Photoshop benches: Dual G5 2.0 vs. Dual Xeon 3.06 and others: G5 wins.

[AnImuS]

Originally posted by: Eug
There is a thread over at Ars with PSBench results submitted for a bazillion computers.

PSBench runs a series of Photoshop filters and records the time. The first 12 filters are the more commonly used filters. The last 9 are used infrequently, but take more time.

Now the benches include a dual Power Mac G5 2.0 and a dual Xeon 3.06. The dual G5 destroys the dual Xeon in the first 12 tests, and is slightly faster in the last 9. Overall the dual G5 is moderately faster using the normalized scores which give each test equal weight, but interestingly the overall test completion times are similar between the dual Xeon and the dual G5.

A single Athlon 1 GHz scores 100
A single Athlon XP 3200+ scores 332
A single G5 1.8 scores 344
A single P4 3.2 scores 427
A dual Xeon 3.06 scores 488
A dual G5 2.0 scores 547

got any more links to benchmarks? PS tests are as interesting as Intel P4 VS Mac G4 gaming benchmarks were.
and you know how that ended.

 

[Eug]

Graph posted of data presented earlier.

got any more links to benchmarks?

PCMag review is up. Table of results. (The naysayers will be happy since the dual Xeon is faster than the dual G5 in their Photoshop tests.) There's also the scientific benchmarks I posted earlier in the thread.

Dual G5 2.0 faster:
Adobe Acrobat - convert Word document
Adobe Acrobat - convert 9 images
Sorenson Squeeze - encode video
Avid Express Pro - encode video

Dual Xeon 3.06 faster:
Adobe Photoshop - apply filters
Newtek Lightwave 3D - render scenes

When Apple's Steve Jobs introduced the Apple Power Mac G5 this summer as the fastest personal computer any company had built to date, we took it with a grain of salt. After all, Apple had made that boast in the past, and those claims did not tend to hold up when independent third parties (such as ourselves) ran tests on current, real-world applications (not the synthetic benchmark tests Apple cited).

Well, we'll take that salt with a side of fries. After testing a loaded ($4,349 direct, after we opted for more RAM and upgraded graphics) dual 2.0-GHz Power Mac G5 on a range of high-end content creation applications and comparing the results with a similarly configured (and priced) Dell Precision 650 Workstation running dual 3.06-GHz Xeon processors, we see that indeed the G5 is generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available.

Apple has succeeded in boosting its Power Mac line, taking Apple users into high-performance computing. And by outperforming top-specked Windows machines on some tests, Apple has proved that megahertz isn't everything. The new flagship Mac will more than satisfy power-hungry graphics, video, and business users and may even win Apple some users from the Windows/Intel camp.

 

[LethalWolfe]

From page 2 of the PCMag review Eug posted:
"At these larger image sizes, although the Wintel test times were quite good, both the G4 and G5 computers proved more adept at distort functions like wave and pinch. Moreover, on the Windows system, loading the controls often took a minute or more. If these times are added back to the actual test times, both Macintosh computers would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer."


Can anyone explain what they mean by "loading the controls" ? Do they mean opening the the image (the control in this experiment) in Photoshop or do they mean applying a filter and waiting for the filter's controls to appear?


Lethal

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe
From page 2 of the PCMag review Eug posted:
"At these larger image sizes, although the Wintel test times were quite good, both the G4 and G5 computers proved more adept at distort functions like wave and pinch. Moreover, on the Windows system, loading the controls often took a minute or more. If these times are added back to the actual test times, both Macintosh computers would have clearly outperformed the Windows-based computer."

Can anyone explain what they mean by "loading the controls" ? Do they mean opening the the image (the control in this experiment) in Photoshop or do they mean applying a filter and waiting for the filter's controls to appear?

Yeah I don't know what they mean either. Of the filters I've tried, their windows usually pop up quite quickly on both my Celly 1.4 and TiBook 1 GHz. Mind you that's with a small pic. Maybe it takes a lot longer for the filter controls to pop up when the image is several hundred MBs. (The filter controls have a mini-preview of the pic with the effect of the filter.)

 

[silent tone]

No need to crap on the mac fanatics. They've been waiting for years, to stop saying 'my computer is fast enough, I don't need PC'. Let them enjoy their new cpu.

 

[cmdrdredd]

there is a new OSX version that is fully 64bit either available now or very soon FYI

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
there is a new OSX version that is fully 64bit either available now or very soon FYI

No there isn't. OS X.2.7 can address more than 32-bits for memory, and it uses some 64-bit libraries and allows some 64-bit calculations. But it is not completely 64-bit, because each individual app can only use 4 GB max (even though OS X can use more than 4 GB without swapping hacks and the G5 supports 16 GB with its 8 memory slots).

X.3 is coming soon, and is more tweaked for the G5, but it isn't fully 64-bit either.

ie. OS X is more 64-bit than Windows Server 2003 for Xeon, but less 64-bit than the Windows 64-bit for Itanium 2.

 

[RussianSensation]

I dont think one benchmark could be indicative of the overall perfomance leader. Just like Athlon XP is stronger at some applications than a P4, on the whole P4 won the 32-bit era crown.

Yes G5 is faster in some benchmarks but no one ever remembers the fact that I paid $775 dollars for this in June 2003:

2x256 Geil PC3500 Ultra Platinum, Abit IS7, 80gb 8mb WD, 2.6p4 "C", 52x cd-writer and dvd-rom, and yes i have all those USB 2.0 ports and firewire ports that Apple has (except for their Firewire 800 and Airport Extreme), case and a power supply

but guess what mine right now is at 3066mhz 935FSB and for extra $40 i just bought Zalman CNPS7000Cu which will probably take me to 3.2+ no problem.

so today for approximately $800 i am behind the fastest G5 but after considering the price difference (of say at least $2000) from my setup i could assume i wanted to spend $3000 on a mac so that would leave me with $2200+ to upgrade next year, and then next year again and then some again...

so in 2 years I'll have p5 4.0+ghz when these people with G5 will still have their old G5 and i'll still probably have more money left over (this is hypothetical)

so in the end its subjective. If money isnt an issue its a different ball game, but most users will just keep upgrading by chanigng motherboard and cpu and ram when necessary for fractions of the cost of a full Apple system, in the end I believe catching up and outperforming it in the long run.

thats my 2 cents

 

[Eug]

Price is an issue, esp. with the single CPU G5 machines. Personally I think they're worth the money, but then again, case design, build quality, software bundles, warranty, and feature set (eg. Firewire 800, optical audio in/out, etc.) are important to me. Not to mention the fact that I've gotten sick of wasting hours building PCs.

For those who don't mind stripped down boxes and the time spend building them though, the G5s would be expensive. OTOH, the dual G5 2.0 is actually cheaper than a Dell dual Xeon 3.06.

As for overclocking, sorry, but that's just a lame AT-geek argument. 99.9% of the population doesn't overclock, esp. if they're buying $3000-4000 dual machines for real work.

Oh, and did you actually pay for your OS and software?

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: nourdmrolNMT1
thats cuz there CANT be a dual athlon 64, nor would anyone have one right now.

lets just try to get the names a lil straight so as to not confuse the newbs.

MIKE

AMD has some i bet... heh

 

[wetcat007]

Originally posted by: NFS4
What I find interesting is that Mac fanboy/crackheads can ONLY use Photoshop as a means to "destroy" PCs.

Don't they have anything else to grab ahold to...besides Steve Jobs' wang I mean

Yeah, I mean I've never felt a need for more speed in photoshop, these days it runs more than fast enough as it is, now Mac heads, where'd your right clicker go? Oh wait it's too complex to have one lmao. Apple claims to be superior yet still only makes single button mice.

I don't see what mac heads seriously have to back it up, I mean i can see all the reasoning behind linux users, but what about mac? not only closed box hardware, but very closed source source, at least you can build your own PC, and have a choice on operating system.

I think Mac's are a thing of the past and the current war people should worry about is Windows VS Linux

 

[glugglug]

Photoshop benefits a TON from a 64-bit CPU.

In the most commonly used mode, the images being worked with are 64 bits per pixel (16 red 16 green 16 blue 16 alpha). Being able to fit the whole pixel in a register helps immensely.

I'd be willing to bet these photoshop filters are already G5 aware and are using 64-bit mode. Wait until Photoshop for AMD64 comes out.

 

[addragyn]

Most here don't really seem to understand PS7Bench or the people running it.

 

[Huma]

wow. The Dual G5 should really kick ass for Half life 2.

oh wait... nevermind...

 

[ShawnD1]

Who cares if they won a photoshop benchmark? Who here at anandtech actually owns photoshop? 10 maybe 20 people? Next they're gonna try doing benchmarks with AutoCAD; another program that almost nobody has.

 

[addragyn]

Originally posted by: wetcat007

Originally posted by: NFS4
Yeah, I mean I've never felt a need for more speed in photoshop, these days it runs more than fast enough as it is, now Mac heads, where'd your right clicker go? Oh wait it's too complex to have one lmao. Apple claims to be superior yet still only makes single button mice.

I don't see what mac heads seriously have to back it up, I mean i can see all the reasoning behind linux users, but what about mac? not only closed box hardware, but very closed source source, at least you can build your own PC, and have a choice on operating system.

I think Mac's are a thing of the past and the current war people should worry about is Windows VS Linux

There are many, many professional environments where PS useage could use a speedup. Bump your images up to a couple hundred megs or even a gig or two. Feel the lag?

The Mac OS uses a completely different UI model than Windows. Apple had the HIG (Human Interface Group) doing UI research before Windows could address memory beyond 640k. It is simply a different model. It is (sadly common) small mindedness to somehow equate different with inferior. And I mean in the most general sense. With a capital G.

Apple hardware uses the same standards and commodity parts as other machines out there. By the same reasoning AMD hardware is "closed" since it won't take a P4. In addition to PowerPC specific Linux distros there are others that do PPC ports (Gentoo & Debian). The core of OS X, Darwin, is open source and available directly from Apple for x86 and PPC. The engine of Safari, Apple's browser, came from the KDE project. On the day Safari was announced Apple submitted their fixes and the changelog to the KHTML team. The lead dev had very god things to say about this.

People have been proclaiming Apple's end since... well, the beginning. Next. With OS X, FCP, Shake, Pro Tools, VT Supercomputer, USN Xserves, excellent G5 sales, iPod sales over 1 million, iTMS, and AAPL up over 40% in the past 3 months your prediction is as informed as all that "closed source" nonsense.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Who cares if they won a photoshop benchmark? Who here at anandtech actually owns photoshop? 10 maybe 20 people? Next they're gonna try doing benchmarks with AutoCAD; another program that almost nobody has.

Funny you should mention AutoCAD, because it's a Windows only program.

Anyways, I've posted other benchmarks elsewhere in this thread.

not only closed box hardware

They sell the complete package, but current Power Macs have the best designed cases ever made IMO. Such a clean organized design. Plus it's standard PCI-X, PCI, DDR, serial ATA, USB 2.0, Firewire, IDE, etc. Need I say more?

but very closed source source

And Windows isn't? Actually OS X is much more open source than Windows ever was. For example, Apple's Safari browser is based on KDE Konqueror, and the improvements made in the engine were given back to the *nix community as open source. Remember, OS X is Unix.

I think Mac's are a thing of the past and the current war people should worry about is Windows VS Linux

Not really, considering that Linux isn't really quite there as a desktop OS yet. You might be right if you were talking about the server space. Interestingly, it seems the *nix geeks are choosing OS X more and more for laptops these days. Instead of running Linux and Windows on a dual boot laptop (and battling driver issues with Linux), you may as just run OS X and get both a beautiful GUI and full Unix simultaneously.

Apple claims to be superior yet still only makes single button mice.

Heh, this lame argument pops up in every Mac thread. Have you ever used OS X with a single button? It's actually quite simple. Windows XP is much more difficult to navigate with a single button because it seems developers are less inclined to think about GUI ergonomics. Dunno where to put something? Hmmm... Let's just put in the contextual menu even when it doesn't belong there. Anyways, it's moot, since OS X (and older OSes) have full right button contextual menu support built-in if you decide to get a different mouse. It's just that you don't need it for most usage. And even if you do, it's Apple-click.

 

[ShawnD1]

I don't like that mouse argument either. If you want 2 buttons, go to Best Buy and get a new mouse for $15. Macs are able to use a standard USB mouse from Best Buy without problems...

 

[OmegaRedd]

Read my lips M-A-C'-S suck. Who the hell cares about 1 round of photoshop. My cheaper pc will destroy any mac in real apps and games. The only thing mad Mac's are better at is creating photoshop pic's of steve botty boy's trowser snake.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Who cares if they won a photoshop benchmark? Who here at anandtech actually owns photoshop? 10 maybe 20 people? Next they're gonna try doing benchmarks with AutoCAD; another program that almost nobody has.

I agree. They should only use games to benchmark computers because computers are just toys and no one ever uses them as a source of income.

I mean, professional photographers and people in video/film post production don't use things like Photoshop, After Effects, or any of that useless non-linear editing software. They just sit around all day fragging each other in the latest shooter while magic pixies produce the content you see every day in print, on TV, or in the theaters.


Lethal

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Who cares if they won a photoshop benchmark? Who here at anandtech actually owns photoshop? 10 maybe 20 people? Next they're gonna try doing benchmarks with AutoCAD; another program that almost nobody has.

I agree. They should only use games to benchmark computers because computers are just toys and no one ever uses them as a source of income.

I mean, professional photographers and people in video/film post production don't use things like Photoshop, After Effects, or any of that useless non-linear editing software. They just sit around all day fragging each other in the latest shooter while magic pixies produce the content you see every day in print, on TV, or in the theaters.


Lethal

pwned!

 

[0roo0roo]

dude pc users, just admit the g5 is a fast chip. if it helps, its an ibm chip, not apple.

its like an attack on some peoples manhood or something

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe

They should only use games to benchmark computers because computers are just toys and no one ever uses them as a source of income.

I mean, professional photographers and people in video/film post production don't use things like Photoshop, After Effects, or any of that useless non-linear editing software. They just sit around all day fragging each other in the latest shooter while magic pixies produce the content you see every day in print, on TV, or in the theaters.

Well for the 1% of people who actually use photoshop, get a Mac. As for the other 99% of the world, the speed of applying filters for a program that costs as much as a computer doesn't exactly impress us.



0roo0roo, nobody said the G5 was slow. Who's the fastest is what people are asking. Since I don't own a mac, I really don't even care who is the fastest.

 

[sharkeeper]

Dawn on a Dual G5

Dawn on a PC

Things get better when the sun goes down!

Cheers!

 

[Stang289]

I have a 1700+ PC with windows XP, and a 1.7 Cintreno Laptop (work isssued). My wife has a 700MHz EMac. This is what I use each for:

PC/Laptop:
Dark Age of Camelot
Guitar Port (Line6 is supposed to be working with apple to port it to OSX)


EMac:
Safari
iTunes
Sherlock
MS Office ;p
converting docs to pdf

If one machine would do it all I would use it, but Apple doesn't have enough market share for some games to be ported to it, and MS doesn't seem to care about it's apps being as well refined as Apples iApps.

I use the laptop at work, but not for anything that couldn't be done on a powerbook.