Apple, Microsoft on Windows on Mac; Benchmarks

[ccrandall77]

DirectX and OpenGL layers in Windows are much closer to the hardware than in OSX. OSX has an extra OS layer due to the OS design, this has always been a problem visible in games (many developers have talked about it). On one hand, you can design an OS to be modular (and usually more stable...a crash in a module will not bring down the entire OS), whereas with Windows, many things are integrated (can be much faster, but an error can bring down the entire OS).

Just look at the war of words between micro and monolithic kernel zealots...same issues. Unfortunately in software development, nothing is free and everything sacrifices something.

I recall reading an article about why the DVD player on Macs sucked. It mentioned something about the software not taking advantage of the GPU to do much of the processor intensive video tasks and leaving that up to the software to do on the CPU. I don't know if that's related to the issue here with OpenGL, but it seems they've had issues with not taking full advantage of the ATI card's capability in the past.

 

[weg]

You see that number people? That's 820. 820 MB. And this is Vista idling.

This is a beta of Vista, it will probably much better once they take the debugging and logging code out.

 

[Shintocam]

Speak for yourself

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.

Speak for yourself. I'm an Apple customer and I am very much excited about running XP. The fanboi's have to take their collective heads out of their butts. There are still MANY applications that only run on XP (or some other flavour of Windows). Why should I buy two computers to be able to run all the software I want. Now I can buy one computer and use ALL the software I need and want. So yes I am VERY excited about this. The scientific lab I work in is also VERY excited about this. We have many Win only apps and now we can have the best of both worlds.

 

[weg]

Im sure if you took a PC that came out the same time the XP came out, and ran that against a Mac that came out the same time 10.4 came out, Tiger would win hands down.

Hmm.. are you saying that a PC built 2001 is slower than a PC built 2005? Really? How unbelievable!

 

[kylos]

As has been pointed out, Photoshop on Mac is not universal yet. But Cnet's comparison is even worse than that. Rosetta translates on the fly, caching translated code for later use. Their startup time test was completely absurd, since that is when a large portion of translation will occur, and not coincidentally, the period of time where Photoshop will be at it's absolute worst. If they had done a worthwhile test, such as applying a filter, we'd still have the rosetta issue, but it would at least not completely handicap the mac.

 

[mmmcheese]

I recall reading an article about why the DVD player on Macs sucked. It mentioned something about the software not taking advantage of the GPU to do much of the processor intensive video tasks and leaving that up to the software to do on the CPU. I don't know if that's related to the issue here with OpenGL, but it seems they've had issues with not taking full advantage of the ATI card's capability in the past.

I believe those are 2 different issues. In fact, the majority of Windows DVD players are software only as well. There are a couple of first party DVD players, but most people favour a player like PowerDVD (which does have an option for hardware playback, but is turned off by default...in fact a lot of times the hardware setting will cause artifacts and other weirdness depending on the specific driver).

 

[Shintocam]

"Also, Windows appeared to be stable; it crashed only once when we were investigating DirectX settings, not an unusual occurrence on any Windows-based PC." (I bolded for emphasis)

Should all OS comparisons include the time for reboots? I'm sure the drivers still "green" but still, when a Microsoft-centric pub says this it can't be a XP on Mac issue.

I consider "stable" crashing maybe once a month (and half those instances I did something stupid and caused it myself)

Well I can tell you I have two Windows machines that I use fairly regularly (not as much as my Mac but still fairly regularly). I have had them both for 3 years. They are running XP. They have NEVER crashed. Not EVER. Oh and they have never had a virus either. Not one. My Mac G4 15"PB on the other hand, has locked up/crashed probably about 6 times over the last two years. Still not bad at all really however it was pretty much never my fault (usually it was Apple's in my opinion CRAPPY USB driver for the iPod (the firewire works fine) that caused the problem). Still, I love my powerbook (mostly because the I just like the OS) and look forward to getting an iMAC soon (and a new MacBook Pro of course). I may also stop having to have two computers on my desk so that I can run my Win only apps.

But you know most of the crashes in Windows are because someone loaded some piece of junk shareware app onto their computer. There are many fold more apps for Windows than apple when it comes to shareware, 99% of which is written by complete amatuers (which is fine) that cannot possibly account for the thousands of possible variants of a PC. Many crashes are hardware related. How many video cards are there for the Mac? Half a dozen? How many are there for the PC? A few hundred? How is it windows fault if some crappy video card maker comes up with a even worse driver that causes Direct X to crash?

 

[nagromme]

It's great news if it lights a fire on Apple's rear end and they fix some of the problems with OSX like the OGL implementation and low quality drivers.

A good sign from last year:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/mac-opengl/2005/Mar/msg00199.html

I run them, every day. At least 30.
13 professional graphics applications, plus dozens of utilities and productivity applications of all sorts. My PowerMac has 12 GB of RAM, something that Windows can't even cope with.

I'm more in the 5-6 range, but point taken. Most OS X apps seem to use 0% CPU when not in use, even if not hidden! (A similar oversight is often made in comparing Core Duo Macs to G5 Macs: run multiple apps at once that DO use CPU time, and those multiple cores become even more useful.)

How is it windows fault if some crappy video card maker comes up with a even worse driver that causes Direct X to crash?

A lot of the problems with Windows aren't MS's "fault." That still doesn't make the problems acceptable to people.

Anecdotally you can find people whose Mac crashes more than their PC (sorry for your bad luck!) but happily the overall trend is the reverse, especially for consumers (as opposed to rigidly limited workplace machines).

 

[Sdashiki]

Your car may take you to the pizza shop in 5 minutes, but USS Enterprise can take you to the next star system.

NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!
NERD ALERT!

Seriously, good anaolgy though.

 

[dalvin200]

Did anyone else want to shoot themselves while watching that uneasyscilence video? I just couldn't stand that mans voice. Also I thought you could have the home edition SP2 for it to work but they strictly say that its for XP Pro, is that right?

i saw it last night, and had the same feelings as you (re: the guys voice!!)

i believe u can have xp home sp2

 

[MrCrowbar]

I think it's good to see photoshop doesn't suck that much (remember it's running under Rosetta) compared to a native XP version. I guess the intel OSX version will kick ass.

 

[BenRoethig]

Hasn't OpenGL always been a problem with OS X?
(Asking an honest question, not trying to argue)

Yep. Hopefully they do something about it this time.

 

[Nemesis]

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

Nowadays anyone can be a reporter if he can tell his pencil from the computer and his arse from his elbow.
Well, that means cNet's guys are out, I fear ...

 

[BornAgainMac]

I run them, every day. At least 30.
13 professional graphics applications, plus dozens of utilities and productivity applications of all sorts. My PowerMac has 12 GB of RAM, something that Windows can't even cope with.

So, I hope you finally begin to understand that comparing Windows and Mac OS X is same as comparing your car with USS Enterprise E.

Your car may take you to the pizza shop in 5 minutes, but USS Enterprise can take you to the next star system.

Comic Book guy comes to mind. I liked that comparison though, I'll have to quote you on it with my Windows buddies.

 

[nagromme]

Most amazing:

http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6058832.html?part=rss&tag=6058832&subj=news

"Boot Camp finally provides a baseline for a true head-to-head contest of Apple hardware vs. PC hardware, without operating systems or Rosetta or anything else qualifying the results."

And then, with NO further mention of Rosetta at all:

"In our Photoshop test, the original MacBook Pro struggled, running about five times slower than the PC competition--slower than on even the lowest-end iBook. Clearly, the Windows XP platform has made all the difference here."

Wow, that's some serious misinformation. Go C-Net

 

[AidenShaw]

wrong number

You see that number people? That's 820. 820 MB. And this is Vista idling. I know OS X is a RAM hog too, but it manages pretty well with the meager 512 that I have on my old iMac G4 (and Im talking about when it's not idling).

Look at the "available" number - just about 400 MiB is actually in use.

The PF number includes memory reservations and other overhead - the "available" number is the better one to use.

 

[nataku]

"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."

Lol! Microsoft has really gotten hit on the head really really really hard. Those guys dont know anything about creating something great.. All they do is copy the idea of someone else and use their marketing bullshlt to make it look original. I suddenly have the urge to snap a Win XP CD in half.

 

[sunfast]

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

Sadly, if you have a look here several apple customers are excited about running XP.

 

[Mikael]

*image*

You see that number people? That's 820. 820 MB. And this is Vista idling. I know OS X is a RAM hog too, but it manages pretty well with the meager 512 that I have on my old iMac G4 (and Im talking about when it's not idling).

That 820MB figure is the size of the page file. As you can also see in the screenshot, there is more than 600MB of free physical memory. Windows uses the page file even if there is sufficient RAM. It's how it works. It may look inefficient, but as can clearly be seen in the tests between OSX and WinXP, performance is pretty good anyhow. It's also important to remember that this is the beta of Vista.

And to you guys that think Windows can't cope with lots of apps running at the same time: I bet your definition of running 25 programs is loading them up and letting most of them sit their, idling. Loading up programs only consumes memory and as long as there is memory, the computer won't slow down. I regularly have about 20 apps running on my WinXP laptop and it, naturally, runs just fine. I've run my laptop like this without rebooting for over a month, as hard as that probably is to believe for most of you. It even went out of sleep without crashing with more than 20 apps open!

OSX probably handles high load from several programs better, if both systems are equipped with single core, non-SMT CPUs. It would seem that Windows runs very fast on systems with SMT (like the P4) or more than one CPU, though.

 

[AeChei]

I am running 10 full blown applications, at least 3 os haxies, and 3 non-standard menubar items. and all i am doing is surfing the web, email, and word.

 

[studiomeridian]

Seeing as how XP runs Window programs very well on the Intel iMac, I'm looking forward to running programs like 3DS Max and XSI on the new Intel Mac Pro's when they come out.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Looks like Windows wins on OpenGL (3d graphics run by the graphics card) by a notably margin while Mac OS X wins on CPU-based rendering and all CPU benchmarks.

So Windows is better for games, OS X is slightly better for everything else. About what I expected.

 

[nicksoper]

Originally Posted by Bill G. & pals
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."

On a very personal level I would assume most existing mac users are not excited about xp, but excited about not having to get their of my chair, or ask a colleague to test work on a pc environment.

Originally Posted by 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.

The powerpc photoshop benchmark pretty misleading, although nice to see how much fast the next gen of photoshop will be, assuming the results will be comparable. Does anyone use their brand new intel mac for batch processing in photoshop anyway? I always find a machine in the corner to do them quietly, who cares if it takes an extra couple of minutes?

Something that I would be very interested to know is how flash movies in a web browser are running on intel macs these days? Windows definitely did something right there.

This note is an optimistic note for the cynics. I think that if osx IS slower than xp, on the same machine, with the same apps (universal apps on osx of course) then apple will have to put there hands up (internally if not publicly) and simply optimize leopard to at least make all the scores comparable. At least now apple will know how much faster they have to make it.

Speed and productivity? Are they the same thing? I won't answer that, but if you think yes then perhaps you do too much rendering and not enough work flow.

Vista slower than XP? It’s happened before.

Vista and 10.5 race? Will all this mean apple and windows might race to get there systems done first?

 

[Hattig]

The main difference in performance is OpenGL, which is distinctly worse on the Mac than on the PC although everyone suspected that already. Also highly multithreaded applications such as Apache also seem to perform quite badly, according to Anandtech's article last year.

Nobody has run a really decent set of benchmarks yet however. CNet seems to have run an extremely biased and technically incorrect (and incompetant) benchmark though. Processor intensive tests aren't that useful - the processor is the same - you need OS intensive tests - file I/O, threading, system libraries, and so on.

And indeed the apples-to-pears comparison will be vista, once it is out. Right now we've got an apples to, err, carrot comparison. Microsoft loses performance in each OS update, Apple gains performance, and Microsoft is way overdue for their update.

Not that it means anything to me. Mac OS X is nicer to use than Windows, and I prefer it overall even if it turned out it is 5% slower clock for clock than Windows on the same hardware.

 

[nilmar]

They won't kill themselves

Guys, can't you see... Apple wants to sell more of its computers, not OS. They allowed windows to boot on Apple computers so that people can enjoy the beautiful white or aluminium machines, not having to be put off by the OS.( face it, many people do not want a Mac because the OS cannot support alot of softwares and games.)

I think Apple realises that many people love the designs of its computers but are afraid of the OS. They are afraid that they can't load their applications on the OS. See...Apple allowed windows user to use ipods, so they are now doing the same thing to macbook pros, imacs, macbooks, mac minis. Look at the response of ipods, 42 million sold! You think all of em are mac users? The market is huge out there, they cannot afford to stay loyal to their own OS. They have to think of a way to get the computers out to everywhere. Face it, Apple is still a business, they wanted to earn as much money as they could. They dont exist to cater your unique needs (counterculture), they exists to make lots of money, so that all the shareholders are happy and their bank accounts are healthy.

Im a switcher myself. I got sick of all the crashes, virus, hangs on windows XP. I have to format my old PC every 1 month. If not for my games, I would have made a complete switch to MAC (im not afraid of the OS..lol..). I recently upgraded my PC for my games and is now waiting for my macbook pro to arrive..which will arrive on Monday or Tuesday ... cant wait to get my hands on it! Im two steps away from becoming a full blown Apple fan, those who wore "I love you , Steve !" tshirts at mac events.. lol