PC User wants information

[whitegold]

All,

I'm a long time PC user, with a lot of McFriends. They're constantly spitting numbers and figures and rumours and rhetoric at me.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has some GENUINE UNBIASED benchmarks that compare equivalent (if there is such a thing) PCs and Macs.

My own personal opinion is that in the "olden days", when the G4 was first out, it was kick-ass, compared to the Pentium 3s they were clocked slightly under. But as Pentium 4s topped 1 gig, and now 2 gig, and with advances such as RDRAM used in P4, and DDR Ram used in new Athlons, etc, the Apples are looking decidedly underpowered. Especially for their price. (That being said, their laptops aren't bad in terms of price for performance, just because everything else is so bad.)

What I am looking for here is Honest, factual, unbiased information. Please don't look on this as a troll or an excuse to come on and say "Windows sucks! Aha ha ha ha ha! Macs Rule."

I'm looking for informed, factual NON BIASED information. The only unbiased info I've been able to find is a quite old article in a graphics magazine comparing a bunch of graphics workstations.

[For what it's worth: The Mac (a G4 500) was well and truly in the back of the pack. In fact it was only beaten for last by an iMac. And by the way, the competition was Pentium 3s @ 733-900mhz.]

Apologies for the long post. I wanted to establish a few things to leave as little stupity room as possible for the uninformed Zealots out there.

 

[snowman]

I don't think mac people are any harsher than PC people when it comes to talking s**t about the other system. I have loads of PC-head friends, and they throw alot of garbage at me too, though over the many years we have come to a more mature way of picking on each other 🙂 Anyways, there is no way of telling which system is faster. One system is faster on doing one thing and the other system is better on something else. It's not all about hardware eighter. The systems are so completely different. Windows is even running ontop of another system, and X got a UNIX base. Both have different stages of pipelines, different busses, different soundcards, different drivers for graphics and soundcards, different class libraries, different processors...

Originally posted by whitegold
All,

I'm a long time PC user, with a lot of McFriends. They're constantly spitting numbers and figures and rumours and rhetoric at me.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has some GENUINE UNBIASED benchmarks that compare equivalent (if there is such a thing) PCs and Macs.

My own personal opinion is that in the "olden days", when the G4 was first out, it was kick-ass, compared to the Pentium 3s they were clocked slightly under. But as Pentium 4s topped 1 gig, and now 2 gig, and with advances such as RDRAM used in P4, and DDR Ram used in new Athlons, etc, the Apples are looking decidedly underpowered. Especially for their price. (That being said, their laptops aren't bad in terms of price for performance, just because everything else is so bad.)

What I am looking for here is Honest, factual, unbiased information. Please don't look on this as a troll or an excuse to come on and say "Windows sucks! Aha ha ha ha ha! Macs Rule."

I'm looking for informed, factual NON BIASED information. The only unbiased info I've been able to find is a quite old article in a graphics magazine comparing a bunch of graphics workstations.

[For what it's worth: The Mac (a G4 500) was well and truly in the back of the pack. In fact it was only beaten for last by an iMac. And by the way, the competition was Pentium 3s @ 733-900mhz.]

Apologies for the long post. I wanted to establish a few things to leave as little stupity room as possible for the uninformed Zealots out there.

 

[whitegold]

Thanks for the response...

I also know it's hard to get equivalent benchmarks, considering, for example, that the number one gaming benchmark is 3DMark, which is only available for Windows.

But I'm hoping for some actual statistics. For example, people tell me "Macs are faster at Photoshop." I just find it very hard to accept that a 733mhz machine can possibly be faster than a 2 gigahz machine. I know megahtz aren't everything and all that. I use an athlon, which clock for clock are far faster than a Pentium 3, and better than P4 for most things. It's not everything... but it IS SOMETHING. Tell me a G4 450 is the same speed as a G4 800. Or a P4 1.3 is the same speed as a 2gig.

While PC processors have leapt past a gigs the Mac hardware seems fairly stagnant (until recently, of course). I'm also aware that the P4 2gig does NOT have double the power of a 1 gig (if they existed... not sure).

I just want stats and specs and information that truly compares the two. I recently read a really good comparison of Athlon dual processor systems and Xeon Dual systems, and I would love to know where the G4 as a chip and as a workstation fits in. Is it really where the marketting puts it? Well above? Particularly in Photoshop, where facts and figures seem a little dubious.

Long post. Sorry.

 

[Microsoft_Windows_Hater]

Maybe help....

Want grunt? Steer away from the G3 range and low G4 range.

Opinion:

G3's are passed their use by date in my opinion.

G4's, well i want one.

G5's will rock the planet.

Comparision:

P3's. Comparable to G3's in most departments.

P4's. Comparable to P3's in most departments.

Athlon. Comparable to G4's.

 

[whitegold]

Thanks for the overview, though what I'd love to find is...

I'm of a similar opinion, though despite all people say here, P4s do perform pretty similarly to Athlons. They do have quite some grunt, especially for certain application.

I agree that G3s are a little long in the tooth now. The rumours that Apple will be looking at putting the G4 into iMacs seems pretty cool. G3s are pretty underwhelming now, and as people are expecting more of their iMac with things like iMovies, iTunes, and iTonyhawke it's really looking like they could use a bit of a boost.

I was talking to someone just the other day that the G5 must be due soon. That should rock.

By the way, I love the unbiased name. 🙂 I'm using WinXP now. Pretty good. I like it. I even know a few Mac people who like it.

 

[Microsoft_Windows_Hater]

Hey, hey....

thats a figure of speech after so many crashes and problems....

I am buying office 10 if that makes a difference to you opinion.

Well, my G3 works fine in such areas as Tonyhawk, iTunes and iMovie. It certainly has the grunt that is required.....

 

[evildead]

if you want to see

If you want to see some real tests.. get some fat Photoshop files and put some filters on it. And do the same thing on a PC.. see the diffrence. If you put them head to head you will see that the Mac is faster. I Have seen head to head tests vid clips on the web.. but I dont remember were. Or.. You should try some Bryce 5.0 for Mac and PC.. render some big files... that would be a good test. The thing about Mas's is... they move large chucks of data at a time in memory. So big files like graphic, 3D, Video, Audio, ect.. get pushed arround very fast. And now with OS X... true dynamic RAM allocation is a huge plus. I was a little disapointed that Apple didnt intergrate DDR memory in the latest QuickSilvers but ... it should be in the Next box. I Have heard rumors of FireWire2.0 and USB 2.0 built in to the next generation of PowerPC's. All so, look in industry.. who uses PC's and who uses Mac's, industries that really demand a lot of power use Mac's. True most companies have PC's on all desks including mine, but I just check my email and use Office.. any box can do that. Try making Episode I on a PC??? Their is a reason why Mac's were involved there. Think of it this way? Do you think pro race car drivers drive hondas on there way to work?

 

[spikey]

I agree completely with the pc to mac processor comparisons.
I have used XP and i am quite impressed.
RDRAM sucks.
Cant wait till G5, if apple market it correctly it will sell like cremated cakes. (i might even save my pennies for one)
the "whos better mac Vs pc" debate will be killed off as soon as the G5 comes out.
Not sure about G4s in imacs, heatsink seems a little large for a compact desktop machine.
Does any1 know whether the G5 might have altivec, or some other engine?

 

[Microsoft_Windows_Hater]

Altivec

rumor says that it will.

things ranging from 64bit to 256bit altivec 'velocity' have been reported and it is porbably bound to happen as it will help support apps that have altivec support under G4.

 

[Scab Cake]

As an unbiased computer user, I have a dual PIII 733 and a G4 867 and I use them both a LOT. I am a college student studying computer science and I get garbage all the time about having a mac or wearing Apple shirts. To me, though, computers are just computers and they all do the same thing. Anyway, as far as performance is concerned, I know that the dual 733 doesn't add up to 1.46 ghz, but it's a pretty fast machine. I've found that, as far as web stuff (surfing, java applets, etc.) the mac is a little bit slower (I'm running 10.1 with 640 megs of ram). However, whenever it comes to graphical use, or multimedia, the mac just smokes the PC. Not only in speed, but in compatability. I'm running Win2k Pro on my PC (dual boot with RH Linux 7.0), and the multimedia software available for Windows is sub-par. I do web design on both computers and I'd say that they are usually about the same with respect to performance and Adobe's s/w crashes about the same amount of times on either platform. I use GoLive and Photoshop for my web stuff without the use of many of the fancy filters and stuff that they use to compare the PC and mac at the keynotes. Of course, since my PC is a little slow by today's standards, I notice that the mac is considerably faster in just basic OS applications. However, my dad has a 1.6 ghz P4, and it runs pretty much everything really fast. Speed seems about equivalent with the 1.6 ghz P4 and the G4 867 (running OS 9). So, there's my long spouting about equivalence of speed. I would say that if you were to buy either computer, you would have a great system. I would HIGHLY suggest running Win2k pro on the PC if you get one since it's crashed on me about 3 times over the past YEAR. Of course, I would highly suggest you get a mac before suggesting you get a PC..... 🙂

Man, now that I read that again, it sounds really convoluted...sorry.

 

[Microsoft_Windows_Hater]

3 crashes? Jeez

in my time i have managed to get Win2k to not have one crashless day..... On an Athlon 1ghz it seems to crash regularly, even to the point of restarting without my command at around 9.30 each night........

I must say for me, 10.0.4 has been a pleasure to use and i cant wait for 10.1. My Mac, although slow, has also been a pleasure to use. In terms of power the Athlon flogs it, but i dont mind at all. They both work and i dont do anything fancy, just programming, and i can wait for a compile.

There is only one dif though, i always recommend the mac and i am never touching a pc again.

 

[mymemory]

I have the answer

First, you have to realize what you want to do with your computer.

If you are gonna use it for graphics (photoshop, Illustrator, etc). A mac is gonna do the job fine, specially when you hook up scanners and printers, because there are not too much troble with the settings, etc.

If you are gonna do 3D or work with data bases and networks etc. PC. Macs can do the job but the real performance you get it in a PC with all the troubles that come with it.

If you are gonna work with audio, I'll choose Mac. Audio (and video) are very hardware base stuff and you may get a lot of troubles with a PC because of the drivers and the hudge ammount of devices and software that doesn't really work. And the softwares and hardware that works you can find it for mac too.

If you are good dealing with PC's and dealing with the OS, keep your PC. Beacuse the Mac plataform MAY look and feel a bit limitated (organized is the word). If you are fooling around with your computer get a Mac.

A Mac computer have a longer live than a PC and you won't be running around getting the latest processor just because most of the Macs runs good with what they have, just need to add some more ram and that is it.

 

[ThlayliTheFierce]

Re: 3 crashes? Jeez

Originally posted by Microsoft_Windows_Hater
in my time i have managed to get Win2k to not have one crashless day..... On an Athlon 1ghz it seems to crash regularly, even to the point of restarting without my command at around 9.30 each night........

I must say for me, 10.0.4 has been a pleasure to use and i cant wait for 10.1. My Mac, although slow, has also been a pleasure to use. In terms of power the Athlon flogs it, but i dont mind at all. They both work and i dont do anything fancy, just programming, and i can wait for a compile.

There is only one dif though, i always recommend the mac and i am never touching a pc again.

Just an idea for you... I'm running Win2k on an Athlon 700 with 512 ram. I've crashed it many times, but only about 3 times since I replaced the ram. I had a medium-grade ram module in there and Win2k HATED it. Linux and 98 worked fine though. So you might want to check and make sure you are running the highest quality ram you can get. 2000 is a good, stable OS, so why do we have to upgrade to XP? Maybe I'll like it, but I still don't think it's necessary.

 

[spikey]

Well, ive got XP and im quite impressed.
It is an improvement over all the other sperm microsoft ejaculates. And quite alot better than NT...... sorry, windows 2000.
Although yeah 2K is pretty stable for a microsoft OS.

But when i put XP up against OSX i cant help but feel XP is just a really cheap imitation.

(why am i talking PC in a mac forum?)

 

[MasterX (OSiX)]

It all comes down to this…

In the end there are 2 things you will ever care about.
1) Productivity: Macs let your be more productive than PCs, unless you have OfficeXP, AND only use OfficeXP. Then they're equal (unless you have Office v.X)

2) Performance: PCs (AMDs) offer the best performance in ALL apps they run. P4s offer the best performance in WintelWorld for SSE2 enabled apps. G4s offer the best performance for Altivek-enabled apps. Almost everything Adobe makes has SSE and Altivek now, that's why everyone here (myself included) swears by the Mac's performance (plus the great OSs). It seems that AMD beats P4s in most non SSE2-apps (the P4 compiler -something-or-other- uses reverse order of all old code; someone explained it to me I didn't really get it). I've heard that the AMDs really perform best in 3-D rendering, I think it's the short pipeline and DDR ram.

My picks: If your user experience comes in as a strong neccesity, go mac. If you like computers, go mac. If you like computers that run Windows, go buy P4. If you want Adobe app performance go mac. If you want to build your computer, go AMD. If you want a WindowsOS AND Adobe performance, go P4. If you want 3D performance, go AMD. If you want overall performance, AMD. Media power, Mac first, P4 2nd. If you live and die by inter-operability with Windows, go P4. If you need to use every trinket app that's available for windows, get a PC. If you consider computers tools go with some PC. If you want a religion w/your OS get OSX, a G4 and 1.5GB of ram. Or if you want to spread the light of macintosh, get a PBG4, 1GB Ram, OSX 10.1, a 30GB HD and don't make us look bad :¬)

Just remember the 3 key mac-pc connection rules:
1) VPC 4 exists, it's fast enough to get by on light use.
2) Macs read PC disks.
3) Macs connect to PC networks.
__________________
(Don't flame me, I've heard it before!)

[Edited by MasterX (OSiX) on 10-06-2001 at 11:33 PM]

 

[whitegold]

Macs connect to PC networks

3) Macs connect to PC networks

Yeah, but badly! We run a PC network with one mac connected and it has a lot of trouble getting access to some resources. Not sure why.

More annoyingly though, it puts stupid resource.frk, "the volume settings folder" and another one in every directory. EVERY directory, and every sub directory it goes into. This is highly irritating. I know it's just a file system issue, but it's still really annoying when you put your zip disk in someone's machine to read a file then have to go through and delete that stuff off the disk...

In any case, thank you all for your info... been very informative, particularly "Scab Cake". Nice to hear from someone using both platforms.

One thing that I did want to say is that I think there are big advantages and disadvantages to both platforms.

Examples of advantages for Macs include good performance, attractive OS, more standardized hardware, reliability.

Disadvantages are a lack of software, including games, shortage of mainstream support (bank software, ISPs, some websites, etc), relative high cost of hardware, etc.

Naturally for PC you have the exact reverse In particular I fee that the unstandardized hardware used in PCs is both a blessing and a curse. And in many ways, I feel that microsoft is unfairly blamed for making a crap OS.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're perfect. But the sheer volume of stuff that a windows operating system has to support is vast. The number of devices, the number of brands. The amount of bodgy software and driver versions.

In my opinion it is these things that contribute vastly to the stability of the Windows operating system. PC people go out and buy a basket of hardware, toss it together and complain that it doesn't all work together as a seamless unit. Macs don't have that issue.

The choices that are available to PCs are vast. There area million cases, a thousand motherboards, a hundred video cards, a dozen different CPUs (counting revisions and version), 4 or 5 different types of RAM....

This choice is both good and bad. It's nice to be able to choose, mix and match, customize, and budget.

But it's also nice to have things work. THat's why I bought a gateway machine.

Those who complain about Windows crashing a lot should consider their hardware. I believe a lot of crashing is caused by dodgy hardware (particularly cheap motherboards, and for some reason, Sound Blaster Live cards).

 

[MasterX (OSiX)]

I have to give credit for Windows doing a decent job in the name of support. The voume settings is only annoying for PC users, it's an invisible folder for Mac users, PC disks do the same stuff in a mac. When I said Macs connect to PCs it's more of a utilitarian thing, it's not perfect. And I was referring to OSX, even though I haven't personally done it yet. I've heard that runnign VPC has excellent results when connecting to a PC network FYI. Mac hardware is much cheeper now than it was. This is becaus ea lot of hardware is now multi-platform. Especially external stuff. Actually almost all external devices work on both systems: printers, CD-RWs, hard-drives, scanners, ect. Internal devices are a mixed bag, some video cards can be mac-flashed, and drives work, but most other things (graphics cards) don't. The biggest issue is people looking to install what I call "crap hardware" into their system. Some small company that sells 52x CD drives for $80 probably wouln't go through the trouble making mac drivers. CDcyclone, Sony, Pioneer, Yamaha, LaCie, Plextor, Sanyo, and Iomega are all pretty good w/mac support.

I will not comment in depth on printer support under OSX, all drivers will need to be re-programmed, thus the delay/lack of support. I've heard many complaints about OSX support for old printers, thing is only old G3 desktops and old G3 laptops have serial/scsi ports. I think Apple needs CD-RW support for SCSI, but beyond that (Parallel/serial) forget it.