[analogika]

I believe the whole point of Snow Leopard is dropping all the compromises necessary for continued PowerPC support.

[residentEvil]

intel only, that is how i'm understanding it too.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by chris v 

I've got a Dual 2.0 G5 with 4 gig of RAM. The other day, a client sent me a 25 mb Illustrator file that just brought the thing to its knees.
...
Moral of the story -- if your software is a bloated, cruft-laden resource gobbling hog that's not multi-threaded, has restricted access to memory, and only uses one CPU no matter what, (I'm looking at you, Adobe) you're not going to see all that much of an improvement between a good dual G5 and a good Quad-Intel.
...

Yeah, it seems to me that Illustrator's core code is still rooted in the 80s. I always liked FreeHand better!

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I have to admit that my frame rate does indeed drop to as low as 14 FPS on 1080 AAC QuickTime trailers during high action. It depends on the trailer, but in general that's true.

True enough for QuickTime AAC movie trailers, but for HD content in general that's not accurate. It depends on the codec used. I can play 1920x1080- Apple Intermediate Codec files generated by my Canon HV20 at full 30FPS without any issues (and about half processor utilization).

I assume you mean H.264 trailers? AAC is just the audio track format.

H.264 is indeed extremely CPU-intensive, both on encoding and playback.

That said, other than for video editors, other HD formats are largely irrelevant. A home user will seldom encounter HD video in anything but H.264.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Sealobo 

furthermore, new software have started dropping ppc support. i think SPORE supports only x86...

Few non-game apps have dropped PPC support -- yet.

With games, the reason they're going Intel-only is because of something called Cider. Basically, it's a custom, single-app version of WINE that lets the Windows game run unmodified. The Cider wrapper takes the Windows game and makes it run on an Intel Mac. But since Cider doesn't convert between CPUs (it just passes through the CPU commands unaltered), it is Intel-only.

That said, the Intel Macs have taken over just as swiftly as PPC killed 68K back in the day. The vast majority of Macs in use now are Intel, thanks to Apple's rapid market growth over the past 2 years. Not that many people will suffer as apps go Intel-only.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by analogika 

I believe the whole point of Snow Leopard is dropping all the compromises necessary for continued PowerPC support.

Incorrect. Dropping PPC support may be something it does, but that's not the point of (or anywhere close to the majority of the changes in) Snow Leopard.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by tooki 

A home user will seldom encounter HD video in anything but H.264.

At least until Apple supports Blu-ray.

[darcybaston]

Glad you're enjoying your system PwrMac! Users should always buy what they need to match dollars with performance and obtain value. Sounds like you found a sweet spot. I hope you remain happy and content to stay in that spot until your needs change.

I REALLY enjoyed my DC G5 2GHz, but then I got into writing music using nothing but softsynths, lots of h.264 encoding, and Windows software development. The G5 became painful to use real fast. It did everything else perfectly, and smoothly, as you've experienced. My needs changed though and the machine didn't keep up.

So I sold it for $1300, and took that $1300 to put into a 2GHz MacBook. This machine's configuration is stellar for what I need. It's so much better at handling audio units, h.264 encoding and native Windows code execution, that the G5 would be severely limiting to me if I had to use it on a daily basis (again).

Another G5 deal breaker for me was Flash content. My G5 could be maxed out just by viewing a flash based web site. The plugin has improved since, and that has to be taken into consideration, but the experience with the MacBook is so much better that I remain tempted to say that if Flash can make a G5 stutter, it has to stay out of my way.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by analogika 

I believe the whole point of Snow Leopard is dropping all the compromises necessary for continued PowerPC support.

As Catfish_Man points out, that's not "the whole point" of Snow Leopard at all. Almost the entire thrust of Snow Leopard is to provide advanced developer features for next generation software development. Dropping PPC support is not explicitly mentioned as a selling point of Snow Leopard. Moreover, the developer release still contains universal versions of most Apple applications.

[dimmer]

Moreover, the developer release still contains universal versions of most Apple applications.

Well, would you really expect Apple to take the time to go through every application and make it non-universal? What would the point be?

Snow Leopard - the OS, not the apps - will only run on Intel hardware. But Apple and other software developers will still want to be able to target both Intel and PPC for a year or so at least: and xCode makes that simple.

[Todd Madson]

My big Mac at home is a dual 2.5 ghz model, with 7 gigs of ram and
about 1.2 terabytes of disc space.

I've found just about every trick possible for maximizing the speed on it:
turning nap mode off, accelerating the video card, getting SATA drives
with 32 meg caches, etc.

I've even got G5 optimized versions of Handbrake and Firefox among others.

I'm using it primarily for audio work and still have yet to hit a wall but I do see
areas where the G5 now is showing its age in certain applications that use a
lot of processor cache.

The Core2 line and Core2Xeons show a huge efficiency increase in terms of
processing in terms of both energy consumption and even at lower clock
speeds you tend to get more done due to the design. And just wait until the
next generation after that. We'll be seeing more cores and bigger buses
and larger caches yet.

Here's an example of an area the Core2duo excels over the G5:
A 2.2 ghz core2duo T7500 (Merom core) using Alex Kan's cruncher for Seti
is MUCH better than using the 2.5 ghz G5 (970FX) processor (using the G5
version of Alex Kan's cruncher.

Why? On this laptop although it has a slower front side bus and bus speed,
the 4096 kb L2 cache is a huge plus in keeping things flowing smoothly.

The G5 is hobbled by its tiny 512 kb cache (per processor).

The G5 is cool but it's pretty much done as far as a evolving platform.

I'm happy to have it but it will be 2-3 years before I get a newer Mac and
I won't be happy to see new OS releases that I can't utilize that may force
my hand to upgrade before I want to.

Another issue with the G5 that makes me feel I can't trust it is, I've already
had one coolant leak that resulted in the almost complete destruction of
my CPU. I believe my Applecare is up or nearly up and if it dies after that
I'm pretty much screwed.

I have a spare computer, believe it or not an 2.5 ghz Athlon 64 x2 dualcore
machine running windows and my old G4 400 but that thing is a tortoise
compared to the G5 or the athlon.

So, yeah. It's not dead yet though: my biggest music project to date
was 128 tracks with multiple softsynths, reverbs, effects galore, it was
like 19 tier wedding cake music. It was not even breathing too hard.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by BurpetheadX 

I just sold my Dual 2.0 G5 two months ago, but it was a fantastic machine that DID hold it's own by todays standards. With my 10,000 RPM Raptor drive, it ran just as fast current dual-core intel machines. The G5's can still do everything the Intel's can, just can't crunch the hard numbers as fast.

Interestingly, Apple slowest laptop that goes for $999 is even clocked faster than that dual G5 2.0, and that MacBook's CPU also faster on a per-clock basis too.

Saying a dual G5 can be nearly as fast as a dual-core Intel machine really isn't saying much.

[Veltliner]

Originally Posted by analogika 

I believe the whole point of Snow Leopard is dropping all the compromises necessary for continued PowerPC support.

I hope with "snow" Leopard they mean real snow.

Can't have an operating system be high