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superbovine

macrumors 68030
Nov 7, 2003
2,872
0
Seanb23 said:
Http://www.scientificweb.de/mathstef3.html

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I prefer OS X hands down to XP any day of the week, but it's looking more and more like Moto and now IBM have been laughing all the way to the bank as they take Apple's money and sleep on the job. I'm p*ssed, in other words, that my $3300 laptop cannot handle the exact same complex audio programs that high-end peecee laptops costing less compute with ease. Yes, XP is unstable. Yes, pipeline. Yes, viruses. Etc. Etc. Etc. I DID buy an outrageously expensive powerbook to re-join this camp in the first place, OK ? But this is halfway through 2004, and, well, I've seen the enemy artillery with mine own eyes, in my own house even...

Wake up and smell the burnt rubber, Apple. I found this link from the end of 2003, among many others, with a few minutes of google. Anyone have anything else they have found in the past year or so ? No links to grand descriptions of university superclusters, no links to old MHz Myth speeches from, what, 2001 ? No platform wars, no irrelevancies about Explorer vs Safari vs Firefox...just some raw modern benchmarks.

Yessiree, modern benchmarks only. Let's put our favorite computer company's feet to the fire of the competition. Some, um, Mac rumors have it that even Steve himself uses a lot of profanity when this topic comes around. Good.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3921


...well, think about Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Prada, etc. are they interested in economies of scale ? I don´t know any american big shopping chain, but think about the german cheap Lidl or Aldi, they sell cheap products at cheap prices, they are interested in economies of scale, sell as much as possible in order to sum all the very little margins and make a profit as well as investing the cash they get and make a few more cash before the have to pay for the products they have already sold. In esence, two completely different business models, both work, but both target different segments of the population, this is quite hard, but so it is. And no, I am not in the Gucci segment, I am in the cheap no-name PC brand, I would like to buy an Apple but I cannot afford it. And I want to repeat, if you are not in the economies of scale business, your brand is your biggest asset, take care of it as if it is your own child.
 

Seanb23

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 6, 2004
46
0
superbovine said:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3921


...well, think about Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Prada, etc. are they interested in economies of scale ? I don´t know any american big shopping chain, but think about the german cheap Lidl or Aldi, they sell cheap products at cheap prices, they are interested in economies of scale, sell as much as possible in order to sum all the very little margins and make a profit as well as investing the cash they get and make a few more cash before the have to pay for the products they have already sold. In esence, two completely different business models, both work, but both target different segments of the population, this is quite hard, but so it is. And no, I am not in the Gucci segment, I am in the cheap no-name PC brand, I would like to buy an Apple but I cannot afford it. And I want to repeat, if you are not in the economies of scale business, your brand is your biggest asset, take care of it as if it is your own child.

We aren't comparing cheap mass produced PCs with Macs here. The specific comparason is between the high-to-ultra high end of each. And Macs are far, far behind in performance, despite their high quality build, and there is a growing body of evidence that supports this fact. I certainly don't take issue with the design quality aspect of my powerbook...it is beautiful and reliable, though somewhat slow for what I need it for. Much slower than the Mac salesman and just about every Mac zealot I talk to will admit. But it does have that killer OS...that's what keeps me hooked, I'll admit it.

To use the well-worn "Macs are like BMWs" automobile analogy...would it not aggrivate you if you were cruising down the coast highway at 75 MPH, testing the handling limits of your nice, overpriced, fancy BMW, and then saw a large convoy of happy looking people in nice, though far cheaper Ford cop cars whip around you at 120 mph while towing heavy trailers, handling the hills and curves as effortlessly as you do, only at a far higher rate of speed with a heavier load ? Would it not also aggrivate you further if you only saw a handful of this convoy wrecked or broken down later on down the road, rather than most of 'em, as your BMW salesman predicted to you would be the case in his sales pitch for the more expensive BMW ?
 

Mord

macrumors G4
Aug 24, 2003
10,091
23
UK
all of you saying pc's are faster seem silly to me, first off i have only seen two proper benchmarks of g5's with everyday apps, the barefeats ones and the apple ones, some of you my say they are biased and you may be right, the other benchmarks i have seen are from pc, mac bashing sites that just have gameing tests with a stock dual 2.0GHz g5 and a pimped out pc, even if they were equall the mac would still be beaten in gameing but thats a directx thing and who uses there mac to game?


what i would like to see is benchmarks on the same os (gentoo or debian linux) with the same applictions (some 3d rendering, gimp, some video encodeing, that type of thing (all dual awear))

but untill those benchmarks the fact is still in my mind that a dual 2.5GHz g5 is damn fast (and so is the 2.0 and the 1.8) and any top end pc is damn fast.
 

superbovine

macrumors 68030
Nov 7, 2003
2,872
0
Seanb23 said:
We aren't comparing cheap mass produced PCs with Macs here. The specific comparason is between the high-to-ultra high end of each. And Macs are far, far behind in performance, despite their high quality build, and there is a growing body of evidence that supports this fact. I certainly don't take issue with the design quality aspect of my powerbook...it is beautiful and reliable, though somewhat slow for what I need it for. Much slower than the Mac salesman and just about every Mac zealot I talk to will admit. But it does have that killer OS...that's what keeps me hooked, I'll admit it.

To use the well-worn "Macs are like BMWs" automobile analogy...would it not aggrivate you if you were cruising down the coast highway at 75 MPH, testing the handling limits of your nice, overpriced, fancy BMW, and then saw a large convoy of happy looking people in nice, though far cheaper Ford cop cars whip around you at 120 mph while towing heavy trailers, handling the hills and curves as effortlessly as you do, only at a far higher rate of speed with a heavier load ? Would it not also aggrivate you further if you only saw a handful of this convoy wrecked or broken down later on down the road, rather than most of 'em, as your BMW salesman predicted to you would be the case in his sales pitch for the more expensive BMW ?

if your are comparing high-end pc with macs you still have to deal with the fact that they cheaper, and made in larger quantities. as to your analogy, could you expand on it further. it doesn't make sense. are you saying bmw can't go 120, or the cop cars weigh more and can go just as fast? also, did the bmw sales predict that most ford's would be break down? have you ever talked with a bmw salesman?
 

whenpaulsparks

macrumors regular
Jun 5, 2004
210
1
Tallahassee, FL
i could really care less if my photoshop images are rendered 2 seconds faster on a PC... that's the problem with this society... gotta have it now, and if its late, we need to blame something. and i'd rather use OS X than XP any day of any year in any alternate universe.

but, from my personal experience, i have found macs to be quite quicker, when you don't look at raw benchmark scores, and you actually look at "user" speeds, or how it feels. my 450MHz G4 Cube, 512MB PC100 SDRAM, was far faster than my brother's 1.2GHz Athlon PC with 512MB DDR running windows 2000 (which was faster than XP on his computer). Not only that, the cube had a worse video card (64MB Radeon 7000) and his had a GeForce 4 64MB DDR. and still, my cube would boot up, start applications, run applications, etc. far faster than his. in terms of usability, i could really care less if his could render an image quicker... i could start mine up, check my mail, talk to some friends quickly, check macrumors, shut it down, and be back on with my day before he could start up his email program doing the same routine. i recently sold my cube, only because i wanted the speed and upgrade-ability of a PowerMac G4, so i got a 1GHz, which, needless to say, kills his computer.

do i care? no. is my mac faster than PCs twice its speed? yes. so go on arguing if you want.
 

Seanb23

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 6, 2004
46
0
Yeah, Macs ARE blazin' fast on Photoshop...they always have been. This, I believe, has to do with RAM usage and other mac-specific things. But I'll re-iterate : These powerbooks, today, simply lack the raw cpu power needed for some complex audio (and video) stuff. Go on believing that your antique Cube runs twice as fast as PCs if it makes you happy...and it appears that most Mac zealots are indeed in awe of the Emperor's summer '04 wardrobe...but I've seen other, depressing hard evidence with my own eyes that, here in the year 2004, they are lagging pretty badly. And I really would like some legs under my platform here, um, to coin a phrase. You are right though...there really is no point in arguing with you fine folks, the mac faithful...

That said, I'll eat my hat if I am driven back to working with windoze due to Apple's hardware inadequacies. I, like you, dislike it THAT much, and, like you, would never argue that OS X isn't simply the best OS out there ! Christ, as a youngster, when I first saw UNIX on the big mainframes, I immediately thought of how crummy DOS was even then, before the really sickening heyday of the swindlers up in Redmond. But, hey, I'm not so blinded by mac fandom as to not be able to admit that they spent some of that largesse on some pretty impressive hardware, esp. lately.

Maybe we will see them G5 powerbooks before my dire predicament of having to re-switch. Maybe.

But it would be refreshing to see Apple take a cue from it's competition and develop a superfast "Mobile" type chip, instead of attempting (probably, in vain) to shoehorn the G5 into a pretty lil' laptop. Yeah, I know they don't want to go back on their word, but it does take courage to admit that you were wrong, and now you are trying out another path.

Maybe I'll just have to get a gigantic portable power supply and rickshaw of some sort and just haul a dual G5 tower around behind me or something...
 

oingoboingo

macrumors 6502a
Jul 31, 2003
988
0
Sydney, Australia
Hector said:
all of you saying pc's are faster seem silly to me, first off i have only seen two proper benchmarks of g5's with everyday apps, the barefeats ones and the apple ones, some of you my say they are biased and you may be right, the other benchmarks i have seen are from pc, mac bashing sites that just have gameing tests with a stock dual 2.0GHz g5 and a pimped out pc, even if they were equall the mac would still be beaten in gameing but thats a directx thing and who uses there mac to game?

MacWorld did a comparison of the G5s to an AlienWare system back in December I think, and the G5 was beaten out in most tests by the AlienWare machine. If a Mac-friendly magazine like MacWorld can't even manage to cook up some tests where the G5 wins everything, I think that is telling us something.
 

Mord

macrumors G4
Aug 24, 2003
10,091
23
UK
can anyone provide a link to these tests? i'd like to check them out and here validity, i'd also like to see a test for the dual 2.5GHz g5 as soon as someone can get there hands on one
 

Rabidjade

macrumors member
Mar 21, 2004
65
0
As I said before, the overseen cause of computer speeds is the software. Mac software developers have it easy, they write code for one type of hardware their brethren have designed and that’s about it. Even the hardware they write programs for is limited (OSX on a PowerMac 9600, anyone? How about XP on a 333mhz P2?) . The less hardware you have to write for the less clutter your software has to sort when accessing and faster read/write times for your drives, cpu's so forth. Point being the bench marks on the Mac side is on software DESIGNED for only Macs. PC side is tougher; they didn't design software to force users to upgrade. So they have to take in account of the billions of variations and third party hardware that their software will run on.

Now if you built a PC with same specs straight down the line with a Mac, designed software from the ground up for the specific hardware the PC is built of (or even the same family of hardware). Take this then put it against the Mac in benchmarks, anything you find on benchmarks will be drastically different. Think about it people. :cool:

(Sorry for the edits, long day and numerous mispellings)
 

jhu

macrumors 6502a
Apr 4, 2004
854
1
iNetwork said:
Well now that the cat is out of the bag. PC's are faster--specifically AMD. If it's raw processing power you want the PC is a year or 2 advanced of the PPC arean. It's a good, easy platform, but it's not FAST!. I think when I get back home I'm going to compile matching Linux kernels on a PC and for different Macs and do some benchies... :) Finally someone to stir the turd!

may i suggest you use povray for benchmarking. load linux on the pc and the mac, compile povray on both, and follow the benchmark instructions.
 

jhu

macrumors 6502a
Apr 4, 2004
854
1
Seanb23 said:
We aren't comparing cheap mass produced PCs with Macs here. The specific comparason is between the high-to-ultra high end of each. And Macs are far, far behind in performance, despite their high quality build, and there is a growing body of evidence that supports this fact. I certainly don't take issue with the design quality aspect of my powerbook...it is beautiful and reliable, though somewhat slow for what I need it for. Much slower than the Mac salesman and just about every Mac zealot I talk to will admit. But it does have that killer OS...that's what keeps me hooked, I'll admit it.

To use the well-worn "Macs are like BMWs" automobile analogy...would it not aggrivate you if you were cruising down the coast highway at 75 MPH, testing the handling limits of your nice, overpriced, fancy BMW, and then saw a large convoy of happy looking people in nice, though far cheaper Ford cop cars whip around you at 120 mph while towing heavy trailers, handling the hills and curves as effortlessly as you do, only at a far higher rate of speed with a heavier load ? Would it not also aggrivate you further if you only saw a handful of this convoy wrecked or broken down later on down the road, rather than most of 'em, as your BMW salesman predicted to you would be the case in his sales pitch for the more expensive BMW ?


here we go with the car analogies. perhaps a better analogy would be an acura nsx vs. a cheverolet corvette.
 

gekko513

macrumors 603
Oct 16, 2003
6,301
1
It's very difficult to find benchmarks that can compare the potential of different processors.

I will give an example. I once wanted to make the encryption algorithm RC4 run fast. This algorithm is implemented in the open-ssl library and is available for "all" platforms.

I was working on a Dual Opteron system, a dual Xeon system and a single PIII computer at the time.

The original open-ssl library had a special optimized version for Pentium and a general version for all other processors. However, that version must have been optimized for the Pentium II, because it ran like crap on PIII and Xeon. After playing a round with the code for a while, I ended up with 3 different versions that did excatly the same thing, but each version ran fast on one processor and slower on the two others.

Most programs can be heavily optimized for a particular platform. Usually we're talking about a factor between 2 and 4.

So if you take a program that has been optimized for the P4 (Winzip for instance) and run it on an Athlon processor, the P4 will be much faster. Even worse, if you take a program that has been written for Windows and optimized for the P4 and port it and compile it for Mac OS X, then the Mac will almost always be slower, unless of course someone takes the time to optimize it for the G4 and/or the G5. This goes both ways.

When it comes to pure benchmarks, they will give some indication on some aspects of the performance of the system, but mostly it will give an indication of how much effort the compiler developers have used to optimize the compiler for that particular benchmark on that particular processor.
 
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