In G-List Digest #944, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 15:45:38 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Feedback on G5
At 08:06 PM -0400 08/25/2003, Sativa Saposnek wrote: > >Has anyone here yet purchased a G5? I'm interested in hearing some >feedback on user impressions, particularly those who have used it >for things such as video editing, and Photoshop related stuff. Apologies in advance - my G5 "experience" yesterday really rubbed me raw, and a death-by-chocolate didn't fix it. :\ Yesterday, I went to the Apple Store in King of Prussia, PA - just outside of Philadelphia. Semi-waste of two hours driving time, bridge toll, and gasoline. They didn't have a G5. They didn't have literature on it. They couldn't answer the questions about it I asked. They couldn't answer PCI card compatibility questions about older Macs I asked. And their prices for the paltry selection of peripherals they carried sucked - higher or par with CompUSA! So much for my first visit to an Apple Store. Luckily there was a well-stocked low-price Microcenter just a few miles away. So I at least managed to buy the peripherals I wanted. (To be fair, Microcenter didn't have a G5 either, but their staff was very very knowledgable and helpful). As for the G5 itself... The specs look great - 1 GHz frontside bus, faster i/o buses, etc. But, IMO, it's a don't-bother season of machines. Why? 1) This is a new motherboard and i/o implementation for Apple. Traditionally, their rev 1 systems are buggy and they don't offer upgrades after fixing 'em. 2) The included OS X 10.2.7 (Smeagol) has only minimum 64-bit enhancements. 3) The next OS X (Panther), which is a $100+ upgrade, has only a few more 64-bit enhancements. IOW, for at least the next year or so, half the throughput (compute and i/o) of the machine is going to be wasted/inaccessable[*]. And that time frame may be extended even more, because the application developers can't really do their thing until *after* Apple fully supports the 64-bit architecture. Why pay good money for wasted/inaccessable performance? By the time the performance is fully supported, there will be faster debugged hardware available in the same price range... [*] ROFL. Even with half the power poured on the floor, +/- benchmark quibbling, these puppys beat the fastest PCs! Eat that Wintel! - Dan. ------------------------------ Addressing the points you raised, Apple should really just get with the program and make sure that there is at least one G5 in every Apple store. This should have happened the day after they announced the G5. It would give people the chance to try the thing out, and maybe have helped increase the interest level. 1. The basics on the motherboard are actually pretty well worked out, with the possible exceptions of the 133/100 MHz PCI-X slots. The remainder, Firewire 800, USB 2.0, PC3200 DDR RAM, and Serial ATA are pretty well defined technologies, not really pushing the state of the art forward. USB and Serial ATA have been in the PC world for over a year. Could Apple have screwed them up, yes, but probably didn't, as there are off the shelf ICs that Apple would use, instead of rolling their own. IBM, unlike Intel, is not known to screw up silicon, so the G5 and the system controller chip are pretty well guaranteed to work properly. 2. The G4s, even in single processor models, were being choked by the 167 MHz front side bus. The new memory architecture, with 800MHz-1GHz front side bus, at 128 bits wide instead of 64bit wide, would fix that. Even the behind the times Intel Pentiums are running 533MHz busses. It would be interesting to see Apple bring out G4 with lets say, a 400MHz front side bus, and compare it to the current 167 MHz machines. 3. Don't overestimate the need for 64 bit optimization; most operating system functions don't need it. The base G5, which will run the current OS at 1.6 GHz, is probably as fast as the dual 1.4GHz G4, both due tot the clock speed increase, and even more importantly, the memory bandwidth. The basic processor core, and the Altivec/Velocity Engine has been tuned up as well, needing fewer clock cycles to run the same instructions in most cases, which should help both regular operations and multimedia/streaming data type applications. 4. There are not many functions in the base operating system that will benefit by being recoded as 64 bit instead of 32 bit. Also, the G5 still runs 32 bit instructions at full clock speed, which is a direct contrast to the Itanium, which dramatically slows down when running 32 bit instructions. This is also the crux of AMD's push into 64 bit CPUs; they will run PC 32 bit code at full speed. Recompiling the OS to go 64 bit should not be a big deal; OSX is Unix based, and should be easily ported if there was a serious need, or benefit. 5. I/O is a hardware function, whether the OS is 64 bit or not does not impact clock speed of the CPU, the optimizations in the Altivec/Velocity Engine, the memory bandwidth, the data throughput of the Serial ATA drives, Firewire 800 data transfer rates, or USB 2.0. While there probably will be some speed increases available when more of the operating system is moved over to 64 bit, it certainly won't be twice as fast. For the price difference between the dual processor G4 and the mid range G5, get the G5. Aside from the advantages of the basic architecture, right now they seem to be a better deal;. I see about a 7-800 dollar price difference between the bottom of the line G4 and the bottom of the line G5. The G5 has a SuperDrive, the G4 has a combo drive, which eliminates the price difference right there if you add a SuperDrive to the G4. Only reason now to get a G4 is if you still want to run OS9. Kostas -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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