The specs for the G5 machines that were accidentally posted at the Apple store a few days ago were correct. Steve Jobs just announced G5 Powermacs at the WWDC conference. He’s calling it the “world’s fastest personal computer.” They just finished doing a demo in which a Dual 2 GHz G5 vastly outperforms a High-end Dual Xeon. Read more for preliminary specs. Prices will be $2000-3000. Oh, and the Panther OSX update was announced, but we already knew about that.Update: Official specs are up at the Apple Store. Also see Apple’s G5 Benchmark Page.
Note: this is a fast and dirty transcription from the conference floor:
Single/Dual processors. Up to 8GB Memory. Can talk to memory @ 6.4GB/s. 4x Superdrive in each. Geforce fx5200 in lower, radeon 9600 pro in higher mode.
System – G5 System Controller – dedicated bandwidth to each subsystem. IBM is fabricating it. 6x faster than G4, 8GB bandwidth, 1processor doesn’t slow down the other one. 400mhz DDR memory, AGP 8x Pro, 133mhz PCI-X slots. Hypertransport. Serial ATA. 1.5GB/s bandwidth. independent interfaces to each drive. Rest of the i/o – high performance. optical digital i/o and analog i/o, fw800 ,usb 2.0
Massively parallel. Up to 250 inflight instructions. — can be processed at the same time. The G4 can do 16. Floating point “monster”. Two fully symetric integer units. massive branch prediction logic.
Fastest front sidebus – ever. designed for dual processor systems.
Blurry photo of case (digital pic taken of big screen at keynote speech)
Keep a glass of water nearby if you’re an aspiring student.
These boxes look pretty dang sweet. Finally Apple has some hardware that can properly run OSX. I wish I had the money for one of these. I’v got a fantasy that IBM will want to try to push the PPC970 into the general, non-apple workstation market and which could allow for some cheaper pricing on these kind of boxes….but alas I doubt that will happen….
Wow!
Only $2,999 for the Dual GHz!
… the round case times are gone 🙁
Must… sell… everything… I own…
Must… have… new… Mac…
I haven’t gotten a darn thing done all day… except to fantasize over the new macs and listening to every word that Jobs says.
Wow
COOL
F***ing A!
I’m impressed – can you tell?
–
Perhaps apple is targeting greater penetration into the creative and scientific work station user as well as servers. That could mean that we’ll see a cheaper G4 offering for us mortals.
Well, it’s clear you were all wrong.
However don’t let this stop you from insisting that Apple must switch to x86 or die. Those of us who own Apple hardware really get a kick out of that.
$3000 is an excellent price for the dual 2GHz PPC970, and will be certainly comparable pricewise to a dual 3.2GHz Xeon system, whenever that becomes available. For the time being, the dual 2GHz PPC970 will be the fastest personal computer available.
There’s some details I’m still not clear on which I’m certain we will find out as soon as the Apple Store finishes updating. Namely, I’m wondering if the DDR400 memory controller is dual channel or not…
But I think it’s quite clear at this point that Apple is once again the performance leader. For how long? As long as IBM maintains a commitment to developing the PPC970 line.
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHA!!
HHAhahhahahahhahahah… h aa…h….
<chokes and dies>
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~willmore/G5Side.jpg
To quote the Darkness, I think its growing on me. The aluminum looks schweet.
So the G5 outperforms the Xeon on Apple’s own test. I’m not impressed. Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. I want to see how it really performs in practical situations in a variety of operations. There is no single computer designed that can do EVERYTHING well. Before we go all wild and crazy and drool all over them, let’s find out some more about what they really can do in the months that are before us. Apple has been guilty before of just short of outright lying over it’s computers’ capabilities before: anyone else remember the hype over the G4 being a “legitimate” supercomputer?
Give me a break!
Until one or more of these beasts show up at the local CompUSA. I’ll make sure to wear a bib, so I won’t drool all over the floor while checking them out!
Heheheh.
Yes I can agree until there are some real benchmarks done and real world testing from independent’s with no axes to grind, the speeds will have to be taken with a grain of salt.
That being said, with a 3Ghz promised in 12 months I think IBM is going to be actively upgrading the 970. So I think that the era of Apple being if not faster at least comparable to X86 machines might finally be here to stay.
G5 on apple’s site for £1999 us and uk
It’s time to re-read this article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,939886,00.asp
Congratulations Apple
Anonymous, I honestly expect a 2ghz 64bit processor to outperform the leading edge 3ghz 32bit processor. Even if it doesn’t I love the feel of my Dual 800mhz G4 already, this thing can’t be any slower, It’s already sold, I was waiting for the next big leap from Apple. Looks like my G4 is getting sold!
>> So the G5 outperforms the Xeon on Apple’s own test.
Ummm.. no. Industry standard SPEC benchmark results were shown, demonstrating the dual 2Ghz G5 outperforming a dual 3Ghz Xeon.
I’m a pc user but the G5 is a real impressive machine. I won’t give up x86 completely but I think I can make some space in my office for a new G5.
This gets old.
Every time I went out and looked up the prices for a decent _quality_ PC (and quality for me includes more than GHz or GB), I ended up in the same regions as an equivalent Mac, especially when I count in my own time.
So I can’t buy a new computer every two years, and you know what: I don’t have to. Good equipment lasts, and I simply save a bit longer and buy a new computer every three or four years – it’s that simple.
1. Does this mean I can get a dual 2ghz Mac for $3,000? Or is that just the price of the CPU?
2. How well do you think these will perform compared to the 64-bit Athlons?
3. I know this is going to sound like a troll, but it’s really not … how much will OSX slow these CPUs down?
I’m impressed. The G5 looks to be a great processor for the PowerMac. On paper this looks like a real competitor for Prescott. I’m really curious to see how the G5, Prescott, and Opteron compare. Dual G5 vs. dual Opteron will also be really interesting. Maybe Intel will finally make dual processor systems available for us mortals to compete with Apple on the high end.
That said, I’ll reserve judgement on whether it really beats a P4 until I see INDEPENDENT benchmarks. Apple has “stretched” the truth before (a la G4).
Any idea when these are going to be available? Prescott is set for Q4, I think. From the soud of it, the G5 should be available much sooner, but when?
Also, I’m just quickly scanning some of the conference, but it looks like they are puting a Radeon 9600 in their high end boxes. WHAT???? A processor like this DESERVES at least a 9700 Pro or an FX5900. Maybe the 9600 Pro is the base configuration. This would make sense for 2D, audio, and scientific conputing.
Jobs said they are available in August.
So the G5 outperforms the Xeon on Apple’s own test. I’m not impressed. Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. I want to see how it really performs in practical situations in a variety of operations.
I do as well… I can’t wait for application benchmarks. The old G4s were holding their own on AltiVec-optimized applications even with an enormous MHz gap, and also with the AltiVec unit executing instructions faster than the bus could supply the processor with data.
On any AltiVec-optimized application, I expect a new G5 to decimate the same application on an PC in existance (or for that matter, on a dual 3.2GHz Xeon when it is released)
As for “So the G5 outperforms the Xeon on Apple’s own test.” that’s not entirely correct. The G5 is outperforming the Xeon on the closest thing the industry has to a standard benchmark. Furthermore, this won’t test the performance of vector operations, merely raw integer and floating point performance.
I think it’s safe to say the tide has turned again, and things are back to the way they were following the release of the G4… now it’s time for Apple users to talk about how comparatively slow PCs are. *grin*
Now it will be time to see if IBM can deliver on their commitments where Motorola failed, and I for one have faith that they will.
Oh My Gawd! I just creamed my pants! I can’t wait to see how fast iChat runs with Panther and one of these babies.
I want to see this in above paper-launch quantities as much as I have wanted this in the past for hihest end P4. I think what really needs to step up to the plate here are the boxes that everyone will go for at large, that is the 1,6 + 1,8 models.
Just noticed that you can see a video of the keynote here:
http://stream.apple.akadns.net/ (click Watch Now)
Lets say the G5 is the fastest pc out there. I actually love the PowerPC line over X86. BUT, Apple is suckering you again. The hardware is fast, but how about the OS??? Is Panther 64bit? Or is it 32bit OS that a 64bit processor will emulate and ergo not fully utilize the hardware advantage?
Apple has a looong history of beefing up their hardware and selling you a crappy slow OS to run on top. Remember the MacOS on PowerPC? You got a PowerPC chip emulating a 68K one to run MacOs.
Wake up! The new G5 are good only if you slap a 64bit Linux on them, or AIX for that matter. Apple may have the hotest hardware, but they will sell you something that you cannot fully exploit with Panther, I’ll bet.
Agreed, altho I was personally hoping for prices in the HOME desktop range rather than the higher end business range. I’m a potential PPC 970 customer, but at those prices I’ll have to stick with my current machine (an AMD T-bird) a lot longer than I had hoped.
No relief for the poor computer user here. 
from the apple store G4 power mac (mini-tower) with a 1.25 GHz G4 is 1299. Not bad.
Apple is finally priced in the mass market. That is a big deal.
£1,549.00p
For new technology that is competertive.
PowerMac G5 available September 1, 20003
Get off the crack, panther is 64bit.
… it´s a beauty: http://www.apple.com/powermac/
You should have done the benchmarks against a dual opteron 1.8GHz PC. And what about some standard benchmarks like SPECint and SPECfp? Oh I know – there the G5 doesn’t have any chance against an dual Opteron or Xeon.
Wonder how well this thing will sell in europe since apple seems to have dissed them in the past….
now we have to live through lots of articles on how faaaaaaaaaaaaaaast it is compared to x86. nobody cares except mac addicts. people who own macs will buy macs. people who dont, wont. this isnt going to get them an increase in owner%%. but it will make existing mac users upgrade.
its bad enough reading x86 vs mac articles, now we will be flooded with mac vs x86 articles going the other way.
my only hope is ars + aces do an indepth technical review and give me something interesting to read rather than look my photoshop can do blur in .0000000005ms or some garbage.
..All your PCs have already been smoked by the G5 ..
This is an historical day for Apple my friends …
Enought with the PC trolls, OK? Who the heck cares if you are or not “impressed”?
First off the benchmarks are there, they are using your beloved Spec. Now that don’t show apple starving for performance, now all of the sudden industry standards are biased, riiiigggh? No since they pick the fastest processors from Intel, which are faster than the initial Opterons BTW, now you complain that they did not used Opterons in their benchmarks. I am guessing that if hte G5 was 10x as fast as anything in the market you would be bitching because it is only 10x as fast, and you built your beloved PC for $4.99 and this and that. Enough really.
You would never buy a mac, nor will ever consider one. So just move along then.
Now let the rest of us drool over some really kick ass boxen.
I want one I want one I want one
Seriously, the new tower design is DROOL-WORTHY, havent been excited about Macs lately, but the G5 is just beautiful (aside from the extremely impressive specs)
The quicktime stream show live queris ala beos this is GREAT !!!
—
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid
RE: Apple is suckering you again!
By alan6101 (IP: —.ATLNGAHP.covad.net) – Posted on 2003-06-23 19:33:01
Get off the crack, panther is 64bit.
***************************
eweek article: 64-bit Macs May Outpace ‘Panther’
“Since the PowerPC 970 is backward-compatible with 32-bit code written for the G4, Apple intends to release Smeagol to fill Q37’s software bill until Panther ships, sources said.”
http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=43076,00.asp
Perhaps there is a news update to this that I am not aware of.
Apple is suckering you again. The hardware is fast, but how about the OS??? Is Panther 64bit?
Yes.
Or is it 32bit OS that a 64bit processor will emulate and ergo not fully utilize the hardware advantage?
No
Wake up! The new G5 are good only if you slap a 64bit Linux on them, or AIX for that matter.
Uhhh, AIX is not going to support HyperTransport/NUMA.
A move to a 64-bit processor will benefit MacOS X *much* more than it will Linux. MacOS X currently suffers from a rather inefficient ABI on 32-bit PPC, and a move to 64-bit PPC will allow them to design a much more efficient ABI for all 64-bit applications.
Apple may have the hotest hardware, but they will sell you something that you cannot fully exploit with Panther, I’ll bet.
Perhaps you should read a bit before writing this sort of comment… it’s been known for months that Panther will include a 64-bit kernel and userland (as well as legacy 32-bit supprt, ala Solaris)
“Wake up! The new G5 are good only if you slap a 64bit Linux on them”
No such creature. GNU/Linux is a 32bit OS that has been only partially adapted to the 64 bit arena. It will never be completely 64 bit either because there are benefits to keeping some of the basic OS applications 32bit such as memory footprint size. There are some fundamental problems with getting true 64bit support in Linux because the glibc and gcc are limiting factors in the support.
So you are basically comparing 2 operating systems on the same side of the railroad tracks. Both GNU/Linux and OS-X were originally 32 bit OSes, so the real question is just how much was Darwin and OS-X changed from the original Mach and BSD sources, and how good are the 64 bit libraries and kernel in OS-X and Darwin? That I can’t answer having never used either one nor have I audited the code base for Darwin. Doesn’t seem like you can truely answer that either.
Just thought I’d point out the falacy of the argument over comparing original architechtural code bases while trying to make a performance statement when both systems started out with the very same 32bit heritage.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
i dont consider my post to be trolling. my work box is an 8way power4 16GB ram 5.3TB disk.. the ppc970s _BIG_ brother, not cut down in any way. with a bigger backplane than you can imagine and a faster disk to io subsytem than you can dream of.
somebody can point me to fft performance of this thing, especially with matlab. I’m not an apple user today but it would be easily motivated if this thing could do my simulations in 1/2 the time my dual 2GH P4 does today. Performance sells hardware.
/jarek
GNU/Linux is a 32bit OS that has been only partially adapted to the 64 bit arena. It will never be completely 64 bit either because there are benefits to keeping some of the basic OS applications 32bit such as memory footprint size. There are some fundamental problems with getting true 64bit support in Linux because the glibc and gcc are limiting factors in the support.
—-
bwahah..
thats why linux on alpha has been 64bit clean for how many years now? same goes for linux sparc-64.. or freebsd alpha which has also been 64bit clean for years…
If the Dual scores 15 in the test and the P4 3 GHz scores 8, than a single P4 3GHz would be still slightly faster than a hypothetical G5 single. Now we don’t have single G5 2GHz, but only 1,6 or 1,8 for 95% of the customers. If you break it down, a mainstream P4 2,4 will be faster compared to these and cheaper as well. That is the reason why Apple won’t sell more machines than before.
I loved most comments here : some about how better 64 bits is , etc…
First, 64 bits will mean, at first SLOWER CPU, and a lot more memory. 64 bits mean that all basics variables will require 64 bits instead of 32 bits. But it will be good for applications which demand 64 bits precision anyway ( matlab, for exemple ).
Second : the bench ARE impressive, that’s for sure. PIV was already good for floating point executions ( except in denormal mod ), and G5 seems to be really faster. I guess memory bandwith is one of the key point here.
BUT… It is useless for most computers users. As a student, 2000$ is far from affordable, and my 700euros PC is so sufficient for now.
The new hardware is quite well priced and I love the minimalist look of the G5. But IMO the OS is at least as important as the hardware and I’m worried about what Apple are doing to the OS X Finder.
I’m far from happy with the current Finder, but Apple replacing it with ‘the familiar iTunes interface’* worries me a lot.
I should really reserve judgement until I actually use it, but this seems to make the Finder more like Windows Explorer, I fear it could lose even more of the things that made the classic Mac Finder so elegant. I hope you can still customise the toolbar (I’d want to get rid of the totally pointless Action menu) and I’m not going to be happy if I can’t turn the sidebar off. Maybe it’s time for me to start looking for an alternative Mac OS X file manager.
It will certainly be interesting to see what John Siracusa makes of the changes.
*I suppose that explains why Apple have given the Finder a brushed metal UI, even though it breaks their own UI guidelines.
Wow! I’m already drooling and I haven’t even heard the keynote!
Its kinda funny how the threads work here. For months we had the “No, they’re not going w/ the 970s, they have to use the ClawHammer…..” and others saying “No, IBM is going to supply them w/ the 970s”. Well, I guess all the rumors and bickering is over until the G6 comes out (can’t wait
).
As a student, this system would cost me about 1/2 year’s tuition. Hopefully, by next year – when I intend on upgrading or buying a new system – they’ll have dropped in price and will be on a student purchasing plan. Windows will be gone from my system…..I will be free at last.
Can’t wait for more details on Panther and to watch the keynote.
BTW – if you go to the Apple store, there are PDF whitepapers on the 970 and brochures on the G5 up right now.
Get off the SPEC issue. It’s a non-sensical benchmark that I’ve seen artificially boosted time and time again. The ONLY “benchmark” that matters is real world production line applications where you can find out how well the system really performs with today’s software. How many ftp requests can I handle? Can I render my next masterpiece drawing while still listening to a ogg without bringing the system to a crawl or skipping the music stream. How fast can I do the render compared to my coworker on such-and-such computer and will I need to go out to lunch to wait for it to finish?
No one CARES about SPEC marks because it’s just as easy to lie with them as it is to artificially boost FPS from a graphics card. The real question is will the average worker Joe see a major difference at his desk with REAL LIFE applications AND will he think the $2k to $3k worth the price for what it gives back? That’s not a question you can answer with SPEC or any other artificial benchmark whether it’s industry standard or not. Doesn’t matter who made the CPU, Intel, Motorolla, IBM, or little green men from Mars, if Joe doesn’t approve from what he sees on his or his friend’s desk, he won’t buy!
I want one real bad.
Perhaps you need some computer architecture classes. As everyone should realize, due to (for example) cache coherence issues and synchronization issues, SMP (that’s multiprocessing, since you seem slow) does not scale linearly with the number of processors. It’s a shame that the numbers released today don’t feature a single G5 (say the 1.8 GHz) to show how it (likely) blows the doors off a top-of-the-line P4.
KOMPRESSOR
SPECint from http://www.spec.org
G5 – 2GHz: 800
P4 -3.0GHz: 1164 (Intel D875PBZ motherboard)
Xeon 3.06GHz: 1098 (Dell Precision WorkStation 650)
But Apple lies and says on http://www.apple.com/powermac/:
Xeon 3.06GHz: 836
P4 3GHz: 889
Does Apple really have to do those things? Maybe yes, because even an Power4+ with only 1.45GHz is faster than an 2GHz G5.
A-XP -2.2GHz: 1044 (Athlon XP 3200+ Asus A7N8X )
Opteron 1.8GHz: 1095
Apple does even more cheat at SPECfp:
the P4 and xeon numbers are completely wrong:
http://www.apple.com:
G5: 840
P4 3GHz: 693
http://www.spec.org:
P4 3GHz: 1213 (Intel D875PBZ motherboard)
So only if Apple divides P4s numbers by two a G5 is faster.
So I can’t find any new PC processor that is as slow as an G5 (at least at SPEC)
“Is Panther 64bit?
Yes
“Or is it 32bit OS that a 64bit processor will emulate and ergo not fully utilize the hardware advantage?”
No, the OS is fully 64 bit
“Wake up! The new G5 are good only if you slap a 64bit Linux on them, or AIX for that matter.”
No, the benchmarks showed that Panther ran it faster than the Xeon.
“Apple may have the hotest hardware, but they will sell you something that you cannot fully exploit with Panther, I’ll bet.”
Kepp telling yourself that if that allows you to sleep at night
” thats why linux on alpha has been 64bit clean for how many years now? same goes for linux sparc-64.. or freebsd alpha which has also been 64bit clean for years…”
Try again, Linux on Alpha for 64 bit computing uses a drop in glibc-like lib originally from DEC that Compaq continued work on, it’s not stock glibc. Sparc64 hasn’t been around for a LONG time. ALL current distros of late for Sparc are Sparc32 because gcc 2.95 and glibc 2.2 did NOT support Sparc64 processors, only Sparc32 and Sparc64 in 32 bit mode. It’s only recently that gcc 3.2 and glibc 2.3 have partially working 64bit sparc code.
FreeBSD for Alpha is only 64bit toolchain and kernel, any of the 3rd party stuff from GNU are as likely not 32 bit still. I’m taking a guess on that one, but I won’t back down on it unless I hear from FreeBSD Alpha coreteam.
The GNU toolchain as I said before is the limiting factor for Linux 64bit support. Some of the most important “ports” it’s supposed to support are broken. This is why Linux on Sparc isn’t going anywhere currently. All the distros are Sparc32 rather than Sparc64.
“there the G5 doesn’t have any chance against an dual Opteron or Xeon.”
Sorry, they showed SPEC and real world benchmarks which prove you wrong.
“It’s a shame that the numbers released today don’t feature a single G5 (say the 1.8 GHz) to show how it (likely) blows the doors off a top-of-the-line P4.”
Ermm… everybody agrees on that Steve Jobs is last person in the known universe to NOT publish something that would should Apple is faster, hell, he even sold this mocked up Photoshop BS for years and you ate it. Don’t even start trying to tell me they didn’t have time to benchmark the single CPU models….
I heard that the SPEC benchmarks were done by VeriTest (independantly) so these benchmarks were NOT done by Apple. I don’t know if they said this in the keynote, but I was getting updates by someone at CNN and that is what I was told. I don’t have any way to verify this so take it for what it is worth.
“First, 64 bits will mean, at first SLOWER CPU, and a lot more memory. 64 bits mean that all basics variables will require 64 bits instead of 32 bits.”
No only pointers must be stored as 64 bit values, it still increases pressure for memory and cache but the PPC970 should have no problem handling it.
“But it will be good for applications which demand 64 bits precision anyway ( matlab, for exemple ).”
If it requires 64 bit today it is because of double precision floating-point values and the speed of those have nothing to do with if the processor is 32 bit or 64 bit. That said I though that matlab stored all values internally as fractions…
“Second : the bench ARE impressive, that’s for sure. PIV was already good for floating point executions ( except in denormal mod ), and G5 seems to be really faster. I guess memory bandwith is one of the key point here.”
Yes it is very impressive and for the second time in my life Im tempted to buy a mac (the first where when PPC seemed to be the only future – Intel showed that it wasn’t so).
Compare the prices in the UK and USA…
The top model –
2999 dollars in USA
2299 pounds in UK (3,833.52 USD)
It should be ~1800 pounds!!!
They are overcharging sooo much!!!!!!!
Is there a way to order from USA to UK?
Indeed Panther is supposed to be 64bit [we will see when it comes out how much legacy 32-bit it will use]
But check this out:
Taken from
http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=43076,00.asp
***
“June 9, 2003
64-Bit Macs May Outpace ‘Panther’
By Nick Ciarelli and Matthew Rothenberg
Apple Computer Inc. is nearing the release of desktop systems featuring IBM’s 64-bit PowerPC 970 chip, sources report—but a 64-bit version of Mac OS X may lag behind by a month or two.
Sources said that the IBM chip will make its first appearance in a new Power Mac known internally as Q37. However, sources said, Q37 won’t ship with a 64-bit version of Mac OS X, limiting OS performance gains in the initial release. Instead, Q37 will launch with a special build train of the current Mac OS X Version 10.2, a k a Jaguar.
This build, code-named Smeagol, will run on the new chip but won’t take advantage of many of its key features, including 64-bit support. Sources said Apple’s goal for Smeagol is to deliver Mac OS X performance at least “on par” with what Jaguar could achieve on Motorola G4 chips running at the same speed; the move will allow Apple to ship the new hardware before Mac OS X 10.3, a k a Panther, can take advantage of all the new processor’s capabilities… ”
***
So Panther is 64bit, but are they going to ship Panther with the G5? Or are they shipping 32bit Smeagol, er, to sucker you?
Is not like Apple hasn’t done this before. If they don’t and ship 64bit CPU with a 64bit OS, I’ll give them credit and say that it is a step in the right direction.
I am glad Steve Jobs is at Apple and not in a religious cult, otherwise many of you would have taken the fatal kool-aide. 🙂
For the record I like the G4 and G5 hardware, I do not like the lack of performance of MacOS X although I like the looks, but I never put eye candy over performance for my home computing.
Don’t believe me? Load YDL on a Mac, and realize how much the MacOsX was rather a powerful box.
But alas, I can agree to disagree.
Anyone else notice that the Apple Store says, “Step 1: Select Your Power Macintosh G3”?
Check http://live.macobserver.com/article/2003/06/wwdc2003_keynote.shtml
Conflicting numbers between 2.1 and 2.5, but the agreement is that it (a G5 2x2GH) could do your simulations in less than half the time a Xeon 2x3GH could.
Apple had an independent company do the SPEC tests and used GCC 3.3 on both systems. Yes, everyone whine now about how GCC isn’t the most efficient compiler. Wah wah wah. If they’d compared ICC and CodeWarrior, everyone would have whined that they’re not directly comparable. Wah wah wah.
Jared: A co-founder of Mathematica was at the keynote and said, more or less, “The G5’s competition for our software is Unix workstations costing twice as much, not PCs.”
This is interesting how well it follows my prediction from a few days ago, though. The low end machine is under $2000, the high-end one is under $3000 (and you <em>can’t</em> get brand-name dual processor Intel workstations–make no mistake, these are workstation-class machines–for less) and gosh, PC partisans are doing their damndest to be dismissive of it anyway.
To paraphrase Futurama’s Bender, bite my shiny aluminum cheese-grater ass.
yup it is effectively gone. Market share gap will be slowly closed next (closed not ended). G4 mini tower for $1299 will do that.
PC days of glory are closing fast. but you know what they say. nothing ever lasts. sorry pc fans.
Everyone knows how is the Value of the Euro today but apple keeps on with the prices of europe system to much high.
3.358,80 Euros for the 3000 USD. … hey !!!! when do you want to start selling more units in europe? and stop Apple complaining for the low market share.
PS: it is nice to note that ,80, I wuld be happy to know who was so proud to publish the price with ,80 at the end
I was part of a Mac shop a year ago (or so). I had one of the first G4 cubes when it came out. I was nothing but satisfied.
I am hoping 2 things:
#1 That I can afford the new G5!
#2 If #1 is false, that G4’s will come down in price. : )
The Spec tests published on the performance page are probably just nonsense. I checked SPECint rate base on the apple page which gave the dual G5 17.2 and the dual xeon (Dell Precision 650) 16.7. Then I looked at the results on http://www.spec.org and noticed that the same Dell got 21.7 (dual Opteron 1.8 got 24.0).
If I understand it correctly they just took a Dell computer and used gcc 3.3 with unclear compiler settings and got the value 16.7. Then they used that value for marketing purposes.
Megol said
“If it requires 64 bit today it is because of double precision floating-point values and the speed of those have nothing to do with if the processor is 32 bit or 64 bit. That said I though that matlab stored all values internally as fractions… ”
Of course it ha something to do. Because a 64 bits cpu will have 64 bits precision for simple word value, and 128 bits for double word ( I don’t see many applications whi will require more than 128 bits precision for floating point values… )
So, basically, when you can, you’re doing floating point calculations in 32 bits ( float ) on a PIV. Matlab works natively only at 64 bits ( because of all the matrix stuff, perticularly matrix inversion, which is sensitive about precision ). So you have to do all the computations in 64 bits on a 32 bits machine. Not very convenient.
“No only pointers must be stored as 64 bit values, it still increases pressure for memory and cache but the PPC970 should have no problem handling it. ”
Why only pointers ( which are variables as any other, by the way ) ? I expect a float to be 64 bits, and a double to be 128 bits ? If the memory bus is 64 bits large, it is normally faster to align the memory on 64 bits rather than 32. It is true on 32 bits intel cpu ( 32 bits aligned data are much better handeld than 16 bots aligned data for 16 bits data, for example ), and I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be on the ppc970.
And memory bandwidth is really one of the biggest problem in today computers. Even with cache, memory is almost always the bottleneck of a lot of computive intensive softwares ( BLAS libraries, etc… ).
gee… Starting at just $1,999? I’ll have to run out and buy one of those. They’re so “affordable”.
Price is still one of Apple’s biggest problems. Maybe now that G5 is out, they’ll come out with an inexpensive G4 based system? One that actually comes with good enough video and memory to run OSX?
But the G5’s sure do look like nice systems. But I must say that for $1,999 you should be getting the system with the $2,399 specs! Especially the memory… They’re selling a $1,999 computer and they can’t afford a few dollars to double the memory to 512mb?? all of them should come stock with 512mb!!
get rid of the rewritable DVD and the price is $1799. That is not bad for 64 bit processing and again the G4 is now $1299.
MEmory is quite cheap, if they wanted to charge so much money they should have started with more memory .. what if they had 2 Gigs on the highend machine with no more then 100 usd more?
Probably ppl will say “wow 2 G of memory” …. and buy
What am I missing here?
Note: to save space, I’m using the following format
<int base>, <int rate base>, <fp base>, <fp rate base>
on http://www.apple.com I see
Dual G5 – 800, 17.2, 840, 15.7
Dell 650 – 836, 16.7, 646, 11.1
Dell 8300 – 889, 10.3, 693, 8.1
but on http://www.spec.org, I see
Dell 650 (3.0GHz) – 1089, 21.7, 1053, 15.7
P4 3.0GHz w/HT on i875 – 164, 13.8, 1201, 13.6
Why are Apple’s Intel scores so slow? Are they cheating? Did they configure the Dell 650 and the Dell 8300 to “match” the G5? This “smells” bad.
Oh, I heard they compiled with GCC under RedHat. So I guess the G5 beats a P4 running RedHat, but not a P4 on Windows. Hmmm. I’m a Linux user, but this still seems slimey.
Jobs, you finally have a decent processor. There is no reason to start spouting half-truths. The simple truth is good enough. I like apples, but Jobs sure likes “bending” the truth.
Apple compiled the benchmark software for both their own machines and Intel PC’s using GCC. GCC has been heavily optimized by Apple for PowerPC G5. GCC sucks on Intel.
For a real (ie. without steve jobs lying) benchmark, you should compare Apple Compiler results (GCC for G5) against Intel Compiler results (ICC for P4).
This is the difference you saw (and, yes, jobs is cheating again).
From: http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/
Specint base 2000
Dual 2.0Ghz G5 – score 800
Specfp base 2000
Dual 2.0Ghz G5 – score 840
From: http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030421-0209…
Specint base 2000
Single 1.8Ghz AMD Opteron – score 1081
From: http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030421-0209…
Specfp base 2000
Single 1.8Ghz AMD Opteron – score 1093
I’ll leave it to you all to debate these numbers…
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WOW! Those new G5s have SATA Hard Disks!
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Oh, Linux vs Windows doesnt make much difference on the Intel side. If anything, a single user mode installation of Linux should beat Windows for the same code.
damdamdamdamdam….
I knew it… everytime I get a Mac, a far better one comes out. Just bought a dual-1.25 MHz tower a couple months ago. Anyway, I hope that Panther supports the older towers.
I wish the x86 pundits would *shut up*… there getting so annoying…. Apple is competively priced for a *quality* system. yea, I can buy a $69 x86 motherboard, a $4.99 junk-keyboard, a cheap-a$$ case that you have to bend the metal back and forth 20 times to free the metal pieces. I’ll garbage pick a floppy drive, pirate a copy of WinXP – then I can wave my arms around and cry about how expensive Macs are for the MHz you get. From looking at quality x86 systems like Alienware (I’m told-although I never seen one up close), they can easily get into the $3000+ range.
I’m heading out to go to the local Applestore right now 🙂
BTW- I have both an x86 machine next to my Apple and use them both equally so I’m not biased. I’m saying you get what you pay for, and the Macintosh is a far better machine than any x86 machine I’ve used.
“Apple compiled the benchmark software for both their own machines and Intel PC’s using GCC. GCC has been heavily optimized by Apple for PowerPC G5. GCC sucks on Intel. ”
For most applications, even floating point, my experience says that gcc 3.3 is pretty good. The differences with ICC are about 10-15%, which is not such a big gap. The differences between 2.95 and 3.3 are HUGE !
On my last numerical package, recompiling it with 3.3 instead of 3.2 already gave me a code 10% faster.
For normal people, gcc is already really good.
ha,,this is great news and Big Brother and Apple did it. It’s not Apple’s own spec’s that show the processor pulling away from the fastest pentium. Its IMB own data too. Just remember that this 970 is based on the Power4+ chip and even that at 1.4 was very fast and blew alway Intel. It’s so nice that the tide has turned. ….”risc is good”
Fuck! I just read some reviews + benches around Web and all I can say is fuck! Apple DID IT! did it did it did it did it. Omg 2999 for dual with 1GHz FSB!
Apple’s back baby, Apple’s back…
I think it’s safe to say the tide has turned again, and things are back to the way they were following the release of the G4… now it’s time for Apple users to talk about how comparatively slow PCs are. *grin*
This doesn’t negate the fact that OS X is sluggish and unresponsive compared to WinXP. This is a case of “death by a thousand cuts”. OS X adds enough overhead that is seems slower on my dual 1.25 GHZ G4 than WinXP does on my 700 MHz P-III. I waste a lot of time every day waiting on the OS X GUI to catch up with me that it’s not even funny. I’ll bet that OS X on the dual 2 GHz G5 will feel as responsive as WinXP does on a 1.4 GHz P4.
Talk about mashing your own words just to be obstinate. GCC is more heavily optimized for the PPC? Hello earth to geek, GCC was developed on what platform? Has been used on what platform primarily for 10 years? Hint, its not the PPC!!! Unless you want to tell me that Apple can improve GCC in 3 years better than all the work of the entire OSS community over 10 years?
Just remember that this 970 is based on the Power4+
nah ppc970 is derived from power4 not power4+.
Yeah…I discovered the same thing with the Aussie branch charging $1700 AU dollars more than the US for the 17″ Powerbook. When I did the currency conversion it was so far out that I called them to find out what was going on.
They told me that each country decides on its’ own pricing policies and will charge what the market will accept. Nice. No thanks.
Praise the maker for eBay! I decide on my own pricing policies, and with relatives in the US I’ve got the warranty problem solved.
As for the G5, my Athlon 2Ghz suddenly looks like a mid-80’s piece of cr@p but I can’t afford to replace it.
Sheckle for an ex-leper?
except that a Power4 contains 4 processing cores, which makes it much more powerfull than a Hyperthreaded Pentium4. Afaik, a PPC970 contains only 1 core. Still, it’s a nice little CPU they made, and more importantly, they gave it the bandwith it needed to perform well (not like the previous mainboard, which virtually strangled the CPU). Btw, “risc” doesn’t mean anything nowadays, except maybe “not x86”.
This doesn’t negate the fact that OS X is sluggish and unresponsive compared to WinXP.
I think you should try OS X on a PPC970-based system (namely one with a 64-bit kernel and userland compiled with the 64-bit PPC ABI) before making that judgement.
This is a case of “death by a thousand cuts”. OS X adds enough overhead that is seems slower on my dual 1.25 GHZ G4 than WinXP does on my 700 MHz P-III.
Yes yes, I’ve heard it all before… wait for Panther, and try it on a new system. Apple has just released new hardware and will soon be releasing new software to fix some complaints… so shouldn’t you give that a chance before claiming that “This doesn’t negate the fact that OS X is sluggish and unresponsive compared to WinXP.”
I waste a lot of time every day waiting on the OS X GUI to catch up with me that it’s not even funny. I’ll bet that OS X on the dual 2 GHz G5 will feel as responsive as WinXP does on a 1.4 GHz P4.
Well, troll all you want, OS X on a 1GHz G4 does not have responsiveness issues in my opinion…
I just wish Apple would implement a resize without showing window contents option systemwide, similar to the way iTunes resizes. I will certainly conceed that the window resize speeds are pathetic compared to Windows, but all other aspects of the system (scrolling, menus, etc.) are nice and snappy on a 1GHz G4
It seems that Apple is not going to support Panther with a Journaled File System…
Hi,
just compare G5 to another RISC-Workstations and you know where the real revolution happens. Look at the Sun Workstations! It´s a real shame to sell such a crap and call it competetive. HP´s PA-RISC do a bit better, Alphas even more, but even Alphas are blown away when compared by the memory bandwith. Forget Itanium. The only competitors in 64-Bit workstation market are SGIs and new IBMs workstations. But again, if you look at price, these boxes are 3-5 times more expensive. So with a G5 you have the price-worthiest 64 Bit UNIX-workstation on earth. I don´t mention Opteron, since I still haven´t found a well-known company which offers Opteron-based workstations.
Greetings from Anton
OK, so Steve Jobs is lying about test scores. This is not news. He lies habitually about such things.
Never-the-less, the new machines look good. Congratulations to all you Apple users. You now will have computers that will make OS/X and the programs run on it feel more sprightly. As a Windows user, I benefit, because both Intel and AMD will push harder. We all win with this release.
Recently, I purcahsed a white box x86 with a 2.4 gHZ cpu, low-end Nvidia GeForce 4 card with 128 mb ram, 512 mb DDRAM at 533 mhz, top of the line intel mother board, a 120 megabyte hard drive for $650. I could have purchaed a 3.0 ghZ Intel CPU, more RAM, higher end video card, etc. for about $900. However, I chose not to because the 2.4 ghz system already is overkill for all current applications. My system is lightning fast for games, multimedia, and anything else I throw at it. This is what the Mac is competing with. I can shell out $2000-$3000 dollars for an awesome system, but the simple fact is that in another 3-4 years, the system is going to be outdated, and I will have to shell out another $2000-$3000. As for home servers, I have an AMD 350 with 256 mb ram, running as a mail server, NAT server, DNS server, router, firewall, SAMBA share, etc. utilizing 1% cpu. For home use/load servers are even lesser utilized than client machines.
You go cry now.
Mac G5 faster.
Mac G6 will be faster.
OS X best OS.
Would everyone stop bitching about the prices? Apple never has made Wal-Mart specials, you know. They’re not aiming at the poor college student market–these are workstation-quality machines (read the press on them). And when you factor in the drives and included software, you’re not much above the price of a similarly equipped Dell or Gateway. Get over it and come back to reality.
I don’t think Apple entirely gets how to compare spec scores. You compare your own scores with the scores published by other manufacturers. Not make up your own numbers for other systems. Sheesh.
I just went out to Dell and priced a PWS 450 2×3.06GHz XEON with a simular configuration to the $2999 2x2GHz G5; the price? $3801 and I couldn’t find anything stating what the NIC was.
The G5 can also be ordered with an ATI 9800 Pro; someone was compaining that the $2999 model only came with an ATI 9600 pro.
Benchmarks:
Apple didn’t cheat… They just bent the truth a little. The GCC compiler is very good at optimizing for the x86 based system; it’s also very bad for non-x86 systems. Apple and IBM are working on improving the PPC & POWER optimizations. AMD is working on the Opteron optimizations. There are also other groups working on fixing the x86 bias in the GCC compiler.
That said, SPEC rates are computed on a system configurtion and compiler bases. Apple bent the truth a little by having the Dells run RedHat and made them use the same version of GCC as Apple was using. The GLIB shipped with RedHat is only a 80386 library; this combined with using the GCC instead of Intel’s compiler made the Intel numbers lower then thoses posted on the SPEC website.
As I said Apple only bent the truth a little. The G5 IS FASTER then a Dell running RedHat. The G5 maybe slower then a Dell running Gentoo or Windows both of which can use the Intel compiler for the SPEC programs.
The SPECs given by Apple are correct for the configuration noted in the Detailed SPEC Documentation supplied; thus, Apple didn’t lie (beceides Apple didn’t do the testing, they had a independant company do it).
Got a Dual 1.25 too and I run two instances on RC5-72 all the time, I can watch the large Martrix reloaded preview with no lag and run iTunes with large visual effects on and still have 10 apps open with no problems.
I very much doubt that your P3 is faster or multitasks as well.
Now that the rumors turn out to be true the haters and PC Sanford and Sons are out in force to negate the good news.
Whats nice is that IBM has plans for G5 beyond 2GHZ, so maybe the days of Apple lagging in processor speeds might be over. They certainly did not hold back in other respects like supporting USB2 so now people can stop bitching about that what ever that was worth anyway.
Its a good day for Mac.