Bare Feats has posted various test results comparing “CPU Crunching” for a Dual G5/2.5GHz Power Mac vs. Dual G5/2.0GHz Power Mac vs. Dual Xeon 3.4GHz vs. Pentium 4 3GHz vs. 64 bit Athlon 2.2GHz = 3GB of 333MHz DDR which shows that the top G5 Power Mac (dual 2.5GHz) won every CPU intensive test except one.
Test results here.
Bare Feats explains, “Though the G5 Power Macs did well in the CPU tests, they were pretty much ‘smoked’ in the 3D GRAPHICS tests. Part of it as to do with how much effort developers put into optimizing (or re-writing) the game code to take advantage of the unique features of the G5 Power Macs. Quake 3 Arena, though considered obsolete by avid gamers, is a perfect example of the potential of the G5 Power Macs to excel in gaming.”
Test results here.
What IS an Apple G5 anyway? Its just a marketing tag that Apple pays IBM to put on IBM’s 970 processor. Apple G5s are IBM computers just running Apple’s OS … Apple assumes too much credit for ‘their’ computer. Apple can’t even think past the one button mouse, isnt that pathetic and out of touch …though, if they didn’t have some sense I’m sure they’d still be using their now extinct, NuBus. Apple fanboys never like to acknowledge Intel technology inside their Macs, like PCI, or even the goddam microprocessor itself, which Intel invented.
This old argument that Macs are for serious work is really out of date, and really a quite pathetic reflection on the simplist, cut and dry, argument Apple fanboys try desperately to cling to. What about CAD apps like AutoCAD etc … are they games?? Even Pixar set up a render farm using 600 cheaper PCs, so Steve Jobs is convinced of the PCs power/price benefits, like the other 98% on computer users, but not the Apple fanboys who worship eveything Apple … pathetic.
“……Now if Apple adopts IBM’s Power Cell processor, rumored to run 10 times faster than anything presently being sold, the tables could turn and turn fast……..”
I’ve got a sneaky suspicion, this is something which is already up His Steveness’ sleeve….
Dont know if its true or not, but by using the Cell…and a few tweaks.. you may have a situation where all the available PlayStation, Nintendo.. and even that other game platform games might be able to run natively on the next gen Mac…
If this turns out to be true…. it would spell the beginning of the end to Wintel…and Intel !!..
And maybe if that happens… would we see the last of trolls like nomacforyou… ??
</wishful thinking>
Games = Fun w/ Adequate play
Game Addicts = No Career
Think about it, if you have 6-12 hours daily for online games, you won’t have a real job. And you know the truth, there’s no way you can play one hour and get out easily for almost all online games. While these 12 hours you can do really productive stuff, or at least get some fresh air. Been there, done that.
A victim of game addict.
RE: Apple is a marketing company
I think you should go do some research before you have to shovel those words back into your mouth. If Apple is a marketing company, Intel is a lying company (MHZ Myth). Intel, and AIM (Apple, IBM, Motorola) took different trends on chip design, and PowerPC chip architechure is way advance than what Intel can offer. Hell if I have 200 3.0ghz PIV running in my office vs 200 Mac Minis, i would like to see the electric bill on those
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />90+Watt vs 20+Watt.
PS
I’m very offended by the stereotyping of a gamer of seen posted here. Those who apply to this should be ashamed of themselves.
Yes, I am a gamer. There is nothing I enjoy more than playing games, except maybe also producing a live math help show for students as well as two websites devoted as an extension of the show and to help students ready themselves for the High School Exit Exam.
Yes, my name is Michael. I’m 21, I’m a gamer, I own a Mac, I’m a web designer, programmer, videographer, producer, and director.
Perhaps it may come as a surprise to some of you, but I find inspiration and enlightenment in some games. Try Metal Gear Solid.
I sometimes play Return to Castle Wolfenstein on my PowerBook. It’s fun and a useful break from real work every now and again. I am not sure I’m missing a liquid-cooled Pentium Whatever. I used to love playing Defender on an Atari 400 when I was a kid, so it’s all about gameplay rather than processor speed.
Games bring in more money yearly than movie ticket sales or music sales.
Why would Apple want to ignore this lucrative market and say to its customers, “Sorry, you can´t play the latest, newest games”
Can you imagine Apple making a computer that would not play music?
Apple needs to work more with the game industry. Apple has so much cash, why not partner with them to bring out Mac versions of the games when the PC version is released?
What I find curious about the anti-game commentors here is that they are all Mac users.
Aren´t Mac users supposed to be open-minded about computer use? That the more and different ways computers are used will be another stepping stone to expanding the use of computers in new and different ways?
I see game playing the and communities they have set up as pushing out the boundaries of computer use.
Graphic card companies are building faster and better video and graphic technologies because of the huge gaming market. Game companies are building new, better and more exciting games and graphics.
These new technologies can only be good in opening up new computer-based training and entertainment areas.
By pushing the envelope on performance, gamers force the computer-related companies to bring out better computer systems and supporting products.
Why are so many Mac owners so closed-minded? I am truly surprised.
Goodie writes: “…so it’s all about gameplay rather than processor speed.”
That´s similar to what the producers and directors of the silent, black and white movies said in the 1920s when the new color, talking movies came out.
PC and Mac users: Can’t we all just get along?
Respect each other’s choices, as long as they are informed choices.
(Magic word is “Soviet” – a reminder of our ideological differences)
Games = Waste sez the following and I quote: “How fast can a pc encode a FCP video into DVD? If I have 10 apps open at the same time, can I switch back and forth without taking a penalty hit in performance? How about those processor intensive Photoshop filters? Are these things important to the people who buy their PCs to play games? Didn’t think so.”
The average computer user never needs to “encode a FCP video into DVD” or needs the $600 Photoshop program. And what 10 apps do you or anyone has open at one time on a computer? And why would they all need to be open?
The average computer user uses their computer to:
1. Get/send e-mail.
2. Print something.
3. Play or download music.
4. Work with photos/video.
5. Write a letter or do school homework.
6. Surf the web.
7. Burn a CD or DVD.
8. PLAY GAMES.
(Did I forget anything?)
As you will notice Apple´s iLife applications and other software is based on the average computer user. Apple is trying to sell more products to the average computer user. The Macmini is the latest attempt.
Where Apple is weak is the game use of the computer.
Until it can get the game use to par with the PC world (however it is done – working with the game developers or technology improvements in their computers), Apple will have problems bringing over PC users to the Mac world.
macnut22: Part of it as to do with how much effort developers put into optimizing (or re-writing) the game code to take advantage of the unique features of the G5 Power Macs — well, that makes more sense than many comments here.
Jack A: They only have to produce ONE game that is the ultimate and starts out only running on the Mac…. Nice thought but it simply isn’t economical if we are talking about games incorporating the work of more than a hundred people. Check out the credits at the end of the last Call of Duty map … it’s like a movie, almost.
Games=Waste: </i>Games are boring when you reach a certain age and getting your work done becomes far more important</i>.
Who cares. I bought a top-specc’ed iMac for the kids — plenty of computing for most tasks but a bit tardy for some games. Would you rather I buy them a PC instead, or have them think I’m UrAnus for denying them a game machine? Well, they’re happy and entitled to play games after their homework is done, just as Apple is happy to have sold an iMac. In fact, the iMac gets more use as a gaming device than the PS2 and Sega combined! If the top games [we can ignore the few that won’t get ported over] didn’t run on the iMac, then I’d have bought a PC.
Tired: Now if Apple adopts IBM’s Power Cell processor, rumored to run 10 times faster than anything presently being sold….
Potential good news indeed, but I don’t count on the competition standing still; it rarely happens.
General Consensus: The tide of switchers is running our way. With Windoze having the issues it’s having, you could almost ask: “Why’s it taking so long — and what part does games play in PC-users loyalty to their OS?
To summarize: the G5s did well in the CPU tests but got smoked in some 3D tests where developers didn’t optimize their code for the G5.
It simply means that Apple needs to help some of these less-than-diligent developers do so, perhaps with some software to ease the transition.
Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Anyway, I have no issues with the gaming capability of my dual-2.5. I do have some with the iMac 1.8, adn while it’s not a dealbreaker for me, it could be for a potential switcher.
MAW: Case “close[d].”
What a bunch of whiny losers. Gamers are pathetic, anti-social losers who are probably best locked in their parents’ basement playing their little games than being in the real world anyway.
As someone mentioned before, today’s gamers are the D&D nerds of yesterday. Sad, laughable, and easy to shove under the rug. Feel free to continue to waste your money, time, and your life on that sad pursuit.
My condolences to your families. LOSERS
You are no doubt the expert on losers, eh?
I don’t know what the problem with gamers is. I could understand criticizing people who spend every waking hour playing games and nothing else, but I doubt most gamers are like that.
Some people play games to unwind after a hard day at work – maybe fragging away on the computer imagining that the opponent is their boss
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” /> . For people who don’t play a lot of games, this ‘unwind time’ may rather be spent surfing the web, hanging out with friends, reading a book, watching TV, etc.
Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s fair or civilized to make fun of people for something they like to do. How would you feel if some made fun of you because you like to make movies and DVD’s, take photos or make your own music.
Personally, I say “Long live games, gamers, photographers, film makers, web surfers, book readers, movie goers, tv watchers, couch potatoes and everyone else who does something just because they enjoy doing it (of course as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else).
Peace!
Last weekend our teenage sons had 5 other friends over for a game LAN party. The 16-year olds all brought their computers over, hooked them up into an LAN, plus hooked up to the internet via DSL.
It was kind of a slumber computer game party.
They all had lots of fun. All we heard was lots of laughter and fun coming from the basement. No fights, no arguments, no alcohol, no smoking, no drugs.
The next day as the parents came to pick them up one remarked, “I´d rather have a group of seven 16-year olds in someone´s house under adult supervision playing games on a Saturday night then out on the streets or some party getting into trouble.”.
And another added, “You show me teenager walking the streets at night getting into mischief and that is a boy that has no computer, computer games or a broadband connection.”
I have an iMac, they all use PeeCees.
To Parent of two gamers:
Ah, yes. Stash the teenagers in the basement for hours. Very healthy indeed.
Believe it or not, the choice isn’t just between gaming in the basement and smoking dope/causing trouble. There are plenty of other productive activities that DON’T promote isolation and physical lethargy.
By the way, what game were they playing? World of WarCraft? Grand Theft Auto? …or one of the other ultra-violent reality-distortion games that will surely properly prepare them for life after FPS alternate-reality?
Good parenting there.
As the parent of a teenager (and a pre-teen), I can appreciate the challenge of keeping our kids out of trouble, but I took a slightly different approach than the “Parent of two gamers” did above.
When my son was a Freshman I bought him a TiBook, which he still uses to this day. Now, mid-way through his Senior year, he has a 3.92 GPA, scored 1520 on the SAT, is starting point guard on the varsity basketball team, and was named to last year’s All-State track team in the Mile. He’ll be attending Columbia in the Fall.
We all have an approach that works best for us. In the case of my son and I, the best approach was my close involvement in his academics and promotion of a variety of extra-curricular activities including sports, student government, and sci/tech pursuits. He’s never really shown an interest in gaming.
Gaming casually can be fun, but a computer is meant to be much more than a gaming machine. I think its obscene to pay more than 500$ on any machine for gaming. Buy an XBox. Besides aside from casual gaming, it is for kids…or people who still think they are. Grow up.
A bunch of people seemed eager to yell at Steve Jobs, “It’s his job to get us [Mac users] every one of the latest games, ported, and polished to run at least as fast as the PC version…. because the mac is better.”
Well the Mac is better (:-D) but the reality is that before Steve Job’s gaming initiative we had nothing. All people wanted was CS, which we never got of course, and thanks to HL2 being written in DX9 it looks like we won’t see that for a long long time. Note that I said “DX9” not “OGL2”. This is the beginning of the problems. When a game is written for Direct libraries they are using HEAVILY optimized Microsoft software. Duhh, DX9 is their stupid bread and butter now, no one cares that the mac also gets its ass kicked in those 500-page MS Word search tests. 7 seconds vs 23 seconds. It might happen once in a lifetime, I will give up my 16 seconds if I can have Expose which has saved me probably hours combined to date. Anyway, DX9 code has to be rewritten, and it’s the rewrote code that always gets done half-assed in a port, because the mac developers have less time to do that stuff. They have less time for everything really. Apple provides them with optimization tools (like Shark, read about it on the Apple Developer site, it’s potential is amazing). Then consider how only a few developers really care about speed in the end (namely iD and OMNI, and sadly iD doesn’t seem to be doing their own Mac port for Doom3). When the Omni group ported Giants they painstakingly recoded the DX7 stuff into OpenGL, added Altivec, added SMP support. Game ran like 3x faster than the PC counterpart.
So if you can’t go to sleep at night unless you know your mac can outpace PCs in games, rest assured that yes, it sure as hell can. PC users can also rest assured knowing that no, it doesn’t.
However the people out there who are worried about the money thing, you really need to reconsider the whole situation. Hardcore gamers steal just about every game, they order parts off forums and wholesale sites. No one is making money off these people. Seriously. It is by far the casual gamer who is generating the money for the industry. And as some people pointed out, its a big industry. I didn’t look at figures, but I’d guess based on the lower piracy for console games, that that’s where most of the income is as well. Apple essentially has the casual gamer covered. They have a good selection of games, almost every killer game is there (for me that’s Doom 3 and UT2004). If I could have one magic wish it’d be for a console emulator, in fact I think the best era for mac gaming was when we and we alone had COnnectix Virtual Game Station. The XBOX2 is based on the POWER. I really hope someone clever can do something with that. There is no XBox emulator for Windows PCs i know of, despite it being a 733Mhz P3 with all off the shelf components in it. That’s too bad. Maybe someone can do better.
there is nothing wrong with people who like to casually play computer games. i have friends that do and also have girl friends and perfectly normal lives. even bill gates said in his interview with peter jennings last week that gaming was a better, more interactive way of spending a person’s time compared to tv for example. i’ve met many people online playing computer games, who i talk to frequently and i hate single play games, because they lack that human interaction.
as far as gaming lacking on the mac, i have a highend g5 pm and it runs every game fine. i don’t need to be running the fastest gaming machine on the planet to sleep at night and the stability and convenience of the mac os x makes it worth it.
pants,
i agree. nearly every aspect of my life is tied to the computer. i pay my bills on it, pay my taxes, play games, watch and record television, play and manage my music collection (all legal), surf the web, buy items, talk to friends and family, meet new people… it’s truly an amazing device.
It is quite clear the Mac system is on par with anything on the PC side when it comes to graphics, WITH optimized software. There in lies the Macs problem, not the hardware, but available game software. As has been pointed out endlessly, with so small a market share it does not make finicial sense for game companies to send the time and money to port over to the Mac an optimzed game. This probelm will not change without a serious change from Apple in how it deals with game companies.
As a Mac user I freely admit PCs rule in the game world, and even advise people if their main interest is games, they should buy a PC. This is a no brainer to me, and my friends, most of who are PC users.
The one program I will offer up as further testment to the power of a Mac as a graphics platform is Motion. As a video editor I can tell you this program has blown people away with what it can do in real time, in terms of manipulating video. The very scary thing about Motion is it is a version 1.0 program.
Parent of a NON-gamer: “When my son was a Freshman I bought him a TiBook, which he still uses to this day. Now, mid-way through his Senior year, he has a 3.92 GPA, scored 1520 on the SAT, is starting point guard on the varsity basketball team, and was named to last year’s All-State track team in the Mile. He’ll be attending Columbia in the Fall.”
What a load of B.S.
Every teenager with a computer and a fast internet connection plays games.
If your son is not interested in games and the internet, what in the hell are you doing here at MDN wasting your time and being a bad example to your son???
Because you just made it all up, loser.