G5 2.5 verses a top end PC desktop or laptop

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:26 pm

I have a G5 2.5 ordered at the moment cost approx £2300 with bluetooth installed and 250 gig and 1 gig apple memory.
I was told to expect delivery 2nd week of August. i am now being told it may ship the 2nd week in September. I,m really disapointed with that schedule.

For less or similiar money could i buy a pc that would equal the G5 2.5s power ? ?
I intend to use alot of Vsti,s Absynth Atmosphere etc etc and a pci or firewire powercore.

Your thoughts would be appreciated as i have been considering switching over to PC for some time now as Apple as beautifull as they are overpriced in my opinion. I have no experience of using a pc for music making. i did use an atari for along while witch was stable and had greta midi timing etc etc. We used that at the Ministry of Sound in 1994 for a live set - very reliable and 8 bit !

best

Jamie~F

dirtstyle · Post by **dirtstyle** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 7:44 pm

sorry thats taking so long. i can certainly attest to how anxious you must be; i drove myself crazy waiting for my dual 1.8 to be delivered. though in my opinion having to wait that long does not merit canceling your order, though it does blow. yes, its expensive. yes, its seriously delayed. but it WILL be worth it. if you're already a mac user i don't need to tell you why it will be worth it. apples absolutely rock the creative world! at a price, yes, but all i can say is that i am seriously jealous of your new 2.5... ahh..liquid cool

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:46 pm

dirtstyle wrote:sorry thats taking so long. i can certainly attest to how anxious you must be; i drove myself crazy waiting for my dual 1.8 to be delivered. though in my opinion having to wait that long does not merit canceling your order, though it does blow. yes, its expensive. yes, its seriously delayed. but it WILL be worth it. if you're already a mac user i don't need to tell you why it will be worth it. apples absolutely rock the creative world! at a price, yes, but all i can say is that i am seriously jealous of your new 2.5... ahh..liquid cool

What your power like on the 1.8 ? Do you feel like you have enough juice ?

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:11 pm

Ther was a recent uk
tv program called The Gadget show that I saw where they pitted a G5 (top model) againced a very Fat pc (Athlon 64 I think) using photohop filter rendering. The pc absolutely left the G5 standing.
My brother runs a dual G5 in his studio and I have to admit they are DAMN quiet! Built like a tank as well.

I gather that moving from macs to pcs is a difficult and spititually painful move for a seasoned mac user. If I could afford it I think I'd go for the G5, they really do run Logic frighteningly well. It's the tough case and nearly silent performance that impressed me most, I wouldn't think twice about gigging with one.

detroitechno · Post by **detroitechno** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:19 pm

I've had this conversation many times, so I'm not going to go into detail. but you can build an athlon 64 pc for half the price of the G5 that will run circles around your new mac. there are plenty of bench marks around the internet and various forums. Just look around.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 10:38 pm

detroitechno wrote:I've had this conversation many times, so I'm not going to go into detail. but you can build an athlon 64 pc for half the price of the G5 that will run circles around your new mac. there are plenty of bench marks around the internet and various forums. Just look around.

this is true. I just switched back to PC from Mac, and went the Athlon 64 route. talk about headroom. Not only could you build an Athlon 64 system thats faster, you could buy a laptop that is just as fast as the new dual G5 for under 2k with a gig of ram. That is - just as fast when using Live 4 with VSTs. your mileage may vary depending on what your projects contain, and the extent of your multitasking. But let me put it this way, My $975 Athlon 64 3000+ Laptop runs Ableton with NI Komplete plugins equally as fast, and in some instances faster than a $2,500 Dual 2ghz G5.

If you go the desktop route, the Athlon 64s on Socket 939 (fx & 3500 and above) have an extremely fast memory controller

dirtstyle · Post by **dirtstyle** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:14 pm

jamief wrote:
dirtstyle wrote:sorry thats taking so long. i can certainly attest to how anxious you must be; i drove myself crazy waiting for my dual 1.8 to be delivered. though in my opinion having to wait that long does not merit canceling your order, though it does blow. yes, its expensive. yes, its seriously delayed. but it WILL be worth it. if you're already a mac user i don't need to tell you why it will be worth it. apples absolutely rock the creative world! at a price, yes, but all i can say is that i am seriously jealous of your new 2.5... ahh..liquid cool
What your power like on the 1.8 ? Do you feel like you have enough juice ?

i have so much juice i could bottle it up and sell if i wanted to

i ran some bench tests of my own with live and got my g5 D1.8 running pretty good. i had 40+ tracks going at once with at least one waves reverb, eq or compressor on EVERY track along with some various automations. live was still only using half of the cpu's juice; i couldn't believe it! i have 1.5gig ram in it which helps i think. i also use final cut pro frequently for video editing and it ripps through it's rendering with ease.

overall i am very happy with a machine that could only be built by apple and IBM, not just anybody in their basement - even if it does cost me an arm and a leg. i worked really hard to get it and am very pleased with the results.

pentajigga · Post by **pentajigga** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 5:12 am

dirtstyle--
are you doing this on ableton live or on logic... cause ableton chokes mcuhg much quicker than logic in my experience...

ryst · Post by **ryst** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:25 pm

dirtstyle,

Quick question. I remember when you did the test you said the Live meter was near 100%, correct? I emailed Ableton and they said that the Live does support dual processors but one is used for audio and the other is used for the GUI. They also informed me that CPU meter is for audio processing ONLY. So I am confused now. Where was your CPU meter in LIVE 4 when you had 40+ tracks and lots of plugs?

dirtstyle · Post by **dirtstyle** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 5:09 pm

ryst wrote:Where was your CPU meter in LIVE 4 when you had 40+ tracks and lots of plugs?

i did not know how the processor loads were split in live before you posted that, that makes perfect sense. i just came to my own conclusion and it may be wrong. i'm still a novice.

when i said 50%, i was drawing that conclusion from looking at the cpu usage in OSX's activity monitor, which basically shows you that the processors combined max out at 200%, 100 for each processor. when i looked at the monitor in live i was thinking, hey its hitting 100+%, the song is still playing fine, i can still push this thing till it hits 200%, right? well i don't know. whatch y'all think?

ryst · Post by **ryst** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 10:04 pm

when i looked at the monitor in live i was thinking, hey its hitting 100+%, the song is still playing fine, i can still push this thing till it hits 200%, right?

Shit....I don't know

Could you keep adding tracks and plug-ins and see if everything runs ok? This time if you could put eq and comp on every channel first ( 40+ tracks with eq and comp on every track) Then wherever the meter is, continue to add tracks and/or reverb on every channel.) And go ahead and see if you can push the CPU meter up to 150%-200%. See how far you can push it with out any problems. I am very interested in this. Thanks, dirtstyle!!!

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 6:47 am

30 Unique Stereo Audio Tracks, 30 EQ4's, 2 Reverb First Classes, L2, TC Compressor, Tape It, TC Filtrator, TC Sonic Destructor, 1 Impulse track with 8 Samples playing, 1 Midi track with Pro-53 playing. Additional FX - 1 of EACH Ableton Effect (reverb as First Class)

All at 76% CPU. Athlon 64 3000, 256MB Ram (had a bad stick, and waiting on a replacement so i'm at 256mb for the weekend), 4200rpm HD. No disk overloads, glitches or hangups at 12ms Output latency.

This laptop cost $875 after $100 rebate.

Lucid · Post by **Lucid** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 8:44 am

ryst wrote:
when i looked at the monitor in live i was thinking, hey its hitting 100+%, the song is still playing fine, i can still push this thing till it hits 200%, right?

Logically, if only one CPU can be used for Audio under Live, you would probably not be able to get anywhere near 200% utilization.

ultrasource · Post by **ultrasource** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 4:03 pm

AdamJay, Not trying to be a dick but you're a bit incosistent with the cost of your laptop on these threads. I thought it was over a thousand bucks? Are you skewing your numbers to prove a point?

Bill Jobs · Post by **Bill Jobs** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 9:41 pm

whats being a dick is responding to a thread and not answering the original posters question.
jamief the answer is xtra very simple. you sound like you want to know if
mac laptops are faster than pc laptops yet, the answer is no they are not, not the one you're getting, not the fastest mac available. there are still pc laptops that can outperform the fastest mac desktops, no need to even bring the pc desktops into the picture as the fastest ones are much faster than their pc laptop counterparts, so your money , no matter how much you spend will not get you a mac that is more powerful than a pc.

that said. this has hardly anything to do with music and if the only reason you're thinking of switching over to a pc is because you're tired of waiting
on the delivery date of your mac, then that's a big mistake. .. in my humble opinion I think there is something else going on deep down inside you and that you're just trying to use the delivery date as an excuse, surely you know it's not a good reason to switch platforms. if you want to change to a pc don't sweat it, just do it, granted alot of people might want to give you some grief but so what they're turds and don't understand that
your computer is just a tool and a competent person can run either platform with little problem.

personal opinion: if I was you , i'd get two laptops instead, a pc laptop and an ibook.

-::mic-minimal::

G5 2.5 verses a top end PC desktop or laptop

G5 2.5 verses a top end PC desktop or laptop

Re: G5 2.5 verses a top end PC desktop or laptop

Re: G5 2.5 verses a top end PC desktop or laptop