Topic: The G5 fiasco

[manunited4eva22]

As I'm sure a lot of you have seen, it seems that apple has been caught cheating in the G5 benchmarks. What are your thoughts on all of this?

Sources: AMD Zone
the inquirer
sooapbox

[oohhboy]

Man am I disapointed. My respects to IBM, but Jobs needs to clean up his act.

[SteveWozniak]

Not really cheating, while it should have done diffrently, prehaps, I'm sure Intel do the exact same thing, use there own compliler to show off the areas there CPU's are better than everyone elses, Intels complire to test their own CPU's, isn't that cheating, shouldn't there use a 3rd party testing complier, to more accurately, also, the SPEC scores don't allow for Alti-Vec, a corner stone of the G4, and G5's power, because they consider it 'unfair. None of hte real world apps that apple used have been optimised for 64-bit processing, Pixar animations have said it is the fastest Personal Computer, useing there Renderman benchmarking software (Renderman is Pixars rendering software, not currently on macs, but not they are looking into it, because of the Power of the G5 systems). Even the operating system Apple used hasn't yet been designed fuly for 64-bit processing, the CPU's scale themselves back to 32-bit mode.

[SteveWozniak]

Oops double post

[Shift Key]

Well NVIDIA was caught cheating in the 3DMark tests a while, again.
Supposedly their drivers detected the output of the frame-rates, and inflated them. Here's an interesting link about what NVIDIA and ATI have done in the past.
http://www.tech-report.com/etc/2003q2/3dmurk03/index.x?pg=1

[Uglydot]

They cheat.  Wheeeeee, everyone one does.  Benchmarks are crap.  A set way to tell how good different types of systems are..that works.

[SteveWozniak]

I also mind you that the GCC texts are not Apple, PowerPC or IBM orintated tests, unlike Intels on test to compare there CPU's., kinda makes Apples tests a little fairer.

[manunited4eva22]

Well, considering that Intel has scores on the Spec sight much higher than that, and Apple made a test that could not possibly be made again, to lower the P4, I would call that cheating. There is also the qhole quake 3 deal, where apple claimed that it had the highest framerate, despite it being slower than a 2.4B with a 9700Pro...

As for Pixar saying its the most powerful, errrr ya, of course their going to say that. Who do you think owns pixar?

And no, intel doesn't do the same thing. They use their own compiler to make their computer as fast as possible, but don't screw with other people's computers. I will use an anaology I saw on overclockers.com

If you are drag racing, and the other guy obviously have a faster car by about 50MPH, you can't say thats not fair let me work on it. When you race you win by only a little, but obviously you are not the faster car.

As for OSX 10.3 not being ready, is that anyone's fault other than apple? Would you blaim the yellow and red light because you weren't paying attention enough to hit the brakes?  

[SteveWozniak]

Well, Apple could make there scores even higher, it they build there own complier, or had IBM do so. Apple aren't allowed to use Alti-Vec in the tests, because they are consider it unfair, it allows alot more power into the CPU, allowing to to process larger chunks of information, that you can't include a turbo engine power tests, it's absolutely stupid that they aren't allowed to use it, yes, Jobs owns pixar, but they do not use Macs for there rendering farms, if Jobs had his way, like you'd suggest, they would, not to mention there is currently no version of RenderMan for MacOSX.  What compiler to Intel use on other manafactures CPU's?, I'll admit that they should have used the Intel compiler, and built a compiler of there own to show of the G5's power, but they used a 3rd party compiler, not optimised for either CPU, and independent tests, they did not cheat. Don't go trying to say they did, the complier was not optimised for then, apple did not run the tests.

The reason for my, was not to blame anyone, not no make excuses, just to say that those scores were achieved with the OS running in 32-bit mode, it will be in 64-bit mode soo, yet it was still able to achieve great scores, those scores will only get better when everything is optimised.


And looking at SPEC scores is close to useless, anyway, it has no real world meaning.

[manunited4eva22]

Well if the company whon did it was not being paid by apple to do what you say I would agree, but the fact is that the test they did can not be replicated because significant chunks of what they did are not recorded. That is not a third party test setup. And once again the GCC compiler should never have been used for either platform in the first place. THe fact is, that even if your system were to for some reason run faster on that compiler, NO DEVELOPER USES IT. No developer who works with intel or windows or amd for that matter.

Have you actually read the summary of what was done to the P4? It was stripped down to the bare minimum and even then it barely lost to the G5.  

As it is, the G5 is far from being the most powerful desktop and when it launches it will still not be the most powerful desktop overall. Will it still have an advantage in photoshop? Probablly so. Some of the other movie editing software, probablly so. But in general, those are workstation apps, and as it is, the mac will never be comparible in games, not just because of its lack of them, but because the hardware will always be lacking.

[SteveWozniak]

Yeah, and I'd really want to spend $3K on a computer for games, I'm not stupid enough to claim a Mac is a platfor for games, it clearly isn't, there will always be main stream games for it, even them I don't use, I have consoles for games. I use my computer for Photoshop, for video editing, for desktop publishing, all Mac orentated areas, like I said the SPEC scores really mean little to general scores. Games like Halo, and Halo 2 are developed almost entirely on Mac, yse Jason Jones are the once Mac-Only dev house are probably considered Mac fanboys, I think Apple should have stuck to there Photoshop style tests, good news is these tests were demoed in front of an audience, which makes a little harder to fake, though clearly not impossible. I am very glad  Apple have IBM on board this time, IBM will do alot more to develop the G5 for speed, rather than Motorola who were more interested in the PPC's imbeded implicationjs, which require lower power consumption, and lower cost.. IBM have thre own server familys useing this CPU to worry about speed (Jobs claims they'll be at 3 Ghz within a year). However, I'm going to have to disagree with you a little on the games front there, it games, any apps, are optimised for the Mac, it will do more than enough to compete with high end PC's in gameing terms, most games that are ported to make aren't that well done, though things are now changeing with developers like Aspyr, headed by a former bungie employee, also handling the Mac port of Halo, and many mac games., they are doing a great jog, still if i wanted a computer for a gaming rig, I'd buy myself a PC.

Either way, you haven't changed my mind, and I suspect for sure I haven't changed yours, this is a vast improvement over the G4 systems, IBM have also said the G5 has a lot more tricks up it sleaves, including the PPC 980 (they have prototypes), which is believed to use the execution core of the IBM Power5 high end server CPU, it'll be interesting to see what else IBM can do.

[Lecter]

The Mac isnt a computer for games. Its more of a computer for someone that actually does computer work, like image making, web site devloping, movie creating etc etc. Mac makes some good products. Anyone in here own a Mac? My Grandma has one of the very first Apple SE computers. I am going to take it apart and rebuild it for fun.

[SteveWozniak]

Well, I have a Mac. A Power Mac Dual 867 Mhz G4.

[manunited4eva22]

I have an old emac, nothing special for me.

The only reason I brought up games was the claim that the Powermac G5 blew away a high end PC in quake 3 arena.

As for PPC980.... ya considering Power5 hasn't even been shown yet, I wouldn't worry too much about it.