Aqua cooled
As you can see by clicking on the FedEx link from yesterday's post, the liquid-cooled 2.5 GHz dual G5 arrived yesterday. So far so good, although I haven't yet had a chance to really push it. It runs KOTOR smooth as butter, but then again so did the 2.0 GHz G5 that preceded it.
I think the fan management is slightly better. The 2.0 G5 was really freakin' loud when the CPU was being stressed. In those situations, the fan would come on and stay on, and it reminded me of the "Juice Loosener" from the Simpsons ("IT'S WHISPER QUIET!!!"). For this new Mac, the fan does come on at full blast when the CPU is being pushed, but it seems to throttle down quite a bit immediately afterwards. It's still significantly louder than my older DP 800MHz G4, but I suppose that's to be expected when the entire front surface of the computer is a big ventilation grill.
My only other beef with the G5 is its weight. It's a hefty 44 pounds. It doesn't help that the handle edges are squared-off metal. On the plus side, the case will stop a bullet. It's also running a new variant of 10.3.4 - build 7L32. The only change in the OS I can see is that it generates prettier stack crawls in the crash reporter. :)
Other than that, it's running great so far. It goes to sleep - something my existing Quicksilver Mac doesn't do well at all (it either doesn't wake up or more commonly, jerks back awake after a minute or two).
Comments
"It's still significantly louder than my older DP 800MHz G4, but I suppose that's to be expected when the entire front surface of the computer is a big ventilation grill."
There was me thinking their relationship to a fish tank was supposed to make them a bit more hush, hush.
Posted by: cremegg | August 6, 2004 12:54 PM
I may not have expressed myself as clearly as I would have liked. Indeed, in average, everyday use (surfing the web, checking e-mail), the new 2.5GHz G5 is significantly quieter than my old G4 tower.
However if I'm doing heavy CPU stuff, like compiling in CodeWarrior or playing a game, the fan is without a doubt much louder than the G4 was in those situations (but not as loud as the 2.0 GHz G5).
Posted by: Brad Oliver | August 6, 2004 01:32 PM
I'm not in the market for a G5 in the pedigree of yours. However, in September I hope to at least be in the realms of G5 gaming with a new iMac! ;)
Posted by: John Hood | August 6, 2004 01:53 PM
Hopefully the G5 iMac will come with at least 6800LE gfx card. They are suppose to be close in price range of the 5200s but run most things faster than the 5900s. So far they are OEM only so here is to hoping that they put them in.
Posted by: Dale McLaughlin | August 6, 2004 08:48 PM
Prettier stack crawls? How so? I'm not aware of any CPU-Software-build changes in the backtrace output, but I'd be interested in knowing of any....
Posted by: Eric Albert | August 6, 2004 10:40 PM
Any chance you could record an audio file of the fans at full whack? Quieter operation was a major consideration for me ordering a G5 to replace my current wind tunnel G4.
-R
Posted by: Richard Bannister | August 6, 2004 10:41 PM
"Indeed, in average, everyday use (surfing the web, checking e-mail), the new 2.5GHz G5 is significantly quieter than my old G4 tower."
Aha, confusion all gone, excitement for my own 44 pound (think i've developed a hernia allready) aqua cooled toy returned.
Posted by: cremegg | August 7, 2004 02:09 AM
"Prettier stack crawls? How so?"
One of the G4s in our test lab is generating crash logs from 10.3.4 (7H63) that have mangled C++ names. I compared it to the new G5, which has unmangled names.
However, I notice now that on my old G4 (also running 7H63), I have unmangled names as well. So I'm not sure where the difference is coming from. Clearly, it's not the OS version itself. Maybe the developer tools being installed affects this somehow.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | August 9, 2004 09:34 AM