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Mac vs. PC, read it and weep

Originally posted by Phatpat
I think that the fact that companies that Alienware, who special in high-performance pc's, are even acknowledging the G5 as competition says a ton. Before the g5 nobody in the pc world ever said anything about macs. By saying they are better they are acknowledging that they feel like they have to compete. Big props to Apple and IBM!
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lol funny cut off your legs....

in the MP3 Encode test they did even show the p4 test probley because they didnt want it to look bad.
well i think itunes is a little slow with the MP3 Encode vs mmbox
QUAKE III TEST: it shock me how well the g5 did with a out of date gpu:eek: i hope i can get a nvidia 5950 for the new g5

i can wait tell nvidia gets with ibm they are in a partner ship (they will probley do it when ibm has its 65 nm out) am so happy with ibm:D
 
Originally posted by JesseJames
I like using Macs. But as for the work I do I need to have some serious hardware power. Saves time and keeps money coming in.
Apple makes some fantastic stuff. No doubt. But I can't ignore what those PC guys are making. I'd be a fool to do that.
And I'm sure a well-tuned PC could run just as well as any top-of-the-line Mac.
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It's too much fun to bag on the Wintel machines, but I gotta do it:

a high-end Wintel gaming rig is like a Formula 1 racer driven by a half-blind drunk whose luck sways between karmic impossibilities. Sometimes he swings around that track like quicksilver, but other times he slams hard into every wall possible.
It's not that I think every Wintel box is a beige hunk of plastic running '95, it's that the brand new 2.4 Ghz PIV running WinXP on a black and silver Dell still exhibit the same flaws:
Drivers, poor .dll handling, user as administrator, virii, still-awkward plug-n-play (I mean seriously MS, can't you make this work), annoying Wizards, IE security flaws, Clippy, aren't any better no matter how fast I can rip Mp3s, render Quake III, or run Adobe Premier.
 
And every time they run a Photoshop comparison the mac wins hands down. All this proves is if you design a program to take advantage of a specific machine it works very well. The interesting part will be if the 64bit nature of the G5s will get programmers to design some new kickass programs to take advantage of it. How about a new generation of games designed for the G5? Want to win people away from Alienware? That's what Apple is going to have to get done - convince others to develop specifically for the new macs.
 
Compare with Avid Free DV

The video rendering test was pointless due to Premiere's fate on the Mac. The most appropriate application to use for the test would have been Avid Free DV because it was recently released simultainesly on both platforms.

The real-time 3D test should have been done with Unreal Tournament 2003 for the same reasons. Having said that, once your frame-rates exceed 200 then you should be sorted for good graphics. Ten more frames are hardly an incentive to choose one platform over another. I also think that the true worth of the Apple hardware will be revealed when most applications are G5 optimised.
 
The ati 9800 pro seems to help out the G5 quite a bit compared to the 9600. Apple should make the 9800 pro the standard card for the towers and keep the 9600 as a downgrade option only. Hopefully more high end graphics cards will soon be available such as the 9800 xt, fireGL, and geforcefx 5950. The low end cpu in the tower needs to soon be a 2.4GHz G5 in order to stay competitive as well as have slower G5s in consumer models. Updated G5 compilers are also essential.
 
Originally posted by Sheebahawk
not out of date, but only half the video RAM is available in the Mac configs. I hope to see more offerings in the jan revisions
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That's a much better statement :) I also hope to see some new cards available, it's all in the firmware and drivers.
 
I would like to read the whole article, as Alianware obvioulsy only showed the results that benifit them.

I would like to see an array of Open GL benchmarks in all types of resulitions with both AF and AA turnd on in high levels. (since DirectX isn't avaliable on mac, only the crappy ports which emulate it) however it would be good to see how good/bad some of the ports are.

I would like to see a single and dual proc Opteron System, a single and dual K7 Athlon, and a Xeon, in the tests.

Also the cost of the system (to buy, and to run)

Not just prebuilt systems

Oddoles of RAM in the 64-bit computers (a tyan board offers space for up to 32GB of DDR333 ECC-REG RAM)

Linux 64-bit benchmarks.

comeon tomshardware, anandantech, x-bitlabs, etc...
 
More and more people are realizing that you do not need a super computer to get you work done. I personally would estimate that 80 to 90% of computer users do not need high end stuff. (Most people surf, e-mail, and word process.)

In my work, I need a reliable machine that wakes from sleep and picks up the local wifi in a few seconds. A computer that gets my work done faster. Like how my Mac remembers the WEP code for any network I ever connected too (I have 4 or 5 that have WEP enabled. All of a sudden when I upgraded to Panther I didn't have to key in the code anymore. It remembered... Panther is so cool)

I am an PC consultant. I setup and maintain PC's (And now Macs) My first job using my 1Ghz TiBook was diagnosing a down router. I plugged my Mac in, isolated the problem and was leaving in 45 minutes. If I still had my windows XP laptop it would have taken me easily a half an hour extra. (Wake from sleep, force the network to wake up and get an IP.... all of this was done in a couple of seconds on my Mac.)

So mega CPU speed might be a must for a few, but I bet the majority of the computer users out there would benefit the most from the Mac OS and its time saving coding.
 
i guess... but

ive used the new 2x 2ghz G5 - and i still think its the fastest computer..

but the slowest computer to get a worm virus!!!!

hah... :p
 
Given the known problems that a bloated registry has on Windows OS performance I would be very interested to see the same test on a year old PC and year old G5 where both have been fully utilised during that time.
Vanilla
 
I have seens these benches done before by other people.

Firstly Macs are over 2x faster than PCs at DVD encoding, if the PC using Premier Pro and the Mac uses Final Cut Pro. This is because Apple does a very good job of optimising for the Mac, while other companies dont.

So if you were going to do video editing (like me) then getting a G5 would be the best option.

A lot more programs would be faster on the Mac than PC, if they were optimised enough. The latest version of UT2003 gives most Macs at least a 30% performance increase because of the optimisations they have used.
 
something looked strange to me. It's like MacWorld was trying to show the PC was better than the Mac in all of the tests! Did anyone else notice that they left off the P4 3.2 Ghz system in the last (mp3 encode) test? What is that about? They said they were focusing on the more quality systems. Weird! Would it have been sooo hard as to just put the results down as you would think a test like this would require?

I bet the P4 got smoked, so they didn't want to show that!!!
 
funny

I work off a powerbook and a PC 2.66 P4.

Believe it or not the 17 inch powerbook is a faster computer than the Pentium, if you include the hanging programs, legacy code tripping over itself, and memory leaks making me have to reboot at least 3-5 times in an average work day. Can't even tell you the amount of times I have sat there shutting down processes hoping that the PC figures out whatever has stumped itself with, awaiting that one process to return that never does. How is this faster....it cannot be, and I do it most days if there is any file over 10 megs I need to pump out.

I do mainly 30-70 meg print jobs files in Photoshop, Illustrator, and In Design, and always have a file of the same size kicking around on the clipboard. Sorry PC, after working with you both for years, gotta say with the stability of OSX, you may get some tasks done faster, but if I want to finish a project and not babysit my OS, the Mac is always going to be a champ.

I thank you
 
Brundlefly: Your point is well made.

If one is told that a PC is demonstrably faster than a Mac as recorded by various external benchmark tests its understandable that some may well lean towards the PC.

However if you were also told that there was a strong likelihood that the PC would over time slow down and become progressively unstable dependent on the level and type of usage due to the steady erosion of the Registry files integrity you may well reach the conclusion that - speedy though it is from the outset - you would rather have a computer you could depend on for years to come to gain a reasonable guarantee of a return on investment.

Having used PC’s for a number of years I know this to be a fact. Successive loading and uninstalling of software products, manipulation of large files, suffering a range of Microsoft software “enhancements” and fending off a slew of viruses will without a doubt result in a machine that is noticeable slower and less responsive than when you first unwrapped it from its packaging and powered up. Invariably you either re-install the OS or fight on until you can upgrade to the next latest and greatest PC hardware.

Having a machine whose integrity and responsiveness remains intact over the years to the point where it becomes an anonymous, automatic tool for your daily use is an incredibly powerful benefit.

The graphical interface and the hardware design are all pleasant bonuses, but having a machine that simply works day in day out is surely priceless.

As I mentioned before I would love to see a demonstration of this opinion by seeing a test on a year old PC and equivalent year old Mac where both have experienced heavy general usage. Run benchmark tests on both machines.

I’m pretty sure you will see a very different picture emerge to what is being promoted by alienware.

Vanilla
 
heh

and another good point made Vanilla.

I keep my PC as clean as possible, for all those exact reasons. I also rebuild it three times a year, fight off viruses, reboot it on average 3 times a day, run a limiting 100 font faces, defrag every night, checkdisk upon boot, run the virus scanning software all the time, run update the OS at least once a week, patch this, patch that, run ad aware every few days, turn off the internet connection when not in use, and lose programs about once every day....all said and done, I am losing about 2-8 hours a week babysitting a system.

I have not rebuilt my mac since I got it in march, I have upgraded about 6 times, flawlessly every time, I run about 400+ font faces, and I never lose programs in the crunch of the job.

Long gone are the days of sitting on the cmd +s to ensure the last save is safe, I work away and feel at ease that my applications are secure and not going to let me down.....

to me this is priceless, I can't justify billing a client for the 8 hours of system bs at $75 an hour. That's $600 a week in lost revenue.

sure PC's are less expensive, but the headaches for someone in my line of work, they just are not worth it.

sorry to come off as a mac head, I am not, I am application driven, and I have picked the less painful of two, it is just what makes sense, not preference.
 
The point?

Really, what's the point? I have a TiBook 800 G4, not the latest nor greatest for Apple or for the PC. I don't get upset when new hardware comes out. Why? Because it does what I need.

Seriously, arguing about whether Apple or the Wintel Hegemony :rolleyes: provides the superior hardware/software combination is about the same as getting into an argument over who has the bigger "member", Bill or Steve. Who cares aside from their wives?

It's a tool. And if you have to convince others of the superiority of your choice in order to feel superior or if you have to convince others of the incorrectness of their assertions in order to feel vindicated, you've got some serious ego problems.

I would like to close this by pointing out how much the Mac platform spanks Wintel. :D

That is all.
 
Originally posted by Stelliform
More and more people are realizing that you do not need a super computer to get you work done. I personally would estimate that 80 to 90% of computer users do not need high end stuff. (Most people surf, e-mail, and word process.)

So mega CPU speed might be a must for a few, but I bet the majority of the computer users out there would benefit the most from the Mac OS and its time saving coding.
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I agree with your statements. It is just normal to want the newest and best model that you can afford. I'm that way myself.

I would like to be more active with Maya PLE and Photoshop. So I'm sure at that point I will see the need for something more than my Dual 450 G4. I'm wondering now how long my 2000 model will continue to last?
 
Originally posted by dxp4acu
something looked strange to me. It's like MacWorld was trying to show the PC was better than the Mac in all of the tests! Did anyone else notice that they left off the P4 3.2 Ghz system in the last (mp3 encode) test? What is that about? They said they were focusing on the more quality systems. Weird! Would it have been sooo hard as to just put the results down as you would think a test like this would require?

I bet the P4 got smoked, so they didn't want to show that!!!
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Alienware didn't have the full test posted. The dual G5 completely owned the Photoshop tests and a few others.
 
Originally posted by leet1
Wonder if they ever run any benchmarks involving linux.....
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Sure they do. For servers. :)

Also, judging from the debate about whether programs are equivalent on both platforms, optimization, etc. I can just imagine the posts when they run the Word test vs OpenOffice on Linux....is that even a meaningful comparison at that point?

Y'know, I'm perfectly willing to concede that Apple's full of it when they call the G5 the "world's fastest personal computer." I don't care, because I like OS X better than Windows (or Linux), and if I bought one of those Alienware jobbies, I'd have to run Windows (or Linux). No thanks.

Originally posted by hulugu
Drivers, poor .dll handling, user as administrator, virii, still-awkward plug-n-play (I mean seriously MS, can't you make this work), annoying Wizards, IE security flaws, Clippy...
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They retired Clippy awile ago; there's a tongue-in-cheek page on Microsoft's site somewhere about him debating his future employment prospects. (I'm too lazy to look it up for you though). But you're right, the rest stands, and the other Assistants are just as irritating. I disabled them long ago because they popped up one too many times to offer me instructions on how to do something completely unrelated, even peripherally, to what I was actually trying to do. :mad:
 
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