Apple Power Mac G5 - Manual (Page 26)

Design and Print
The Power Mac G5 delivers the quantum leap in processing power and performance
that design and publishing professionals have been eagerly awaiting. More system
memory and faster memory architecture make it possible to manipulate massive
images and layouts entirely in RAM, reducing the need to access the hard drive. Other
hardware features, such as integrated Gigabit Ethernet, DVD burning, and fast Serial
ATA hard drives, accelerate design and print workflows.
True to form, Mac OS X is the industry’s most graphics-friendly operating system:
ColorSync ensures consistent, accurate color; AppleScript makes it easy to handle
repetitive tasks consistently; and powerful font management features are built in.
Since Mac OS X is designed for multitasking and memory management, designers can
use more applications simultaneously than ever before. What’s more, both QuarkXPress
6 and Adobe Photoshop CS, the latest versions of the industry’s most popular design
applications, benefit from the unmatched power of the Power Mac G5.
Adobe Photoshop
To demonstrate the superiority of the Power Mac G5, Apple conducted tests using
Adobe Photoshop CS (8.0), the most widely used application among creative pro-
fessionals. Adobe Photoshop is a particularly effective cross-platform measure of
system performance because it has been optimized for both Macintosh and
Windows platforms.
Apple ran the tests using a 600MB Photoshop file and a suite of 45 commonly used
Photoshop actions, including file saving, image adjustments, mode changes, and
filters. Apple measured the time to execute each filter or function and compared the
performance of all actions using an indexed score.
1
The dual 2GHz and dual 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 systems ran the 45 filters 90% and 76% faster,
respectively, than the 3.2GHz Pentium 4–based system, and 81% and 68% faster than the dual
3.2GHz Xeon-based system. Even the single processor 1.6GHz Power Mac G5 was 21% faster
than the 3.2GHz Pentium 4–based system. 1
Power Mac G5
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
Power Mac G5
Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
Dell Dimension XPS
3.2GHz Pentium 4
Power Mac G5
1.6GHz PowerPC G5
21% faster
Dell Precision 650
Dual 3.2GHz Xeon
11% faster
Alienware Aurora
2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-51
11% slower
45-filter function test with 2GB of memory
Percent faster than Pentium 4
Baseline
90% faster
76% faster
26 Technology and
Performance Overview
Power Mac G5
Adobe Photoshop CS
Now optimized for G5.
Adobe Photoshop Results