More CPU Nerd Stuff... G5 vs. Opteron vs. Xenon
AnAndTech Article Very interesting indeed!
It paints the G5 as a very competant CPU, but also shows the sheer might of the Opteron. It's impossible to relate the benchmarks to audio performance, but there are some interesting things to consider.
The Opteron has by far the best floating point performance of the bunch, and the lowest latencies getting to system RAM. Both of which should make it completely dominate in audio use. We've seen this in testing with Sonar between the Xenon and Opteron, but the Altivec variable is a big one in comparing the G5. They showed that when Altivec is used the G5 becomes extremely competitive. I'm a little curious about the huge latencies the G5 is showing getting to RAM though. Coupled withe the smallish L2 cache I would think that it would be crippled in an audio application when the audio latency is cranked down. Perhaps that's where the Altivec varibale saves it, I don't know.
And in the server space, where application have to spawn many threads dynamically, the G5 is literally crushed. But it's not the platform, it's the OS that's holding it back.
Hey, at least Mac OSX is pretty!