[The Ginger Rat]

Congrats, Eggman- God, the interior is such a looker.

BTw, your shipping box arrived in the best condition of all the boxes I have seen posted.

[freaktornado]

Originally posted by The Ginger Rat:
BTw, your shipping box arrived in the best condition of all the boxes I have seen posted.

Probably because he lives less than 2 hours from where they are shipped from.

[KidRed]

Wow, the dual blew the dual Xeon away to take top dog!! Awesome. Can't wait to get one.

[Eug Wanker]

Yep. The G5 rox at this bench. I've started a new thread about it.

[Leonis]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Yep. The G5 rox at this bench. I've started a new thread about it.

Wish the same could happen in 3D.....but not

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Leonis:
Wish the same could happen in 3D.....but not

I guess Cinebench is the only 3-D app then? How is the G5's FP performance and bandwidth going to do anything but excel at 3-D. I think the lack of pro - 3D cards is a bit of a problem but that should be old news soon.

You could make the case that PS is not even the G5's strongest suit with it relying mostly on the relatively weaker Integer performance of the G5. We still need to see an xlC version of Cinebench and then we'll talk. PS probably isn't even near squeezing every last drop of performance out of the G5 w/o a recompile.

-Jerry C.

[Commodus]

What I want to see are gaming benchmarks that don't involve Q3. I don't care that I'm getting 275 FPS in a game that's 4 years old, no matter how good it is. I'd rather see what UT2K3 gets!

[eggman]

Originally posted by PixelPete17:
In Painter 8, could you make a 50MB file and a 100MB file and tell me whats the largest cloner brush you can run on each file and still get real time (or darn close to real time) paint stroking? I know the cloners vary, but could you just use two or three (or whatever you're comforatble with), and let me know the results? Since Painter isn't optimized for the G5, I'm really curious how well it performs.

I just happen to have a 50MB file lying around from doing the Photoshop benchmarks...

Using the "Straight Cloner" on that file, a 100px brush seems pretty darn zippy on a 25% view of the image. It was following my cursor nice and easy.

Interestingly, Painter 'idles' with significant processor demands. If I just hover the cursor over the document window, both processors start working around 50% - almost like they are *expecting* me to do something heavy duty, and are psyching themselves out. I swear I'm not kidding about this... perhaps Painter is giving itself an incredibly high task priority when expecting brushstrokes.

I'd never noticed this before - but with the G5, the whirring of the fans lets you know how at any given time just how hard it's working. It almost renders the CPU Monitor redundant!

BTW, on an aside, I have the "processor slewing" at automatic - not at highest performance.

The thing is, the brush pads apply as a fraction of the total brush radius, so as you start getting to the larger brush sizes (like 450 pixels) you really are traveling a good distance before the next brush pad gets applied and that starts feeling... chunky? But it's tracking the pen, even as I'm moving very quickly.

At 100px the "Melt Cloner" can lag behind when making very fast strokes over large areas, but if doing even quick strokes within, say, a 3rd of the document, it's quite responsive. In other words, when a move is so quick that I'm really not controlling the brush, it can lag... but when I'm moving the brush in even a rapid - but controlled - way it's very responsive.

The "Van Gogh" cloner is very usable at 25px, but by 50px it's getting hard to control.

The "Chalk" cloner is usable up to about 66px.

I hope this gives you some idea of where Painter 8 is at on the Dual G5. It's very subjective, of course... but I think my judgment about what's usable and what's not is informed: I was the senior developer on the first industrial grade true-color PC paint system (called Lumena) back in the mid 80s, and pioneered the implementation of some of those natural media techniques that made their way into Painter.

[Eug]

How much of that is related to the mouse's/pen's refresh rate?

[eggman]

Originally posted by Eug:
How much of that is related to the mouse's/pen's refresh rate?

The tablet I'm currently using should be sending something on the order of 100-125 coordinate pairs per second, so I don't think that this is at issue.

Mostly I'm noting situations where the brush rendering visibly trails the cursor... and that's because there's a lot of pixel blitting going on.

[PixelPete17]

Wow. Thanks eggman for taking the time...big smiley for you!

Sounds like you have an interesting past...had no idea you were so deeply involved with a rich history in digital artistry. You've been blessed man! I'm an independant designer owning my own business handling a wide range of clientele and client requests, and now REALLY look forward to getting a Dualie Coolie Big Mac Heart Attack Monster Machine! lol

Thanks again, and we should talk sometime more about Painter and "things", you sound pretty interesting.

Take Care,

Pixel Pete

[Magic Genie]

Wow- you fellow G5'ers are really sharp.

Does painter give you anything that Photoshop's brushes don't?

[techtrucker]

Hey Eggman,

Can you post your first impressions of how the G5 performs in general? You know, app launch times, Finder operations, etc...Thanks!

[eggman]

Originally posted by Magic Genie:
Does painter give you anything that Photoshop's brushes don't?

Definitely. Photoshop 7's brushes are considerably better than they used to be, but in terms of both performance and capabilities they don't yet hold a candle to Painter.

Just as an example, Painter has watercolor brushes that actually *drip* - the paint flows down the canvas from where the brush applies it. There are impasto brushes that apply paint that looks 'thick', with specular highlights and shadows. Painter's tools model real world media in some very sophisticated ways.

Whether Photoshop gets there over time remains to be seen...

[chris v]

Originally posted by Magic Genie:


Does painter give you anything that Photoshop's brushes don't?

Yes. Download the demo and give it a whirl. The brushes are only really useful if you've got a tablet, but Painter responds much more like real media than Photoshop.

CV

[eggman]

Originally posted by techtrucker:
Can you post your first impressions of how the G5 performs in general? You know, app launch times, Finder operations, etc...Thanks!

App Launch times (bounces):

BBEdit 7 : 1 bounce
Safari 1 : 1 bounce
iTunes 4 : 1 bounce
Microsoft Entourage v.X : 1 bounce
Microsoft Word v.X : 4 bounces
Microsoft Excel v.X : 1 bounce
Dreamweaver MX* : 1.5 bounces = 2 seconds
Flash MX : 2 bounces
Photoshop 7.0.1* 1 : 1 bounce = 1.5 seconds

The asterisk (*) items are apps that load plugins or components which cause them to take more time to be ready to use than their number of bounces would indicate so I'm indicating the number of seconds before you are able to actually use the app.

The Finder is a big improvement over my old 450Mhz G4. Opening my iTunes Music Folder (538 folders enclosed) is instant. Going to Finder prefs and having it "Calculate folder sizes" results in those sizes appearing immediately upon the mouse button coming up! (Keep in mind, there are sub-subfolders of albums containing the actual MP3 and AAC files).

Ripping a 128bps AAC was between 12x and 20x - but that's pretty clearly disk bound - reading off the SuperDrive. I haven't tried ripping any AIFFs from off the hard drive.

It's fast. Compared to what I'm used to, it's preternaturally fast. There's just a huge psychological difference between waiting and waiting for the computer to do something for you... and having it respond instantly ("Yes, Master...?").

[freaktornado]

Regarding the Cinebench numbers, I was under the impression that it has not been optimized for the G5 yet, isn't this the case?

[eggman]

Originally posted by freaktornado:
Regarding the Cinebench numbers, I was under the impression that it has not been optimized for the G5 yet, isn't this the case?

Someone mentioned Cinebench? These are all PhotoBench numbers... and PhotoBench is just a script that runs under Photoshop, which of course does have G5 optimizations.

[Eug]

Originally posted by freaktornado:
Regarding the Cinebench numbers, I was under the impression that it has not been optimized for the G5 yet, isn't this the case?

You are correct, but as eggman says, this isn't Cinebench.

BTW, a dual G5 will still probably be a bit slower in Cinebench after G5 optimization than a dual Xeon 3.06, according to the guestimate posted by one of the Maxon programmers.

[techtrucker]

Originally posted by eggman:
App Launch times (bounces):

BBEdit 7 : 1 bounce
Safari 1 : 1 bounce
iTunes 4 : 1 bounce
Microsoft Entourage v.X : 1 bounce
Microsoft Word v.X : 4 bounces
Microsoft Excel v.X : 1 bounce
Dreamweaver MX* : 1.5 bounces = 2 seconds
Flash MX : 2 bounces
Photoshop 7.0.1* 1 : 1 bounce = 1.5 seconds

The asterisk (*) items are apps that load plugins or components which cause them to take more time to be ready to use than their number of bounces would indicate so I'm indicating the number of seconds before you are able to actually use the app.

The Finder is a big improvement over my old 450Mhz G4. Opening my iTunes Music Folder (538 folders enclosed) is instant. Going to Finder prefs and having it "Calculate folder sizes" results in those sizes appearing immediately upon the mouse button coming up! (Keep in mind, there are sub-subfolders of albums containing the actual MP3 and AAC files).

Ripping a 128bps AAC was between 12x and 20x - but that's pretty clearly disk bound - reading off the SuperDrive. I haven't tried ripping any AIFFs from off the hard drive.

It's fast. Compared to what I'm used to, it's preternaturally fast. There's just a huge psychological difference between waiting and waiting for the computer to do something for you... and having it respond instantly ("Yes, Master...?").

Thanks, for now I'll have to live vicariously through you...

[Hydra]

Originally posted by eggman:
Someone mentioned Cinebench? These are all PhotoBench numbers... and PhotoBench is just a script that runs under Photoshop, which of course does have G5 optimizations.

I made the Cinebench comment above in response to an insinuation that the G5 wouldn't do well in 3D as opposed to Photoshop. It is true that Cinebench needs to be reworked a bit to make use of all the G5 has to offer but the engineers at Maxon but never commented about the improvements that the xlC IBM compiler will have. From the numbers I and other have seen with xlC it is expected that a pretty nice improvement will be seen. The Maxon engineers stated that they will use whatever the best compiler is available, for that particular platform (they use Intel's highly advanced compilers for the Windows version). xLc is still in beta but it looks to be quite impressive.

-Jerry C.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Hydra:
From the numbers I and other have seen with xlC it is expected that a pretty nice improvement will be seen. The Maxon engineers stated that they will use whatever the best compiler is available, for that particular platform (they use Intel's highly advanced compilers for the Windows version). xLc is still in beta but it looks to be quite impressive.

Well it depends. For integer stuff xlc provides only a marginal speed boost over gcc 3.3 on average, and sometimes it's slower.

xlf OTOH can be several times faster than g77.

What kind of code is Cinebench?

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Eug:

What kind of code is Cinebench?

Good question. I don't have the answer to that. Maybe I'm expecting too much from xlC w/o actually knowing the code make-up of Cinebench. The Maxon guys seem pretty open to discusion over at Ars, to their credit, but the Cinebench thread over there has been quiet lately (I know you read the forums over there). It makes me wonder if their playing with xlC and waiting to spring a nice surprise on us.

On a side note, but ironically more on topic, it seems my Dual G5 CTO may have missed being picked up by FedEx yesterday and I will get it tommorow (Friday). I have not had success in using the tracking number on FedEx's site and the Apple store rep told me that it may have missed the last pick-up yesterday One more day won't kill me but it is making the day crawl.

-Jerry C.

[Eug]

Originally posted by Hydra:
On a side note, but ironically more on topic, it seems my Dual G5 CTO may have missed being picked up by FedEx yesterday and I will get it tommorow (Friday). I have not had success in using the tracking number on FedEx's site and the Apple store rep told me that it may have missed the last pick-up yesterday One more day won't kill me but it is making the day crawl.

My heart bleeds for you... NOT!

I jealous.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by Commodus:
What I want to see are gaming benchmarks that don't involve Q3. I don't care that I'm getting 275 FPS in a game that's 4 years old, no matter how good it is. I'd rather see what UT2K3 gets!

ok here you go. UT2K3 on a dual G5


http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/Dual_g...800_tests.html



happy now?

[gto47]

...Thought you guys might like to know - My dual G5 has shipped. (9600/512/160/no modem CTO) It was a personal edu order, made 6/23/03 at 1:32PM, less than an hour after it was made available. I can't wait until it gets here, i have 512MB of additional memory sitting my my desk waiting for it. Hope this means a lot of orders are shipping out.

[Hydra]

Just got my Dual G5 CTO this morning. (9800 + BT). So they most definately are shipping.

See my thread I started.

-Jerry C.

[flyhigher]

Looks like everyone getting their duals ordered from apple, or picked up at an apple store. Has anyone received one from a reseller yet?