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I was also thinking that the 2MB L2 would help a TON also.

sparkn wrote:

akb825 wrote:

There are some 1080p trailers here.

Thank you.  I now feel my eMac 1 GHz is inadequate due to it not being able to play anything above 720p without the jitters.

I think I can safely say that I don't care what the benchmarks are because either new Mac will trounce what I currently have.

720p is unwatch-able on my 1GHz PowerBook. Stutters and skips constantly. I'm getting on average 9.29 fps!

Again, its painful and looks like poop. Maybe this is due to only having 768 MBs of ram? Even with a normal homemade movie I'm only getting 30 fps.

wellfleation wrote:

Again, its painful and looks like poop. Maybe this is due to only having 768 MBs of ram? Even with a normal homemade movie I'm only getting 30 fps.

I revise my prior statement.  In windowed mode (normal mode) it sucks.  Horribly.  Unplayable - audio only, with an image every 10 secs or so.

In full screen mode - it is beautiful with no dropped frames (that I can tell) and quite nice.

As for your home movies - the human eye can only see 24 fps, and 30 fps is pretty much standard on video cameras.

MacBoy4139 wrote:

wellfleation wrote:

Again, its painful and looks like poop. Maybe this is due to only having 768 MBs of ram? Even with a normal homemade movie I'm only getting 30 fps.

I revise my prior statement.  In windowed mode (normal mode) it sucks.  Horribly.  Unplayable - audio only, with an image every 10 secs or so.

In full screen mode - it is beautiful with no dropped frames (that I can tell) and quite nice.

As for your home movies - the human eye can only see 24 fps, and 30 fps is pretty much standard on video cameras.

Actually, it's more like 60 images in video if you count the fields (2 fields per image). But that's just rounding out the number cause in reality, it's 29.97 FPS with two fields per frame.

Last edited by Wolf355 (2006-01-17 9:20 pm)

Wow, that number seams like its RAM-starved. How much RAM does that thing have? I think just drawing fractals in the default size and saving to images 640x480 or less, 512 MB would be fine, but 256 would probably be getting to the point where it might slow down with page ins/outs. If you're saving large images, 512 MB might begin to feel a little tight. Also, if you have other apps running, that might be taking up valuable RAM if you don't have much.

Nothing open, I re-did the test: 177.43 seconds for the mandelbrot variation zoomed. Man, compared to my iBook G4, my Hackintosh really flew through that test. . .

akb825 wrote:

Wow, that number seams like its RAM-starved. How much RAM does that thing have?

640 MB. Had Safari open, nothing else.
I was actively browsing webpages while the fractal was working (getting bored, lol) but I'll retest with nothing open and not touching it at all real quick.

EDIT: 260.711sec (4:20) / Mandelbrot Variation Zoomed / G4 800 MHz / 640 MB RAM

haha, 4:20. My iBook's a stoner.

Last edited by DJ LUCiTE (2006-01-18 12:19 am)

DJ LUCiTE wrote:

akb825 wrote:

Wow, that number seams like its RAM-starved. How much RAM does that thing have?

640 MB. Had Safari open, nothing else.
I was actively browsing webpages while the fractal was working (getting bored, lol) but I'll retest with nothing open and not touching it at all real quick.

EDIT: 260.711sec (4:20) / Mandelbrot Variation Zoomed / G4 800 MHz / 640 MB RAM

haha, 4:20. My iBook's a stoner.

Safari loves to take over everything - I have seen Safari go up to 95% CPU (Activity Monitor was using the rest) just loading www.apple.com

smeghead wrote:

Seba_Aethiad wrote:

Czachorski wrote:

For me what these benchmarks do is make me pretty content with my MDD G4 PowerMac.  I installed iLife '06, and it runs wonderfully on this machine and it still performs very well for my needs with photos, music & video.  When I can see something like a 10x increase in speed, then I will be itching to upgrade, but I am quite content for right now.

For better or worse, I just recieved my 17" iMac Core Duo this morning (( purchased on the day of their release )), and considering that I'm upgrading from a over-worked 2002 DVI PowerBook 867, this is a work of beauty, and probably around the 10x increase in speed you mentioned.  It's all relative.

I do appreciate the benchmarks that were posted, but since I can't exactly afford a G5 Quad at the moment (( college student )), this is more than adequate, especially for my $1350 student price.  I opted for a gig of ram and the 250GB hd option, if anyone's curious, and so far, no troubles.  I only mention this because I was initially dubious as to the switch, but so far, all's well.

So would now be a good time to replace my dual 1.25 MDD.... or is it upgrade time and wait for the 2nd revision.  If I sell my current PM then I could totally buy the iMac. 

Or I could bung some more ram in the sucker and put in that shiny Radeon 9600 PC/Mac and get a new Dell 20'' monitor.  That doesn't solve the whole slow bus speed, no SATA (ATA HDs seem to be getting scarcer), only 4x AGP, no USB 2.0 (my PCI USB 2.0 card doesn't work with iPod grrrrr).  Anyway, it also has the nice goodies like Frontrow and the iSight built in and it's quiet (I got the Wind Tunnel blues).       

Anyone with a professional opinion?

For me the choice was simple.  I wanted to replace my wind-tunnel G4.  It's super noisy and even though I've replaced/modded the fans and put in a copper cooler, it still runs hot.  That probably has something to do with the fact that it's full.  Full of memory, PCI cards, HDs, Optical Drives and it has an ATI 9800Pro in it.  The real decision came down to getting a dual G5 refurb'd (2-2.5Ghz) or an Intel iMac.  Given that the performance for a dual 2Ghz seems to be roughly the same as the iMac and that the iMac is dead quiet, has a really nice GPU (finally!) and can span monitors it was a no brainer.  I'll suffer through 6 months of PPC  binaries to go with the new machine.

One other concern that I had was this being the 1st Intel out of the chute.  I've owned Apple products since 1981 and I'm always hesitant to get the 1st Gen of a radically new product.  I can still remember my flaming PowerBook 5300 (aka the smoker).  What alleviated this concern was the fact that Apple chose to re-use a case that they've had for a while.  At least this way I won't be the only one replacing a midplane......  Also, Applecare on the iMac is cheap ($169) compared to the PowerMacs and given that I was planning on getting a refurb, and that I've had trouble with 2 G5's at work, I'd be spending ($249) money on that as well.

I currently own 8 macs (some will be leaving according to my wife) so I'm calling this an "professional" opinion.

Overall I'm thrilled at the performance for a home machine and the design and noise level aren't bad either.

Last edited by jr57k (2006-01-18 9:56 am)

avkills wrote:

Damn I need a new laptop.

-mark

Judging from a lot of people's replies, it seems that I'm influencing a lot of people to buy new computers...

Ok,

My Dual 2Ghz g5 (3.5GB RAM) did the mandelbrot variation zoomed in 53.5 seconds. (anti-aliasing on)  (49.7 after re-boot no other apps running)

Hey does this FractoGrapher use Altivec?

-mark

Last edited by avkills (2006-01-18 8:59 pm)

mo' ron wrote:

MacBoy4139 wrote:

As for your home movies - the human eye can only see 24 fps, and 30 fps is pretty much standard on video cameras.

Your eyes can detect differences easily above 24FPS.

Yep 24 FPS is around the basic speed required for fluidity...but your eyes can see much faster than that. I recall a conversation about fighter pilots that could spot an enemy aircraft in 1/60 th of a second.