Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Core Duo
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 30, 2006 11:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
iLife '06 Performance with iMovie HD
The next application that I looked at was iMovie HD, a part of the newly announced iLife '06. There are two primary focuses for performance in iMovie HD: video import speed (if you are dealing with a non-DV or non-iSight video source) and effect rendering speed. I focused on the latter, measuring the time that it takes to render various transitions and video effects in iMovie HD.
Note that all of the transitions and "Video FX" are single-threaded, so there was no performance difference on the iMac between running with two cores or one enabled.
First up are the transition rendering times. There are 15 transitions in iMovie HD that can be placed between two separate clips. I timed the amount of time that it took for the transition to be rendered upon inserting. Each transition was timed three times and the results were averaged - the average time is reported in the table below:
The Core Duo was slightly faster - the total for all of its transitions was about 8.5% lower than the iMac G5's time.
The bigger performance differences come when looking at the Video FX render times. These effects take anywhere from a few seconds, all the way up to multiple minutes to render, and can definitely bog down the creation of any movie project.
The sample above is almost all of the effects that you can perform in iMovie HD; the exception being all of the Quartz composer effects, which were left off in the interest of time. When the G5 and Core Duo are close, the G5 generally pulls ahead by a single digit percentage. However, when they aren't close, the Core Duo is usually ahead by at least 30%. If you average it all out, the performance advantage translates into about 11% in favor of the Core Duo. Once again, these tests are single-threaded, so there is no performance benefit due to the dual core nature of the Core Duo.
The next application that I looked at was iMovie HD, a part of the newly announced iLife '06. There are two primary focuses for performance in iMovie HD: video import speed (if you are dealing with a non-DV or non-iSight video source) and effect rendering speed. I focused on the latter, measuring the time that it takes to render various transitions and video effects in iMovie HD.
Note that all of the transitions and "Video FX" are single-threaded, so there was no performance difference on the iMac between running with two cores or one enabled.
First up are the transition rendering times. There are 15 transitions in iMovie HD that can be placed between two separate clips. I timed the amount of time that it took for the transition to be rendered upon inserting. Each transition was timed three times and the results were averaged - the average time is reported in the table below:
| iMovie HD Transition Rendering Performance in Seconds (Lower is Better) | iMac G5 1.9GHz | iMac Core Duo 1.83GHz |
| Billow | 5.36 | 4.14 |
| Circle Closing | 3.32 | 3.13 |
| Circle Opening | 3.41 | 3.09 |
| Cross Dissolve | 3.51 | 3.34 |
| Disintegrate | 6.14 | 4.73 |
| Fade In | 2.31 | 2.32 |
| Fade Out | 2.30 | 2.28 |
| Overlap | 3.25 | 3.25 |
| Push | 3.43 | 3.26 |
| Radial | 3.35 | 3.29 |
| Ripple | 6.74 | 5.32 |
| Scale Down | 3.73 | 3.53 |
| Warp Out | 3.58 | 3.91 |
| Wash In | 2.43 | 2.47 |
| Wash Out | 2.35 | 2.39 |
| Total | 55.21 | 50.47 |
The Core Duo was slightly faster - the total for all of its transitions was about 8.5% lower than the iMac G5's time.
The bigger performance differences come when looking at the Video FX render times. These effects take anywhere from a few seconds, all the way up to multiple minutes to render, and can definitely bog down the creation of any movie project.
| iMovie HD Video FX Rendering Performance in Seconds (Lower is Better) | iMac G5 1.9GHz | iMac Core Duo 1.83GHz |
| Adjust Colors | 75.62 | 48.62 |
| Aged Film | 30.43 | 32.44 |
| Black & White | 52.62 | 35.81 |
| Brightness & Contrast | 26.12 | 28.13 |
| Earthquake | 113.69 | 56.75 |
| Electricity | 78.47 | 54 |
| Fairy Dust | 151.69 | 58.63 |
| Fast/Slow/Reverse | 6.12 | 8.56 |
| Flash | 24.44 | 24.16 |
| Fog | 46.25 | 49.66 |
| Ghost Trails | 80.97 | 76.31 |
| Lens Flare | 61.12 | 46.22 |
| Letterbox | 26.94 | 28.75 |
| Mirror | 25.6 | 25.16 |
| N-Square | 31.13 | 32.63 |
| Rain | 45.6 | 39.75 |
| Sharpen | 35.75 | 43.25 |
The sample above is almost all of the effects that you can perform in iMovie HD; the exception being all of the Quartz composer effects, which were left off in the interest of time. When the G5 and Core Duo are close, the G5 generally pulls ahead by a single digit percentage. However, when they aren't close, the Core Duo is usually ahead by at least 30%. If you average it all out, the performance advantage translates into about 11% in favor of the Core Duo. Once again, these tests are single-threaded, so there is no performance benefit due to the dual core nature of the Core Duo.
Media Encoding Performance with iTunes and Quicktime
iLife '06 Performance with iPhoto, iDVD and iWeb
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Illissius - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
Compared to native applications, obviously, it's less than ideal; on the other hand, compared to, say, PearPC, it's pretty amazing. (I don't have any data and haven't tried it myself, but from what I've heard I'd suspect it runs at 5%-ish performance; compared to that, 30-70% is a minor miracle.)I know it won't interest the end user any whether it could've been even worse, but wanted to point it out, nonetheless ;).
yacoub - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
I wonder how it compares in game- oh, right, Mac. Hehehe ;)DrZoidberg - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
there is one very popular game on mac.World of warcraft....could anandtech pls include a benchie comparing mac with intel core duo vs g5 in wow? It would be interesting to see if apple switching to intel means macs are better at games (or not).
fitten - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
Is the Universal Binary out for WoW yet?Cusqueno - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
I have a 20" iMac Core Duo and with the default 512 RAM it was bad performance. About 5-10 fps in IronForge and 20-25 elsewhere. When I upgraded to 2 GB RAM it has improved greatly, maybe 10 - 20 in IF and 30 - 40 on the road. I guess this is due to Rosetta using lots of RAM.As of last night, there was no Universal binary. But today is patch/reboot day so might be pushed when I get off work. It is supposed to be included with version 1.9.3 according to the WoW forums.
fitten - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
That's pretty awesome considering that you're running WoW in emulation (Rosetta).vortmax - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
Seeing that Rosetta is needed for all MS and Adobe apps. and since using Rosetta seems to take lots of memory, it would be nice to see how it runs with 1gb. Also, some benchmarks from Photoshop would be nice :)Thanks Anand!
Lifted - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
"... but those are the ones we want to measure anyways so they have to be there."Eug - Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - link
Does turning off one core turn off half the cache?ie. Is it really Yonah Core Solo, or is it Yonah Celeron M?
maconlysource - Wednesday, February 1, 2006 - link
Where did you get the toolbar single proc- dual proc utility.I installed the developer pkg on my Intel iMac but can't find it?
Can you email me it?
Thanks.
Pete.