Primate Labs Blog

Hi
Great Work!

I am in the process of deciding which mac model would be best for my audio recording needs.
I have Protools mpowered 7.3, which actually runs at 16bit operation (up to 20 tracks without dropouts), on my emac g4 ppc (1ghz)

I am debating bewtween going all out on a power mac, and saving my money for other audio equipment and buying an iMAC 1.83 Ghz machine. I'm not too sure about the iMAC's ability to run protools 7.3 smoothly.

Can you help me with this?

Nice.. with 2.16 core 2 duo, I'm still like on the bottom 20.. I want that Mac Pro!! :D

if your wifes G5 is running like crap sell it and get a new intel mac, it will be way fast and you can probably make ome money in the deal

HELP!!! My wife has a Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5 (June 2004) w/3GB running OS 10.4.9 and it runs like a dog ever since we got it. It seems like even the simplest of tasks (i.e. closing an application) will frequently whirl up the fans and take 10s of seconds to perform. We have spoken with Apple support a number of times and even took it into the Apple store and they can't seem to fix the problem. They actually have trouble quantifying the problem. The best they could do was get the G5's fans to run hard by opening all 7 of the 3D examples in grapher at the same time. They replaced the "logic board", but nothing seemed to change. We are running close to the end of our 3 years of Apple support and are getting desperate. I recently found geekbench hoping that one of the tests could quantify the problem and maybe even identify the weak link. Her G5 scored a 179.9 (http://www.geekpatrol.ca/browse/2006/?view&...) is this about right using geekbench 2006? Can anyone tell me if something looks strange? Thanks!

@13/chalres:

Keep in mind that Photoshop CS2 is not universal, and runs under Rosetta on the Macbook Pro. A fair test would be CS3 on both the G5 and Macbook Pro. I have a Macbook Pro Core Duo, a Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo, and a G5 Dual 2, and I can tell you that the Core 2 Duo with CS3 - which is a Universal App - is faster in some functions than the G5.

well....my 3yrs old powerbook g4 scores only 692.....
and the macbook pro is best about 3152 : )
5 times, ha!!!!
its time.

thx for the cool performance test anyway

Cool! Keep the great work.

well id have to say this, does not include things like altivec, which provides a significant increase in power depending on what your doing... so photoshop cs 2 on my mac book pro, is just marginally faster than my original power mac g5 x2, some of that is the other stuff geek bench does test, but if there was a version that took advantage of altivec there would be a closer standing between intel macs, and old powermacs... well outside of the quad core thats just a beast

The fact that almost all of these computers, even some of the G3s can run 10.4 Tiger and still deliver a perfectly comfortable user experience for most use says so much about the quality of OS X and the Apple environment.

A very useful comparison - the wide range of test machines is especially apt since so many of us Mac owners keep our computers for years and years. The results here mostly match the performance I've seen from my wide range of Macs participating in Folding@Home (a distributed computing project for medical research) Not too surprising since Folding, like Geekbench 2, uses processors and memory far more than graphics.
As for upgrades: as this message is being sent from a G4 700 MHz eMac, (score of 353) the prospects are indeed tempting.

Wow, this is great, thanks!

Wow. According to this the new MacBook Pro is almost four times as fast as my 1.67GHz PB G4! I guess it's time to upgrade!

I guess the old PowerBook 1.67 is getting a little long in the tooth. It would be nice to be three times faster. MacBook Pro next summer, methinks. To be fair, my machine scored 919 - slightly better than the average given here. Is that worth the $ I spent on RAM? Who could say...

Great list!

Some of the results do seem rather strange, however. For example the 500MHz G4 (100MHz bus) scoring slightly higher than the 533MHz G4 (133MHz bus). I'm also a bit surprised to find relatively low end Core Duo boxes with 667MHz buses blowing away G5s with dual channel 1.25GHz buses. I suppose there are wait states introduced when your bus speed far exceeds the response time of your RAM, but it still seems strange to see 18 month old 32-bit notebooks performing better than the fastest 64-bit PPC towers.

Wowza! I always felt like my little Mac Mini Core Duo was more peppy than a dual G5. Thanks for the statistical proof!

1044 for my imac G5 (no isight) hmmm me too :(

wow, makes me realize my dual 2.5GHz G5 is being beat by a basic lowend macbook! Time to upgrade baby!

Really?
You got the iMac G3 @ 400Mhz? :P
Good luck then!

3 entries in the list, Wifes computer is 3.5x better than mine :-( need £'s now for new coolness.

hmm looks like i need to upgrade!