[George Loch]

[Francois Stark] “The single dualcore 2GHz will be slower than the dual 2GHz G5, and the single dualcore 2.3GHz will be slower than the current dual 2.3GHz – because they share one bus to the CPU. Their only advantage will be PCIe – which also does not help all of us with PCI-X hardware.”

I am not so certain. Remember we have new, faster ram as well. I think we should wait and see on this one.

[Francois Stark] “Answer this: Why would Apple not lead their website with the new dual core G5 machines? Are they not proud of their newest high-end offering? They are leading with the new iMacs, the new G5’s are nowhere on the front page…”

Also notice that Steve Jobs only shows up for the consumer announcements. Apple is a consumer company – at leas they want to be. They wil lstill serve the pros but, they put a lot of emphasis now on the general market or as general as they can get. iPod is their current love and will be so for awhile.

-gl

[George Loch]

[boots73] “I am a little confused as to why the newer one should be faster when it has less ram in it.”

Because it’s faster ram. The data can be moved more quickly in and out of the cpu and that translates intogetting more things done per cycle.

I would just make sure to get the 20″ and some f/w storage. The iMac will allow you to cut very well in FCP. It will just be the rendering times that suffer and the amount of RT preview you can get.

-gl

[George Loch]

You make a good point. The beauty of it is both versions are in the box.

-gl

[George Loch]

[MitchJi] “So if AE is slower on a G5 is it due to the G5 or did Adobe do a better job of optimizing for Intel?”

Actually, I still think they are valid tests in terms of the user experience. Xbench doesn’t help me get my work done but, AE does and I like knowing what helps it operate more efficiently. So, yes, I do see a cross-platform comparison of AE, Photoshop even Cinebench as useful. What we don’t have (and won’t in the foreseeable future) is a cross-platform NLE to do the same.

BTW, I foundd, having done a lot of AE on both platforms, that the Mac still had the AE edge until the dual-core AMDs arrived. Now it’s a catch up game. This new Quad mac may put them back on top.

-gl

[George Loch]

I went to boxxtech.com and configured a dual core AMD (lowest end – 265s) and configured a base model spec’ed like a base G5 quad and one with the 4500 FX and let’s just say that the G5 was VERY competetive (by several hunderd dollars in the later case).

Now, I can’t say how closely these perform to one another as I suspect the quad G5 may be faster than the quad 265s but, this gives you a solid idea how truly comparable workstation-class options are.

-gl <- willing to take either setup without complaint 😉

[George Loch]

[Andy Edwards] “..hmmm could it be the PCI Express Kona 3?”

Yes, but how long did Kona2 take to get here after it was announced? 😉

-gl

[George Loch]

Np. I will nevermind 🙂

-gl

[George Loch]

Are you certain you configured them similarly? The only quad-core 9300 I saw at hp.com was starting at $8k.

-gl

[George Loch]

The BMD multibridge is the only game in town right now. I suspect they have been working on other PCIe options as well however. Kona…no clue.

As for RAID, that is a nother matter. There may be some of the PC sata raid cards that are compatible but, up until now there was no way to test.

-gl

[George Loch]

[Tom Wolsky] “I thought PCI Express was PCI-X.”

Actually, no.

PCI-X = faster PCI 1.x
PCIe = PCI Express

PCIe is totally different and should not be backwards compatible. The implication then becomes that all the BMD and KONA owners are not going to using these new macs with their H/W. All the iO folks should be happy though 🙂

-gl