14 DAY TRIAL // Benchmark values Steve Jobs presented were vaporware and have no place in the real world. Many have said that the original G5 iMac was faster and other have said that the new Core Duo machines are faster. As expected, actual comparisons are beginning to arise and both with benchmarks and 'real life' tests.
From the initial results it seems that the new machines are indeed faster than their predecessors, although not as fast as the ads say. True enough, at the moment, there are not that many universal binaries out there, which will run native, in order to have a clear image of real life performance. Also it is noteworthy that while the new machines have two processors, they are 32-bit, and the G5 was 64-bit, so while it is a big step forward, it is also a big step backwards.
Compared to the previous iMac, the new Intel based one is faster, but the new model pales when compared to Dual and Quad G5 machines. This is, of course, normal, and it is for this reason that the PowerMac G5 will still see a lot of use until the new Intel based Power Mac models come out.
See the test results from MacInTouch and ArsTehnica .