On Jul 25, 2010, at 5:57 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote: > This may be an ignorant question, but I'll trust the Mac fans here to > be kind. > I have MDD G4. 1.25 dual proc. 2GB RAM. > I'm thinking of going to a G5, and curious if I got a dual 2.5GHz, and > sufficient RAM, if in general, I'd expect 2X the performance. > The only time I feel it shows its age is when encoding video. > Depending on the exact encode, it can take 2hrs to 4hrs real time to > encode the one hour of video. > If the encode looks to use one core only, I take it it will do the > same on the G5, and single/dual/quad won't change result much, just > free up cores for other functions, right? > I'm running Leopard, and trust these machines are happy to use it as > well. I followed the liquid thread, anything else to watch out for?
I don't think it's an ignorant question at all. In fact, I think you'd likely see about 2x performance improvement. The G5 was a HUGE upgrade from the G4, not only in speeds, but also with the addition of 64 bit processing instead of 32 bit. For software that's optimized for 64 bit, this means that roughly twice the data can be processed in a given software command than in a 32 bit system. The G5 also brought around a different bus communication setup instead of forcing the 2 CPUs to communicate through a relatively slow FSB. Check out the link below for a relatively old comparison between the G5 and the 1.25 Dual G4: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_vsG4MDD_review2.html When you're reading the above link, keep in mind that Panther is the operating system they're using, and these would be some of the first G5s to market (should kind of date the article). When Tiger rolled around, G5 support was greatly improved with a significant amount of G5 code being added to the OS for optimizations as well as bringing 64 bit capability to the operating system. Leopard took this even further and I feel like the performance is best with this OS (just my personal observation). I have a dual 2.0 Ghz early 2005 model G5 (BOL for that release) and I'll say that it's quite good for video exporting. Exporting a 30 minute video through QuickTime Pro to H.264 via the "Save for Web" function takes approximately 7-10 minutes depending on the quality of the source video. Granted, on my MacBook Pro, it takes less than half that for the same function, but on my old dual 1 Ghz MDD it would take upwards of 20 minutes to do the same function. On some source movies with very high quality video, it would take a 1:1 time or sometimes actually longer than the source to do the compression! I LOVE my G4's, but I'll be the one of the first to say that the G5 and later definitely are improvements in some regards. Hopefully that helps! -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
