The IBM Powermac G5 Quad

[Shephard]

Here's an old CPU some may be familiar with and others not. Thought I would share.

This is my PowerPC 970MP. It's a 2.5ghz 'Quadcore' - 2 CPU PowerPC processor. This was in Apple's final Power Mac G5 and it was there top of the line computer before the introduction of the Mac Pro in 2006.

This thing got so hot Apple needed to liquid cool it with a unit made by Delphi. Even liquid cooled, it still ran hot and noisy with 6 additional fans.

I gutted most of the computer to clean out the dust and troubleshoot. Thankfully I did not have any leakage which was a well documented problem with the liquid cooled G5's. Now I am putting it all back together!

I remember there was an old Anandtech article comparing the G5 was the new Mac Pro in which the Mac Pro destroyed it. Ran quieter (air cooled), drew less power, more powerful, and better interior.

The G5 was a great computer for it's time. I will be doing some benchmarks if I can get it up and running again.

 

[dragantoe]

this is really cool! thanks for sharing it. it goes to show apple would probably be better off if they continued to buy cpus from intel instead of trying to make their own.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I'm rather curious on how it performs compared to modern ULV dual cores.

 

[SPBHM]

I'm rather curious on how it performs compared to modern ULV dual cores.

I think it is as fast as a sandy bridge ULV (DC with HT) at around 1.8-2GHz on cinebench 11.5

 

[Cerb]

I'm rather curious on how it performs compared to modern ULV dual cores.

Per-clock, they tended to be a little bit better than a P4, but not by much, if Altivec couldn't be made use of. Like the p4, it was made to scale higher in clocks, but failed to, on account of thermals (supposedly Altivec was largely to blame).

Per-core-per-clock, they were pretty much demolished by the Core 2 CPUs, and we've come a fair way, since then.

So, compared to modern cores, who knows, exactly, at least without benchmarking, but I doubt it could compete with an IB or HSW dual-core at 2GHz (save for maybe crippled Celerons, or something like that). It might even only just barely hold its own against Jaguar .

 

[SPBHM]

So, compared to modern cores, who knows, exactly, at least without benchmarking,

using google I found at least 2 different sources, one with 2.00 and one with 1.99 for cinebench 11.5, that's why I said I think it's the same score as ULV SB (DC HT) at 1.8-2GHz

 

[Cerb]

using google I found at least 2 different sources, one with 2.00 and one with 1.99 for cinebench 11.5, that's why I said I think it's the same score as ULV SB (DC HT) at 1.8-2GHz

Cinebench also made Bulldozer look good. I trust it as a scalability test, but not much more, and mentally whenever a supposed AMD engineering sample new high score is sighted.

For example, I did manage this, thinking about potential places to look:
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geek...r:"PowerPC G5 (970MP)" frequency:2500 bits:64

http://browser.primatelabs.com/processor-benchmarks

A 2.9GHz mobile SB i7, FI, gets ~2x the Geekbench score. I don't even trust Geekbench to be a decent benchmark, but it's at least a test suite. The duals don't quite get 2x, but seem to get 1.25-1.5x...for whatever that's worth with Geekbench. The quads seem to get about 2x/clock, again, for whatever that's worth with Geekbench.

 

[Sweepr]

Interesting. Please share your results!