“Intel, Apple Computer, Advanced Micro Devices and others will promote tests over the next few months purporting to show that their products are vastly superior to those from the competition–though the tests are often for tasks no sane person would consider,” reports Michael Kanellos for CNET News.com. “Apple has new Power Mac G5 desktops coming out in August, while AMD plans to release its Athlon64 chip for desktops in September. Intel, meanwhile, is expected to introduce Madison, the third version of its Itanium processor, next week and to launch Prescott, a Pentium 4 with a face-lift, in the second half of the year.”
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off the benchmark season by claiming that the new G5s, which come with chips from IBM that can run 32-bit and 64-bit software, leave Intel-based PCs in the dust,” writes Kanellos.
“Did Apple lie? No, it probably got the results it said it did on the Dell machine, but the system was probably submerged in maple syrup or powered by a humidifier. Everyone manipulates benchmarks and performance claims. Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo), an independent benchmarking organization, once maintained its headquarters at Intel,” writes Kanellos. “Then there was the time that Apple claimed its G4 Cube desktop was a supercomputer. What it failed to mention is that it was a supercomputer in the view of U.S. government regulations concerning exports to Pakistan and other budding nuclear nations. Those export regulations have since changed.”
“This year, the underhanded behavior should be in full throttle. Apple and AMD are faced with declining market share. Both companies, however, have come out with products that will rival Intel’s. Any advantage they can obtain–test results, customer wins–will suffice,” writes Kanellos.
Full article here.
are we still talking about these tests.. what we should be discussing is the fact that on the x86 side there is no similar workstation like the G5 ::shock::. Like was said at the keynote Apple is no longer competing with Intel desktop systems but with Unix workstations. These test don’t even begin to describe how lucky we are that Apple has created this this hardware for us.
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48409524&m=2020920275
Ok, what needs to be clear is that moving from 32-bit to 64-bit is not really related to speed, but ability.
The same app compiled as 32-bit or 64-bit should run about the same on the G5. The difference is that a 64-bit app can use more memory, and can use a much greater magnitude of numbers, and can move data in larger blocks (actually, this last one might give a 64-bit version a bit of an advantage in speed).
This is why Photoshop and such, and video apps like FCP, will benefit from the G5. Imagine editing multiple Gigs of video IN MEMORY! (The higher-end G5 has a 16 gig limit given 2 Gig memory modules.)
Or making integer and floating point calculations with twice the precision of previous PowerPC processors…
Now above and beyond the move to 64-bit, the G5 has other imporvements, including higher clock speed, higher bus speed, more parallelism, etc, which will make it a much better processor for both 32-bit and 64-bit apps… everyone wins…
I love to hear Wintel wimps whine. Who cares, the base line is, however fast Wintel is, you still get the system with M$. If they find any redeeming value in M$ software, then they deserve to use it.
BOYCOTT M$
Your’s is bigger than mine ! Your stomach that is. Can’t reach any ZD NET articles. Slashdotted maybe?
The article obviously failed to mention any price difference. They also failed to respond with the results of their own tests.
The Mac costs $1000 LESS than a comparable Dell. So much for Macs being expensive machines. Cost is very important! Otherwise we would all have Crays in our basements.
And of course, CNET only picks on the issues that it possibly can. They ignore the usual list of Apple truths such as its lower maintenance costs, longer useful life, easier to use, etc. All of these offer additional savings for the user.
No one I know buys a computer just to stare at it doing benchmarks. We buy computers for the ENTIRE tool; hardware, OS (GUI), and software. I’d like to see them (or anyone) do a REAL Cost-of-Ownership comparison. I am so tired of these pointless my-sausage-is-bigger-than-yours discussions.
Remember the news media industry, which cnet is part of, primary goal is to generate income and gain readership, not necessarily report accurate news.
Any controversy they can create, by reporting only half the story, make the “STORY” more well known with the aura of credibility, will get more readers and generate more income. If a website gets more hits, they can theoretically make more money.
After noting that he slams Apple, and Jobs more than AMD or Intel, the author may only be pretending to be an oblivious wintel user, but he is doing and succeding at what CNET is paying him to do, get people to read CNET.
CNET is the King of FUD. First off, Apple experienced a growth in marketshare over the past 12 months. So that argument may have been true a couple of years ago… but their marketshare is stabilizing if not growing. I doubt they’ll ever see anything near a majority market share, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Apple grew to a nice healthy 15% share.
The interesting question is why Apple needs to lie about benchmarks.
It’s appears that:
1) Apps on Pentium 4 3 GHz will beat dual G5 2 GHz
(comparing vendor-optimized SPEC)
2) Intel chips will continue to improve faster than
IBM chips
The bottom line is that speed improvements are good, but Apple still isn’t in the same ballpark. They are lying because they need to cover this fact up.
ex mac user, you are a dickhead
booboo, we won’t have real performance results till people actually get G5s. But this is my reading of the situation.
Do you have any other explanation why Apple are using misleading benchmarks?
Ex mac user, what evidence do you have that Apple is lying? Their testing methodology is thoroughly documented, and they have even explained why they benchmarked the way that they did. Where is the lie? The benchmarks aren’t even misleading. The applications shown were clearly faster on the G5, and evidence from people who have access to the G5s (the After Effects scores at xlr8) bears this out.
Just use the tool that gets your job done. Period.
who cares….
EX Mac User my ass!
Just another numb nuts Windows drone stinking up a Mac web site with tired BS about a platform he doesn’t understand and will never be worthy of using.
Don’t worry about the chip speed. It’s the dual GHz bus, st***d.
I have Macs and PCs at home (retired by NT4 server license because it just sucked). I use Linux, NT4, 2000Pro at work.
We have an application at work that uses random search techniques to solve medium sized problem. Use 875 INTEL motherboards, with RDRAM (The IT guy says it’s the best he can buy) and LINUX 7.x. Multiple solutions in memory yield 400 MB memory allocations. At that level, the P4 cache is useless. You are continually swapping in data from 400 MB through a TINY little cache. It is basically not there. Well here are the results: Beyond a 1.2GHz P4 we don’t see any performance improvement. NONE! 1.7 GHz no. 2.8 GHz? NO. My theory has been that the memory bus is saturated. When I get my hands on a G5, and believe you me, I will. I am recompiling all that code to see what happens. And I suspect the P4/875 combos will get spanked.
I think the Intel platform can keep up as long as the cache works sufficiently to protect the P4 from starvation. But take that 160 MB photoshop file through its paces, and the whole machine will be paying the price of designing the machine to be good enough for gaming…
Leave that junk for the gamers, they have nothing better to do. I prefer to make money on my computing.
i guess Ex-macuser is envy and worry about G5….hahaha what else can it be..the fact is Ex-macuser knew Mac is superior then a junk he use i’ve been througn with M$ bullshit coz i am an EX-Winuser,the one thing i regret is not swicthing earlier,but i am glad i did!
To A.T.
My non-techie background did not allow me to understand half of what you said about Apple vs. NT or whatnot, but I am interested in the results you find. I hope you perform those tests or comparisons and that you get an editor to edit your syntax so that I can then understand it.
Intel, “In-smell” AMD or whatever. As a systems tech for a Crisis Line, I have learned as far a computers speed is important, but so is productivity, user experience, etc. The point:”What time have I to continually understand and stop my work to “restart” to begin again”?. I do understand the speed it takes me to accomplish a computer task on me pokey G3 with OSX, smokes what I “sometimes” get accomplished on my intel – windowsXP (control-alt-crap anyone?). That’s be a fact for me since the beginning of PCs.
My CEO asked me one day, “What would be the impact of implementing a Mac Platform?” This was after a particularly harrowing experience with her intel laptop running windows 2000 and powerpoint…..”Gee, darn thing froze again….” as she tapdanced in front of the crowd.
“So what would be the impact?”
“Loss of my job” I replied.
It turns out that the PowerMac G5 is an incredible value when compared to equivalent PCs.
Apple PowerMac dual-2GHz G5:
dual 1-GHz front side buses
2 banks of 4 memory slots for 400MHz PC3200 DDR-RAM
512MB of PC3200 DDR-RAM installed
160GB Serial ATA HD and Serial ATA controller
ATI 9600 Pro card in an 8X AGP slot
Gigabit Ethernet
Analog and Digital audio in/out
4x DVD-R/CD-RW optical drive
800 and 400 ports
3 “open” PCI-X slots
Zone controlled cooling system
Included software ( iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, QuickBooks for Mac New User Edition, FAXstf, Art Directors Toolkit, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, GraphicConverter, QuickTime, iChat, Safari, Sherlock, Address Book, iCal, iSync, DVD Player, Mail, and Apple Developer Tools )
… All for $2,999
I checked out Dell’s Web site (a price leader in PC retailers), and configured a system as close as possible (but not quite meeting) the specs for the dual-2GHz G5:
Dell Precision 650:
dual Intel� Xeon� Processor,3.06GHz
533MHz front side bus (not 1GHz)
512MB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory (not DDR3200 RAM)
ATI, Radeon� VE, 32MB, VGA/DVI (not ATI 9600 Pro)
Sound Blaster� Audigy II with onboard 1394 (1394 is not 800)
Adobe� Premiere� 6.5 with TotalTraining DVD package
4XDVD+RW/+R w/ Roxio� Easy CD Creator/Sonic SE
120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive (not 160GB, or serial ATA)
Total price: $4,139
Note: It also doesn’t have an aluminium case, or zone-controlled cooling system. And I couldn’t easily find out if it has Gigabit Ethernet included, or how many “open” PCI-X slots were available.
Even though it does not match the G5’s hardware specs, the Dell 650 is 38% more expensive than the $2,999 PowerMac G5!
Benchmarks – I love all the froth and bubble – Most of it seems to go like this:
Apple cheated – They should have used compilers and bechmarking apps that were optimised for the Intel chip, not the ones optimised for the G5. Blah, blah, blah.
I must admit, if anyone was going to pick holes in the testing process, I wasn’t at all surprised to see Intel respond “within 1/2 an hour”. They have been reining Champ in benchmark-bending for over a decade now.
Let’s see, um, you want Apple to be more technically accurate, and you say that the Dell was “probably submerged in maple syrup or powered by a humidifier” – Finally, someone with an unbiased presentation of FACT.
When I got to the author’s words “maple syrup” I knew that the author was truly technical and objective, and not just a slandering moron. I do have one technical quibble: Why do you suppose maple syrup used, and not molasses? And why the humidifier? I await your next insightful installment.
Ex Mac User must be a mindless troll trying to start a dumb argument, just ignore him.
Never feed the trolls
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