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Two iMacs of the same generation, one Intel-based and the other IBM-powered. The creators of this video took two machines right out of their boxes, boted, configured the machines, and then powered them down. The two machines were then powered up simultaneously to gauge the difference in the amount of time it would take to boot each machine to its desktop. The results are pretty amazing. The Intel Core Duo machine had reached the desktop before the G5 model had even gotten past its grey-Apple screen:

 

imacs.jpg

 

If these results are typical (I need to bug Eric) then the improved boot times will probably turn out to be one of the most underappreciated new perks of the Intel machines.

 

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/1/17/2547

 

But...

 

A skeptic has done his own testing and discovered that the times in this video are not typical. Check out his results here:

http://silvermac.com/blog/archives/58

I had an iMac G5 before i got my intel iMac yesterday, and i can tell you. the VERY VERY first thing that made me go "whoa" was how fast the new intel iMac booted up. the previous iMac G5 had 1.5gigs of memory and the intel only has 512 currently, but when it comes to boot up time and universal applications, the intel iMac has surprising speed.

the intel only has 512 currently

 

Yes, I am curious about the effect of dual channel here too. Would like to see some comparsons of 2 x 512MB versus 1 x 1GB from the likes of BareFeats.com and Xlr8yourmac.com.

 

Thanks again for helping the OSx86 community out so much yesterday!

Edited by bofors
Yes, I am curious about the effect of dual channel here too. Would like to see some comparsons of 2 x 512MB versus 1 x 1GB from the likes of BareFeats.com and Xlr8yourmac.com.

 

well they are both from DDR2 (My last iSight built in mac, and the intel) the big difference between the two that i checked out is the iMac G5 has a 533mhz memory bus speed and the intel iMac has a 667mhz memory bus speed.

 

not too sure about the cas latency, but i wouldn't really consider that the key factor here. The frontside bus speed and the memory bus speed are the real bottlenecks for most computers now a days, and tend to have drastic results in terms of comparable speed.

 

Thanks again for helping the OSx86 community out so much yesterday!

hey no problem. I'm just as psyched about this as the rest of you are! Personally the day that i can program off of one machine for linux, windows and OSX i'll be a happy coder.

You will need to boot both machines to the desktop (assuming autologin is enabled) and let them sit for a couple of minutes, and then repeat several (5 or so) more times in order for the BootCache to settle down. With each successive boot you will notice reduced disk activity and generally faster booting, which will eventually level off.

 

There are a small number of major contributors to boot time on a Mac OS X system:

 

Firmware init time. EFI is significantly quicker than OpenFirmware in getting to the point where the bootloader starts.

 

Disk seek time. This is reduced courtesy of the BootCache, but is overall directly related to the layout of system files on disk and the seek performance of said disk.

Edited by crazymonkeypants
I had an iMac G5 before i got my intel iMac yesterday, and i can tell you. the VERY VERY first thing that made me go "whoa" was how fast the new intel iMac booted up. the previous iMac G5 had 1.5gigs of memory and the intel only has 512 currently, but when it comes to boot up time and universal applications, the intel iMac has surprising speed.

 

On my G4, from a cold boot, it takes 20 seconds for the grey Apple screen to first appear. 20 seconds later, I'm on a useable desktop.

 

Total boot time from power-up to desktop, about 40 seconds.

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