My Dual 2GHz LW benchmarks

[Darth Mole]

At last - my dualie turned up today, and so here are some fresh-out-of-the-box, load-'em-up-and-press-F9 results. Make of them what you will. (Oh, and it's running with 1.5GB RAM, with a mixture of 4 or 8 threads, though the variations seemed to always be in tenths of a second, so I think they're ignorable.)

Results in seconds:

Radiosity_Things = 2.7
Radiosity_Reflective_Things = 29.0
Raytrace = 63.9
DOF = 6.7
Nebulae = 69.3
Textures = 4.0
Tracer_No_Radiosity = 222.2
Tracer_Radiosity = 479.2
Sunset = 110.8
Variations = 130.9

As I've said previously, I see no really major advance running on a G5 beyond the pure MHz increase. For example, my old 500MHz G4 used to crawl through the Raytrace scene in 521.3 seconds, which makes the dual 2GHz 8.15 times faster - pretty much as you'd expect. Hopefully, this will change with future versions of the OS and LW.

And the good news is that the 128MB ATI card has (so far) had no ill effects in Modeller - I'm happily rotating an object with 150,000 points in SmoothShade mode and it's fine.

I'll post more info if anything interesting arises, but so far I'm one happy bunny

[Ge4-ce]

Ok, Darth..

I can believe that these are acurate results.. Only.. Personally, I find them a lot better than the dual G4!! so that's good, .. but still a little bit dissappointing against the dual xeon... especially tracer radiosity is half as fast!! that's pretty slow..

I would ofcourse never buy a pc.. just.. I will wait for the next one.. (dual 2.5 I hope)

Not because of this, but I want one with a quadro FX card in it! and a source at Apple-expo in Paris told me that they would come to Mac in short notice..

[js33]

Darth,

Thanks for posting some REAL LW benchies. I trust your numbers more than any others I've seen so far.

Cheers,
JS

[Darth Mole]

They're genuine - like you, I don't much care to own a PC so I have no reason to fabricate them one way or the other.

I'm sure there are faster PCs; as of today, this is the fastest Mac I can buy. So I did (eventually - three days short of three months from order to delivery!)

I can imagine my next upgrade might be to a dual 3.0, which would be half as fast again. Although my bank account might have something to say about that. Now a dual 4.0 - that would be a must-buy!

(Personally I don't know what benefit you gain from these supposed high-end cards; you still have to press F9 eventually - I guess they're good for animators who need real-time feedback...)

[Darth Mole]

Sorry js33 - our replies overlapped - thanks!

If there's anything else anyone is interested in specifically, I'd be happy to benchmark scenes for them.

[Beamtracer]

The fastest 3Ghz dual Xeons (when decked out with 2gigs of RAM) seem to still be a bit faster than the G5 with Lightwave.

With Photoshop the G5 seems to blitz the Xeon.

One of the reasons may be that Photoshop has been updated since the release of the G5, and includes optimizations for the G5.

Lightwave hasn't had an update yet, so hopefully when LW8 is released in the next couple of months it will take advantage of some of the G5 features.

Also, the OS hasn't been optimized for the G5. Beta testers of the upcoming Panther OS (probably to be released in October) have confirmed that this OS brings a significant speed increase to the G5.

Unfortunately, if you buy a G5 today you don't get an automatic update to Panther, so you'll have to pay for it.

Also with benchmarks, no matter what the platform, it's important to get an overview of benchmarks from a few different contributers. People may have varying amounts of RAM, or there may be other factors that affect speed.

[js33]

Beam,

Darth's numbers seem realistic of the G5 performance. Also that PC mag Photoshop benchmark had the PC faster in like 14 out of 17 tests so you might as well throw out the Photoshop arguement.

I believe Panther and 8 will make some improvements but probably not drastic. I am waiting to see if Newtek makes 8 64 bit for G5 and AMD64. Now that will be an interesting test.

That's the problem with benchmarks. You know better ones are just around the corner but are never what you want them to be today.

Oh well the 64 bit extraveganza marches on.

Cheers,
JS

[Johnny]

Originally posted by Darth Mole
(Personally I don't know what benefit you gain from these supposed high-end cards; you still have to press F9 eventually - I guess they're good for animators who need real-time feedback...)

So...what's all the raving about these high-end cards?

Are things really extra, super-zippy while you're modeling or in Layout?

Glad to know the 128MB ATI card doesn't fight with Modeler...I may have to change my order..again!

J

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Johnny
So...what's all the raving about these high-end cards?

Are things really extra, super-zippy while you're modeling or in Layout?

For me, it's not that they're so much faster as far as OpenGL performance...physically, pro cards such as the Fire GL and Quadro series cards have pretty similar specs to their "gaming" counterparts. Sure there's some speed increase, but the real benefit is that generally, they can be counted on to be much more reliable for 3D-intensive DCC apps because they are tested, certified, and come with specialized drivers that are specifically tuned for individual apps such as LW or Maya, AutoCAD, etc.

In the past, I've spent about 2 years on an Intel-based system with an Oxygen GVX 210 and later a Wildcat 3 (forget the exact model), and display anomalies which are common amongst gaming cards I've encountered, such as disappearing grids, flickering textures, selections not displaying properly, etc., were non-existent. It's this accuracy and reliability which for me, are more important than the speed increase.

[mlinde]

Originally posted by Beamtracer
Unfortunately, if you buy a G5 today you don't get an automatic update to Panther, so you'll have to pay for it.

Um, Apple's policy usually allows acquiring an OS upgrade for the "cost of shipping" ($19.00) if you purchase within 90 days, so these systems may qualify if 10.3 comes out in the next 90 days.

[Ade]

Your all wrong, THESE BENCHMARKS ARE FAKE...
G5 DP2 is no faster than a Pentium 3.
BANDini (aka CaptainJerk) will set it all straight.

[nicsta]

I've noticed there are not many dual G5 scores on Chris' LightWave Benchmarks Web Page.

Are you going to post your scores there?

[DaveW]

Originally posted by Ade
Your all wrong, THESE BENCHMARKS ARE FAKE...
G5 DP2 is no faster than a Pentium 3.
BANDini (aka CaptainJerk) will set it all straight.

Yes, why hasn't the Defender of Truth posted here yet to set the record straight?


As for Pro 3d cards, from what I have heard (never used one of them myself) they help a lot in Maya but LW doesn't seem to get much of a speed boost from them. I haven't experienced any of the display artifacts TripleG mentions with my GeForce cards, and they do dual monitors great and work great with games so I don't see any need to spend 2x the money for a Pro card.

[Darth Mole]

Message deleted :-)

[Beamtracer]

Ade may have been joking / sarcastic, sending up Captain Panini.