Ted Byrne

Preamble

Our family computer has definitely earned its stripes as a workhorse. It’s a 2003 Apple Power Mac G5 tower. It’s still chugging along quite nicely, and still is definitely more than adequate for email, Word, Excel and surfing the web, etc. However, I bought it in the era before processing 12 MB RAW camera files was commonplace and YouTube HD video even existed. Heck, YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005. Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind setting up batch jobs and Photoshop actions when I don’t need to sit in front of the computer, but the lag in response after each click of the mouse was starting to drive me mad. The simple fact of the matter was that a 6-year old computer wasn’t cutting it anymore for 2010 multimedia tools. Also, Apple is now starting to release Intel-only versions of some software and many other software providers will likely follow. This is significant as the G5 is a PowerPC-based machine. As an example, the Aperture 3 Demo, released last month, will not even install on the machine.

So I bought an iMac 27″ Quad-core i7.

I wrote that last line very quickly. However, I always diligently reference any purchase like this and spent hours weighing the pros and cons of an all-in-one vs the upgradability and modularity of a Desktop machine (my preference). However, the new iMacs, released in Fall 2009, were getting rave reviews for speed and the huge LED display, but on the downside many models had major issues with quality-control (yellow tinge, flickering) and improper packaging (broken screens upon delivery). In terms of speed, however, the i7 model is (at the time of this writing) now competitive with the entry level Mac Pro Towers – and cheaper, AND with a 27″ inch gorgeous display!

Because of the early issues, however, I still decided not to be an early-adopter and held off ordering one for Christmas 2009. Besides, there was a two- then in January, an unheard-of estimated three-week delivery time!  Apple was holding back the assembly line to ensure that there were less problems. With an imminent release of a new line of Mac Pro machines in February-March, I thought I’d eventually be swayed towards a Desktop. Heck, I’ve got a decent monitor already. I even considered the late-2009 Mac Mini for a short while.

But no… Apple got their act in gear and production caught up to the immense demand. Delivery time was back to 24-hours and the QC issues seem to be working out. I cracked and had quad-core i7 model in the house within 48 hours. That was last week and first impressions are very good, indeed.

Before I continue; this article is not a review of the new iMac. There are plenty of those on the web (here, here, here and here for example). Indeed, there are always ample reviews for every new Mac model that comes down the pipe, all professionally and rigorously comparing similar, recent models for us potential buyers to evaluate in order to make an sensible, informed purchase.

The operative word in that last phrase was recent.

Yes, there are plenty of reviews comparing the new iMacs to various 2009 and 2008 models… But what about about my 2003 G5 ? What kind of performance increase should I expect to see? A significant one, I expect… But I wanted quantitative comparisons – numbers, percentages, charts!

Of course, the folks that write Apple hardware reviews for a living can’t be expected to keep families of legacy Macs lying around for years. As well, it’s very hard to keep various generations of machines on the same playing field in terms of testing conditions and benchmarking. But yet there are plenty of users out there with older machines, like me, who would just like to see even a ballpark comparison. One of the very positive sides to owning a mac, after all, is their longevity.

So out of curiosity I conducted one myself, thinking that there may be others who could benefit from (or at least be curious with) the results. I also threw in a 2007 MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo that I use daily for work. I used a series of tests that I estimate to be practical, real-world, everyday tasks, from three generations of Macs.

The Machines

The most pertinent details:

• 2003 – PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz (single), 4.5 GB RAM, OSX 10.5.8, (10′000 RPM drive) [stock photo].
• 2007 – MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 3 GB RAM, OSX 10.5.8, (7′200 RPM drive) [stock photo].
• 2010 – iMac Quad-core i7 2.8 GHz, 4 GB RAM, OSX 10.6.2, (7′200 RPM drive) [stock photo].

The numbers in [#] in the results chart below refer to details concerning each test, which I’ll describe here. For all photo-based tests the same folder of  20 Nikon D90 Raw NEF format  files at 4288 x 2848 (mix of landscape, portrait, macro) was used. For the video compression test the same DV clip of 5:05 Standard Definition 720 x 576 DV was used.

1. Ripped U2’s “War” in MP3 on “High Quality”, 192 kbps, iTunes 9.
2. Export to web “iPhone kbps” default (Quicktime Pro 7.6.4)
3. Using Elgato Turbo.264 USB accelerator on “iPod High” setting.
4. Using ffmpegX “DVD” preset (mpeg2-enc), version 0.0.9y.
5. Export at jpeg “high”, resized to 1000px on long edge, Nikon ViewNX version 1.5.2.
6. Export at jpeg “high”, resized to 1000px on long edge, using Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor. CS3.
7. Export at jpeg “high”, resized to 1000px on long edge, using Tools > Photoshop > Web Photo Gallery. CS3.
8. Ran standard Photoshop speed test action from Retouchartists.

Results (click on image to zoom)

No surprises here

For good measure I downloaded and ran the Geekbench 2 benchmarking app on each machine. You can have a look at the details for each test here at the Primate Labs site.

Click to zoom.

Geekbench Results

Conclusions

There’s no suprise here as the iMac easily bests the MacBook Pro and the G5 in all categories, except the CD Ripping/Encoding test. I was actually surprised that the iMac actually took longer than the G5, probably due to the read time of the relatively slow optical drive in the machine. The tray-loading drive in the G5 is a Pioneer DVR-109, which has a 40x read speed (6.00 MB/sec) while the slot-loading drive in the iMac is a Sony OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5680H. I can’t find any tech specs on the official web site, but it not likely faster than 24x, like a similar model. In any case, there are also some reports of iMac optical drive slowness over at the Macintouch forums and I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it. Overall, the iMac 27″ i7 is night and day faster and I’m pretty sure that I’ll be happy with my decision… And the G5 will continue to get everyday moderate use as a family PC.

Hopefully, this comparison with older machines may be helpful for someone currently considering leapfrogging a few Mac generations.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome. /TB