G5 - is it really that fast?

[Derek Roff]

Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product marketing at Apple, 
said:  "The scores were higher under Linux than under Windows, and in 
the rate test, the scores were higher with hyperthreading disabled 
than enabled.  He also said they would be happy to do the tests on 
Windows and with hyperthreading enabled, if people wanted it, as it 
would only make the G5 look better."

I find this curious.  Joswiak says that Apple chose Linux as the 
faster PC OS, in order to have a valid G5 vs. Intel comparison.  From 
a marketing standpoint, I would have used Windows, since that is what 
most customers will use.

As to the importance of floating point speed, I have always read that 
all graphics, image and sound processing, such as video, games, 
PhotoShop, CAD, ProTools, etc, need floating point for all the 
serious number crunching.  If true, this would make floating point 
performance more important for all the work I do, except email and 
word processing, for which the slowness of my typing and thinking 
speed is the bottleneck.

Derek Roff
Language Learning Center, MSC03-2100
Ortega Hall Rm 129, 1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
505/277-7368, fax 505/277-3885
Internet: derek at unm.edu