Comparsion between Intel and G4 iMac

What applications are you running, and how are you comparing speed? It's certain that for some applications and uses, the new iMacs are indeed a couple of times faster, but that's not going to be the case for all applications and for all functions. Without knowing what you're running, it's impossible for anyone here to say whether what you're experiencing is normal or whether there's anything that can be done to improve your results.

And just FYI, other than the difference one would expect due to CPU clock speed, a G5 is not automatically faster than a G4 in all cases. Some applications run significantly faster one a G5 than on a G4 (all other factors being equal) but as has been shown in testing, some applications show little improvement, or none at all. So don't extrapolate from the claimed performance of the iMac Core Duo over an iMac G5 and expect your new iMac to be many times faster that your G4; that's not likely except in perhaps some very specific instances.

Regards.

Macspeed.com (I believe this is the right url) just posted their own benchmarks and they are saying it is nearly 2x faster the the iMac G5.


Glor

Once again, it depends on what the system is doing. Apple is not lying; they just present the system in the best light; that's what everyone who sells anything does. If you look at MacWorld's tests and Apple's claims, you'll see that there are functions that do indeed perform close to 2x better than the equivalent iMac. But no, all functions are not going to be sped up to that extent. Applications and functions that can take advantage of the dual processor are most likely to be sped up by a significant amount; functions that are stricly linear (such as the iPhoto import and export MacWorld complained about) aren't going to speed up much since they aren't going to take advantage of the dual-core.

I'm sure that we'll also see more improvements in the future as software gets more precisely tuned for the Intel processors.

Yes it is considerably faster than my G4, no doubt.

And it's even faster for most functions than the iMac G5 which would have been your other choice, so what you got is the best-performing iMac Apple's ever offered. Isn't that really what it's about? So why get your knickers in a twist about what some tests show?

Nuff said. These forums really aren't a venue for venting, so unless you're looking for advice about how to optimize the performance of your new iMac, let's leave it at that.

Regards.

I am running the 1.83 GHz Core Duo, it is so much faster than my iMac 700 or PowerBook 867 MHz it isn't even funny. Felt like moving from a Pentium 3 to a Athlon XP. It feels like there are several generations of processors in between.

I haven't owned a iMac G5, but based on using one for 20 minutes in a store using a G5, the Duo feels faster than that as well. The only time the Duo won't run as fast is when it is running Rosetta applications (and it is still about as fast as my G4's were). The 2-3x improvement is true with certain applications (mainly those that make heavy use of multi-threading), but don't expect it on everything. Even if across the board improvement is 25% that is still a huge improvement. A 25% improvement would be like going from a 2 to a 2.5 GHz machine, nothing to scoff at. It is the same price too boot.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the performance of the Intel iMac. Just make sure you have 1 GB of RAM (especially if you run Rosetta applications) and don't judge its performance running PowerPC (Rosetta) applications. Every computer manufacturer makes the speed boast. It was a real benchmark, it is just a little misleading.

Perhaps he means MacSpeedZone.

I have to say I doubt this sites claims very much. They point out somewhat sarcastically to use Activity Monitor to see CPU usage.

When I do this with my new iMac I see processor usage go over 100%. I think this is because with 2 cores I actually have 200% availible.

This alone makes me think that test is a load. Thoughts?