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Dell Vs. iMac

S

samsflagdrummer

macrumors member
Original poster
OK, my ignorant friend got a dell, 1.6 Ghz a while ago, and I was wondering if that even compares with my iMac at 800 Mhz (supposed to be around 6 gigaflops). How many gigaflops would his dell run at? (both have 256 Mb, Nvidia GeForce 2 ect.)


Just a stupid little argument...
 
You're right, it's a stupid little argument 🙂

I guess it's a bit like saying, which is better, a porsche or a semi-trailer. One will kick butt at racing, the other will rule at hauling large amounts of stuff around.

Actually to recap, I don't know the answer to your question 😉
 
Re: Dell Vs. iMac

Originally posted by samsflagdrummer
OK, my ignorant friend got a dell, 1.6 Ghz a while ago, and I was wondering if that even compares with my iMac at 800 Mhz (supposed to be around 6 gigaflops). How many gigaflops would his dell run at? (both have 256 Mb, Nvidia GeForce 2 ect.)


Just a stupid little argument...
Click to expand...


Unless you like counting gigaflops does it really matter? If you want to feel superior roll out OS X and the iApps then ask him what software he got right outta the box.


Lethal
 
Realistically there isn't much that the 1.6GHz will even come close to the iMac with. I suspect by the speed of the chip that it probably has an older or slower graphics card too.

The tests I saw comparing an 800MHz iMac and a 2.8GHz P4 all in one thing from a while back (what was that thing called again, the one that jumped over the iMac in the commercials) showed that when put in a case with a subpar motherboard and hardware that the iMac all but kept pace with the P4 in most cases. That being the case the iMac should have no problems taking on a 1.6GHz P3,P4,Celeron what have you.
 
Re: Re: Dell Vs. iMac

Originally posted by LethalWolfe
Unless you like counting gigaflops does it really matter? If you want to feel superior roll out OS X and the iApps then ask him what software he got right outta the box.


Lethal
Click to expand...

Now thats a good point...
 
FLOP comparison and equasion.

-Gents

Here's an interesting one for you.

As we know, mhz and ghz are just a measurement of clock rate. Years ago, that was a 1:1 ratio with calculations/sec.

Well the newer processors are a bit more eficient than that.

After much digging, and small wonder, Intel works hard a burying this, here are the ratios of some current chips. All you have to do is multiply the following by the clock rate and you will get the chips peak performance in Floating Point Operations.

Pentium III: 3.2 FLOPs/Cycle (3.2:1)
Pentium IV: 1.8 FLOPs/Cycle (1.8:1) (see why the first P4's were slower than the PIII's?)
PowerPC G4 (cant rememebr the number of the chip): 7.45 FLOPs/Cycle (7.45:1)

So, taking these figures, and asuming your friend's Dell box has a P4 thats...

Dell: 2.88 GFLOPs Peak
iMac: 5.96 GFLOPs Peak

Please note: Peak performance is different than that of sustained or even than that of idle.

DISCLAIMERS NECESSARY TO AVOID A NITPICK/FLAMEWAR:

I found these specs by digging around the internet, and talking to a number of persons at Motorola, and Intel. You can find them too, I wish I could remember the links for you.

And yes, there are other factors involved in measuring a modern computer's performance. I'm focusing on microprocessor performance. No Bus, RAM, VRAM, HD access-read/write, nothing else in this discussion. That's a morass of information I think we can agree will never truly be solved.
 
P4 or Celeron? What speed DDR?

Easiest thing to do is run SETI uninterupted for 24hrs and see who's machine does the most. Run the command line version for your iMac, and have his run all the time in the background. Make sure neither machine goes to sleep etc etc. Don't use them for anything else at all, not even to check your email.

That will let you know which is best for raw computational power. Now altivec skewing (lame Photoshop benchmarks), just seeing what the basic architecture can do.

My guess is that if it's a P4, it will blow your machine away 🙁 I say this because my old AMD 1600+ was almost 2x as fast as my girlfriends old 700MHz G4 iMac. Even if it is a Celeron it might eek out a win...

If you decide to do this kind of thing, please post the results.

As a recent switcher, I am very interested.

Thanks,
--chris
 
Sure the 800 might not be as fast as the 1.6 P4 in some (note: some) areas, but chances are, after one viewing of the suck feature and he will be crying.
 
Well the new Dell will run slower. I just got one for my mom and the thing is soooo slow! Probably cause it's running XP.
 
Originally posted by yzedf
Easiest thing to do is run SETI uninterupted for 24hrs and see who's machine does the most. Run the command line version for your iMac, and have his run all the time in the background. Make sure neither machine goes to sleep etc etc. Don't use them for anything else at all, not even to check your email.
Click to expand...

unless i remember wrong, SETI units can very in length and difficulty. so your %, status bar, and other info will be incomparable.

i'd just use a benchmarking utility if you're serious about it... tho the gflops answer was posted earlier...

pnw
 
If you so unsure that you have to ask, does it really matter?

Unless it is easily noticable, who cares?

Either way, his Dell with XP still sucks. 🙂
 
Originally posted by MacBandit
Realistically there isn't much that the 1.6GHz will even come close to the iMac with. I suspect by the speed of the chip that it probably has an older or slower graphics card too.

The tests I saw comparing an 800MHz iMac and a 2.8GHz P4 all in one thing from a while back (what was that thing called again, the one that jumped over the iMac in the commercials)
Click to expand...

i believe that would be the gateway profle4. man, what an ugly beast that thing was.
 
Originally posted by beez7777
i believe that would be the gateway profle4. man, what an ugly beast that thing was.
Click to expand...

-beez7777

Ooo! Did you see that the 17" iMac is now CHEAPER than the Profile 4 with DVD burner 😱 😎 😱

I guess the cow had a big ol' poo.
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
unless i remember wrong, SETI units can very in length and difficulty. so your %, status bar, and other info will be incomparable.

i'd just use a benchmarking utility if you're serious about it... tho the gflops answer was posted earlier...

pnw
Click to expand...

the key is to get a "benchmark" that is on both mac and pc that is not skewed towards one architecture more than the other.

do seti for a week or two then, in the background during normal use.

as you can tell, i firmly believe benchmarks are bullsh$t. xbench tells me that a G3 ibook 800 with 640mb ram is faster than 12" PB g4 867 with 256mb ram. and then everyone whines that the new version isn't the best (ie skewed) for altivec. who cares?! the PB is not worth the ca$h, that is what the test is telling us. fundamental g3 architecture is better than fundamental g4. so... the g4 is getting its arse handed to itself by the P4, while the "low-end" g3 is quietly doing better than it should. there are 1.0 and higher g3's being made right now, have been for some time. never be released until the 970 or the g5 or whatever is released, cuz that 1.2ghz g3 would make the 1.42ghz g4 look dang stoopid.

anyways... my rant is prolly boring you guys... so I digress.

buy a computer because it does what you want, how you want, and is affordable to you. winxp vs OS X vs linux vs bsd vs whatever is tiring. buy something, and remember the computer is the tool, not you! 😉
 
Originally posted by patrick0brien
-beez7777

Ooo! Did you see that the 17" iMac is now CHEAPER than the Profile 4 with DVD burner 😱 😎 😱

I guess the cow had a big ol' poo.
Click to expand...

Gateway:

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 2.66GHz
512MB DDR SDRAM
120GB HD
DVD-R/-RW/CD-RW Recorder
17" LCD Flat Panel Display

iMac:

17-inch widescreen LCD
1GHz PowerPC G4
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX
64MB DDR video memory
256MB DDR266 SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA hard drive
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
56K V.92 internal modem
Apple Pro Speakers
AirPort Extreme Ready
Bluetooth Ready

Let's compare... the iMac can't get a hdd over 80gb (120 or 200 for the gateway), costs $100 to get up to 512mb ram (gateway is 512mb min with dvd burner), both have 10/100 and modem and usb (6 ports for gateway, 5 for iMac including the keyboard) and firewire (2 ports for each), gateway comes with 3yr warranty at no extra cost vs 1yr for the imac. iMac does have a better vid card (64mb versus 32mb).

It is pretty much a toss-up feature wise.

Disclaimer: No way in hell I would buy the Gateway! My g/f had a g4 imac 15" 700, and it was very nice.
 
Originally posted by yzedf
the key is to get a "benchmark" that is on both mac and pc that is not skewed towards one architecture more than the other.

do seti for a week or two then, in the background during normal use.

as you can tell, i firmly believe benchmarks are bullsh$t. xbench tells me that a G3 ibook 800 with 640mb ram is faster than 12" PB g4 867 with 256mb ram. and then everyone whines that the new version isn't the best (ie skewed) for altivec. who cares?! the PB is not worth the ca$h, that is what the test is telling us. fundamental g3 architecture is better than fundamental g4. so... the g4 is getting its arse handed to itself by the P4, while the "low-end" g3 is quietly doing better than it should. there are 1.0 and higher g3's being made right now, have been for some time. never be released until the 970 or the g5 or whatever is released, cuz that 1.2ghz g3 would make the 1.42ghz g4 look dang stoopid.

anyways... my rant is prolly boring you guys... so I digress.

buy a computer because it does what you want, how you want, and is affordable to you. winxp vs OS X vs linux vs bsd vs whatever is tiring. buy something, and remember the computer is the tool, not you! 😉
Click to expand...
go on rant and rave! I feel the same! Apple has been crapping all over themselves for the past 2 years because of Motorola> Cant do this because of this line or that line. They could have just as easy kept scaling up the original imac but couldnt let those g3's go faster then those stagnated motorola chips. So the whole line was held back because of motorola. Even now this is still going on with emac, imac, powermac. They should let each line go as far as the market will take them instead holding them all back because of the powermac. Its their lost sales if you ask me. But again if the 3 lines are relying on a motorola cpu, then those 3 lines will continue to be Stuck! Then Apple crys about sales? give me a break. You are correct they should have kept going with the g3 instead of holding it back waiting on motorola.
 
Originally posted by patrick0brien
-yzedf

All good points.

One to add: the Gateway uses an analog connection for it's display.
Click to expand...

Not to mention that you can upgrade the Gateway to the latest and greatest Intel proc, the 3.06GHz hyperthread model. I don't see Apple offering the latest available in their iMac. It is a "consumer" machine. Bah!
 
The model they have for product lines is hurting themselves since everything was so tied to where motorola was not going. Here they have the best OS period and then get stuck with the cpu with the least progress. They should just yank those damn motorola chips out of every product line and install 970's at different megahertz and different components around them!Then they should send motorola a long letter thanking them for screwing up their business. If moto would have just kept pace with intel apple sales would have skyrocketed. Thank god the software engineers are looking to the future!
 
Originally posted by yzedf
Let's compare... the iMac can't get a hdd over 80gb (120 or 200 for the gateway), costs $100 to get up to 512mb ram (gateway is 512mb min with dvd burner), both have 10/100 and modem and usb (6 ports for gateway, 5 for iMac including the keyboard) and firewire (2 ports for each), gateway comes with 3yr warranty at no extra cost vs 1yr for the imac. iMac does have a better vid card (64mb versus 32mb).

It is pretty much a toss-up feature wise.

Disclaimer: No way in hell I would buy the Gateway! My g/f had a g4 imac 15" 700, and it was very nice.
Click to expand...


The DVD-R/-RW/CD-RW Recorder only very recently became an option. The 3 yr warranty is an additional $179 that is already included in the cost and is NOT free. The 2 firewire ports are 4 pin, so good luck recharging the battery in your iPod. The Profile also has an rather large EXTERNAL power supply. The Profile uses laptop optical drives and not desktop drives like the iMac. The price is $1999 with a 1 yr warranty.
 
Originally posted by spinner
The DVD-R/-RW/CD-RW Recorder only very recently became an option. The 3 yr warranty is an additional $179 that is already included in the cost and is NOT free. The 2 firewire ports are 4 pin, so good luck recharging the battery in your iPod. The Profile also has an rather large EXTERNAL power supply. The Profile uses laptop optical drives and not desktop drives like the iMac. The price is $1999 with a 1 yr warranty.
Click to expand...

Warranty is my mistake.

Not my problem that firewire standard was never set between 4 and 6 pin.

EXTERNAL power supply is great idea! Ala the Cube, less noise and heat inside the computer. Laptop optical drive is same idea, smaller too.
 
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