Apple Fastest Retail Personal Computer.

Every graphic designer I know uses a Mac, if this is faster than other macs they are more likely to buy it. Time is money.

 

actually they just dropped the price to 2499 and if you can get employee discounts, you can get it for under $2100 with a demo model. I like windows for somethings and I like osx for other things. I do have more problems with my OS(windows) at home then I do at work. But I do plan on buying a quad in december which I will be getting for approx $2200 I dont think thats a bad deal.

 

Actually, the apps that people who are likely to buy this system are the ones that tend to be threaded. And WTF is with people saying "omg it's not threaded, what a waste of a dual-proc rig!!!11" - use one sometime. On apps that are threaded, it's about twice as fast. On the rest of the apps, you NEVER get any sort of usage-spike lag; it's absolutely stellar multitasking and makes you go "THIS is how computing is supposed to be".

Dual core/dual proc is good for WAY more than just doing things faster. People don't even realize how much they multitask. DC just takes that general unresponsiveness away. I thought my 3000+ felt responsive, then I got an X2. Wow. My AutoGK'ing of movies happens to be threaded; superb. Movies take half the time to reencode. Or, if I want, I can set it to only run on one core and get my frag on instead of waiting for it to finish so I can even surf the web again.

Yes, the PPC architecture may suck. I don't have enough experience with macs to say from personal use. But multiple cores IS the way forward with computing. I'd estimate you'll be able to get anywhere from eight to thrity-two cores in a single package by 2010. The OS will be intelligently designed to keep a core set aside for general usage smoothness, just about everything will be threaded and the only limitation to gaming realism will be due to some political BS.

Point? Don't say four cores is pointless. It brings unbelievable speed to threaded apps and makes your computing experience stupidly smooth. That responsiveness is what any typical home user would consider the "speed" of the computer. So, realistically, I do think it's a fair claim.

 

How did you reach this conclusion? I have been using PCs for over 12 years, right back from the Windows 3.1 days. My most recent PC had a 3.06Ghz Pentium 4 HT processor and a gigabyte of RAM. I ran both Windows XP and various distributions of Linux on it...

But my new IMac G5 gives by far the most responsive everyday computing experience I have ever had. No lag whatsoever.

 

how is the talk of pentium3 systems being used as servers any kind of point against the power mac? this isnt designed for that!

its for creative professionals using stuff like... final cut, logic, photoshop. have you ever edited video? on something other than imovie, and using multiple video and audio tracks with lots of filters on the video to adjust all its levels and make the colours broadcast safe, etc? I assume not, because on my mac mini, while it doesnt take too long to render stuff, it would be nicer if it was quicker. Im looking to start my own company doing wedding filming, music videos, etc and as a computer im going to be using daily for high end video work, I need a high end computer to get it all done as quickly as I can myself work. Hence why I will be investing in one of these systems as soon as possible.

If you arent part of the target audience using any of the apple pro applications, its fair to say you wont be needing the a quad core system with 16gb of ram... right? in which case you buy their home computer, the imac.

 

sigh, those people will never get it until they try it
they just take one look at the 3dmark score for an x2 system against an a64 system and say its worthless
been using the same argument as you since hte x2's were released but people just dont believe it

 

Did you say CAD??

Apple don't do CAD!!! haha// all CAD computerss are x86!

 

and yeah... a reckon a lot of people here haven't actually used a dual core G5 for any length of time... let alone a PPC...

don't bash what you don't know, I prefer video and graphics works on my Apple system... not because of cliché, but because I really do think it's better than windows.

But i also do have a windows X2 machine.. and anything that the OSX system can't handle, the WinXP one will.

OSX is good for some things whilst WinXP is good for others.. that includes hardware it runs on too.

 

What do you mean? All cad computers are x86? where did you get that from?

 

not sure.. but try to find me a OSX CAD program that is used in industry?

 

Are you sure you know the meaning for CAD...?

Computer Assisted Design...
Photoshop is a CAD program technically. So are video editing programs, pretty much any program that lets you design something on a computer could be considered CAD.

 

Those are the same people that think 77fps is less playable than 80fps. I mean before I ran SLI (though only using a single card now) I thought 30 was perfectly playable, now I definately like to stay over 40 and can tell a difference. But anything above that is really just a safety net for the slower parts.

Anyone who would still buy a graphics card based on the 3dmark score when EVERY website now does actual game benchmarks is insane. I remember back when I was writing reviews that just posting a 3dmark score and a few words on whether the color of the board matched the rest of your system nicely was enough, but it doesn't mean jack in real-world gaming. That said, the person who compiles something to install a few game engines and a dozen or so levels from the games thoat use those and make an automated run-through (though not timedemo which, if my understanding is correct, has physics precalculated and thus leaves the CPU free-er for GPU info giving abnormally high results) will be quite popular among review site owners.

 

Photoshop... no.

Illustrator... yes, but it's still no CAD program.

Try and find an AutoCAD equivalent and there is none... in the last couple of years, there has been a few simple (home orientated) CAD programs out for Apple but nothing that a professional would use.

All Architects and CAD designers i know who run a Mac would be AutoCAD on VirtualPC for mac.

And then, industry specific CAD programs are all on X86 PC... none for the Mac afaik.

P.S. to be a pendant, it's Computer-Aided Design although some people now-a-days do like calling it assisted.

 

I'm not arguing that. My next investment will be an X2, now that I've bought my 2GB of RAM. Dual core IS the way forward. However, four cores in a machine that has no outside hardware support and is singular OS dependant (yes, you can throw Linux on there, but it's still all *nix) is useless. Plus, the PPC architecture is so flawed and unefficient that you're wasting probably half of your processing power. Again, my 2.8GHz single cored AMD64 processor will probably beat it in everything from benchmarks to everyday use and responsiveness.

Not really sure where you get off making this comment, as the first line in my previous post was "Benchmarks lie."

My point? 4 cores is an extremely awesome thing. I can only imagine the increase in everyday usage. However, 4 PPC cores IS useless, especially compared to the fact that a single X2 will wipe the floor with it in terms of everything. The Fastest Retail Personal Computer? Give me a break.

 

^Two contradictory statements.

Is it the fastest apple ever, or is it faster than any PC made?

Benchmarks anyone? I would like to know.

 

my post had nothing to do with yours, it was in reply to firehed
both were somewhat off-topic as they were relating more directly to X2's than anything else
if you go back a few months and look at threads about X2's you'll see lots of people saying they're useless because barely anything is multi-threaded atm
what both us are saying is that it doesnt matter because there are still huge benefits to running single threaded apps on dual cored cpu's

 

have you ever owned a G5, not just used one briefly?

this sounds like all talk from a someone who's been on x86 all their lives.

your 2.8GHz A64 would beat it??? really?? so you've used a quad core G5 have you?

I have a 2.8GHz Dual core A64, and still... I prefer working on my lower spec'd mac.

4 PPC cores is going to be a boon to anyone who uses a Mac for intensive computing... e.g. design professionals in the media and film... why do you think that the Mac has been so popular... it's not always about the speed, but the efficiency of the cores.

People say AMD is more efficient than Intel and most things bar encoding... and similarly, the PPC is more efficient than x86 is some tasks as well.

If they release a quad core computer to the mainstream before everyone else, Kudos to them.

If Dell released a quad-core computer to the mainstream... i reckon most people would be like 'w00t! that r0x0rs, i wonder when my gaming rig will get that!'... but because it's apple, and were on a predominantly PC based forum.. we get 'apple sux0rs, we don't care because it's not x86'.

 

No, i think the point is that you dont really need a quad core system on a windows machine. I'm not sure about a mac, but hardly any windows programs are programed for dual core, let alone quad core. Therefor it really wouldnt make that much a difference in performance.

 

Just because quad isn't needed as of right now or when it's released on a system doesn't mean that it won't be needed in the future.

This programs has already the max G5 dual or faster to run at recommended... soon some company will release for quad.

-Recommended System for Aperture

* Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster
* 2GB of RAM
* One of the following graphics cards:
o ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition
o ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
o NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL
o NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE or 6600
o NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
o NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
* 5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial
* DVD drive for installation

 

exactly... Apple has the luxury of being able to dictate what they want, not only from software developers but because they also develop their own software and OS.

Apple's Final Cut Pro and shake digital and film editing software is used in major industry (Lord of the Rings used it iirc) and Apple makes it... so if it designs quad processor support, then a quad PPC G5 makes sense.

Where as it may be difficult to get unanimous support for developers of X86 software.. it's seems relatively simple to make changes to PPC software as only one vendor sells the hardware on which it runs... Apple.

I'm not pro Apple, but then i'm not pro MS, intel or AMD either... I run both systems and use them as tools, the right tool for the job when needed. But I do hate views (from both the mac/ppc and intel/ms sides) who take snipes without actually experiencing both and make generalised sweeping statements or just talk crap.