Geek Patrol has pitted an Apple Mac Pro against a Power Mac G5.
The configs of the two test machines:
Mac Pro
• Intel Xeon 5150 @ 2.66GHz (two dual-core processors)
• 1024MB RAM
• Mac OS X 10.4.7 (Build 8K1079)
• Geekbench 2006 (Build 190)
Power Mac G5
• PowerPC G5 @ 2.5GHz (two dual-core processors)
• 1024MB RAM
• Mac OS X 10.4.7 (Build 8J135)
• Geekbench 2006 (Build 180)
Geek Patrol reports, “Overall, the Mac Pro is 7% faster than the Power Mac G5. In individual tests, the Mac Pro is between 34.9% and 280.4% of the performance of the Power Mac G5. The Mac Pro outperforms the Power Mac G5 when it comes to integer calculations and scalar floating point calculations, while the Power Mac G5 outperforms the Mac Pro when it comes to vector floating point calculations and standard library memory performance. Of course, we’ve tested a mid-range Mac Pro ($2500 US) against a top-of-the-line Power Mac G5 ($3000 USD), so even though the Mac Pro is only a little bit faster than the Power Mac G5, it’s significantly cheaper!”
Full article with benchmark details here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, we’d like to see the top-of-the-line Mac Pro (with two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors, US$3,299 as configured above) vs. the old top-of-the-line Power Mac G5 (Original price: US$3,299) that Geek Patrol has used in their testing.
that when the G5 was the latest and the greatest it truly was an outstanding processor.
What may be more helpful is to time the two machines doing the tasks that customers would use them for…CS2, video work, etc.
What I’m wondering is how the faster processors, etc., would compensate for the Rosetta effect on non universal applications like CS2.
The G5 rocked the HOUSE when it came out. It still kicks some serious butt.
Regardless of what people would like to see, a year old Quad G5 standing up to a brand new Core Duo 2 proves that the PowerPC architecture was solid.
IBM failed PowerPC. When IBM wrote off Apple as not being important enough to keep PowerPC and the G5 a cutting edge processor they seem to have doomed PowerPC. Even the G5 was a lackluster effort on their part.
What is done is done and for reasons outside of performance I like the move to Intel processors. Dual Boot, Virtualized OS Environments and possibly a Wine type implementation in OS X is reason enough to make the switch.
as a video geek – i’m not 100% in awe of the new intel machines – they’ve always put integer perf ahead of fp and vector perf.
of course, in the end, the intels always beat the snot out of the PPCs after a time… so i expect this trend to also continue.
So… one way to summarize is in terms of alternate OS support – the G5 Quad lets you keep your Classic support; Mac Pro gives you boot camp.
The Pentium was not. End of story.
The G5 proves again that Apple did NOT lie in the megahertz myth, but now Intel is again the future.
I’ve nothing to add. Just repeat: waiting for the performance you want will cause it to become available sooner and at a good price.
Resist Apple’s marketing machine by being a smart consumer.
Interesting that the 2.66GHz Dual Duo is 7% overall faster than the 2.5GHz Quad G5, and that 2.66GHz is 6.4% faster than 2.5GHz. Seems clock-for-clock they are the same.
Not bad for a chip that came out a year ago to be on par with one of Intel’s latest & greatest, huh?
Now where’s my 3GHz G5????
Altivec is the difference, otherwise both look pretty equivalent. Which is impressive for the G5 since Woodcrest is supposed to the best ever… so far.
>> Now where’s my 3GHz G5????
In my xbox 360!
I have a 2.5 with 2 gig of ram. I really would have thought the new model it would have been alot faster even as a mid-line model. I wasn’t in the market to upgrade, but now I know even the 3Ghz probably wouldn’t be worth a $3,500(or more) hit to upgrade, for me at least.
So the old G5 is 7% slower than a Woodcrest that is 6% faster. Sounds like a draw to me. And to top it off, you can keep your coffee warm on the G5.
There is no indication that the GeekBench test suite was compiled to take advantage of the “128-bit SSE3 vector engine” that is part of the new chips but un-mentioned with the older chips. Given that the Quad PM has long used G5s with their Velocity Engines, the test compiled for them likely takes advantage of that technology … thus a huge advantage in processing vector floating point calculations. Had they upgraded the memory in the new model they would have seen a jump in memory performance as well.
The message is:
If you have a G5 quad keep and have fun. If you want buy a new one then pay less and have the same amount of fun.
Overall, the Mac Pro is 7% faster than the Power Mac G5…
oooooooh not impressed.
I expect to see that lead get larger after Leopard arrives. OS X is not yet optimized for Core anywhere near as well as it is for PPC. More efficient compilation can make a big difference in a lot of situations. And as DLMeyer said, NOTHING is optimized for the new SSE unit in Core 2 yet.
Nevertheless, it remains true that the G5 is a beautiful and powerful processor.
But it’s also true that IBM is making a whole lot more money selling PPCs to all three new consoles than they did selling PPCs to Apple.
“MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, we’d like to see the top-of-the-line Mac Pro (with two 3.0GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors, US$3,299 as configured above) vs. the old top-of-the-line Power Mac G5 (Original price: US$3,299) that Geek Patrol has used in their testing.”
Obviously, I’d love to see a new top-of-the-line Mac Pro with Woodchuck, er Woodcrest, processors go up against a top-of-the-line PPC system running two quad-core Cell processors at 3.0 GHZ. Of course, its about “performance per watt”, so PPC got dumped and we’ll never get to see that in a Mac. And yes – it would be cheaper – a single quad-core cell will be in the PS3 priced out at $500.
Once 33% or so of the Mac installed base moves over to Intel, look to Apple to start weaning you over to Vista, or whatever Microsoft will have by then, since the features will be “seamlessly the same”. The moment Apple went over to Intel, the clock began ticking. Remember the hype about EFI and how a Mac could NEVER boot Windows? Funny how that feature-set got turned off. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid MDN…you’re only slightly better than Rob Enderle – at least he knows the gig is up.
On december or eary 2007, intel will realese the “Quad Core” chip, so there will be 8 cores mac by simply replacing the chips in the actual Mac Pro, can you imagine a quad core iMac or Mac Mini?
I believe taht Steve Jobs Plans never was to have the “Ultimate Proccessor”, G5 with a few more MHz or the Cell proccessor will be far more power that any Intel chip, but Only intel chips will allow Apple to directly take over the PCs market, that is the real reason of Why Apple Move to Intel. Besides that, remember that Apple help Motorola and IBM to desing the PPC chip, so may be can help Intel to make a better, but far more better chip some time.
Once 33% or so of the Mac installed base moves over to Intel, look to Apple to start weaning you over to Vista, or whatever Microsoft will have by then, since the features will be “seamlessly the same”. The moment Apple went over to Intel, the clock began ticking. Remember the hype about EFI and how a Mac could NEVER boot Windows? Funny how that feature-set got turned off. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid MDN…you’re only slightly better than Rob Enderle – at least he knows the gig is up.
You’re delusional. OSX is the Mac. Without it, I would just go buy the cheapest box I could get to run Windows like most other people. I love Apple’s designs, but OSX is the reason why I’m a Mac user. OSX Tiger was Apple’s most profitable software release ever. They’re not abandoning it.
The Power Mac G5 is quite a machine. I don’t have a Quad (it’s a 2.0 GHz dual-core), but performance is not an issue for me. It will serve well for many more years, I’m sure. Perhaps a “third party” can provide a 3.0 GHz Quad PPC upgrade, using future parts that do not require liquid cooling.
TeamZissou sounds like MacDude and I wish people would stop complaining that Apple didn’t go with the Cell. That would have been a horrible decision for several reasons. 1. The cell was designed to be a gaming chip from the ground up. It’s optimized to perform the same functions over and over again which is great for a video game that runs the same program for hours and needs intensive graphic processing (which can be vectorized). That power is wasted in a general purpose computer where you have several applications running and they are constantly requesting different things. 2. Even the things that the cell is good at are hard to access. Taking advantage of the vector power and multiple cores of the Cell is not simple. Coding for it requires specific strategies and from what I’ve heard the developers have found it to be very difficult and time consuming. Apple has always had a problem getting the developer numbers MS has or getting people to port over to the mac. Using the cell would have made that much worse, whereas using Intel makes it much better. 3. The cell is proving to be much more expensive than originally planned. The huge chip with 9 cores has lots of possible points of failure, so that when the chips come off the line at the fab many of the are unusable, meaning the remaining chips have to be more expensive to cover those costs. It also means yields are lower than expected and that’s another chronic Apple problem that they are trying to get away from. Sony can only sell the ps3 for $599 with the cell because they take a huge loss hoping to make the money back in game sales. The actual cost of the ps3 is probably closer to $1000. Add more RAM and RAM slots, harddrive and HD bays, more networking options and the fact that Apple needs to make a profit on the machines and it becomes clear that a cell based PC is not any cheaper than what Apple released on Monday, plus this is available starting two days ago. Cell isn’t available and it isn’t a good choice for Apple.
The new PowerMacs are, on average, a whopping 7% “better” than the G5? This is almost within the range statistical error! I had expected a minimum 30% increase in average performance. I suppose that I’ll have to wait until next year and hope that the next generation of Intel chips will have the power I want.
Any insight would be great…
I have the following:
Dual 2.0GHz PowerPC G5
2GB MB DDR400 (PC3200)-2X1GB
ATI Radeon 9650 XT w/256MB
I have the opportunity to get the new 2.66 Mac Pro through work before the end of the year (some budget surplus).
I live in Flash and Photoshop … Does anyone have a sense how well Rosetta versions on the new Mac might compare to my current machine performance-wise? I’d be happy if they were close knowing that things would get better when they went Universal.
I know no one has first hand experience. Just curious what you folks think. Or what your experiences with the current MacIntel machines has been.
Thanks!
Also SSE3 isn’t new. It was released in 2004 and has been included on most Intel Processors since then including the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo. Also it has been lisenced to AMD so most of their processors include it too. I can’t find too much in the way of technical detail of how the test software was written but SSE3 has been out for awhile and is widely used so it’s very possible that it was taken into account.
The SSE3 vs Altivec debate could get ugly and bitter but I don’t think there is much a difference either way. I think this test shows that the G5 is amazing and I wish it hadn’t been allowed to die but the Intel machines apple is putting out now certainly aren’t slow, and unlike the G5’s they should get faster soon.
Jay, we need to talk.
The PPC will live on in the Xbox360!
Steve is setting us all up for the transition to Windows when he retires (soon).
I cannot believe people are still crapping on about the Cell.
Thank God there are people like Jay that ACTUALLY understand the fundamental differences between the Cell architecture (great for games and embedded applications – i.e. repeatedly doing essentially the same thing for hours on end) and the architecture needed (and hence used) in multipurpose computing.
Now it may be that after YEARS of developing and redeveloping software code bases the commonly used applications used today MAY have been able to squeeze out additional performance.
But the applications most likely to benefit from processors with vector graphics acceleration (eg the creative suites) have shown NO interest in starting again and redoing their applications for another platform. Remember how many apps that were DROPPING Mac support because they no longer wanted to code for both x86 and PPC, imagine what would have happened if Apple went Cell? That wouldn’t be a port job to re-code, it would be a build from the ground up project, because as all you Cell fans point out (yet then conveniently forget when it doesn’t suit your arguement) the Cell is so COMPLETELY different. And yes xBox and PS3 can use this, because they are writing code for a VERY specific closed system just to play games/handle multimedia. Apple isn’t trying to niche itself even more!
So give up on the Cell would have rocked but now we’ll never know crap.
We do know – the Cell is not a processor for multipurpose PCs. And using it would have destroyed Apple’s developer base, not enhanced it.
end rant.
My 2 cents,
Luke
Sadly, today I made the decision to not buy a Mac Pro. The speed tests are in and Photoshop and Flash run around 30% slower on the Mac Pro (under Rosetta) than on my dual G5. Adobe’s apps are my bread and butter, and I can’t justify taking a 30% speed hit on the apps that put food on my table (and in my cat’s mouth).
Grr. To boot, Adobe could be as far as 14 months away from updating their apps to Universal Binary. Photoshop will probably come sooner, but Flash … who knows?
I guess I’ll just save my money and get some more memory for my Ol’ G5 … she’s still a workhorse!!
http://www.macworld.com/2006/08/firstlooks/macprobench/index.php
Have to agree with MDN on this one….
They are comparing the previous generation’s top of the line, with the current generations mid-range option… What’s the point of that?
Let’s see a test with the previous best vs. the current best and then talk.
yeah but look at the Adobe Photoshop CS2 scores, both the G5 Quad and the G5 Dual were nearly three times faster than the Mac Pro. This is obviously the effect of Rosetta on the scores.
I think, therefore that Andrew Harris has made the right decision. If you depend on Adobe software, then do not upgrade until they move to universal.
Trevor got in just before me.
So my initial response was to the “Same Comparison… Different Results or Different” post, not to Trevor’s
MW: “before” as in why wasn’t I…
I agree, if you are curently running a dual g5 and heavily depend on Adobe apps, wait. But if not than the MacPro is a sick computer. And to all the speed junkies who are getting all wound up about the performance of the Dual Xeons, I have one word for you, RELAX! The thing has been out for four freaking days! Look at other sites that have tested the new 5100’s, they blow away other processors. Yes the G5 is powerful, but where was it going? If there was real progression in that technology why did we never see a G5 laptop or mobile proc. But lets look at todays 5150 vs the quad. You get a performance boost (how big depends on the test, remember 4 days in release), you get much more internal expansion, you get a quieter cooler machine, and when new you can save a sh*t load of cash. I think we all need to give it a little more time before we write this thing off and start worrying about our own use and not everyone else’s. And from what I have read, the Kentsfield is not a true quad core.
Before I get started, please repeat after me: “CELL DOES NOT HAVE OUT OF ORDER EXECUTION. IT WOULD SUCK SUCK SUCK AS A GENERAL PURPOSE CPU”. Thank you.
Regarding SSE: The new version of SSE3 in Core 2 has more new instructions (relative to old SSE3) than old SSE3 had compared to SSE2. It also has fully 128-bit paths (old SSE3 had 64-bit paths that required chopping 128 bit ops in half). It could easily have been called SSE4.
Even Intel’s own compiler barely gained support for the new instructions in the past month or two. So it is completely impossible that any outside benchmark could be using them properly.
Also, a very important factor: the Mac Pro ships with 2 1GB DIMMs, but it has four memory channels. Therefore the current benchmarks are all being performed with only HALF of the Mac Pro’s available bandwidth. Try it again with 4 or 8 DIMMs and you’ll see massive speedups on any memory-limited task.
McGherkinstein Jones needs to learn either to read the text or do the math.
“yeah but look at the Adobe Photoshop CS2 scores, both the G5 Quad and the G5 Dual were nearly three times faster than the Mac Pro. This is obviously the effect of Rosetta on the scores.“
The “1.25” mentioned is hardly triple the “0:45” or “0:48” noted, more like double. That would be “a minute and twenty five seconds” (85 seconds) vs “forty-five seconds” (45 seconds). It was fairly obvious ( see the “:”) even without the explanatory text.
That said, Andrew Harris is right – neither he, nor anyone with a decent G5, should upgrade yet if they rely on software that has not gone universal yet. Wait until the software your livelihood depends on is updated before you buy. Or switch software.
MW=keep … yeah, keep your G5
All of the G processors were fantastic chips…the only problem was that IBM stop designing them about 2 years ago…
So onwards and upwards.
So.
The latest Intel chips are 0.5% faster per clock cycle to the old G5.
If IBM would be allowed by Apple to release a 3ghz G5, then that would bet all Intel systems.
Since Woodcrest Xeons are the fastest processors on the planet, this means that the G5, witch has been out since 2002, was the fastest for 3 years.
Finally when Intel has a processor with 4 meg cache, 1333mhz bus, Altivec and a total new core, it can beat the G5 by 0.5% per clockcykle.
Whohooo!
This is progress.
The only reason that you should buy a quad Intel before a Quad G5 is that you can run Windows.
some problems with geekbench – use their results browser and find some Core 2 machines with slower clockspeeds and slower fsb’s which have the 5150 Xeons for breakfast! Must be compiler problems (gcc) for MacOS – stick with windows then with Intel.
I stand corrected, and since I’m posting this, I can, apparently, read. Therefore, it was my maths at fault, or rather the failure to make the conversion from minutes:seconds to decimal. That is, I left a step out.
The point, however, remains unaltered. As was subsequently admitted by DLMeyer. So what was he/she saying. At this point I speculate:
ner ner he got it wrong, I’m smarter than he is..
well, I say, good on you
MW: “hot” as in not
If you want to buy a car, you would have to get the mortgage loans. Furthermore, my sister commonly utilizes a term loan, which occurs to be the most reliable.
Wow, it is really rare thoughts connecting to this post! Even the online writing jobs will hardly make out with this.
Now, the free ringtones and just polyphonic ringtones seem to be really popular, but, there’re persons, which buy the hot thought like your.
If you don’t depart after what you need, you’ll never have it. If you don’t call for, the reply is regularly no. If you don’t get used to thesis writing , you’re continually in the same place.
Yeah absolutely very
practical for the lecturer it was pleasant to read about this post! If you need to get a great job firstofall you need resume writing. Study and don’t forget – if you have to work and study at the same time, there areold pros who are ready to balm you with your resume when you under time heaviness and looking for a great job.
There are various situations when you don’t got no free time to make your website optimization job. Quantities of businessmen leave their websites. It is incorrect, because the manual article submission company will be ready to support you.
When you need the particularized research paper, you will not have to create that by your own. Now we have very good developed market of custom writing services and that is practicable to order america essay paper.
Difficulties don’t influence on you? Thus, you’re ready to create the history essay. Or probably, you ought to begin from not complicated free essays to improve your writing technique!
Houses and cars are expensive and not everybody can buy it. But, credit loans are invented to aid people in such situations.
We can notice a tendency of enlarging of a number of writing corporations. Probably, that is just because a lot of students started to buy essay papers in the web.
Opting for dissertation writing and just some custom thesis, we do not determine such kind of the best thesis proposal referring to this good post.
Do you think that is not real to get high quality support for cheap? You are mistaking, just because you should ge all these when buy research papers online.
Do you think that’s very easy to check your papers? It can be more complicated than you think. Furthermore, you should surely use plagiarism detector to assure that all is good with your papers.
Sometimes some people do know the proper way to create the custom essays. But if you’re not experienced writer, you should find the distinguished buy essay paper service to order your pre-written research papers with the purpose to show your writing technique.
The data related with this post would be utilized by essays writing companies. To buy essay and to buy research paper wasn’t a problem for progressive men.
Generally, students don’t like the term research paper creating, however they still need to demonstrate their creative writing ability! Hence, some buy a essay service will be a good helper for term papers writing.