Hector said:
and freakbeak seeing as there is no malware to speak of bar opener which just dose as it says, it opens, that would be a pointless exercise, i'm not denying that you can get a pc tower for less than a powermac or you cant get a 15" laptop with a faster cpu for less than a powerbook what i try to say is that for (exactly) what you get it's pretty good value.
freakbeak?
As for the malware I could whip up a little app for OS X that leaks memory for you!
If you are doing price comparisons I can see why self-builds aren't fair. However, for a computer enthusiast that just wants the most powerful machine out there cost isn't going to be as big of an issue and being able to pick your components is a big plus - x86 wins hands down in that arena.
I don't really care about benchmarks so much because there are far too many factors involved. It is way too easy to skew the numbers in favor of what you prefer. There are some lowel-level benchmarks that are straight-forward such as how long it takes to copy a large file or crunch through some floating point arithmetic. This may rule out factors such as the efficiency of the operating system libraries since these simple tasks can easily be coded in assembly. However, these types of benchmarks are not practical and do not really convey any useful information for daily use of your computer.
Higher level benchmarking such as FPS measurements on games or rendering times in PS are more practical but the number of variables involved does not make it a fair comparison between hardware. Many applications are optimized for particular instructions sets (i.e. Altivec) and/or rely low-level libraries such as Quartz, CoreImage, DirectX, etc. Plus these apps also rely on the efficiency of the operating systems to manage resources, etc.
When it comes down to it your experience and perception of performance hinges on many things other than raw computing power which is difficult to accurately measure in any meaningful manner. I tend to agree with Apple's mindset that is more about your "computing experience". There are things like I about Apple's hardware, OS and software and there are things I like about x86, Windows and Windows apps. Experiment with all the options and use what you like the most.
Now, I am not saying benchmarks are completely useless. I think they do serve as a vague reference to how hardware performs, but you can't take it too seriously or think that a few points here or there makes one system better than another. If you use common sense and objectivity I think you can come to some reasonable conclusions. Apple is lagging behind in laptop performance these days. I know the G4's pack more punch per cycle but they are nearly 1 GHz behind and the FSB can only get up to 167 MHz - not a powerful combination. I don't think it's bad, but it's not comparable to what's going into high-end x86 laptops these days. The Power Mac G5 is doing well in my opinion. The only criticisms I have are the lack of PCIe and that for a huge case the expansion in terms of empty drive bays is rather pathetic. I think the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 and Intel Pentium D's will be giving the G5 a run for its money. Lets hope IBM can get dual-core G5's out within the next 6 months to keep pace.
Hector, I understand you started this thread to try to quelch x86 fanboys who just come here to bash on PowerPC hardware. I am obviously not one of those people. However, I don't understand what any of these benchmark tests will prove. Numbers are numbers and can be manipulated towards one's desired hypothesis. My advice to computer users concerned with benchmarks is this: Try to obtain a good understanding of how hardware and software works together, use common sense and remain objective. Then, purchase the hardware/software that best fits your needs and that you enjoy using. Forget what other people say, it is irrelevant.
