[OS X TeX] Performance comparison G4/G5

[Claus Gerhardt]

This weekend I got a new G5 at 2.5GHz and used the opportunity to compare 
the performance - as far as tex is concerned - with my old G4 at 500MHz. 
In short, the improvement is linearly in the frequency, the G5 typesets 
tex documents 5 times faster than the G4: a thirty page paper (2 runs) 
\le 2sec, a 300 page book (2 runs) = 8sec.

Textures' flashmode in classic works again instantaneously - there was 
an uncomfortable delay with the G4. Using Textures for writing and 
editing was and still is my preferred way, though I have to admit that 
TeXShop and pdfsync work very well together, but of course not as good 
as Textures and - alas - no flashmode.

My overall impression of my G5: beautiful and perfect; extremely quiet 
and really fast. Unfortunately, I couldn't test it with Mathematica, 
since my license expired and I have to wait a few days to renew it, but 
I guess the two processors' power won't be a bottle neck, but rather 
the memory: with the G4 and 1.25MB I always ran out of memory when 
doing some special Gröbner base calculations and of course it took 
weeks!

Claus
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