iMac G5?

[Thomas Holm]

Glenn,

i see from you signature that you've already got an iMac G5! How's it performing in Archicad?

(I know this is off topicc, but I rely on Djordje to move it right 😉

[glenn_peters]

Sorry for the misleading signature Thomas... I was a bit premature in updating my information as I anxiously wait for my pre-order to arrive (Apple Canada promises very soon).

I will let you know how it runs AC 8.1 (and AC 9.0 when that arrives from GSCNE). Hopefully soon!

(Only concern is with the NVIDIA video card... it is an 18-month old card that was a "value" performer when first released. Guess the tight confines of the new iMac don't allow for much more, or Apple is saving the better performance for the towers and/or future upgrades.)

Sorry Djordje for the off-topic babbling.

Glenn

[Thomas Holm]

Glenn, I'm moving this to the hardware thread.

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=21073#21073

[glenn_peters]

Haven't forgotten our on-line discussion Thomas... just waiting for all the pieces to fall into place before posting any impressions.

20-inch, 1.8 GHz G5 iMac arrived just over a week ago. It is a beautiful unit, and the screen is gorgeous (until I see a 30-inch cinema screen, at which point I will find it "too small" )

ArchiCAD 9.0 arrived this morning and I note that the "recommended" requirements for a Macintosh match up OK with the G5 iMac:
- Power Macintosh G5 1.8 GHz (check)
- Display: 1280 x 1024 pixels (20-inch is 1680 x 1050 pixels)
- Standard OpenGL cards with 64MB onboard video (check)

I'm unable to do a proper test yet as my 2GB RAM upgrade kit from CDW has been delayed (scheduled to arrive 3rd week of October now )

256MB of RAM will not provide proper performance (and is well below the recommended 1GB RAM) so no impressions until the upgrade.

Anyone else with this set-up who is able to comment?

[Anonymous]

glenn_peters wrote:
Haven't forgotten our on-line discussion Thomas... just waiting for all the pieces to fall into place before posting any impressions.

20-inch, 1.8 GHz G5 iMac arrived just over a week ago. It is a beautiful unit, and the screen is gorgeous (until I see a 30-inch cinema screen, at which point I will find it "too small" )

ArchiCAD 9.0 arrived this morning and I note that the "recommended" requirements for a Macintosh match up OK with the G5 iMac:
- Power Macintosh G5 1.8 GHz (check)
- Display: 1280 x 1024 pixels (20-inch is 1680 x 1050 pixels)
- Standard OpenGL cards with 64MB onboard video (check)

I'm unable to do a proper test yet as my 2GB RAM upgrade kit from CDW has been delayed (scheduled to arrive 3rd week of October now )

256MB of RAM will not provide proper performance (and is well below the recommended 1GB RAM) so no impressions until the upgrade.

Anyone else with this set-up who is able to comment?

A great place to buy upgrades and ram for Macs is Other World Computing at http://eshop.macsales.com/Specials/XLR8YourMac.cfm

I think the 2 GB upgrade set was more than $125 US cheaper than CDW at $425 US and they usually have everything in stock. You should keep them in mind for future upgrades for your Macs.

[glenn_peters]

Thanks for the RAM recommendation Michael... others have also pointed out that Crucial is a great place to source additional memory from.

Our firm has a corporate account with CDW Canada so we don't pay the web site price (typically 10-20% less).

Still, I'm disappointed by the delay in sourcing the memory. Next time I will certainly check with a few other vendors. Until then, I'm trying out AC9 on our 1GHz G4 (and waiting...)

[Thomas Holm]

AC 9 performs very well, much faster than 8.1, even on my below-recommendation-outdated-I-should-be-ashamed-hardware.

And since many operations are much smoother, to me it feels faster than 7v3!

[Anonymous]

Here is a tip to see if you have enough RAM for any give use under OSX 10.3:

Launch "Activity Monitor" (Utilities folder) and show "Activity Monitor" from the monitor menu. (Moved it to a second monitor if you have one connected)

At the bottom of the window, click on the "System Memory" bar.

Under the "System Memory" bar, the "Page ins/outs:" tells you if you have enough RAM.

"Page ins" totals the data sent from RAM to VM (ie sent to the HDD) and is not that important.

However, "Pages out" tells you how much of that data has been returned to the RAM from the HDD, which is much slower that keeping it the the RAM the whole time.

So idealy "Page outs" should be zero if you have sufficient RAM for a given job.

Photoshop and movie editors idealy need around 2Gb RAM, with 4Gb topping out performance on Dual processor G5s!

Check to see what you need.

Regards,

Nick Harvey

[Aussie John]

I read somewhere that significant performance gains can be made by having matching pairs of RAM rather than 1 or odd RAM modules ( ie two 512 is better than 1024)

(has something to do with the bit rate that data is transfered 128vs 64)