On Monday, September 1, 2003, at 03:26 PM, Richard Kenward wrote:In message Mon, 1 Sep 2003, SimonMartin writesThe other interesting point is that in the publicity surrounding the release of the G5 a couple of months ago, I think it was not their 2GHz box, was meant to be sooo much faster than the Xeon 2.2GHz!...oh !!
I think they ran a photoshop 'Bake-off', a dual 2ghz G5 against a Xeon box. The Mac beat the PC handsomely. Adding to together the two Photoshop action files in the links you sent would bear this out.
Dear Martin
I think you would agree that if you are interested in a fast system, then you are certainly not interested in single processor boxes full stop! The G5 2GHz MP box is certainly the fastest Mac on offer at the moment, it therefore follows that you would pick a PC that's a dual. I suspect that a 2.4GHz Dual Xeon is not the fastest available PC CPU combination available now. Things have moved on since that test was done, but it is one for which we have a published comparison test, and it's only now we are starting to get real world G5 performance figures as they start getting around.
Yes, for some reason the Xeon does not excel as a single CPU in this test, but anyone buying this class of processor would hardly be thinking of running it as a single. Xeon CPU's are traditionally aimed at the server market and would be optimised for two, four and more operation work, not for use as singles. It suspect it may not even be the most suitable for PhotoShop work.
I have no way of knowing if the tests these people put together (and I think it's fair to say it is a Mac orientated site) favoured the Mac or the PC. My understanding from what I've read on the site, is that all the boxes had to do exactly the same PhotoShop task using the same file. We can see for ourselves the dual Mac took 29 secs and the dual Xeon took 26secs. We both know that any such test will depend on more than just raw CPU speed of course. Quality and speed of ram, speed and type and allocation of drives. etc. Hopefully we can rely on the testers to apply a reasonable level of fairness to their testing.
Now obviously things will move on for both platforms especially when PS is available for 64 bit operation. Roll on the time this happens. All this is not going to mean much to people working with small file sizes...horses for courses!
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Cheers
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