Processor speeds on Mac vs PC - newbie question

Clockspeed is a really bad way of judging performance. Ask AMD! Their 2.4Ghz CPUs are faster than Intels 3.0 (and faster) CPUs. PowerPC processors have shorter pipelines so achieve more per clock cycle than an x86 processor. That said a 3.0Ghz PIV is almost certainly going to be faster that a 1.33Ghz G4.

The G4 will be plenty fast enough for most people though.

 

http://www.asia.apple.com/g4/myth/

 

FWIW, my 1.25 Ghz PowerBook rocks the snot out of my roomate's 2.7 Ghz HP Laptop.

 

Define "that". Is it much slower? Yes. Is it less than half as fast? No. Can it be quantified? Not really.

I don't think Windows is that CPU hungry - but there are couple of things to bear in mind. One is the unnecessary services that are on by default. The first thing I do with a new PC and after re-installing Windows is to disable the unnecessary services - especially the disk indexing service. Another is you have to spend far too much time nursing it along to keep it working.

So, speed isn't everything. In the past week I've spent two full days trying to get SP2 installed on my Dell desktop. Each time I think it worked, something eventually failed (last time was networking stopped totally). I guess it's just incompatible with my machine. At one point I couldn't even remove SP2 in Safe Mode. In the end I just gave up, and I'm staying with SP1 with all the latest updates. My wife suspects I did that all deliberately, to justify getting a Mac.

That's two days I'll never get back. In the past I've enjoyed tinkering with computers, but Windows stopped being fun a long time ago. Right now, I want and need something that willl just work.

 

Wonderfully put

 

Yes a 1.33 ghz G4 is a lot slower than a 3 ghz P4, anyone who tells you otherwise is seriously deluded. If you're rendering 3D graphics or playing your favorite FPS game it is quite obvious, but for your average user (mail, surfing, wordprocessing, listening to music) 1.33 ghz is fast enough. Actually anything built in the last 6 years is probably fast enough.

Additionally there are some things that just are nicer to do on the Mac. I have PC workstation that is easily 4x the speed of my fastest Mac, but when it comes time to make a new video of the kids for Grandma, I turn on the Mac even though it is slow because the tools on it make ME fast.