We all saw that video where the guys are comparing start up times between two iMacs, one running Intel and the other running G5 processor. If you are one of several people left on this planet who didn’t see it here is the link.

The difference in boot times is such that one gets impression that Intel chipped iMac blows the G5 away. Not so, I’m afraid. Whatever the guys did with the G5 it slowed it down considerably. And Intel iMac is actually hardly any faster than G5. How come? Simple, I used a stopwatch, that video and then my iMac.

Firstly, I have shut down my 20″ 1.8 GHz G5 iMac (rev 1), opened up the case and removed 256 MB of memory to have only 512 in it (I had 768 MB total, for those who don’t like maths:-). Then closed the case, booted it up and measured the times for different events by using the stop watch on my Sony-Ericsson T630 mobile phone. Processor setting is on ‘Highest’

First point is the Mac sound, second point is when Apple logo appears, third point is when “Starting Mac OS X” appears on the blue background and finally when the computer has completely booted – once the time is displayed in the menu bar (comes about a second or so after the dock has loaded)

And since I used stop watch on the mobile phone I performed the test 8 times and got the average times, even though the differences in measurements were minimal.

Then I played the video a few times and checked the times for same events on both machines. I can not pick up the time when the guy presses the buttons but my measurements from the moment he said “go” until the Mac sound give me 4.5 seconds. So I guess I might be wrong 0.5 – 1 seconds at most. But I’ll assume that the word “Go” is the starting point.

So, below are the scores for all three computers, you be the judge. Please note v G5 is the G5 from that video.

Event v G5 Intel My G5
Mac sound 4.5 4.5 3.5
Apple logo 25.5 6.7 15.6
Mac OS X 1:21.6 31.9 34.4
Ready to use 1:38.0 37.9 40.8
       

So if my G5 boots in under 41 seconds then the G5 in comparison video should boot in under 40 seconds, taking the processor speed into consideration (2.1 GHz).

Number of people made a fair comment – “Even though there seems to be something wrong with that G5 in the video, Intel’s boot time is astonishing!” I actually think it’s a bit disappointing after all the media fuss I expected more.

And that video … ah, never mind.