G5 VS Mac Pro

some body know if APPLE company will offer upgrade for those who bougth the QUAD model in these days

Any answer to your question would be rumor since it hasn't happened yet, nor has it ever been announced. Please see the terms of use on the right about rumors.

As for Core3, that's rumor, and should not be believed anymore than vaporware.

Since the Xeon Mac needs no liquid coolent, I think it is a better long term value unless all your applications aren't yet Universal. Keep an eye out for the Xeon Mac benchmarks with Rosetta applications such as Photoshop to see if the overall speed of the Xeon is able to overcome the deficits of Rosetta's slowdown.

To find out what applications are available as Universal, I've made this FAQ:

http://www.macmaps.com/macosxnative.html#INTEL

I think the question to ask, is there any application that you currently use on the Quad G5 that is presenting a performance issue to you? And if there is such an App that you use, is there a Universal Binary version of the app that is available. And if there is, is it a free update or a for cost upgrade.

After answering that question, then I would ask this one.

If you have a reason to upgrade to a Mac Pro, do you have a pressing reason to do it right now? If not, I would wait until any early issues if any are resolved, and memory availability becomes more wide spread for the Mac Pro.

However, if you need one, I say go order it today!!!

Tom N.

one can never be truly happy unless one is buying new toys.

ok apple, please give me my commission.

1) If you have the money, absolutely upgrade.

2) If you bought your G5 from Apple in the past two weeks, and its not a CTO then you can still return your machine. (May be a restock fee, I don't know). If you have a CTO or it's past 14 days then you can always ask Apple...they can only say no. Just don't talk to a low level CSR. They will only say no. Talk with someone who has the power to say yes otherwise you are wasting your time.

3) Worst case...sell your G5 on eBay while you can still get a handsome price. Use the proceeds to by your Mac Pro.

Good luck.

Since you spent a lot of money on the quad, I'd say hold off and not buy the macpro. If however the G5 is < 14 days then I suggest you return it for a refund (less 10% restocking fee if your in the US). Otherwise you'll not get back your investment and it will be a waste of money.

As for apple offernig upgrades, its not going to happen, its money losing proposition.

The grass is always greener as they say. You bought the G5 because it met a need, has the need changed? Does the G5 work any slower now that the MacPro is out? No, so be content with your purchse and enjoy - life is too short to sweat the small stuff

Mike<br>

The latest benchmarks are in. At least for the 2.66 Ghz Xeon, Rosetta slowness has not been overcome:

http://www.barefeats.com/quad06.html

Still it is better than the old ones found with the 2 Ghz iMac Intel Core Duo here:

http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index1.php

Keep an eye on that barefeats page to see what the 3 Ghz has in store.

Since you spent a lot of money on the quad,

Which is precisely why he should dump it now while he can get a good price for it. That is what I did at least. Sold mine for $300 less than what I paid. $300 for an upgrade like this is a bargain in my opinion. Plus once CS3 comes out the price of G5s is going to plummet.

Since you work on HDV, I would wait until the MacPro's have a Blu-Ray optical drive option. Hopefully the wait won't be long (January 07?). Then you could burn your HDV video in HD on DVD's, etc. You could between now and then, probably identify someone who would want to buy your G5 Quad.

I want a MacPro too. But I'm waiting for IMovie HD 7 or other Apple software to incorporate Blu-Ray and Apple put Blu-ray drives as an option in their MacPros.

I find this discussion very interesting. I've been looking at the G-5 quad and 30" display (which has dropped in price). After surfing today and reading, I wonder if I should get the new Mac Pro. My main Mac program is PhotoShop CS2 and I've heard that it doesn't do too well on the new Macs.
So is it better to get one now or wait? Will the "old" CS2 work on the new Macs at all? Anyone know what issues arrise using the CS2 on the new machines? Of course when CS3 comes out for the new machines, I imagine it will work well. Can anyone shed light on why the new machines are less expensive than the G-5 quad?
Allie

The other issue presently is, like with any new system, there are going to be bugs, and it seems that the new SATA II interface and RAID is suffering when it comes to large file I/O. http://www.barefeats.com/quad07.html

The other, when the G5s came out, RAM was expensive, and while ECC DDR2 FB-DIMMs are always going to cost more, another premium.

Intel's roadmap for 2007 may change, but at least it is public knowledge for the most part.

>My main Mac program is PhotoShop CS2 and I've heard that it

doesn't do too well on the new Macs.

That's because CS2 has been compiled for the powerpc and the new macs are intels. Apple had to devise a mechinism to allow programs compiled for the PPC to run on the intel Macs. Enter Rosetta. It works extremely well but being an emulation you will be paying a performance penalty. Right now G5's are edging out the intel macs in some(most) photoshop tasks

>So is it better to get one now or wait?
This issue with CS2 is only going to last until adobe releases CS3 which they have comitted to making it Universal Binary, that is run natively on the PPC and intel Macs.

I think the G5 quad is a fine machine and will be up to the task, but it is last generation technology and so the long term benefits may be mitigated. The MacPro us todays technology and while the short term benefits are being mitigated by rosetta, its long term prognosis is better.

I saw the barefeats benchmarks and to be honest, I Interpret them as the MacPro is an excellent choice. Only marginally slower in rosetta apps, but significantly faster in Universal Binary programs.


Mike



Mini MacBook Mac SE

I have a G5 Quad like you and I was looking forward to the Mac Pro release but frankly, I was dissappointed.

Full Bandwidth DDR2 667Mhz DIMM's
4MB shared L2 Cache
2 x 3Ghz Xeon Dual Core's
1.33Ghz FSB

And in tests, the best they can get is 2.1 times faster than the G5 Quad. The machine tested was a pre-production (souped up) version of the retail version.

Add to that the cost of the memory, and availability of the memory (none avaialble that I could find in the UK so far).

Sure it sounds nice, double this quadruple that blah blah, but still no wireless or bluetooth as standard.

Having just forked out for your Quad G5, I would wait a couple of years when the 8 core offerings are on the table.

You'll notice better performance when OS X leopard is released as it is truly 64 bit, not just at the UNIX layer like Tiger, but throughout the whole interface as well and all applications (watch Steve Job's keynote - it's mentioned briefly).

So if you can be glad with your Quad and be dubious about speed claims. The benchmark tests (spec_rate) are designed natively for a x86 architecture so will always favour x86 over PowerPC in results, just remember Apple's arguments for not doing spec_rate tests in days gone by

You said:

"I think the G5 quad is a fine machine and will be up to the task, but it is last generation technology"

Last generation? Dual core? PCI express architecture?

Well that would mean the Mac Pro is last generation, since IBM, Intel amongst other chip makers, are already looking at quad core and beyond

no

you can buy multi core processors from Sun. that is great if you are running apache webservices or need scientific computing... but for checking email, editing photos, post-film, music production, etc, you need software and all that sotware runs on OS X and XP. there are fringe products that work on various other linux distributions, but for the most part, over 99% of the user base is on one of these Apple or MS platforms. AMD might suprise us with something better in the near future, but i don't have high hopes for AMD in the performance realm. they might be able to turn towards integrated and embedded solutions, especially helped with their purchase of ATI. XP and OS X are now firmly behind Intel for their short and medium term platforms (probably long term too).

Intel is already inspecting quad core processors. if intel wanted too, they could have released Woodcrest and other Core 2 processors at high 3 and low 4 GHz levels. they wanted to come into the market at a certain price point and be able to ramp the technology up in order to maximize its lifespan. given that the Mac Pro is such a ridiculously low price and high performance, it looks like they have suceeded. their future strategy does involve "massively parallel" architecture.

G5 has been last generation for quite some time now. It has only been the quality that OS X brings to the table that has made it relevant for so long. If it were not for Adobe not having a current universal photoshop, there would be no question as to the dominance of the Mac Pro in almost all markets.

now... not to say that the G5 isn't a nice machine and it does have amazing hardware architecture. everyone likes to talk about cutting edge and high performance, but in a professional workflow, not everyone actually needs to reside there. i'm not knocking the G5 and its place in the workplace. when your talking about the high end and cutting edge, your talking about a theoretic minority and lots of theoretic requirements and specs get thrown around, but... the G5 is really not there.

in reading my last post, i made a mistake... MS is not behind Intel, their partners are. Apple is both a hardware and software solution. MS is simply the software solution. so AMD will have a place with a certain percentage of the partners, but when you look at the numbers...