Go Back   The macosxhints Forums > Working with OS X > OS X Products -- News and Reviews



Reply
 
Thread Tools Rating: Thread Rating: 9 votes, 4.89 average. Display Modes
Old 10-12-2003, 03:04 PM   #1
griffman
MVP
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 1,472
Comments on the Dual G5 review

Please use this thread to comment on my review of the new 2.0ghz Dual G5 PowerMac.

I've temporarily allowed anonymous posting here, but please, try to keep things civil. I don't mind criticism; I do mind insult hurling and name calling...

-rob.
griffman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-12-2003, 06:02 PM   #2
simX
Triple-A Player
 
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Bay Area, CA
Posts: 227
Great Review!

I was simply ASTOUNDED at that "Ten in ten on ten" ( ) movie. I mean, SHEESH! That even includes things like iMovie and iPhoto! My "lowly" 800 MHz G4 iMac could NEVER pull off such a feat. That seriously is one kick-ass machine. Thanks for the review.

One minor error that I did notice in the review, though, is that in the "Rob's Benchmarks" section, the G4 733 actually wins over the G5 in iCab launch time, just by 0.1 second, though you say the G5 has the best result in the test. Not like anyone should ever want to use iCab over Safari, anyway.

The other thing is that TextEdit doesn't really exist on Mac OS 9 -- perhaps you were speaking of SimpleText?
__________________
-- simX
simX is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-12-2003, 06:07 PM   #3
griffman
MVP
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 1,472
Good catch on the highlighting error ... and regarding SimpleText/TextEdit -- yes, but I didn't have room for both in the label .

-rob.
griffman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-12-2003, 09:10 PM   #4
yubbie2
Triple-A Player
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Houston - Though I'd rather be in Boston!
Posts: 192
Nice review! Next time I come across $3000 lying in the street I'll know for *sure* what to spend it on :-)

You might have even convinced me to try out Keynote and Jedi Knight - clearly both are impressive apps and produce some nice images.

[Just a quick note - on your conclusions page, in the bottom navigation bar, "Photoshop Elements" and "Games" seem to be joined at the hip]
yubbie2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-12-2003, 10:48 PM   #5
TDuncklee
Prospect
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 2
G5 2.0 and Video Cards

I put a Radeon 7000 dual video card in the G5 2.0 for additional displays (I have more than two). Everything was great for a few minutes then I noticed iTunes stutter. Turns out the Radeon 7000 and even older Radeon cards cause the AGP card to overheat for some reason. The odd result is iTunes stutter so bad I can't listen to it.

I'm anxious to hear from anyone that is successfully using any PCI video card in the G5 2.0
TDuncklee is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 12:36 AM   #6
Unregistered
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
scores

My xBench and speedrun scores under 10.3 are quite a bit higher. slightly over 200 for xBench, and over 1100 for speedrun.
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 05:26 AM   #7
chiccorosso
Prospect
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 10
Stability

I'd like to hear something more about stability anc compatibility with various software.
chiccorosso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 07:59 AM   #8
Applal
Prospect
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Appleton, WI USA
Posts: 3
Great review!

thanx for the great review! I found the benchmark programs you used to be helpful in assessing my own 'puter, an MDD dual 1 gig. Unfortunately, I can't afford to sell what I've got to get what I want (a Dual G5) keep up the great work!
Applal is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 08:32 AM   #9
griffman
MVP
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 1,472
Stability and compatibility

For the suite of programs I run, the only issue I've run into is a couple of graphical glitches in Tiger Woods. I haven't tried stuff like Retrospect or DiskWarrior yet, though. I haven't heard much about anyone else having issues, outside of VirtualPC and its need to be reworked for the G5.

Regarding stability, it's been just as stable (which is to say rock solid) as my G4, excluding the two KPs I had right after adding the new RAM. Once I swapped the RAM, that was the end of the stability issues.

-rob.
griffman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 08:43 AM   #10
chiccorosso
Prospect
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 10
Smile Stability

so, as far I can see from reading usenet on Internet it seems there aren't serious system incompatibilities, although the platform is totally new.

On the G4 Launch there were lots of problems.

thank you for your reply and for the review.
chiccorosso is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 10:05 AM   #11
sjmills
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Thumbs up

Any developers out there who will be getting a dual 2GHz G5 will appreciate this report. Our product (MultiAd Creator) is around 700k lines of code. Doing a full build of the debug target on my dual 800MHz G4 with CodeWarrior 8 takes almost 39 minutes. The G5 takes 14 minutes. It's severly cut into my leisure time. It also *screams* through SETI@home data units in only a few hours instead of several. Another thing that impressed me was the smoothness of Ghost Recon and Unreal Tournament 2003. The first thing I did was set them to 1280x1024, 32bit, and all the audio and video options to Highest. Even the most complex maps deliver a very high frame rate with no stutters or lags what so ever.
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 10:23 AM   #12
Timo
Triple-A Player
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: New York City
Posts: 72
excellent review, thanks a lot
Timo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 10:27 AM   #13
friedmaj
Triple-A Player
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 69
Photoshop elements not quite so fast

The PE 2.0 startup is a little deceptive, in that the icon stops bouncing long before the app is actually ready to do anything. I tried starting it on a dual 2 GHz G5 in my local Apple store, and it still took about 5 seconds to finish starting up. Hardly a scientific test, but it would have been cool if it came up instantly...
friedmaj is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 10:51 AM   #14
griffman
MVP
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 1,472
I guess I'm a bit confused by that statement -- I show six seconds to get it running ready to use (after first launch of the day), and I just checked it again. Six seconds after I double click it, I can have a new document open, or it will be ready to edit the image I dropped on it (depending on how big that image is, of course -- load time for the image can be a factor, too).

Are you saying the machine you tested wasn't done loading Elements in six seconds?

-rob.
griffman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 11:08 AM   #15
friedmaj
Triple-A Player
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 69
No

No, I was referring to the movie of ten apps loading at once - because the PE splash screen is covered, one might think that it was done more quickly than it really was.

But it still beats the heck out of 11-12 secs on my 17" iMac.
friedmaj is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 11:23 AM   #16
Unregistered
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
i would like to thank you for taking the time to write this review.
I found it one of the most informative review on the web.
the bad thing is i want a G5 now
Christophe.
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 11:35 AM   #17
Unregistered
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
I'm happy to know that THPS 4 runes fine with the dual 2 GHz and radeon 9800 pro. Because it stutteres and lags from time to time with sual 1 GHz and Radeon 9000. Well let's see my dualie should ship on or before 16th.
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 11:51 AM   #18
griffman
MVP
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 1,472
"No, I was referring to the movie of ten apps loading at once - because the PE splash screen is covered, one might think that it was done more quickly than it really was."

Ah, now I understand. If you look closely at the movie, Elements (and one other app) are actually already running and are not part of the 10 that launch. They just happened to be running already, so I skipped over them with the mouse to launch the others.

-rob.
griffman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 12:34 PM   #19
ruiner13
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Please fix javascript

Rob,

Unfortunately I have to work on a PC at work, and using IE6 to go to the review puts me in an endless javascript loop and I have to force quit IE to recover. It is complaining about some mouseover image not being defined. Please fix this, I'd love to read your review.

-Marc
  Reply With Quote
Old 10-13-2003, 12:35 PM   #20
Lectrick
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Lightbulb Processor is not limiting factor when ripping CD's

I just got a Powerbook 15" 1.25GHz and it rips CD's at 16x also. I think the limiting factor at that point is the speed of the CD-ROM drive. I'm sure that if you tried converting an AIFF file with that monster that it would eat it for breakfast.
  Reply With Quote
Reply


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:02 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2014, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Site design © IDG Consumer & SMB; individuals retain copyright of their postings
but consent to the possible use of their material in other areas of IDG Consumer & SMB.