[cole2001]

I just got my brand new Dual G5, and I thought you guys would be interested in seeing some stats on a real world test between the Dual 1.4 Gig G4 with 2 gig of RAM and the Dual 2 Gig G5 with 3 gig of RAM. My preliminary report suggests that the G5 eats the G4 for lunch... but mainly in applications that appear to be "optimized" for the G5 (aka Final Cut Pro 4.0).

** Times are formatted in Minutes:Seconds***

BOOT UP TIME

From chime to usable Finder:

G4 - 1:15
G5 - 1:07


QUICKTIME MPEG-4 CONVERSION

I converted a 8 minute FCP Movie into a High Quality MPEG4 File through QuickTime Player. Here are the results:

G4 - 3:43
G5 - 3:03

That is approximately a 18% speed bump with the G5.


QUICKTIME MPEG-2 CONVERSION

I converted that same movie to a 2-Pass VBR MPEG-2 File, Best Motion, through QuickTime Conversion in FCP 4.0. Here are the results:

G4 - 23:47 .78
G5 - 18:09 .15

This is approximately a 24% speed bump with the G5.


FINAL CUT PRO 4.0 RENDERING

I went into a FCP Project, again about 8 minutes long, and rendered it. This project had a ton of keyframing movement, video on top of moving still images, and other misc. special effects. Including a 20 second "Boris Red" Titling Effect. Here are the results:

G4 - 34:14
G5 - 18:46

That, folks, is a 45.2% !!!! speed bump with the G5.

I tested this twice and received the same result.

(Not surprisingly, the longest thing to render on both machines was the Boris Red Clip. Approximately 3 minutes for the G5, 6 for the G4.)


INTERESTING STUFF

I noted a very odd behavior with making a QuickTime Movie (NOT QuickTime Conversion) out of that Same Rendered Project in FCP 4.0. The G4 actually BEAT the G5, and by quite a bit. How the hell this is possible, I don't know.

G4 - 1:56
G5 - 3:25

That is approximately a 43% DECREASE in speed with the G5. (I'm tired and being lazy with the math, but that's about it)

I tried this twice. It did the same thing. The G4 kicked the G5's butt again. All of the settings were the same. I can't figure it out. I think it might have something to do with the speed of the Hard Drive from Apple (we just installed some nice drives into the Dual 1.4) I also think that the "return" to 32-bit code through QuickTime (since FCP is rumored to be 64 bit) is causing some problems as well. Otherwise, it is a mystery.

My consensus - if you do lots of rendering, and your system is Dual 1.2 or under, dump your G4 NOW while you can for good money and go for a high end G5. It will be worth every penny, and a time saver.

If you have a Dual 1.4 - you have a nice performing machine. Upgrading will speed things up, but it depends on what you are doing.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

software has not been updated for the g5 yet


when the next version of those programs come out, then you will see major speed increases


since the g5 price/performance ratio has been improved, i suggest eerybody get a G5 for the future if not now

[cole2001]

.. why did FCP kick the beejesus out of QuickTime? 45% is no small number... the G5 had the G4 for dinner, and now I'm hearing FCP4 is not even optimized. When that happens, watch out!!!!!

Panther is not and will not be G5 optimized.. not at the beginning anyways.

Still, the G4 shouldnt have beaten the G5 in the creation of a QuickTime Movie (ie Final Cut Pro Movie). That was just plain weird.

Anyways.

[lars-man]

AFAIK QuickTime is not able to benefit from dual processor systems, therefore the G5 is not so much faster. The odd behavior in your test could depend on the Altivec implementation in the G5 which is not as good as in the latest G4. Perhaps this operation benefits a lot Altivec and that's why the G4 beats the G5.

Lars

[cole2001]

Originally posted by lars-man:
AFAIK QuickTime is not able to benefit from dual processor systems, therefore the G5 is not so much faster. The odd behavior in your test could depend on the Altivec implementation in the G5 which is not as good as in the latest G4. Perhaps this operation benefits a lot Altivec and that's why the G4 beats the G5.

Lars

Perhaps, but "QuickTime Movie" is not the same as QuickTime (that portion is called QuickTime Conversion). It is a simply a part of FCP. But that also doesnt explain why FCP had a 45% increase in speed over the G4. That is a huge speed bump. What's so different about FCP4 on the G4 and the G5?

That's what is boggling me... especially since the core of FCP is - Quicktime!

[Cadaver]

My dual G5's boot time is 35 seconds to desktop. In fact, by the time the grey screen disappears and goes to the blue backdrop with the progress bar, it's already 2/3 the way through.

[alligator]

MacAddict had a similar experience with Quicktime. I'm too new here to add any comments of value, but they speculated it wasn't optimized for the G5 and gave another reason as well. That experience with Quicktime appears to be standard.

[KidRed]

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:
software has not been updated for the g5 yet


when the next version of those programs come out, then you will see major speed increases


since the g5 price/performance ratio has been improved, i suggest eerybody get a G5 for the future if not now

Exactly. That's what kills me about half of these moronic threads claiming the G5 is slow, or isn't 5x faster, or is the same speed or that Apple lied or that some PC site says it really sucks or...

Relax. Go to work or play, whatever it is and get over the whole "the G5 doesn't or isn't and eats lunch or is lunch or..." and be happy with your G5 as many still don't have theirs.

[cole2001]

um.. im not whining that its slow. versus a 1.4, its not as "spiffy" in a lot of things, but I use this machine for Final Cut Pro exclusively. I just thought it was interesting that it got pounced in only one of the four test i did. but i thought it was even more interesting that the g5 pounced the g4 in FCP by such a significant amount, especially when i know now its not optimized for it...

a good sign if ya ask me.

[Hydra]

Apple has been showing a new version of FCP4 to industry types that is made for the G5. I would expect that what your are seeing right now is worst case scenario and it will have some nice speed improvements in the very near future (not that the dual G5 is anything but fast in FCP4 anyway Did you happen to try outputting to fireiwre in realtime with mutliple effects and layers of video? That you should find most impressive

-Jerry C.

[ckohler]

What remains to be seen is how many apps will gain G5 optimizations and NOT require you buy a whole new version to aquire those optimizations.

[RyanG3]

Originally posted by ckohler:
What remains to be seen is how many apps will gain G5 optimizations and NOT require you buy a whole new version to aquire those optimizations.

I have a feeling that not many apps will gain G5 optimizations with out costing us customers. Sad but true. I think many venders will see this as an opportunity to make sales.

[another_steve]

Originally posted by cole2001:
.. why did FCP kick the beejesus out of QuickTime? 45% is no small number... the G5 had the G4 for dinner, and now I'm hearing FCP4 is not even optimized. When that happens, watch out!!!!!

There are very specific examples where some code that has been specifically optimized for later model G4s (PPC75xx) take a severe performance hit on the G5s. Code that has not been optimized in this fashion will do much better. Apple has posted a few pages on G5 optimization. One page in particular discusses the "do's and don'ts for the G5. For example: http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2087.html

Panther is not and will not be G5 optimized.. not at the beginning anyways.

That's not true. There are varying levels of optimization. Since Panther isn't fully 64bit, I'll agree that it's not fully optimized. However, by the virtue of being compiled with GCC 3.3, it benefits from the G5 based code scheduler, etc. Additionally, many common libraries are optimized for the G5. For more information about the types of optimization possible, start here:

http://developer.apple.com/performan...imization.html

Unless a developer is using Code Warrior (which has no G5 specific optimization yet) like Adobe, new versions of software will get a significant increase just by being recompiled with a compiler that has G5 optmizations. Apple's free distribution of GCC is one example, IBM's XLC is a better example.

Steve

[cole2001]

i was complimenting the G5 for its speed.

sorry for not clairifying.

[awcopus]

This is great news as I'm an FCP4 editor using a 1.4 currently. I imagine that the performance under Panther and with an optimized FCP will be only better.

Holding out for a less expensive and more expandable G5 duallie, but psyched to see that Apple has really come through on the video editing front. For the time being, I can't imagine how I'd get by without having a terabyte of storage online (four 250GB drives in my 1.42 duallie). Makes it so easy to manage different projects simultaneously and offers terrific performance compared to external Firewire, and much better price-to-performance ratio than Apple's RAID hardware.

Hope Apple comes through with a G5 that offers more HD slots, but I'm not holding my breath. I think my scratch disc solution is going to be expensive when I upgrade to the G5 next year.