posted by kenty:
It's interesting that you said you got 60fps on itunes visualliser.. I was in an apple store today with the 1.6GHZ G5 and it maxed out at around 18fps full screen.. granted it was a 23" display but I seriously thought it could do better than that.. it had 1.25gig of ram as well...

It depends on if the "Faster but rougher diplay" are checked in the visual preferences or not. It makes a really big difference, at least on my iBook with ATI Radeon 7500...

erlend

kenty · Sep 1, 2003, 07:22 AM

Originally posted by bernt:
It depends on if the "Faster but rougher diplay" are checked in the visual preferences or not. It makes a really big difference, at least on my iBook with ATI Radeon 7500...

erlend

No I defeneitly had the "faster but rougher display" unchecked, but I had the "use opengl" checked... I thought it would be able to handle that no problems.. I mean there are games and rendering in 3d programs that are much more complicated than the itunes visualizer...dissapointing.

jclarkv · Sep 1, 2003, 09:08 AM

Originally posted by AU_student_iceBook:
Ripping- I brought an audio cd with me to try out the G5. It was set to encode at 128k/AAC. (The current stock standard for iTunes)
It only got 10-11x. I found this to be very disappointing, seeing how my iMac 800 gets 8x.

On my newly acquired G5/1.6 with 1 GB or RAM, when I rip a CD it gets just over 14x, but not until it gets goin' for a while. It starts out at 10x, then after about a minute kicks it up to over 14.

AU_student_iceBook · Sep 1, 2003, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by kenty:
No I defeneitly had the "faster but rougher display" unchecked, but I had the "use opengl" checked... I thought it would be able to handle that no problems.. I mean there are games and rendering in 3d programs that are much more complicated than the itunes visualizer...dissapointing.

The FPS you got were really low. I had faster but rougher unchecked (looks like crap) open gl checked and cap frame rate at 30fps unchecked.

Eug Wanker · Sep 1, 2003, 12:40 PM

With bounces, with a relatively fast computer, you'll be mainly measuring drive speed.

With iTunes encoding you're measuring both optical drive speed and the effects of your settings. eg. With my settings, my TiBook can rip and encode as fast as 19X to MP3.

macsimile · Sep 6, 2003, 01:32 AM

got a 1.8 and ripped at 21x... i am running 512 mb of ram (so far... mac ram is jacked up in prices now...)