Apple vs. PC CPU

[Diable]

FishTankX, I don't find OS X slow on my 500mhz dual processor PM, in fact its pretty snappy. Your right about it not having hardware acceleration but on faster machine its not needed.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Not that I have another Mac to comare it with, but OS X seems very snappy on my new G$...err... G4. Of course it might have something to do w/the dual gig procs and 1 gig of RAM. Mmmm... have I mentioned how awesome Final Cut Pro 3 is yet...


Lethal

 

[FishTankX]

Heh heh, Diable my rich chap..
Most of the people I know are on uniprocessor OSX machines. In these situations one CPU gets stuck with drawing and OS work.

With Dual CPU they can just offload the graphics to the second CPU..

 

[smp]

First, it's not Apple who makes the CPU, I don't know why people are giving Apple the credit. Motorola and IBM make the PowerPC processor. The G4 (generation 4) of the PowerPC featured AltiVec, the PowerPC's version of SIMD, similar to SSE/SSE2 and 3dNow!. With the same properties that it must be optimized for. The PowerPC is a RISC processor and hence, comparing it to an x86 processor is somewhat difficult. As far as performance, the memory bottleneck of most Macs will make your gaming a nightmare. As seen by Apple's own benchmarks of Q3A posted on their website. As far as non-memory intensive tasks, a properly optimized piece of code can be quite fast on the PowerPC. Comparing performance directly is hard to do and certainly subjective. To say one is faster than the other would be a skeptical statement at best.
Would the PowerPC be faster clock for clock than an Athlon or P4 using its native code? Yes. Does that really matter? No. Once you cut through all the PR and dogmatic rants of "mine is faster", you'll realize it's a computer, like all the others and the difference isn't night and day.

I thinkt that was well said. In the end they are all just computers. Can't we all get along?

If I had the money I would be buying an i-book tomorrow! If I had even more money, I would be grabbing a powerbook G4
I think that OSX is a good idea.

 

[Go3iverson]

Hey all

I thought I'd get in on this discussion.....I, right now, have 4 computers here in my room......

1. Apple iBook 500MHz G3 - running Mac OS 10.1.4
2. Apple PowerMac 533MHz G4 - running Mac OS 10.1.4 Server
3. Apple PowerMac 867MHz G4 - running Mac OS 10.1.4
4. AMD AthlonXP 1700+ - running Windows XP Professional

First off, you can really feel the difference between the G4 and the G3 in Mac OS X. That Altivec engine is really used in X. What you really have to look at is your performance. I could boot into Mac OS 9.2.x and probably speed up my machine a bit, its true....but why? OS X has great multi-tasking and I know I'll never have to reboot it. It's honestly true. Barring updating the OS itself, none of my Apple's have ever been forced into a reboot. I say forced because I do have to shut them down during extended vacations and, well, we lost power once or twice up here! My XP box, well, I'm getting kinda sick and tired of being asked if I want to send my error report to Microsoft. I've even had the machine hang a couple of times. It's also almost guaranteed that every few days it needs a reboot.

With that said, there are things that load a little faster on XP......such as IE and Word.....both MS products. Conversely, I like the Office Suite for X TONS more. Its got a much better look and feel to it. Seems cleaner too, for some reason. Now, if I were to fire up AppleWorks, Apple's response to Office (yet MUCH MUCH less expensive), that'll load faster than Word will on a PC. Kinda makes you wonder at times if MS makes their Mac code more cumbersome to try and make it seem slower? Just a thought.

Not trying to start a fight with anything I've said in here, just trying to share my opinion from owning some pretty formidable systems. I will say that this forum loads faster on the PC.....and I am typing this from the PC right now. That's also because the OS X Server sits next to it and it's being updated and I have a much better view of the TV from here!


Good discussion so far......for the most part we haven't seen the term "sucks" much at all! Always a good thing!


Mike D

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< the Apple computers are sort of a "luxury" item compares to a selfbuilt PC, but they come with a clever design and good components that work. And to some people the fact that a computer works is worth more than a few mhz. >>



Thats one of the best things Ive read here in a long time!

Apple does help in the design of PPC processors, which has already been mentioned

Mac OS X is slow on my iBook. But I bought it for portability, not speed. I also have the 500mhz iBook with the 66mhz bus. That is one of the big speed bumps. I want to buy a TiBook, hopefully this summer or next fall I will get a chance. It is much faster on a TiBook than my poor little iBook.

If it wasnt for the money, Id buy much more PPC based hardware than I do. I couldnt live without PCs though.

 

[jbond04]

BFG10K hit the nail on the head. I love how Apple uses Photoshop to show off the power of its SMP systems, since Photoshop rarely benefits from SMP at all (about 5%-7% average improvement).

 

[Katana]

<< My XP box, well, I'm getting kinda sick and tired of being asked if I want to send my error report to Microsoft. I've even had the machine hang a couple of times. It's also almost guaranteed that every few days it needs a reboot. >>




You do know you can turn error reporting off, right? Why do you have to reboot the XP machine every few days, what happens? I ask because I also have a 1700+ and can leave it on for weeks without problems, and this is with me installing and uninstalling apps and games all the time.

 

[Degenerate]

<< they are slow and overpriced computers >>


well said.

The only thing that a mac might be better in is the design (look). But i dont see why that woud justify spenidng extra money. Lots more money. PLus, many custon Pc's look just as good, or better.

Yeah. their use of Photoshop as a benchmark is no more than marketing. 3-5 Ph benchies dont mean anything more than the brand of salt you use for cooking.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Ill post this here since some silly x86 zealots may want to post some of this information but in a less biased way

CONS:

1. Price.

2. Driver support in OS X.

3. Mac zealots.

4. Lack of upgradability. This is not much of a problem for everyone. I dont do much more than buy new hard drives and ram. I dont need to upgrade much more.

5. Not a gaming platform. While I consider this a plus, there are plenty of people that still play games. I bought a ps2 so I could use my computer for more important things. But I will include this as a con since most people around here are gamers. To each his own (which is also how I feel about which platform you choose).

6. Mac OS X is still slow. Much like the driver issues, this is a problem. Of course, this is almost a totally new OS, so these issues need to be worked out. 10.1 was an *INCREADIBLE* leap in speed inprovements and from the benchmarks 10.2 will be too. I look forward to it.

7. It still ships with ie but not Mozilla. I dont mind having ie on my system, but it would be much easier if I didnt have to use it to download my choice of browsers.

8. "Closed" hardware platform. While I dont think this is much of a problem, some people like a *HUGE* variety in what hardware they can purchase.

9. OS can be tough for Windows people to understand. I could not figure out OS < 10 for quite a while, but I figured it out once I had the time to play with it for 10 min.


I dont think anyone should buy just one platform. What fun is life if you dont have any variety? To me, owning a PC would be like only having blondes. Yeah, they're cheap, fast, and you can play with them all you want, but without brunettes (sparc maybe) or redheads (definitely Mac, cant say why ) they just arent all that special.

Mac PROS:

1. Network administration. And I dont mean that "ghey" (what a kiddiot word) Windows crap. I mean the hardcore UNIX network. Try adminning one of those from a Windows machine without downloading third party tools or using software from your OS vendor that did not come with your OS.

2. Photo editting.

3. Movie editting.

4. You get away from the old POS backwards compatibility of x86.

5. Mac OS X makes sense. I cant say the same thing about Windows.

6. Mac users will like it better than a PC.

7. Plenty of good and free software.

8. Owning a Mac makes it easier to piss off stupid x86 zealots.

9. Beautiful cases.

10. Beautiful OS in both looks and usability. The speed will get much better with 10.2 (much like 10.1 was MUCH faster) because of gcc upgrades.

11. Mac OS X has been much more stable than Win2k was for me. The Win2k problem was a hardware one, but with the "closed" platform Apple uses, the stability is mch easier to obtain.

 

[Sunner]

<< 3. Mac zealots >>


Come to think of it, thats a pretty big con.
Mac zealots are quite possibly the most annoying zealots, even more so than x86, Linux, and Windows zealots.

 

[Tiger]

<< The PowerPC is a RISC processor and hence, comparing it to an x86 processor is somewhat difficult. As far as performance, the memory bottleneck of most Macs will make your gaming a nightmare. As seen by Apple's own benchmarks of Q3A posted on their website. As far as non-memory intensive tasks, a properly optimized piece of code can be quite fast on the PowerPC. Comparing performance directly is hard to do and certainly subjective. To say one is faster than the other would be a skeptical statement at best. >>



Somebody finally raised the RISC vs. CISC thing. It's ahem..... Apples v. Oranges, although I swear I saw Jobs barking about kicking some x86 butt speed wise at the OSX rollout last year.