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20 Jan 2006
Performance for the new Intel powered Apple Mac computers is far less than the company promised during last week's unveiling.
The Macworld trade publication pitted the new Intel-based iMac against an old G5 model and found that the speed gains fell short of the promised results by a significant margin.
Further reading
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs boasted at the Macworld tradeshow last week that the new iMac would offer at least a 200 per cent performance boost over previous generation G5 systems.
"What is different is that the new iMac [with the] Intel processor is two to three times faster than the iMac G5," Jobs promised delegates.
Apple based its findings on two benchmark studies in which systems were tested in a controlled environment. But Macworld pointed out that such tests fail to reflect performance in real-world applications.
The new Mac machines actually showed an average performance increase of 10 to 25 per cent while performing a series of everyday tasks with software especially designed for the new systems.
In a few cases the new systems showed an improvement of roughly 80 per cent, but this could not be attributed solely to the new processor.
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Do you agree?
RAM?
why do they sell brand new macs with not enough RAM? So they are even more expensive... BTW, what difference does this make to the benchmaking if they have the same amount of RAM.
Posted by: kermit 23 Jan 2006
2x for processor only
What they actually said was that the processor performs 2-3 x faster based on SPEC tests. Real world results will always be slower since they are slowed by the speed of the hard drive and other sub systems. As more native programs come out and programers learn the tricks with the new processor the actual speeds will improve,
Posted by: Kevin Bataille 22 Jan 2006
Hey!
Scrolls like...butter!
Posted by: Jeffsters 22 Jan 2006
Below promised 2x performance in real world speed should not shock anyone!
First of all, Steve says the 2-3x performance boost is in integer and floating point calculations. In real life, there are MUCH more going on inside your Mac aside from just crunching numbers (you know, tasks like accessing memory & disks.) This fact alone tells you that the new iMac Duo Core will not run 2-3x faster than iMac G5. AND if your applications are NOT optimized for the intel chip (meaning u are using Rosetta,) this requires additional clock cycles to translate the PowerPC code to Intel code. This is why the slow down. But don't worry! Applications will become Universal. This should NOT deter regular consumers from buying these new machines. You won't be using processors intensive applications (like photoshop, matlab, etc) for you to notice the slow down due to Rosetta. So don't lets people freak you out about the new Mac you are thinking about buying.
Posted by: Donny Van 21 Jan 2006
Actually Steve Jobs said "
" on these importand math tests" - he did not say across the board
Posted by: Philip Day 21 Jan 2006
Inflammatory article designed for clicks
Anything to bash Apple. Jobs made hte explicit point that the 2x figure was raw processor compute power, and that it would not translate to real-world performance because of other bottlenecks in the system. The writer said he was twice as smart, but I just found out he's only 25% smarter than the average bear.
Posted by: Mort Blort 21 Jan 2006
And this is news?
Steve Jobs said ON STAGE that performance in apps such as Photoshop wouldn't be what professionals expect until they are recompiled for Intel. The Intel-native apps, such as the iLife and iWork suites, just fly!
Posted by: Mike 21 Jan 2006
Nobody really listens anymore
If you listen to Steve Jobs pesentation he said the benchmarks were 2-3x faster, He also said that is not a measure of real world speed, because you have to take into consideration disk speed, native code, bus speed, etc...
Posted by: Paul G 20 Jan 2006
Reality Check
Any professional that is going to buy a Macintel to run Photoshop at this time is not a professional and deserves all the "frustration" they experience. If the software does not exist natively, then the problem dom not realistically exist and the system should not be faulted. Only those fools who rush in will reapthe hell of their hasty decision. NEWS FLASH: Consumers can consider a Macintel. Graphics, video or music pros CANNOT and WILL NOT be able to for several months until they're pro apps and plugins are converted. Period. With applications already made universal binary, these macintels run great and foretell wonderful performance for pros. But it needs time.
Posted by: MacDuff 20 Jan 2006
you realize . . .
that the computers in this test were running with 512mbs, right? and you realize that's not enough memory to run OS X and have it be fast, right? so you realize this wasn't really much of a test, right?
Posted by: Ulf Hednar 20 Jan 2006