New iMac v G3 600mhz Benchmarks pointer pls

[abvidledUK]

I know the new iMac will be faster than my trusty G3 iMac, just wonder how much faster.

Tried Google etc, no joy.

Can anyone point me to a specific Benchmark comparison, or do one for me ?

I currently use 10.3.9

Thanks.

(I'm going to get a new one anyway, probably wait for Leopard and Matt screen to surface)

I've just discovered Xbench.

My overall reading is 11.48

I've also come across this BM Xbench...WOW

Here's the Xbench result (this is on the stock 2.0 GHz 20 inch model w/1GB RAM) -

Results 132.66

Is the new iMac really 13x faster ?

I'll be using it mostly for Photoshop & iMovie, keeping the G3 for Web

 

[tussery]

Yeah the new mac systems are really fast. I find it sad that my 2GHz MacBook is faster than my dual 1.8GHz G5 that was hyped up to be "4x faster than an Intel" and now the Intel processors are 4x faster than the G5 according to Apple. :thinking:

 

[LEDninja]

iDVD took 4 hours to encode a 2 hour DVD. Then some clips won't play on a standalone DVD player. Noticed the clip names started with s,t,v. Yup fingerprint on the edge of the disk. Got out the alcohol and cotton pads. Now everything plays. It is impossible to get a disk out of the slot load drive without grabbing the disk's playing surface. Not a problem when the disk is not full but I tend to load my disks up.

The new iMac seems faster than my 300 Mhz G3 blue and white. When I have to do any kind of video conversion (.mov to DV, .mov to iPod, .wmv to .mov) I still have to take a coffee break.

 

[James S]

half speed to encode mpeg content for a DVD really isn't that bad for an older machine. I remember when the top of the line Macs were finally up to doing it in realtime and that was considered a big deal. Now of course, mpeg encoding is a breeze and it's H.264 encoding that happens at half speed...

this site:

http://xlr8yourmac.com/

is good for benchmarks and info about older systems. Dont just read that and freak out though, most of the articles are about problems and issues that people have had and you might get an inaccurate idea of how prevalent such things are

 

[LEDninja]

half speed to encode mpeg content for a DVD really isn't that bad for an older machine.

That is my new 2.6 Ghz iMac. I wonder if the encoder is PPC native and running under Rosetta. Other than video both my machines can keep up with me (the other one is a 300 Mhz G3). On the internet my BASIC DSL service and the server at the other end are the limiting factors. At least I'm not on dial up and CPF now have a dedicated server.

 

[havand]

That is my new 2.6 Ghz iMac. I wonder if the encoder is PPC native and running under Rosetta. Other than video both my machines can keep up with me (the other one is a 300 Mhz G3). On the internet my BASIC DSL service and the server at the other end are the limiting factors. At least I'm not on dial up and CPF now have a dedicated server.

How can that be? Using my friend's 1.3ghz G4 Powerbook, I used to get frustrated because it simply could NOT keep up with me on the internet. A few times I even gave up completely and went back to watching TV. I can believe they're still useful, but not 'up to speed,' unless you are not a very demanding user. I could use the G4 for casual things. In its day it was fast, don't get me wrong, but NOW, I move faster than it does.

Oh and that 4x faster than intel, but wait, intel (now that we're using them) is 4x faster than the G5! is pure marketing.

 

[James S]

How can that be? Using my friend's 1.3ghz G4 Powerbook, I used to get frustrated because it simply could NOT keep up with me on the internet. A few times I even gave up completely and went back to watching TV. I can believe they're still useful, but not 'up to speed,' unless you are not a very demanding user. I could use the G4 for casual things. In its day it was fast, don't get me wrong, but NOW, I move faster than it does.

Oh and that 4x faster than intel, but wait, intel (now that we're using them) is 4x faster than the G5! is pure marketing.

I owned one of those powerbooks for a long time, my wife is still using it as a matter of fact, it was a great machine and quite fast enough for web browsing. I wonder what was slowing that one down for you? Just like with other OS's you can get them hosed up with garbage that slows them down, but a slow or error prone internet connection will also cause a lot of problems with web browsing.

As far as the 4x marketing, you're forgetting the time frame involved The G5 came out 4 or 5 years ago at which time it was far enough ahead in speed from the Intel offerings at the time that it was actually quite a bit faster. Unfortunately, motorola and ibm were having other problems and were not able to devote enough resources to it's continued development, so the speed bumps that we got were pitiful. Apple, seeing this trend and knowing that motorola was going to have to get out of that business soon or start loosing a lot of money switched to Intel. In the years in between Intel has continued development and given the fact that the G5 was totally stagnant for the last 3 years, it's not hard to believe that they are now 4x faster again

But I do love it when marketing garbage comes back to bite people. The internet never forgets, but it lies to us sometimes

 

[havand]

The funniest thing about the whole computer industry to me, right now is the crap intel has shoved down everyone's throat. IE, you NEED dual core. Having dual cores running at 2ghz is like having a 4 ghz processor! r0x0rs!

Uh, what? No. Give me a 4ghz single core any day of the week. I'm not a 'power' user, but i'm not web surfer either. How often have i really needed to play Half-Life2 while encoding a divx file? Unless you code the programs/OS to use those extra cores seemlessly, there is no point except for heavy multitask use.

And this is no company's fault, this is just general 'more is better!' marketing. This is new, so, it mus be better. The sick part is, I don't really need a faster computer....If they'd just start coding better with less slop.

As far as the Powerbook goes, I'm not sure to be honest. I can get around OSX ok, but i'm far from 'knowing' what i'm doing, i'm not there. Maybe too many tabs or MS Word? Dunno. Might be my general philosophy about computers though. After working as a tech a few summers in a highschool, I realized computers are not simple everlasting machines. The ones in the school environment, over time, obtain a 'slowness' factor. After just constant use and being on 24/7, they just arn't as fast, even when reformatted. They definitely are worse for the wear. Nothing I could ever put my finger on, just a general feeling after spending all day on them. My point is the Powerbook was heavily used, so this MAY have come into play?

 

[LEDninja]

Hardware people build faster computers, then software people write bigger and more sluggish programs. Net result no speed increase. The problem occurs when people try to run the latest programs on older computers.

My 25 MHz LCIII was quite happy running any screensaver then available. Even my 16 MHz LC. I remember flying through the stars on a 8 MHz Mac SE.
I finally got around to hunting down some screensavers for my new iMac and they take up a lot of processing power. HYPERSPACE took up a full 1/3 of the processing power of a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Dual even when I am not in warp mode, just pasing the stars. (I was running it as wallpaper so I can have Activity Monitor up.) I don't think I dare try that on anything slower than a G5.

 

[havand]

I forget where, but someone did a 'productivity' test comparing old computers vs new fast computers. The findings were kind of funny. Supposedly the older computers let you do the 'simple' tasks, ie word processing, faster than the new computers. They didn't have the features, which is probably why, but it is still funny to me.