Apple Goes Dual 1.25GHz, but is it fast enough?

[SSXeon5]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=4955

http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html

Its odd to keep seeing this, everytime I read about macs. That they are now "90 per cent faster than the fastest PC on the market with a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 processor". I think its getting old dont you think, if you roll over HERE is the most recent review with a dual Althlon MP 1.67GHz rig, Pentium 4 2.53Ghz, and the dual G4 1.0GHz. But I want to know is what test is mac doing that we havent see that the G4s kill the P4 by 90 percent. This isnt really a shot to mac, i have always believed macs do alot better then P3s/XPs/P4s in graphic intence apps. And after a 250Mhz jump will it help them to get back into the lead...

I also didnt mention they also got a new 167Mhz FSB that they have also paired with PC2700 DDR! Thats impressive that apple has gotten away from PC133

If your going to post no flames please

SSXeon

 

[Pariah]

It's always best to ignore benchmarks posted by a company about their own products. Occasionally you will fined accurate results (3ware for example), but that is rare, and basically never the case when dealing with CPU benchmarks. The problem with the Apple benchmarks and what makes them so suspicious is that there is no disclosure what so ever of what the "nine commonly used actions and filters" and even more importantly, what the specs of the Wintel system were beyond CPU speed. The Wintel machine may have been running Win95 using 32MB of RAM, which make it no surprise at all that the Apple system killed it in Photoshop. I don't see how Apple gets away with such ambiguous benchmarks. They may very well be accurate, and if they are, then you wouldn't think Apple would be afraid to tell us what they ran and on what type of system they did it on.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

if you wonder why PC makers never bother comparing themselves to Macs, it's for one reason. They don't care, PC makers obliterate Apple in terms of market share and could care less what 5 % of the population has to say. Unless their share is threatened, don't expect to see any sort of platform wars between the two.

 

[dannybin1742]

yeah dude you hit it right on the head, pc makes don't care about a company that makes rigged benchmarks when they only occupy a shrinking <5% of the computer industry

 

[dannybin1742]

hey xeon, nice find, i've been looking for one of these reviews to show my mac addicted friend

 

[SSXeon5]

Originally posted by: Pariah
It's always best to ignore benchmarks posted by a company about their own products. Occasionally you will fined accurate results (3ware for example), but that is rare, and basically never the case when dealing with CPU benchmarks. The problem with the Apple benchmarks and what makes them so suspicious is that there is no disclosure what so ever of what the "nine commonly used actions and filters" and even more importantly, what the specs of the Wintel system were beyond CPU speed. The Wintel machine may have been running Win95 using 32MB of RAM, which make it no surprise at all that the Apple system killed it in Photoshop. I don't see how Apple gets away with such ambiguous benchmarks. They may very well be accurate, and if they are, then you wouldn't think Apple would be afraid to tell us what they ran and on what type of system they did it on.

Yeah thats what my friend was saying, they could have crippled the p4 system totally and made the mac look even better. When the link i gave you the 2.53 crushed the dual G4s by around 20-50%, its sad where they get it beating the P4 by 70% as they claim on there site. And BTW, the 1.25Ghz arnt shipping for another 6-8weeks according to the site, so by then the 2.26/2.4GHz/2.53GHz(533Mhz fsb) Xeons and 2.8GHz(533Mhz FSB) will be out then Here is the greatest quote from the review:

Photoshop Benchmarks
Next, we tested the three machines using Photoshop 7. Since Apple is fond of using Photoshop as a benchmark in numerous "Megahertz Don't Matter" demos, we wanted to check for ourselves to see which platform is actually faster using Photoshop actions that invoke a variety of effects. We discovered that perhaps Apple is half-right -- megahertz might not matter too much, but gigahertz certainly do.

SSXeon

 

[dannybin1742]

it makes me really wonder what filters apple was using? they must have been optimises for the velocity engine. thats the only thing i can think of

 

[SSXeon5]

Originally posted by: dannybin1742
hey xeon, nice find, i've been looking for one of these reviews to show my mac addicted friend

np man Im here to help

SSXeon

 

[apoppin]

Apple claims their Current dual proc 1.0 Ghz machine is 90% faster than the fastest P4

What are their "claims" on the new one - 2 times faster?




EDIT: You can buy TWO P4 systems for the price of one Dual-proc Apple.

 

[Pariah]

You need to read the chart again. The 1GHz are a claimed 69% faster with the 1.25's being 90% faster.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Pariah
You need to read the chart again. The 1GHz are a claimed 69% faster with the 1.25's being 90% faster.

You're right . . . that "Apple Blue-on-Blue" chart confused my eyes.



So it's still "only" 90% faster. It sounds a lot like audio-amplifier specs.

EDIT: One bit of "truth" slipped out of Apple's hyperbole:

It?s further proof that megahertz alone is a poor indicator of real-world system performance, particularly when comparing different overall system architectures. You do the math.

I DID the math and it isN'T in Apple's favor. It's obviously a P4 with PC-100 CAS3 (and who know what other limiting factors).

 

[SSXeon5]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Pariah
You need to read the chart again. The 1GHz are a claimed 69% faster with the 1.25's being 90% faster.

You're right . . . that "Apple Blue-on-Blue" chart confused my eyes.



So it's still "only" 90% faster. It sounds a lot like audio-amplifier specs.

EDIT: One bit of "truth" slipped out of Apple's hyperbole:

It?s further proof that megahertz alone is a poor indicator of real-world system performance, particularly when comparing different overall system architectures. You do the math.

I DID the math and it isN'T in Apple's favor. It's obviously a P4 with PC-100 CAS3 (and who know what other limiting factors).

LOL amen! I mean even when they benched the dual G4/dual MP/P4 the P4 came out on top alot of the time, mostly following the MPs. Now I want to see a duel Xeon tackel the same benchies

SSXeon

 

[jbond04]

SSXeon5, what graphically intense programs are Macs better in? They're obviously not faster in Photoshop. You gave us an excellent link illustrating that. They can't hold a candle to the x86 platform in 3D animation. The Athlon XP and the P4 both have enough power and memory bandwidth to trump the Mac there (ugh...just the thought of working with 3D animation on a Mac makes me feel like I'm working 10 times slower). In video editing/encoding, the massive bandwidth provided by the Pentium 4 can easily allow it to take the lead. And don't get me started on games...

From what I can see, I don't think that Mac comes even close to the P4 or AXP in any of those graphically intense programs. Sure, Apple has Final Cut Pro that they like to strut around with, so you can't directly compare PCs to Macs in that category, but do you really think that the P4 or Athlon would lose?

C'mon guys. I think the biggest flamer on this forum is Apple itself... They certainly got me.

 

[SSXeon5]

Originally posted by: jbond04
SSXeon5, what graphically intense programs are Macs better in? They're obviously not faster in Photoshop. They can't hold a candle to the x86 platform in 3D animation. The Athlon XP or P4 would walk all over the G4 in Premiere. And don't get me started on games... From what I can see, I don't think that Mac comes even close to the P4 or AXP in any of those graphically intense programs. Sure, Apple has Final Cut Pro, so you really can't compare PCs to Macs in that category, but do you really think that the P4 would lose?

C'mon guys. I think the biggest flamer on this forum is Apple itself...

lol NO NO I agree with you, i was being sarcastic that they are supose to be faster in graphic intence crap. I dont believe they do at all

SSXeon

 

[ravedave]

Who the heck uses a graph without explaing what the axis represents, or putting a scale on it.
Is this the weekly world news or something?
Can you imagine the backlash if Anand used a graph like that?????

Seriously an Apple could be 90% faster but still only win by 1 second...

 

[silent tone]

Barefeats did a little benchmarking on the new machines and the new dual gig is slightly slower than the old dual gig.

 

[apoppin]

Unless I am mistaken, the Apple excells in one program - the Distributed.net's RC5-64 cracking program where it seriously beats the P4.


Wow.

 

[dexvx]

The G4 CPU's themselves are pretty fast, its the FSB thats disappointingly slow. They're still using a 166 Mhz FSB thats SDR. Thats like nerfing an Athlon XP to an SDR FSB, or a Pentium4 to a DDR FSB.

 

[kgraeme]

I DID the math and it isN'T in Apple's favor. It's obviously a P4 with PC-100 CAS3 (and who know what other limiting factors).

It's against a Dell Dimension 8200. That uses PC800 RDRAM.

 

[ViRGE]

In Distributed.net's RC5:

Dual G4 1.25ghz: 21.7MK/sec

Dual Tbred XP2200+: 12.2MK/sec

Dual P4 2.53ghz: 10.1MK/sec


You tell me which one is faster.

 

[nightowl]

I don't know why they are using DDR memory. Like dexvx said the system bus is still SDR and the extra bandwidth from DDR is going to go to waste. What good is 2.1GB or even 2.7GB of bandwidth if the system bus maxes out at 1.3GB. It is just another marketing tool that Apple can use.

 

[McCarthy]

Yup, we need Anand to step in and run a true comparison.

The Digitalvideoediting.com test is ok and all. I'd still like to see a much more comprehensive test, including such things such as which machines/OS are hurt the most by running multiple apps, if Apple's firewire/gigabit ethernet are actually any more effecient than the PC versions stuck on the PCI bus, and please, mpeg encoding tests. I've never used After Effects, but I have waited a half hour for my computer to finish encoding a mpg so it's something I'm more curious about.

 

[BD231]

Apple should DIE, all their doing is filling peoples heads with non-sense. They wouldn't need to say such outlandish things if they had anything special to offer, and the way they switch between their "we have better performance" and "mac's just work" mottos ALL THE TIME is just sickening. Who listens to that bullsh*t anyways? Apple is becoming a "thorn in the ass" type company. Ok I'm done venting, dont flame me for hating PR people.

 

[imgod2u]

Yes, in RC-5, the PPC G4 excells. And? RC-5 isn't exactly the best representation of generalized code out there. In fact, it's one of the more......eccentric coding out there. If all you do is run RC-5 then yes, G4's are great, but it's a program to take advantage of processor IDLE time. Why is how fast you run it even significant? RC-5 has to be the only program that comes to mind which just so happens to focus on one of the G4's strengths, which happens to be the P4's biggest weakness. That is, the handling of bit shift and rotate. This kind of intense shift and rotate operation doesn't show up in any other type of program that comes to mind.

 

[paralazarguer]

The reason it does so well in that one application is because of altivec. That and it's 2 meg L3 cache. The G4 is not designed to do well in general calculations and the FPU is quite weak. It's performance comes from its vector processing altivec engine which puts SSE 2 to shame. It's designed as a work station. It's not a PC replacement. It's not for games. It's a workstation. There are only 3 photoshop filters that the G4 SLAUGHTERS the pc in and this is because they are the only 3 that are altivec enhanced. Those are undoubtedly the ones that apple bases its benchmarks on. Just three filters doesn't make your photoshop experience all that much better though. It's 4 or 7 stage (depending) pipeline is very efficenet but not enough. 3d rendering applications that actually use altivec DO slaughter the PC. I would suggest that you read the following three articles if you would like to learn more about this.
P4 and G4e
P4 and G4e 2
P4 and K7