[Spliff]

Read the reply at http://www.slashdot.org/

[thunderous_funker]

thanks for the link. A good and reasonable response to the questions.

[mac freak]

Thank god. We needed that -- the trolls were getting out of control .

[elcuco]

The industry won't change it's opinion of Apple and it will make excuses for everyone that is concerned about Apple taking a big chunk of the market share.

[Dr_Doom]

Well, if there is one thing that all monopolies abhor, it is competetion. In the case of the Apple G5 it seems that there is competetion and the Wintel supporters have forgotten how to handle that.

The Linux folks just see another platform to port to and as usual are pretty agnostic about the situation.

Contrast that with the Window's gamer 'elite' that are about to get pounded in Doom III, and you'll understand where the vitriol and fear is coming from.

Yes. PeeCee's will aways be cheaper. That because PC's are just cheap. I am sure a beowulf cluster of Hugo's could run circles around a Ferrari too.

Cheers,

Dr_Doom

[klinux]

Originally posted by Dr_Doom:
Well, if there is one thing that all monopolies abhor, it is competetion. In the case of the Apple G5 it seems that there is competetion and the Wintel supporters have forgotten how to handle that.

The Linux folks just see another platform to port to and as usual are pretty agnostic about the situation.

Contrast that with the Window's gamer 'elite' that are about to get pounded in Doom III, and you'll understand where the vitriol and fear is coming from.

Yes. PeeCee's will aways be cheaper. That because PC's are just cheap. I am sure a beowulf cluster of Hugo's could run circles around a Ferrari too.

Cheers,

Dr_Doom

There is hardly a monopoly in the x86 market lest you never heard of AMD. Furthermore, those gamers are notoriously fickle and will flock to the best performer - case in point: Nvidia vs ATI. Therefore, the fear and vitriol you imagine from gamers is really nonexistent. If you paint all PC users with a broad paintbrush, then all Mac users are fanatics too, which is not the case.

Lastly, Macs are not Ferrari and PCs are not Hugos. We have gone through this numerous times - the next person that compares computers to automobiles should be shot.

[ASIMO]

What's a Hugo?

[Superchicken]

Why would gamers care about the Mac it's not a gaming platform? Few game developers take it seriously, it's a development platform. That's like saying your palm can process faster than an iPod, yeah woo hoo they're ment to do different things, both have calander apps but they're still quite different.

[Dr_Doom]

'There is hardly a monopoly in the x86 market lest you never heard of AMD.'


I have heard of them. They are really making amazing inroads into the market too .

There are also new employee classes at Intel which explain how to deal with situations that could later be interpreted by the courts as monopoly behaviour. I suppose it would have been better to say that they are very vertically integrated bordering on monopolistic behaviour. My mistake.


'Therefore, the fear and vitriol you imagine from gamers is really nonexistent.'


I am not so sure I agree with you perspective on this point. I have seen quite a few posts which would disagree with your perspective as well. I suppose that if I just spent $1200 dollars on a leet game box and then another $700 on case mods to make it look cool, I would be rationalizing my tail off about now.

'Lastly, Macs are not Ferrari and PCs are not Hugos. We have gone through this numerous times - the next person that compares computers to automobiles should be shot.'

What is wrong with an automobile analogy? It's a fairly decent abstraction to explain thorny technical points to the not so technically inclined. I just hope we don't end up shooting everyone.

How about a Corvette (PC) and Boxter (Porsche) ? Does that seem better?

Cheers,

Dr_Doom

[Superchicken]

By the way isn't Nvidea still beating ATI who has the better hardware?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by Superchic[k]en:
By the way isn't Nvidea still beating ATI who has the better hardware?

ATI is currently in the lead on most games, but nVidia wins on a few.

[businezguy]

That was a pretty good response from the VP. He pretty much made it clear that they did things to make it a pretty even playing field for both the G5 and the P4. It wouldn't have been fair if they choose a compiler that was optimized for Intel. They picked out the best tool for the job.

[krove]

Actually, if you were able to filter out all of the PC-Mac in-fighting, you might have read a few posts from the knowledgeable types that said as much about the benchmarks (GCC for all procs, no hyperthreading, etc). I guess it just takes someone with a bit more status to get everyone to divert their attention from the trolls, shutup and listen.

[/pseudo rant]

[Stratus Fear]

Originally posted by Dr_Doom:
Contrast that with the Window's gamer 'elite' that are about to get pounded in Doom III

Where does everyone keep getting this from? I see nothing to support this. Also keep in mind that Doom III is going to be more GPU intensive than CPU intensive. I guarantee you that any Mac with a Radeon 9800 Pro will probably run no faster in Doom III than my PC with the same card.

[tonyinsf]

The testing used are biased for Intel machines. It maybe that fact that had Apple wanting to even things up for a better comparison.

From CNET:
"Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests."

So, there you are.

[Stratus Fear]

Originally posted by tonyinsf:
The testing used are biased for Intel machines. It maybe that fact that had Apple wanting to even things up for a better comparison.

From CNET:
"Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests."

So, there you are.

So it was you who posted that on front page news...

Well, here was my reply:

1) This isn't entirely true. The compiler isn't optimized specifically for spec. The optimizations it has do offer real world benefits.

2) Also note that other groups who ran SPEC on Intel processors with GCC got higher scores than Apple did. Still don't think Apple fixed something?

In regards to #1, a number of binaries of the MP3 encoder LAME are available for Windows compiled with ICL. They're supposed to be far better than the MSVC++ compiles (as well as the GCC compiles on Linux). That's just one example.

[Stratus Fear]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
ATI is currently in the lead on most games, but nVidia wins on a few.

Most of the things Nvidia is still winning in with the FX 5900u are from driver cheats anyway

[meem]

it's Yugo not Hugo

http://www.hszk.bme.hu/~oj002/yugo

[clarkgoble]

I have heard that video drivers on the Mac tend to lag and not be as optimized as on the PC. Hopefully these new video cards will have some good drivers. I've heard mixed things about the Quake benches, so I'll not talk on that. I really wish the Apple Hardware VP had explained in more detail how those benchmarks were compiled.

(I'd asked that in the Slashdot thread and got labelled a troll for some bizarre reason)

The OpenGL drivers for OSX have reportedly not been that robust either, so if that 3D benchmark wasn't rigged then that really shows where the G5 can shine.

What would be nice is to have information on the other demos, such as the Photoshop, Mathematica and other such given out in full.

Say what you will about using the gcc compiler, but at least Apple was very upfront about their comparisons. I just wish we had info on the more real-world stuff.

[pliny]

Originally posted by Stratus Fear:
So it was you who posted that on front page news...

Well, here was my reply:

1) This isn't entirely true. The compiler isn't optimized specifically for spec. The optimizations it has do offer real world benefits.

2) Also note that other groups who ran SPEC on Intel processors with GCC got higher scores than Apple did. Still don't think Apple fixed something?

What version of gcc? The Veritest uses the same version for both.

Originally posted by Stratus Fear:
In regards to #1, a number of binaries of the MP3 encoder LAME are available for Windows compiled with ICL. They're supposed to be far better than the MSVC++ compiles (as well as the GCC compiles on Linux). That's just one example.

Well yeah if you use proprietary compilers for each machine you will see different scores.

[Eug Wanker]

Ironically, Dell agrees with Apple about the HT issue:

[Shaddim]

Ummm... one question, would a system with dual Xeons actually be considered a "Personal Computer"?

I checked and a Dell Precision� Workstation 650 (w/ dual 3GHz Xeons) that would compete with the Dual 2 GHz G5 was right at $4K with, more or less, the same specs, and it's classified as a workstation, and marketed as such.

So, a G5 Dual 2GHz, which easily has workstation level performance, is a bargain at $3K. And yes, yes I do have mine on order.

[Nebrie]

Originally posted by klinux:
There is hardly a monopoly in the x86 market lest you never heard of AMD. Furthermore, those gamers are notoriously fickle and will flock to the best performer - case in point: Nvidia vs ATI. Therefore, the fear and vitriol you imagine from gamers is really nonexistent. If you paint all PC users with a broad paintbrush, then all Mac users are fanatics too, which is not the case.

Lastly, Macs are not Ferrari and PCs are not Hugos. We have gone through this numerous times - the next person that compares computers to automobiles should be shot.

In the corporate high-performance desktop market which the G5 is clearly targeting and where AMD is virtually ignored, yes, Intel has a monopoly.

Anyways, that awful site where all of this started has a rebuttal to the Slashdot post. I already see some problems with the rebuttal. Anyone care to rebut the rebuttal?

[drmcnutt]

Originally posted by ASIMO:
What's a Hugo?

Apparently what 95% of car owners are driving?

Great tired Car Analogy

DRM

[Dr_Doom]

C'mon .. I amended to Corvette.

Cheers,

Dr_Doom

[Stratus Fear]

Originally posted by pliny:
What version of gcc? The Veritest uses the same version for both.

As far as I remember, 3.3.