[Eug]

All I can say is that the Dual 2.0 with Radeon 9600 seems faster (resizing the same window) than the Single 1.8 with GeForceFX 5200.

What is the bottleneck? The video card and AGP bus? The CPU MHz? Memory bandwidth is the same on both machines.

[reader50]

Move the 9600 over to the 1.8 and retest to determine if it's the vid card. If it isn't, move a 2 GHz CPU module over to the 1.8 and retest. If you have both machines in front of you, it should not take too long to narrow it down.

[Eug]

Originally posted by reader50:
Move the 9600 over to the 1.8 and retest to determine if it's the vid card. If it isn't, move a 2 GHz CPU module over to the 1.8 and retest. If you have both machines in front of you, it should not take too long to narrow it down.

Thanks for the non-answer.

I'm just wondering if anyone has compared a 1.8 side by side with a 1.8, with a 5200 vs. a 9600. I suspect it's mainly CPU speed.

Actually, I'm wondering if anyone knows the theory behind it.

[Maflynn]

Maybe I'm missing something (which is normal) but why is that a non-answer. It seems very logical to swap cards and see if there's a speed difference.

Mike

[cdhostage]

It WAS an answer, just not to the question posed.

[Eug]

I took it as a joke, considering he said to swap CPUs. Anyways, it's moot, since I was just testing it in the store.

Has anyone compared two 1.8s side by side, with different video cards? It seems odd that only a dual 2.0 with Radeon 9600 is fast enough to give (relatively) non-jumpy window resizing.

[reader50]

Eug, your post implied that you had both G5s in front of you. I assumed on your desk, store units didn't come to mind. I certainly do not have any G5s in front of me for testing.

While the CPU modules do unplug, on second thought it seems simpler to disable the 2nd CPU in software on the G5. The motherboards are apparently identical except for the missing 2nd CPU socket, so you would be testing a straight 200 MHz increase. But the store people might not appreciate CPU or video card swapping for benchmarking.

ps - the early G5 reports described physically unplugging the 2nd CPU for certain tests. The "independent lab tests" used this procedure if I recall correctly. So the CPU modules are removable. I was assuming that a 2 GHz module plugged into a 1.8 motherboard would still operate at 2 GHz.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by reader50:
Eug, your post implied that you had both G5s in front of you. I assumed on your desk, store units didn't come to mind. I certainly do not have any G5s in front of me for testing.

While the CPU modules do unplug, on second thought it seems simpler to disable the 2nd CPU in software on the G5. The motherboards are apparently identical except for the missing 2nd CPU socket, so you would be testing a straight 200 MHz increase. But the store people might not appreciate CPU or video card swapping for benchmarking.

ps - the early G5 reports described physically unplugging the 2nd CPU for certain tests. The "independent lab tests" used this procedure if I recall correctly. So the CPU modules are removable. I was assuming that a 2 GHz module plugged into a 1.8 motherboard would still operate at 2 GHz.

You can't plug a second CPU into the 1.8 mobo. There is no socket.

[Landos Mustache]

Here is my take on the matter.

1) expose is really doing the same thing, actually more complicated and it is smooth as silk on a Dual G5. So why is window resizing slow?

2) Ars Techinica ask the same question:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/0...wm-performance

3) I think it is just software optimization that needs some work.

4) I almost NEVER resize windows manually anymore, that is really what the green button is for. When I do I am not losing any sleep over a little stutter.

[Mister Elf]

hmm, maye it's because the 9600 blows the 5200 out of the water?

[Boochie]

I'm not sure about the comparison to Expose. Each window is basically being mapped as a texture by Quartz extreme (as I understand it). Expose just scales that texture using the GPU to great effect no doubt. Window resizing requires the application to re-layout its contents based on the instantaneous window size.

Still, my three year old Pentium III laptop at work was quite a bit smoother at window resizing than the G5 I played with at the Apple Store.

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
Here is my take on the matter.

1) expose is really doing the same thing, actually more complicated and it is smooth as silk on a Dual G5. So why is window resizing slow?

2) Ars Techinica ask the same question:
http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/0...wm-performance

3) I think it is just software optimization that needs some work.

4) I almost NEVER resize windows manually anymore, that is really what the green button is for. When I do I am not losing any sleep over a little stutter.

[Landos Mustache]

Originally posted by Boochie:
Still, my three year old Pentium III laptop at work was quite a bit smoother at window resizing than the G5 I played with at the Apple Store.

Ya but remember the interface is different, OSX looks much better.

[Cory Bauer]

Originally posted by Landos Mustache:
Ya but remember the interface is different, OSX looks much better.

More important that looks, OS X's Quartz interface allows for such fantastic things as Exposé and the picture resizing in iPhoto, to name a few. I'll take these things over fast-window resizing any day, although I wouldn't complain if they could figure out a way to make window resizing in OS X not suck

[Boochie]

Agreed. It shouldn't take a $3000 top-of-the-line desktop machine to get smooth window resizing.

Originally posted by Cory Bauer:
More important that looks, OS X's Quartz interface allows for such fantastic things as Exposé and the picture resizing in iPhoto, to name a few. I'll take these things over fast-window resizing any day, although I wouldn't complain if they could figure out a way to make window resizing in OS X not suck

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by Mister Elf:
hmm, maye it's because the 9600 blows the 5200 out of the water?

Bingo. The FX5200 is a hideous abortion of a graphics card. On the other hand, the 9600 is quite a nice piece of hardware.