Hands-On Report--Apple's New Top of the Line 2.0GHz 20" iMac G5, How Fast Is It?
So how fast is it? We ran our standard suite of speed tests on the new 20" 2.0GHz iMac G5. Our unit is stock in every way, i.e. right out of the box, with the exception that we updated Mac OS X from 10.4 to 10.4.1. The results are given below and are compared with a first generation 1.8GHz 20" iMac G5 and a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with upgraded graphics, an Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL.
| Test | Computer | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| . |
2.0 GHz
iMac G5+ |
1.8 GHz
iMac G5 |
D 2.5 GHz
P Mac G5+ |
| Benchmarks: | |||
| Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS) |
4.9
|
2.3
|
12.9
|
|
Cinebench 2003 - Rendering
|
276
|
244
|
646
|
|
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting
|
1152
|
946
|
1801
|
| Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec) |
10
|
12
|
7
|
| Xbench - CPU |
139
|
128
|
241
|
| - Threading |
111
|
100
|
268
|
| - Memory |
232
|
234
|
376
|
| - Quartz Graphics |
332
|
209
|
521
|
| - OpenGL Graphics |
212
|
178
|
234
|
| - User Interface Graphics |
296
|
312
|
517
|
| - Hard Disk |
138
|
86
|
107
|
| "Real World" Tests: | |||
| Startup (sec) |
37
|
38
|
37
|
| Shutdown (sec) |
8
|
7
|
11
|
| Launch Classic Mode (sec) |
14
|
-
|
10
|
| Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec) |
53
|
-
|
62
|
| Scroll 142p Acrobat Reader File (sec) |
18
|
-
|
12
|
| Encode MP3 in iTunes (sec) |
56
|
-
|
52
|
| Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie (sec) |
23
|
-
|
24
|
| Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec) |
140
|
-
|
401
|
|
Halo 1.5.2 (frames/sec)
|
19
|
-
|
67
|
|
Call of Duty 1.4 (frames/sec)
|
56
|
-
|
86
|
The new 2.0GHz 20" iMac G5 does very well speedwise as one might expect, given that most of our speed tests are not dual processor aware and the iMac G5's CPU is only 20% slower than the Power Mac G5's. The iMac's hard drive tests faster than the Power Mac's (Xbench Hard Disk and Duplicating the 700MB folder), partly because it is new and less full. The iMac also does as well as the Power Mac in encoding an audio file as MP3 and exporting a QuickTime movie as full quality digital video. The iMac does fairly well in demanding 3D graphics performance. However, the high quality settings in our Halo test would have to be reduced somewhat to get an acceptable frame rate of over 30. [Bill Fox]
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