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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Anyone use the New Intel G5 Imac??
Joshua Prezant, Photographer
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North Miami Beach | FL | USA | Posted: 4:24 PM on 01.18.06 |
->> New Intel G5 I Macs?
Has anyone got there hand on the new Intel Imac? I am wondering how slow or fast Photoshop, Photomechanics, ect... run on it using rosetta? I am currently used to the speed of a 1gig processor, 1 gig ram g4 powerbook. I am thinking of getting once.. but am not sure if I should wait till the software becomes native for it. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks Joshua |
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David Meyer, Photographer
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Doug Keese, Student/Intern
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Miramar | FL | United States | Posted: 7:05 PM on 01.18.06 |
| ->> Took mine out of the box last night! At work i use a 20" iMac G5, 1.5g ram, the model just before the iSight update. On the intel machine i haven't noticed any real difference in speed in Photomechanic. At work i'm running CS2, but at home i'm using just CS, and it doesn't seem slow at all. I use a lot of the quick keys while toning images and it processes everything as fast as i can hit the keys and slide the levels/curves around. I'm taking the intel machine to work tomorrow and setting it up next to the iMac G5 to run some speed comparisons with different applications. I'll be sure to post my results. If i can get CS2 on the intel machine that would be an ideal comparsion. We'll see. |
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Doug Keese, Student/Intern
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Miramar | FL | United States | Posted: 7:07 PM on 01.18.06 |
| ->> Oh, forgot the specs on my intel machine. 20" with 1 gig ram and the upgraded graphics card. So we'll see how it competes against the G5 that has 512 mg more ram. |
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Kevin M. Cox, Photographer, Assistant
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Round Rock (Austin) | TX | US | Posted: 7:12 PM on 01.18.06 |
->> As far as Photo Mechanic is concerned, here is Kirk Baker's reply on the Galbraith forums when asked about PM being a Universal Binary (native for both PowerPC and Intel Macs):
"I have had versions of Photo Mechanic built as Universal since mid-June of 2005. We had no plans to release it until there were actual shipping systems. So version 4.4.2 will be offered in a Universal Binary format."
As a reference, 4.4 is the current official version (4.4.1 is available in beta) so I wouldn't imagine it will be much longer before you'll have PM running at full Intel speed on these new machines. |
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Ron Scheffler, Photographer
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Hamilton (Toronto area) | Ontario | Canada | Posted: 7:59 PM on 01.18.06 |
->> A comment about Photoshop CS from the Ars technica review: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/imac-coreduo.ars/6
Quote:
As expected, the iMac Core Duo didn't do so hot. However, I think the scores are respectable. Subjectively, it didn't feel that slow, with the obvious exception of the 9º rotation, pointillize, and watercolor filters. In looking back at some older benchmarks I had on file, the performance of the iMac Core Duo seemed to be on par with a 1GHz Power Macintosh G4. That's obviously a step down from the 1.8GHz G5 in the older iMac, but it goes to show that Photoshop is usable on the Core Duo. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington, DC & Seattle | WA | US | Posted: 11:19 PM on 01.18.06 |
->> Quote:
"Instead, our tests found the new 2.0GHz Core Duo iMac takes rougly 10 to 25 percent less time than the G5 iMac to perform the same native application tasks, albeit with some notable exceptions. (If you'd prefer, that makes the Core Duo iMac 1.1 to 1.3 times as fast.) And we also found that applications that aren’t yet Intel-native—which must run using Apple’s Rosetta code-translation technology—tend to run half as fast as the same applications running natively on the iMac G5."
from http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index.php
also
"The speed of applications running under Rosetta will be something to keep in mind, especially when it comes to the forthcoming release of the MacBook Pro. The users of that professional-level laptop are far more likely to demand serious speed from their applications; if there’s no Universal version of Photoshop available at the time, professional photographers may balk at the idea of running Photoshop at a fraction of its speed."
Potential iMac buyers who predominantly rely on applications that aren’t available in Universal versions (or, for that matter, those who rely on Classic, which is incompatible with Intel-based Macs) will likely not be interested in these first Intel systems. Running a handful of programs in Rosetta seems reasonable, but if you rely on numerous applications that aren’t yet Universal, it’s probably wise to wait."
from
http://www.macworld.com/2006/01/features/imaclabtest1/index1.php |
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Doug Keese, Student/Intern
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Miramar | FL | United States | Posted: 6:19 PM on 01.19.06 |
->> Ok, so i lined up an intel and G5 iMac side by side and made some comparisons. First, here are the specs of the 2 machines:
20" iMac G5, 1.5g ram, the model just before the iSight update
20" iMac Intel, 1 gig ram and the upgraded graphics card.
Software used:
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Photomechanic (latest version)
Office 2004
Toast Titanium
Physical changes: intel machine is a bit thinner, power button moved from side to left, all ports are now in a horizontal row along the back right instead of vertical, screen is brighter, CD loading slot was moved down about 3-4 inches on the side.
On startup, the Intel machine booted up close to 2 times faster than G5.
Photoshop opened up faster on the G5 by about 2 seconds.
Using the same folder of images, they were opened in Photomechanic and the thumbnails appeared at about the same rate.
Selected 4 images in PM to open into CS2, again, too close to call. TIE
Rotated image 90 deg. TIE
Levels, Curves, Saturation (basic toning things) TIE
Unsharp mask TIE
Filters: under Texture, applied the Mosaic Tile - the G5 smoked the Intel by close to 8 seconds.
Gaussian Blur TIE
Raw image opening - G5 beat Intel by about 2 seconds
Summary: for photojournalists doing basic toning, photo prep for publication, no problems or speed issues worth worrying about. If you're doing more graphic design, etc. and use the creative filters, then you're in for a bit of waiting with the Intel compared to the G5.
Toast Titanium ran fine with no problems, speed wasn't an issue.
Office 2004 may have had a slight lag, but not enough to really notice or be concerned with.
iPhoto is considerably faster on the Intel, and the new features are pretty cool.
All in all, if the MacBook Pro runs similar to the iMac and you're only doing basic toning for newspapers, and not heavy creative filters, i see no reason why you shouldn't go with a newer Intel machine. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington, DC & Seattle | WA | US | Posted: 6:30 PM on 01.19.06 |
| ->> Thanks Doug! |
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William Jurasz, Photographer, Assistant
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Cedar Park | TX | USA | Posted: 9:30 PM on 01.19.06 |
| ->> Doug, I'm wondering if iPhoto was the only Intel native app you ran? Were the others PowerPC code run under Rosetta? If so I'm wondering if a Universal Binary of Photoshop would actually run quite a bit faster on the Intel box? I'm fence sitting on a G5 iMac or an Intel iMac. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington, DC & Seattle | WA | US | Posted: 10:04 PM on 01.19.06 |
| ->> None of those vendors (Adobe, Camera Bits/Photo Mechanic, MS Office) have shipped Universal Binary software yet so they had to be under Rosetta. Correct me if I'm wrong.... |
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Doug Keese, Student/Intern
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Miramar | FL | United States | Posted: 9:53 AM on 01.20.06 |
| ->> All of the iLife programs are running in the Intel native platform. Everything else i did was running under Rosetta. You can actually go to the Utilities folder, open up system profiler (where you can view cpu/memory usage as you're running applications) and it lists all the software/programs you have running and weather or not it's running on Intel or Power PC. Just a little thing you can do if you go to an Apple store to test drive one and you want to see wants running on Intel and what isn't. |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 1:47 PM on 01.20.06 |
->> "New Intel G5 I Macs?"
Intel are making G5 chips now? |
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William Jurasz, Photographer, Assistant
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Cedar Park | TX | USA | Posted: 2:14 PM on 01.20.06 |
| ->> No, Intel is not making G5's. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Doug Keese, Student/Intern
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Miramar | FL | United States | Posted: 1:43 AM on 01.21.06 |
| ->> that video is not completely accurate. They should've done it more than once. I did the comparison start up at least 3 times, and while the intel machine won every time, it didn't win by that much. |
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Seng Chen, Photographer, Assistant
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Berkeley | CA | USA | Posted: 3:38 AM on 01.21.06 |
| ->> If comparing startup time is important in evaluating a chip's real world performance, what does that say about the stability of the hardware? |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 10:57 AM on 01.21.06 |
->> "No, Intel is not making G5's."
I know. |
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Jon L Hendricks, Photographer
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Merrillville | IN | USA | Posted: 11:10 AM on 01.21.06 |
| ->> Startup time does have a lot to do with how many different extensions you have on the machine. So, an older machine will have many more to load than a brand new machine out of the box. Not a good comparison unless the machines have the EXACT same extensions to load. |
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