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Is this a joke

The reason is, the falsity that is so obvious by the fact Genentech did manage their feet. The reason is so obvious because you spend more time (hence less taking advantage of speed of), trying to solve computing problems with Pentiums and AMDs than you do with Macs. If you buy into the Mhz/bus myth you get a Pentium or AMD. I for one do not, and have never seen a Pentium that comes close to the speed of my iMac or the ease of use of my iMac.

Let's look at it this way:

Pentium IV is actually slower than the Pentium III.
Tests show that on the RC5 tests above and in other places too!

AMD's fastest processors have their so called speed overemphasized by naming conventions to match up with comparable Pentiums. An AMD 1600, or AMD 1700 etc...Turns out they haven't even reached the speed of the top of the line Pentium IV if you follow that logic. Why don't I see an AMD 2600? Because they are SLOWER!

If the PC world can't agree on its own Mhz ratings = speed in its own processors, what chance in heaven does a Mac have any agreement with PC processors? Do away with Mhz. Let's look at the actual calculations done by programs optimized for their processors.

Case closed.
 
Originally posted by gopher


OOOK, yes I've seen the benchmarks:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/dual_1ghz_performance_test.html

4 to 5 times faster is a dual 1 Ghz G4: 21 million key rate vs. 1.8 Ghz Pentium IV at just under 5 million keyrate for RC5.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/feb/07blast.html

5 times faster is a dual 1 Ghz G4 than a 2 Ghz Pentium IV.

http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html
shows the 800 Mhz G4 is oops my mistake only 2 % faster than a 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV at Photoshop,

The point though is benchmarks alone don't tell the whole story, software itself if it is optimized for one system won't show itself superior in another. But Genentech specificly tried to optimize for Pentium IV 2 Ghz and found it was 5 times slower than the G4. As you can see even the 800 Mhz G4 is between 3 and 5 times slower than the dual 1 Ghz G4. Depending on your calculations
the 800 Mhz G4 can outmatch the Pentium IV or meet it even. Things that slow it down are poorly written software, and hard disk access times (which improve on Firewire hard disks).

Even so, how much does speed really matter when you are forced to reinstall software and identify hardware each time you reinstall, and defrag so often?

Oh and I'm 31.
Click to expand...
ok,now you pissed me off completely
how about this link? http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm
haha "Benchmark Duel: Mac vs. PC, Round II
Dell 2.53GHz Pentium 4 Runs Circles Around Fastest Mac G4"
as for apple's benchmarks,ignore them
thanks to apple benchmarks,2 years ago,i was convinced that G3 350 MHz is faster then 600-700 MHz PC.
that was dirty lie. you are talking about real life experience,but ironically thats area where macs are slowest
-interface,slower than XPee even jagwire
-games are slower on macs
-programs are effectively slower on mac due to aqua (at least thats gonna relatively change with jaguar)
the list goes on and on...
oh yeah,try SETI,if you know what i mean
edit:i forgot to mention that g4 goes mhz by mhz in speed with athlon (even 10% slower),so if you gotta athlon at 1.4 ghz,you gotta 40% faster computer (if g4 is slighly better,thats because of dual cpu's,it isnt fair comparing double priced dual cpu too single athlon,is it? but athlon still runs circles around it)
 
Originally posted by gopher
The reason is, the falsity that is so obvious by the fact Genentech did manage their feet.

Of course they did, if they didn't they'd fall over.

The reason is so obvious because you spend more time (hence less taking advantage of speed of), trying to solve computing problems with Pentiums and AMDs than you do with Macs.
That is VERY debatable these days, my boxes run problem free.

If you buy into the Mhz/bus myth you get a Pentium or AMD. I for one do not, and have never seen a Pentium that comes close to the speed of my iMac or the ease of use of my iMac.

The ease of use factor ?.. yeah, that I'll give you.. the SPEED factor?.. nope, not giving you that.

It's not about how many megahertz you have, it's about how many megahertz and how many instructions per clock you have going on, AND how well fed the caching/memory subsystem can keep the processor fed.

Right now, in the consumer space, the Athlon has the first two nailed down, and the QDR bus on the P4 has the last issue nailed down.

Pentium IV is actually slower than the Pentium III.
Tests show that on the RC5 tests above and in other places too!

Per clock, yes, as http://n0cgi.distributed.net/faq/index.cgi?_recurse=1&file=27#file_55 points out, RC5 is a terrible benchmark for comparison PARTICULARLY with the P4

Here's the thing, the P4 scaled up to 2.0Ghz on a .18 process, the P3 topped out at 1.1Ghz, a 1.1Ghz P3 is about level with a 1.6Ghz .18 P4, hence it was faster (actual speed) on the same process.

AMD's fastest processors have their so called speed overemphasized by naming conventions to match up with comparable Pentiums.

Wrong, AMD's Quantispeed ratings are relative to AMD's older "Thunderbird" core Athlons, not the Pentium 4

An AMD 1600, or AMD 1700 etc...Turns out they haven't even reached the speed of the top of the line Pentium IV if you follow that logic. Why don't I see an AMD 2600? Because they are SLOWER!

Because

1) Intel have been on a .13 process for a while now, AMD only just started shipping .13 parts and haven't perfected it yet. (and AMD are concentrating most of their resources on Opteron)

2) the P4 is designed for raw clockspeed over IPC (which is frickin' stupid if you ask me)

3) a 1.8Ghz AthlonXP will _seriously_ smack around a 2.53Ghz Pentium 4 in floating point, the P4 pulls ahead if SSE2 code is being run on it, but the only reason it holds it's own against the Athlon clocked 700Mhz slower is that the Athlon is running into the limitations of it's memory bus (2.1GB/s isn't enough to keep a 1800Mhz processor fully fed if the dataset overflows the cache)

Notice the Povray graph (FP) and then the Lightwave graph (SSE2)

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002q2/athlonxp-2200/index.x?pg=5

Bottom line, the G4 is fast in a few specific instances, but with each week It's falling further behind everywhere else and is borderline on getting overtaken even in the areas where it IS fast (except for the BLAST tests and a couple of others) , Apple need to start sticking POWER4's in their workstation line :)
 
>http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm

Unfortunately After Effects isn't Altivec optimized. If you use Final Cut Pro, you will get much better results. Use the application most suited to the processor and you will get better results.

As for trouble free AMD, you must be one hell of a guru. I have yet to see a PC that is as easy to run as a Mac. Installing software is something I loath to do on any PC. Too many DLL errors. With a Mac, if I install something bad, I just have to trash its preference and the application and my system acts as it always has without the application. It is that simple.
 
Originally posted by Chryx


I haven't had a dll error since.. ooh, 1997?
It's just knowing when not to (or infact, when TO) punch the machine :)

the biggest trick to a stable AMD rig is to avoid any components that say VIA on the box :)

Windows 2000 is actually a fairly solid operating system, it's bloated, but it does actually work. (frickin' took microsoft long enough)

but then, OSX is also bloated in many ways.

* takes a moment to inject BeOS and AmigaOS fanboyism into the thread *
Click to expand...

Avoiding VIA on the box? I've never seen VIA on any box. And where is this documented? I tried installing Realplayer on Windows 2000, and encountered a DLL error saying one wasn't available.
This was on a clean Windows 2000 system. And now my Windows 2000 machine requires rebooting after logging in each time because Windows Explorer has an error. Once I've rebooted everything is OK. Until wait a sec, it can't ping some part of the server and crashes Windows Explorer again. And this on a slower PC even, a Pentium III 1 Ghz by Gateway. I'm going to have to locate the article on AMD's chipnaming but that's for another night. I distinctly remember they were naming it to match Intel. Still I see the Lightwave benchmarks showing that like the Mac, no one is a clear winner on all programs. Some are optimized more for one platform than another. I still say the Mac is easier to use, install software, remove software, install hardware than any PC out there. And Ease saves time. And what saves time is faster regardless of how fast the machine is.
 
Avoiding VIA on the box? I've never seen VIA on any box.

VIA are a hardware company that make chipsets, chipsets that have a knack for not working properly.

And where is this documented?
On usenet, in every post where someone says "I got a mainboard with a VIA chipset and my soundcard crackles and pops" etc etc.

I tried installing Realplayer
That was your first mistake, Realplayer is an absolute POS program.

And this on a slower PC even, a Pentium III 1 Ghz by Gateway.
Gateway *shudder* that was your SECOND mistake!

I'm going to have to locate the article on AMD's chipnaming but that's for another night. I distinctly remember they were naming it to match Intel.

The article you saw was making shiznit up

http://athlonxp.amd.com/technicalInformation/benchmarkingModelNumbering.jsp

"As a way of communicating the performance improvements of the new AMD Athlon™ XP processor relative to the performance of the currently available AMD Athlon™ processor"

Still I see the Lightwave benchmarks showing that like the Mac, no one is a clear winner on all programs. Some are optimized more for one platform than another.

Indeed, but eventually you'll hit a point where the suboptimal platform is winning through sheer brute force (and the G4 @ 1Ghz is RIGHT on that breakpoint at this time)

I still say the Mac is easier to use, install software, remove software, install hardware than any PC out there.

Sure, if all you do all day is install/uninstall hardware and software, some of us want performance whilst we're actually DOING things with the computer, I like Apple, I like MacOS X, I don't like the fact that Motorola are stringing Apple along with underperforming processors.

Hell, for non-Altivec stuff, the Sahara G3 is faster than the current 7-stage G4 (it's a shrunk 4-stage G3 with 512K of L2 cache, it's IPC is a good 25-30% over the G4 altivec/L3 cache not-withstanding)
 
i was convinced that G3 350 MHz is faster then 600-700 MHz PC.

I'd give a 450-500Mhz G4 fair odds against a 600Mhz Pentium 3 Katmai, I'd expect a 600Mhz Athlon to kick it around though.

-interface,slower than XPee even jagwire

I presume you're referring to the amount of time displaying the genie effects etc? (I can't see Aqua Extreme being slow, though I haven't seen it up close yet).

-games are slower on macs
I seem to recall something about return to castle wolfenstein being exceptionally fast on a 1Ghz Quicksilver... I think most of the workingset fit in the L3 cache or something :)

i forgot to mention that g4 goes mhz by mhz in speed with athlon (even 10% slower)

Depends on the specific circumstance, those dedicated Altivec execution units can go a long way, except right now they bump into memory bandwidth limitations if the dataset is in any way big.

Oddly enough, I recall seeing benchmarks showing a single processor Xserve edging up to a DP Quicksilver in processor intensive benchmarks, could it be that they Xserve's DDR keeps the Altivec hardware fed better?
 
Why should Realplayer or Gateway be mistakes? I mean we are talking software everyone has, and a machine that itself is quite popular. Do you realize how much time it takes an office filled with IT people to install one single PC with an operating system and its software? Sometimes a week! Now imagine this multiplied by many PCs in a single office. Whereas a Mac is ready in an hour with the same kind of software. And then when it comes to install new software often it takes them overnight to get it installed correctly, and this is even though they have the software on their server. With a Mac, it often is nothing more than drag and drop, or at most double click on install and click on restart. It is that simple. It gets to the point where you are afraid to install anything more because you just want a system that works. If PCs got me out of the starting gate earlier, maybe I'd switch to them, but I have yet to see a PC that does that. What good is having 100 times as many software titles, if 95% of them don't work well together? Why is there even an Uninstaller program for PCs? With a Mac, I just drag it to the trash and it doesn't affect the rest of the system. That's the kind of simplicity I wait for in the PC. Drag and drop everything.
 
Why should Realplayer or Gateway be mistakes?

1) Because their software is buggy, unstable, and spyware ridden?
2) because they cut corners in the hardware


Do you realize how much time it takes an office filled with IT people to install one single PC with an operating system and its software? Sometimes a week! Now imagine this multiplied by many PCs in a single office.

Unless the IT people are totally incompetant setting up a new machine shouldn't take more than about an hour, that of course assumes they know what the hell they are doing and have premade OS+application installs ready to GHOST over the network.


Even if they don't, a WEEK?.. that's still incompetance on a grand scale.


Don't get me wrong, I LIKE simplicity and it's something Windows lacks quite majorly, but you are seriously exaggerating (or your IT people are clueless)
 
Originally posted by iH8Quark
VIA chipsets have been a major pain to my buddies in IT. Boy would they be happy to hear someone else say that.
Click to expand...

Send them here http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/k7s5a.htm

Those boards can be had for $50 and they are quite possibly the best value in the history of the world, they're fairly quick, they WORK and they're cheap.. what's not to like ? :)


(I'm using one BTW)
 
Originally posted by Chryx


Send them here http://www.ecs.com.tw/products/k7s5a.htm

Those boards can be had for $50 and they are quite possibly the best value in the history of the world, they're fairly quick, they WORK and they're cheap.. what's not to like ? :)


(I'm using one BTW)
Click to expand...

Toll free number to Taiwan? I think not. OIC, they have a distributer in Canada. Fancy that Canadians can't buy Macs at U.S. prices. And I wonder if we can buy motherboards at Canadian prices? Now is it really all that cheap? Where do you get software, where do you get additional parts? How do you know what parts work together? With a Mac, it just works, and if it doesn't you have anywhere from a year on hardware/90 days on software, and 3 years on both if you purchase AppleCare to find out. And Apple's customer relations will help you if others won't. Building your own PC might be nice, but can you piece together a PC in 8 minutes flat from motherboard and parts and be on the internet, writing a paper, or managing Quicken? You can on a Mac. The argument for getting things done faster on a PC vanishes if you are talking about building your own PC. It is already finished on a Mac. And no amount of PC speed is going to save you there. The Mac is ready to rock and roll out of the box. And that's its strength. The Mac is gourmet fast food. The PC is a recipe and it is up to you to interpret it. Now some will say recipes are great, but what if you had the best chef from the best restaurant make you your favorite dish and have it ready for you? That's what the Mac is all about.
 
Now is it really all that cheap?
It's a $50 mainboard.

Where do you get software
It's a mainboard that takes an x86 (Athlon) processor, software for those is quite commonplace incase you hadn't noticed...

where do you get additional parts?
Pretty much anywhere?

How do you know what parts work together?
If it's a PCI card, it'll work, if it's an AGP card, it'll work, if it's PC133 or PC2100 ram it'll work, if it's an Athlon it'll work.

With a Mac, it just works, and if it doesn't you have anywhere from a year on hardware/90 days on software, and 3 years on both if you purchase AppleCare to find out. And Apple's customer relations will help you if others won't.

Standard hardware warranties on hardware is usually 1 year.
and whilst Mac's AIM to "just work" I've heard enough reports of them not "just working" (Cubes switching themselves off etc) to know better than to believe every word of apples hype.

Building your own PC might be nice, but can you piece together a PC in 8 minutes flat from motherboard and parts and be on the internet, writing a paper, or managing Quicken? You can on a Mac.

You can't on a Mac, you stumble over your VERY first point in that section, the "assemble from motherboard and parts" bit..

aside from that, It's a good point, but it's also fairly moot for anyone who knows what they are doing, exactly HOW often do you need to assemble a PC?..... ooh, once?

It Takes me about 2 hours to get from parts to a working machine, but for the amount I pay for them It VASTLY outweights my Time/Money ratio ($1000 for a fully fledged machine that takes 2 hours to build verses $3000 for a machine that works in 8 minutes)

If I had the cash, I'd have a Mac, they are damn nice, but I can't justify it when I can do what I need to do whilst spending a hell of a lot less.
 
The argument for getting things done faster on a PC vanishes if you are talking about building your own PC. It is already finished on a Mac. And no amount of PC speed is going to save you there

You have to build a PC _ONCE_, once it's built, you have a machine, you don't have to strip it down after each use you know.

Once the machine is built, if it does something faster, it does it faster. stop grasping at straws. :mad:
 
I love this thread!

I was accused of whining when I was trying to discuss these issues, I tried to say that there are others that feel like I do and that I was making general discourse.

Suddenly here it all is in glorious text! LOL

Let me add some lighter fluid to the fun.

Yes, Pcheese's are faster!
Macs more dependable.

SO what we want is faster MACs to blow away Pcheese machines.
That means CURRENT hardware at current prices!

But APPLE has decided that SDRAM is the best RAM for PROs and that it cost ALOT! Despite the fact that its been out for years and anyone can buy it!
Its in the cheapest of WINTEL boxes, the CHEAPEST! :D

We are all angry about that!, the real question here is....

1>WHY is APPLE doing it ? ...and if we can figure that out.

2>DO they still deserve our business!
 
Originally posted by iH8Quark


Who the hell are you responding to? I think you quoted the wrong person.
Click to expand...

I was responding to the guy who used a Porche analogy and has never had a PC.

Anyway, I didn't start this, but I seem to have made it worse.

We all know Apples are better than Wintels for so many reasons. My point wasn't about benchmarks, or even real world performance (wait, it was about real-world), it was about using last-years (or worse) technology in several-thousand dollar machines.

I just want to have my next $3,000+ computer come with a 120 GB ATA/100 (or better) hard drive (at least as an option) with the ability to add a 200 GB drive, without having to spring for an $80 PCI card (it's the principal of the thing. Plus it uses a precious slot). And you can't add PCI cards to e/iMacs. You'd have to use an external firewire drive.

Does anyone still sell machines that expensive with ATA/66? It matters. It's stuff like this that the PC weenies laugh at Mac users for. Do you really think those types of users want to switch? OS X is cool, esp. with it's UNIX core, but it needs modern hardware.

I love the Dual Gigs, we all do. And the 17" iMac is cool and all. But is it too much to ask for DDR-RAM and ATA/133. We should have 166 FSBs, PC2700, FW 2, USB 2, and everything else that makes a computer State-of-the-Art. 15 GigaFlops CPUs are cool and all too, but not everybody runs BLAST.

The G4 is actually a great CPU, and OS X is the best OS I've ever used (never tried BE, though), but they need to be fed by using better hardware.

That's all I was trying to say.
 
Originally posted by solvs
We all know Apples are better than Wintels for so many reasons. My point wasn't about benchmarks, or even real world performance (wait, it was about real-world), it was about using last-years (or worse) technology in several-thousand dollar machines.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I'd LOVE a big meaty PowerMac, but there's no way I'm spending that amount of money to buy something that's slower and/or less advanced than the el cheapo hardware I've got already.

a nice user interface etc etc is worth a lot, but spending MORE money to get something slower and/or less advanced just doesn't make much sense.

I mean, Apple hardware is generally extremely well engineered, but that alone doesn't translate to anything much more than reliability in most cases (and there's no such thing as a 0% failure rate anyway)

If Apple pull a rabbit out of their hats, be it a Motorola G5 that meets expectations or some sort of psuedo-Power4 from IBM (pair of Sahara cores + SMP logic + a few dedicated altivec units should fit on a 100mm^2 die at .13) then I'll give switching serious consideration.

until then I shall sit on the sidelines and look like an Apple fanboy everywhere else, and an Apple-basher on Apple fansites!
 
Okay

Macs are the best - that's it no argument.

Reason:
PC's EVERYTIME you startup you have to look at microsoft! Who the hell wants that!
(unless of course you run UNIX or Linix) but Linix is just shoddy and looks half done all the time!

Mac's well yeah you have to put up with initially starting with M$ software, but you can just chuck it off, get replacements for all the M$Hate Zealot companies!

There you go!? Macs are better PC's are ****... plus a mac looks so much better on your desktop.

SO what if a PC can run a benchmark fast than a Mac under specific conditions favour the pc or vice versa.

As apple said in the keynote, they are atracting more switchers by the day. That just shows how many people went to mac from PC!

Another point is AMD and Pentium are chip companies... they JUST make chips (oh and other useless sh*t) apple make everything to do with computers... the do it all. So I see it as quite an achievement for apple to even be compared with chip companies!

You PC zealots, go and build your stupid PC so it runs faster than my mac. Who gives a stuff!
 
Originally posted by gopher
>http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm

Unfortunately After Effects isn't Altivec optimized. If you use Final Cut Pro, you will get much better results. Use the application most suited to the processor and you will get better results.
Click to expand...
As i said,95% of applications aren't optimized,lets look at few things used by the average user:
dreamweaver,flash and other macromedia apps,QT encoding,games,adobe illustrator..none of them is optimized for AltiVec! AltiVec is only a mask to cover terrible performances of G4,look at G3 sahara from iBooks,that little 700 MHz cpu is almost faster then dual g4 in raw processing power! (i am sure if g4 was single,g3 would be faster.)
now imagine 1 GHz desktop G3,200 MHz bus,DDR RAM,and it is pretty cheap,it would be so much better then athlons! (truly,it would suffer where G4 with AltiVec was fast).
 
Re: Re: People can bitch all they want...

Originally posted by mr.w


Would you rather have a crappy little hinda civic (a PC) or a sweet new Porche 911 turbo (an Apple)... they both serve the same purpose (getting you from A to B) but with the porche/apple you're ridding in style and elegance .... thus a completely different price!
Click to expand...


Do you know any Porche 911 turbo running slower than a Honda Civic? I don't, you f**** apple freak/ victim
 
PC's are faster, SO....

OK, here is another benchmark to check out:
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

Notice only the DP 1ghz boxes are performance competitive. The 933 mhz is MUCH slower than a PC. So an iMac 800 (even with that sexy 17" screen) is so slow compared to anything here.

BTW, you can't even get a 1.8 ghz P4 machine anymore, they are all 2.2 or 2.4 ghz.

Why do I say this?
- I'm so FRUSTRATED with Apple, they've got some WONDERFUL assets (OSX, their "i" apps, quiet PCs like the iMac), yet they SCREW IT UP with their dreadful performance.

- I'm as open minded as anyone, Yes, MAC's have some great software, easy to use etc. But how do I justify a $3000 SPREAD in price for equal (or lesser) performance!?

This is Apple's problem. They will never make a major dent in businesses (large or small) with this type of price performance gap.

The new iMac could have EASILY had a 1ghz processor with DDR ram. How about ATA100? This would easily bump up performance. Why didn't they do this? To protect the very inferior PowerMac line which hopelessly out of date. Apple should learn from IBM's past mistakes. Sometimes it pays to release products even though it will make your current products inferior. IBM did that numerous times in the mid 80's and it finally killed their PC business.

I'm thrilled about the switcher's campaign. But let's face it, this is targetted at home users, not business. If Apple really wants to grow market share, how about appealing to at least one business segment (other than video production). Apple should be "THE" small business computer. But, Apple kills themselves in making this NOT happen.

:mad:
 
Re: Re: Re: People can bitch all they want...

Originally posted by fragiledreams



Do you know any Porche 911 turbo running slower than a Honda Civic? I don't, you f**** apple freak/ victim
Click to expand...

listen a**hole ****. I don't want to start a flame war here.

In all experiences MAC's have been faster then PC's ... were talking about a matter of seconds here people.
 
Whining

Some of the people in this thread seem to be of the mind that only positive things about the Mac can be said here. They fail to realize that this is a public posting area and the posts have all been relevant (at least the ones I've read). Complaining about the price/performance issues of the Macintosh computer line is all too right and necessary. Apple reps DO read these sites and sometimes actually take a little from them. The platform can be improved by *itching and moaning.

The user experience is not so much in question here. Probably everybody here prefers the Mac end-user experience to Windows'. But it's getting harder and harder to justify US$2,000 for a machine that has 50% the performance, 50% the upgradeability, but 200% the looks.

Some people have said that consumers don't need all that extra GHz power. Okay, fair enough. But then why are they not charged more like consumers? Why isn't the pricing structure more appropriate?

I know that this is probably just a matter of personal opinion, but I do not buy the porsche/chevy argument. Maybe I do not understand it. Could someone explain to me why it is that some Mac-heads feel the Mac is like a porsche? It certainly isn't fast like one. I do understand the quality thing though. I mean Macs do keep their value longer than PCs. But the overall analogy makes little sense to me.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Mac-basher, just someone who's slowly finding more and more reasons to look elsewhere for his computing needs. I'm hoping that the new PowerMacs rumored to be unveiled next month are going to make me think twice.
 
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