Ahhhh, now that's more like it! Regular viewers may recall that when the first sets of single-processor Power Mac G5 user benchmarks started surfacing a few weeks back, the results were... well, good, we suppose, but definitely nothing to make you lose control of your bodily functions. Well, grab a mop, folks (ewwww!), because now that dual 2.0 GHz G5s are starting to arrive here and there (well, there, anyway-- we don't expect to have one here for a good long while, yet), new benchmark scores are showing up, and they're a lot more in line with the change-of-drawers levels of performance that Steve Jobs promised during the G5 launch party.

MacRumors notes that PS7Bench scores from one lucky dual G5-totin' cowpoke just popped up on the 'net and have been added to the comparison chart at ChaosMint; Apple's barnburner beat out all other listed systems in 15 out of 21 tests, and turned in a final cumulative time of 95.1 seconds, which is a 24% improvement over the single-processor 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 system. Sadly, there isn't a dual-processor Xeon system on the charts for a more appropriate comparison, but a thread in the Ars Technica forums notes that the dual G5's normalized PS7Bench score is 547; that's the highest score by far on the provided comparison chart of 85 other systems, representing a 12% boost over the dual 3.06 GHz Xeon (overclocked from 2.4 GHz) that just got unceremoniously stomped into second place. Zow-ie.

Just to give you a sense of how the G5's Photoshop performance compares to other Macs you may have encountered, compare the dual 2.0 GHz G5 score of 547 to that of a dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac G4 (338), a 1 GHz 17-inch PowerBook G4 (196), and a 700 MHz iBook (74). Starting to feel an aching sensation in your wallet? Yup, us too. Especially since we fully expect even better scores once Panther is prowling the scene, and ones even better still when the next big revision of Photoshop is further optimized for the G5.

Of course, not everyone sits glued to Photoshop 24 hours a day, so it's nice to see that Accelerate Your Mac! has some benchmarking results from a dual 2.0 GHz G5 engaged in slightly less Adobesque activities. Right now most of the charts focus largely on the difference between the G5's stock Radeon 9600 graphics card versus a retail 9800 unit, so they aren't terribly useful from a processor performance angle, but some of the tests are indeed relevant-- although mostly to underscore the fact that Apple should really update QuickTime Pro and iMovie to use dual processors. On top of that, it's also nice to see the G5 turning in Quake 3 frame rates of up to 367.3 frames per second. Pardon us while we make a small "eep" sort of noise and get very quiet for a while.