Macs Are Slacking!

[awulf]

Here is a web site comparing Mac's, Intels and AMD's and the PC's kick the mac's but in all programs including Photoshop 7!

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc23.htm

What is going on? :confused:

Why Aren't mac's fast any more? Is it Apple, Is It Motorola? Or are these benchmarks inacurate

What do you think?

[Mr. Anderson]

memory and bus speed have a lot to do with it - even though another gig of Megahertz couldn't help either. A single Pentium blowing away a dual G4, pathetic, but true.

When the new machines come out it will be interesting to see how they match up then.

D

[scem0]

Macs are slower. They have been for some time. Apple/moto need to stop making iApps, and need to start working on their processors.

[tjwett]

Originally posted by scem0
Macs are slower. They have been for some time. Apple/moto need to stop making iApps, and need to start working on their processors.

well said. enough with the iCrap already. iThinkItSucks.

[Ensign Paris]

That is just one benchmark, over all I would say that people working on Macintosh would find it a more productive platform, basicly you save time on a Mac by not fiddle arseing around.

Ensign

[djniche]

I agree with the overall argument
you definetaly get a better experience working on a mac. I agree that the speed is not helping. This gives more reason for apple to release a big jump on clock speed. I hope we see 1.5ghz - a dual 1.5ghz or even 1.4ghz dual machine will smoke any pc right now!

look out aug 13!

[iGav]

'YAWN'.............. another one of 'THOSE' threads...... :o :eek: :p

I'm with you Ensign buddy........ ;) :)

[Ensign Paris]

With X.2 I hope to double as productive, technology is great but not when you are so bothered with technical details that it slows you working down, see DukeStreets thread "Does Technology kill creativity" or something like that :)

Think Productive

Ensign

[Rajj]

I concur, Jaguar "should" help Apple blow the doors off the competition;)


Originally posted by Ensign Paris
With X.2 I hope to double as productive, technology is great but not when you are so bothered with technical details that it slows you working down, see DukeStreets thread "Does Technology kill creativity" or something like that :)

Think Productive

Ensign

[awrc]

Originally posted by dukestreet
memory and bus speed have a lot to do with it - even though another gig of Megahertz couldn't help either. A single Pentium blowing away a dual G4, pathetic, but true.

Another gig of Megahertz?

<quick thing with calculator>

That's 1000000000 MHz.

That's 1 PetaHertz.

I think we can safely assume that'll have decent benchmark results :D


When the new machines come out it will be interesting to see how they match up then.
D

I have no worries about what's coming down the pipeline. I don't think we're necessarily going to see any major processor speed bumps anytime soon (1.4-1..5GHz tops) but I think there are a slew of areas they'll improve - bus archiecture, bus speed, cache size and speed.

I think we'll see some of this real soon, with the rest sneaking in in the next year or two.

Another thing to remember, though, is that Apple's shifting focus from professionals to mid-level and consumers. x86 performance has kinda got out of control - outside of the desire to run the latest games faster, you've now got the situation where the major manufacturers are trying to push ever-faster machines on people who don't need them and haven't needed them since roughly the eera of the 500MHz PIII. Ditto with hard drives - with the exception of those who have vast numbers of MP3s, most machines are being sold with drives far larger than their users actually need.

Ironically, it's the professional people that Apple's shifted focus from recently that *can* use all that surplus power.

[saabmp3]

Speed doesn't always make the top difference. Right now I'm on a AMD comptuer with all SCSI 15k drives and CAS 2 RAM. Trust me, it's a ****ing speed demon. It also crashes once a day. This is fine for me bumming around with 25% of my time doing critical stuff. Next year I'm going to be in a much harder place possibly startig adouble major immediatly going into a double masters. I need something that works, no questions asked when I'm writing papers. That's why I'm incredibly stoked for my powerbook. OSX works, plain and simple. I know there are some bugs, but nothing like Win 2k. Speed is a big factor, but for most people it's not even half of the game.

BEN

[cb911]

i read that all Macs will generally run better with the more RAM you can put in them. is this true?

[Pauls]

Originally posted by cb911
i read that all Macs will generally run better with the more RAM you can put in them. is this true?

Generally for OSX, 512 Mb ram is the minimum for a smooth experience. (Sure it will run on less) This will minimise 'swap outs'. This is where the system will write resources stored in ram temporarily onto your hard disk as it needs to free up ram for other tasks.

The more ram you have the less the system will need to 'swap out'. The less ram the more your hard disk is used.

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by saabmp3
Speed doesn't always make the top difference. Right now I'm on a AMD comptuer with all SCSI 15k drives and CAS 2 RAM. Trust me, it's a ****ing speed demon. It also crashes once a day. This is fine for me bumming around with 25% of my time doing critical stuff. Next year I'm going to be in a much harder place possibly startig adouble major immediatly going into a double masters. I need something that works, no questions asked when I'm writing papers. That's why I'm incredibly stoked for my powerbook. OSX works, plain and simple. I know there are some bugs, but nothing like Win 2k. Speed is a big factor, but for most people it's not even half of the game.

BEN

I've seen recently some reports about 2GHz (effective or real) machines having a lot of consistency problems and crashing a lot more than those at 1.5 GHz, for example. Have you found this to be true?

[Sepulchre]

Originally posted by Ensign Paris

basicly you save time on a Mac by not fiddle arseing around.
Cant disagree with that one :D

[awulf]

I suppose in the long run macs are faster to use because they do the job and are less frustrating

When I had a PC as my main computer(486), I had headaches nearly every day and I prefered my Mac IIsi over it, but the PC was more powerfull so I used it.
Then I sold the 486 baught a PM7600 and there are no problems except for speed and the fact it doesn't run OS X well if at all.

[topicolo]

Originally posted by bousozoku


I've seen recently some reports about 2GHz (effective or real) machines having a lot of consistency problems and crashing a lot more than those at 1.5 GHz, for example. Have you found this to be true?

It hasn't happened in any system I've seen or heard of. The only reason I can think of for unstable 2Ghz+ machines is overheating, which is quite possible if a pc case isn't properly ventilated or if the chip isn't being cooled by a proper heatsink & fan.

[dagegen]

Benchmarks never take such things into account as I plugged my iBook into the router and it just worked, I plugged in my digital camera and iPhoto knows its there.

Perhaps a more interesting benchmark would be who could get there sytem out of the box and fetch their email fastest, ie one which measured productivity?

[iJon]

Macs truly are slower right now in raw power. I just built me a new PC for games. It is a 2ghz p4 and it flies. Havent tested it really in anything agaist the mac. And i have windows xp and honestly it is not bad, it is very stable from what ive used. although it is not near as stable as os x. But Apple is falling behind rapidly, intel is getting ready to cut prices on all there processors because they are coming out with a 2.8 ghz. Chances are apples new processors that will come out in the powermacs the 24th wont even compare, not even a dual will be as fast as the pentium. anyways, i am a die hard mac fan and i dont doubt for one minute that apple realizes they are behind. they are working on it, apple has always surprised us and i think they will do it again.

iJon

[szark]

Originally posted by awrc
Another thing to remember, though, is that Apple's shifting focus from professionals to mid-level and consumers.

I think that the Xserve and all of the software editing companies they have purchased recently show that they haven't given up on professionals. They just need to give them some professional desktop systems to drool over. ;)