Dual 1.42 GHz G4 better than Single 1.8 GHz G5?

And within one year new apps will take full profit of the new architecture... and the numbers may well change.
 
It's interesting all the same. Everytime Motorola couldn't deliver decent speed upgrades, Apple switched to 'All Dual' lines. Now that we have a decent processor, we're back to 'high-end only!' for dual processor machines. Wouldn't it be all nice and dandy, if we could choose between 1 or 2 processors for all processor speeds? Some would buy a single 2 GHz machine, others a 1.6 GHz dual processor machine, depending on their work... Well... Right now, the old duals just seem like they're still a nice option.
 
Large choice means large inventory... therefore large immobilization of capital... nobody wants to do that today.

Better focus on a few models that are well differentiated. Of course we would like to be able to upgrade from one to another... have a continuum of models... but of course it has a cost.
 
And of course, the dual 2 Ghz model beat everything.

I agree with Chevy, I think Apple's limiting the options a bit to keep things simple. Remember they heydey of the waning 90's, when we had the 8500 and the 8600 and the 9500 and the 9600, and everything else, and you had to research every one to see which was right for you? Well, as it is, you have to research a lot fewer machines to see which is right for you now.
 
The G5 is, essentially, just a faster G4 processor.

Being 64-bit doesn't make the machine process faster. All it allows you to do is address more memory and be able to compute larger numbers.

So a Dual 1.4GHz machine would obviously be faster than a 1.8GHz single processor.

Now, if more applications take on the ability to address more RAM rather than utilise VM, and then get rewritten to fully exploit the 64-bit architecture, that may change somewhat.

In the meantime, think Dual.

This time next year we should have dual 3GHz machines on the market. That will be something to have =)
 
im no expert. but im sure that with panther... and better development of apps for G5... even the singe processor g5s will show a big increase in speed!!!


let me just say that i worked a bit on a 1.6 G5 the other day,,, and i can only describe it in 1 word: BEAST :p
but personally i would prefer a dual g5. i think the price for the dual g5 is amazing...
 
Either way, any machine that you can see through is infinitely cooler than one you can't (unless it's a PC, of course). I went to CompUSA today to see if the G5's were in (and they had about 20 1.6's and 1.8's on a top shelf), and the first thing I noticed on the display machine was that I could see the motion from one of the internal fans.

Ooooohhhhh yeah!
 
Some more tests from MacAddict:
http://www.macaddict.com/news/news_007.html

"In summary, we discovered that although the dualie -- and the single-processor 1.8GHz G5 model that our reviews editor, Niko, bought with his own cold hard cash last week -- are the fastest Macs we've ever seen, the old adage that "RAM is the best Photoshop accelerator" remains true. In spades."

"My favorite comparison: Rotating a 115MB PSD file on a Quicksilver with 512MB of RAM takes, on average, 41.25 seconds; on the Dual 2GHz G5 with 2GB of DDR SDRAM, the same task takes 2.15 seconds -- that's, oh, about 20 times as fast."

Enjoy! :D
 
What everyone has seem to have forgotten is that the current G5's are shippning with a 32bit OS. Now when Panther is finaly released the code will be compiled and optimized for 64bit processing. With a 64bit finder and 64bit app we should see an enourmous increase in processing performance. --- It just seems unfair that these tests are conducted with 10.2.7. Now when we get the test results from 10.3 64bit and 64bit photoshop the results will be different.
 
I am not a technical expert, but I have done a bit of digging to find out just how much we can expect to gain with 64-bit processing. The answer is none, depends and a lot.

For day to day stuff, you can expect virtually no benefit. Word, emailing, browsing, etc. Not that those apps really need much speed boosting.

Photoshop may benefit a little, but not a as much as you would think.

The biggest benefactor on the list was...games. Yes, games. Followed by high end video and 3D and database apps. All would have to be compiled to take advantage, of course, but my understanding is that Unreal(?) or Doom(?) is being recompiled for 64-bit processing in the future.

Call me a cynic, but I am also not expecting big boosts from Panther as far utilizing 64-bit operations to impact the overall performance of the machine across the board. Marginal, yes. Big, no.

I predict a slow trickle of optimizations over the next two years, at which point we, as a group, can say with a straight face that 64-bit is the bomb. It will not be that way for a while.

It would be in Apple's best interest to optimize FCP for the G5 and 64-bit. That's their flagship app and it needs to really shine. I'm quite sure they're working round the clock to do so.

Did anyone see this?:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/09/12/finaltouch/index.php?redirect=1063464320000

"FinalTouch software lets users process infinite color effects in real-time at a resolution of 2K (2048 x 1556) on a G5. The software provides more than 30 color nodes to be applied simultaneously to original film scans to create real-time color corrections, effects and grades." Holy crap, that's some serious performance!
 
Here's an example of times for Seti@Home (5 units) benchmarks. It should be noted I use my G5 as a print server and normally during these benchmarks, such as Word, Excel, email, web browsing, IM, compiling, web site editting, installing (still) even a little SimCity4.

165m34.780s
191m51.930s
213m26.660s
166m29.170s
217m55.470s

Total: 955m18.01s
Average per unit: 3hours 11minutes

You tell me what has more potential as I'm sure the software hasn't caught up yet.
 
dktrickey: But Panther will have more optimization for the PowerPC 970 and more 64bit code all the same.
 
The 1.6 Ghz and 1.8 Ghz G5's are, of course, single-processor machines, while the G4's mentioned are dual processor machines. Mac OS X is optimized for dual processors, much more so than 9, and I would expect that it would take advantage of the second CPU's quite a bit.
 
1m 38s for that "rotate image" test on my 700mhz G4 iMac with 512mb sdr ram.
so that means dual 2ghz G5 with same ammount of ram is "only" 4 times faster. I'd expect more than that from the world’s fastest personal computer...

after all we are talking about 2*2ghz vs 700mhz, 2*1ghz FSB vs 100mhz FSB etc.
 
the link that Hulkaros posted was a very interesting test concernin photoshop and RAM ... i think u should read.

besides that. i think we should all wait for panther and then judge the G5... and even that is not good enough.. cause its true that all software has not been truely optimizzzed for G5 :)
 
Remember the G% does have some bugs of the G4 (it may have its own that we don't know yet): it can be used to efficiently make machines with 4 of more CPUs !
 
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