20" iMac Intel Duo vs Powermac Dual g5

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esr2

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
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Any thoughts on how the new iMac Intel Duo 2Ghz will stack up against a Dual G5 powermac?.. assuming same ram, etc.

thanks

-esr
 
It depends what you're going to be using it for, but the new imac *should* be as fast if not a bit faster. I assume you're talking about the dual 2ghz in your sig...
 
yeah.

i bit the bullet, i'll have a 20" imac hopefully in a week or two at the most, and i'll know for sure.

i love the Powermac but the damn thing is so f*ing big. If i can get the same or even 80% of the performance i've got now in a much smaller form i'll be happy... plus if i read the tech specs correctly, i can use my 20" ACD with the 20" imac... fun! and odd.

-esr
 
yup, you sure can use your 20" ACD, and you'll be somewhat future-proof ( :p ) with intel-based Mac
 
esr2 said:
i love the Powermac but the damn thing is so f*ing big.
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I'll pay shipping to help you dispose of it... in my room. :D

Please share your experiences when you get it. I'd LOVE to go Mac (at least have one) sometime in the future. I have an old G3 and a G4, both of which I've loaded up with Panther. They just don't cut the butter like a new Mac would.
 
yup and i figure it won't be very long until core applications are all fine and dandy on intel duo (office, adobe, etc)

will advise on how i like it in about a week. the powermac is actually up for sale now... though I won't be giving it away for free as it's sale will help me purchase this one ;) .

-esr
 
when compared side by side in any way you can, the intels are just better

PowerPC processors suck, quite frankly
 
PowerPC processors suck, quite frankly
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That has got to be the biggest pile of bullshit I've seen all day. It's the G4 that "sucks," and it doesn't even do it at everything. The G5 is quite compeditive with the Opteron and Xeon. And if you quote Doom 3 framerates or something such, I'm going to have to laugh at you.
 
HopePoisoned said:
PowerPC processors suck, quite frankly
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which is very saddening because PPC is a superior architecture to x86 in just about every way, but unfortunately it wasn't developed enough to actually get a killer cpu out of it. x86, though it sucks, has been researched and developed so much that it can beat out the under-developed PPC cpu's. Quite a shame, really.
 
HopePoisoned said:
when compared side by side in any way you can, the intels are just better

PowerPC processors suck, quite frankly
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You my friend are an idiot.
 
go check out the FormZ forums and tell me that the PowerPC's suck. They were king until the dual core opterons...

I am really curious to see how these new intelmacs perform. It's sad it's intel, but hey, if they really are 3 times faster, you can't really complain
 
Eh...if you consider G5's +/- to Opty's...then the Intel Duo only really has a chance of being equal at this point. When the speeds ramp up a bit more, than you will see the bigger increase. Right now the biggest advantage is in laptop segment, where Apple had an embarassingly long run with the G4.
 
Too bad Freescale never released that 2GHz dualcore G4+ with a 25 watt power consumption and on-chip everything... :(
 
Fine, fine.


Too bad Freescale never released that 2GHz dualcore G4+ with a 25 watt power consumption and on-chip everything quickly enough...
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
That has got to be the biggest pile of bullshit I've seen all day. It's the G4 that "sucks," and it doesn't even do it at everything. The G5 is quite compeditive with the Opteron and Xeon. And if you quote Doom 3 framerates or something such, I'm going to have to laugh at you.
Click to expand...

The G4 actually has a faster vector engine than the G5 (clock for clock). The thing that sucks about the G4 is the slow front side bus. The G4 is plenty fast but it spends most of its time waiting for data to come across the bus.
 
Eva_Unit_0 said:
which is very saddening because PPC is a superior architecture to x86 in just about every way, but unfortunately it wasn't developed enough to actually get a killer cpu out of it. x86, though it sucks, has been researched and developed so much that it can beat out the under-developed PPC cpu's. Quite a shame, really.
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What specifically about the x86 architecture sucks? I assume that you've got some knowledge about microprocessor design?
 
Thud said:
The G4 actually has a faster vector engine than the G5 (clock for clock). The thing that sucks about the G4 is the slow front side bus. The G4 is plenty fast but it spends most of its time waiting for data to come across the bus.
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Did I say anything that made it seem like I thought the G5 didn't have a worse Velocity Engine? :p Anyway, you speak the truth. The anemic FSB is the G4's main weakness. The even more anemic FPU is another weakness.


What specifically about the x86 architecture sucks? I assume that you've got some knowledge about microprocessor design?
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Lack of registers, for example. The whole design is like a whimsical building that didn't have much of a plan behind it. A room added here, a bit of the roof missing, an extra chimney for some reason... With a small nation's GDP for a decade or so, however, x86 turned out quite nice. Of course, the increased transistor budget played its part as well.
 
I dont know which one is faster / better....

but I will tell you what I would rather have if I had to choose

The Intellimac ;)
 
Ill be ordering mine in the next weeks as well, my buddy just got his 20" ill just do a 17" because I really dont have alot of deskspace on my other desk. A couple guys at work thought they sounded intriguing as well, I love my mini but its time to upgrade :)
 
the way i see it, the G4 is outdated and the G5 runs too damn hot, i dont care about wattage use at all. The coolers on those machines are massive and they STILL produce a ton of heat. I seriously wonder how long the chip would last on amd or p4 cooling....I work on them all the time, i have a dual 1.8 G5 tower that runs so freaking hot....
 
I was gonna pm this to esr, but thought I'd share;

I had a chance to spend some time on a new 20" intel-based imac (why bother with the 17" :p ). It's hard to say in hard numbers how much (or if) it actually is faster. It did launch the preloaded apps as fast, if not faster, than the quad G5...and I could go through the dock, open everything and it all opened very fast. All of the graphics stuff (expose spreading out windows, opening dashboard, the "add widget" splash and iMovie/idvd themes) all ran very smoothly. I ran xbench on it, which I assume is using rosetta, and the processor alone score was 108, IIRC the 20" 2.1ghz imac scored something like 130. Pretty impressive IMO that emulated performance is so close to native.
 
XBench has been a Universal Binary since late July. They were one of, if not the first to release a Universal Binary to the public.
 
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