Apple, Microsoft on Windows on Mac; Benchmarks

[MacRumors]

Microsoft's response to Apple's release of Boot Camp with a positive statement:

"Windows is a great operating system," a Microsoft statement said. "We're pleased that Apple customers are excited about running it, and that Apple is responding to meet the demand."

Meanwhile, Apple explains that the release of Boot Camp addresses some requests from different users and is intended to encourage PC users to switch:

Boot Camp makes the Mac way more appealing to Windows users who are considering the switch by lowering the barrier to moving to Mac

Brian Croll, senior director for Mac OS X product marketing, clarifies that Apple will not preinstall or sell Windows, so users must provide their own copy.

A number of early benchmarks are starting to appear comparing the speed of Windows XP to Mac OS X as well as Windows XP on the Mac compared to other PCs:

- Cinebench 9.8 scores WinXP vs Mac OS X (Bootcamp)
- Adobe Photoshop CS Windows vs Mac (Bootcamp) - note: Mac Photoshop on Intel Core Duo is emulated
- PCMark '04 MacBook Pro 1.83 vs HP 309F 1.83GHz (Bootcamp)

 

[realityisterror]

"Windows is a great operating system," a Microsoft statement said. "We're pleased that Apple customers are excited about running it, and that Apple is responding to meet the demand."

Translation: Oh crap, son! Those fools are getting too much money!

 

[mig]

Do I understand the benchmark right, that windows is generally faster on a mac than the OS?

Isn't that terrible news for our beloved OS?

 

[kainjow]

Do I understand the benchmark right, that windows is generally faster on a mac than the OS?

Isn't that terrible news for our beloved OS?

*sigh* this has been discussed over and over, and basically, Windows is snappier at first, but run 20-25 apps at once on both systems, and Mac OS X blows Windows away in multitasking. It's no competition

 

[ddcrandall]

Something is wrong here. Windows is outperforming OS X on almost every test. Especially the second one. How does Windows do better than a Mac in PHOTOSHOP? And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

 

[arn]

Something is wrong here. Windows is outperforming OS X on almost every test. Especially the second one. How does Windows do better than a Mac in PHOTOSHOP? And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

The Intel Mac's Photoshop is emulated. It's running PowerPC Photoshop on an Intel Mac. There is no Intel-native version of Photoshop for the Mac yet.

arn

 

[kainjow]

Something is wrong here. Windows is outperforming OS X on almost every test. Especially the second one. How does Windows do better than a Mac in PHOTOSHOP? And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

Photoshop is not x86 yet. It's PPC. Emulating is always slower than native instruction, no butts about it

 

[Whistleway]

And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

Because Photoshop is not universal binary and hence you need to run rosetta which emulates and there by drop in performance. After adobe releases the new photoshop, the results should be comparable.

 

[WeeManDan]

Looking at the scores and seeing that Windows looks to be quicker the OSX, is this a case of Apple shooting themselves in the foot and does this mean that Leopard is likely to be a much quicker and more streamlined OS so Jobs can say look at these scores and shows graph compared to XP??

Dan

 

[druggedonions]

Something is wrong here. Windows is outperforming OS X on almost every test. Especially the second one. How does Windows do better than a Mac in PHOTOSHOP? And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

OpenGL hasn't really been optimized for the Intel processor yet so this will bring the scores down for the 2nd and 3rd tests. Once Apple get those issues dealt with and ATI get their drivers refined I think you'll see those scores improve.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Windows is indeed a bit more snappy on a fresh install. But once you install all the programs you need, it is on par with OSX. AntiVirus is mandatory on a windows mashine and it eats quite some power and makes I/O way slower if you enable live virus testing.

Where OSX shines is multitasking. Run Photoshop, Word and iTunes on a PC and it is just painful on Windows. On OSX you can run a bunch of applications without noticable slowdowns. It's limited on 512MB RAM but when you upgrade to 1GB or more OSX beats XP to death.

PS: You might want to do these benchmarks again with reasonable RAM. Put 2GB in there like every sane MBP owner would.

 

[mig]

*sigh* this has been discussed over and over, and basically, Windows is snappier at first, but run 20-25 apps at once on both systems, and Mac OS X blows Windows away in multitasking. It's no competition

Honestly, when I do memory intensive operations, I don't multitask anyway. So what's the point? But I do appreciate, that at least the rendering on OS outperforms the windows (slightly only but it does). But open GL is quite important for me and I am concern about the advantage of windows. I thought GL used to be better in OS?

 

[kainjow]

Honestly, when I do memory intensive operations, I don't multitask anyway. So what's the point? But I do appreciate, that at least the rendering on OS outperforms the windows (slightly only but it does). But open GL is quite important for me and I am concern about the advantage of windows. I thought GL used to be better in OS?

See druggedonions's reply above.

 

[druggedonions]

Honestly, when I do memory intensive operations, I don't multitask anyway. So what's the point? But I do appreciate, that at least the rendering on OS outperforms the windows (slightly only but it does). But open GL is quite important for me and I am concern about the advantage of windows. I thought GL used to be better in OS?

But is this because you're using Windows?

 

[mig]

But is this because you're using Windows?

Of course not. I am using Mac from day one of my computer literacy. And I will continue, because I also need some beauty around me for work and in private (unlike pc and that awful windows - I am superficial, you know). But I am just concern, that this time, there can be a real competition, and Mac will really loose.

I am using software (e.g. Maxwell), which is more advanced/working on windows than on Mac, and I am mostly concerned, that these developers stop producing for Mac based on some benchmarks and I have to switch finally. I am already taking quite some trouble to work around the absence of ACAD for Mac for years.

I just don't want to use a software (windows), which is so uninspiring and mainstream, just because OS looses to it...

 

[gekko513]

The Cinebench total score must be viewed in the light that the different tests have different weight. If you normalise the scores and give each test the same weight, you get:

Cinema Shading
OSX: 100
WinXP: 76

OpenGL SW
OSX: 100
WinXP: 126

OpenGL HW
OSX: 100
WinXP: 140

Rendering:
OSX: 100
WinXP: 93

Rendering MP
OSX: 100
WinXP: 94

Total
OSX: 500
WinXP: 529

WinXP is 5.8% faster. That's not much, especially when you consider the short time Apple has had to optimise their OpenGL drivers for Intel.

 

[Arnaud]

Windows is a great operating system," a Microsoft statement said. "We're pleased that Apple customers are excited about running it, and that Apple is responding to meet the demand."

Ah. Now the mac community is seen as "excited about running Windows". Like, we like Os X, but we are sooooo excited to run Windows.

I'd say, there's a tiny bit of sarcasm in MS' statement...

 

[yippy]

Don't forget how old XP is. When Vista comes out I bet the tables will turn dramatically.

 

[Chaszmyr]

Ah. Now the mac community is seen as "excited about running Windows". Like, we like Os X, but we are sooooo excited to run Windows.

I'd say, there's a tiny bit of sarcasm in MS' statement...

Well, the reality of the situation is "Mac users are excited to be able to run Windows as infrequently as necessary, but we at Microsoft are excited they are still willing to pay for a copy of our OS"

 

[1macker1]

It is a big difference when u are getting ur ass handed to you on your own hardware. I find this to be very funny.

The Cinebench total score must be viewed in the light that the different tests have different weight. If you normalise the scores and give each test the same weight, you get:

Cinema Shading
OSX: 100
WinXP: 76

OpenGL SW
OSX: 100
WinXP: 126

OpenGL HW
OSX: 100
WinXP: 140

Rendering:
OSX: 100
WinXP: 93

Rendering MP
OSX: 100
WinXP: 94

Total
OSX: 500
WinXP: 529

WinXP is 5.8% faster. That's not much, especially when you consider the short time Apple has had to optimise their OpenGL drivers for Intel.

 

[mlrproducts]

PEOPLE.....RTFA(s)!

If you've been under a ROCK, Photoshop is NOT NATIVE on the x86 Macs.

Also, in the PC Mark'04 test, why did the idiot reviewer leave 2GB in the HP? I just don't get it!? However, it looks like good news, as the MBP is pretty much neck and neck except those ones where RAM overwhelmingly makes the entire difference.

 

[gekko513]

Don't forget how old XP is. When Vista comes out I bet the tables will turn dramatically.

Yep, in the same way that Windows 98 beats Windows XP on speed, but not on stability, security and functionality.

 

[askegg]

"We're pleased that Apple customers are excited about running it, and that Apple is responding to meet the demand."

That's funny.

Apple customers are NOT excited about running XP - believe me, I just made the switch and I am never going back.

How f'ed up is Microsoft? If customers wanted to run Windows they would buy an HP. They're cheaper for a start.

 

[VanNess]

The Intel Mac's Photoshop is emulated. It's running PowerPC Photoshop on an Intel Mac. There is no Intel-native version of Photoshop for the Mac yet.

Cnet's "benchmark" article was just plain absurd.

Comparing a resource-intensive program such as Photoshop running in emulation in OS X against it's fully native counterpart in Windows is only interesting to the extent that a major technology publication would stoop to such a stunt and publish such a patently misleading result.

A fair (and more informative) comparison would have been XP-based Photoshop performance results on Intel Macs compared with other XP based hardware such as Dell - which the article did cover - but throwing in Photoshop on Rosetta results into the mix was, quite simply, pointless.

 

[ImAlwaysRight]

Something is wrong here. Windows is outperforming OS X on almost every test. Especially the second one. How does Windows do better than a Mac in PHOTOSHOP? And how is it that the Intel Mac was half as fast as the PPC Mac? I don't understand this at all.

Maybe you stopped drinking the Koolaid? Drink up, son!

Comparing a resource-intensive program such as Photoshop running in emulation in OS X against it's fully native counterpart in Windows is only interesting to the extent that a major technology publication would stoop to such a stunt and publish such a patently misleading result.

That's cnet for ya. That's why I gave that cnet reporter grief in the other thread when he posted asking for negative responses to boot camp.

Don't forget how old XP is. When Vista comes out I bet the tables will turn dramatically.

In other words you mean Vista will be much slower, because that's the way the OS's normally work, right?