Are Macs faster than PC's

[damocles]

The thing that has biased me against Mac's is all the dodgy benchmarks i have seen and all the Crap that comes out of Steve Job's mouth.

I remember seeing an article which showed a Mac was faster than a PC in quake. The Mac had a 3dfx card and the PC a mighty 4 Meg virge '3d accelerator'.

 

[BFG10K]

I think he's refering to multitasking

I was referering to much more than multitasking.

Windows 9x/ME:
Pre-emptive multitasking.
Advanced memory manager.
Dynamic memory allocation.
Advanced virtual memory.
Partial memory protection.
Advanced dynamic caching.
Advanced multithreading.
Modern concept of 32 bit device drivers.

Mac OS
Co-operative multiasking (hold down the mouse button and watch everything stop).
Primitive memory manager (incapable of moving blocks of memory at all and requires sequential unused blocks to operate correctly).
Static memory allocation (get info, change memory size)
Simplistic 1-1 mapping of virtual memory (which makes for wasted space).
No memory protection at all (one bad pointer and it's restart time).
No real concept of caching and is static at all times (turn it off because it just wastes RAM and does nothing).
Simulated multithreading (not true multithreading).
No real concept of device drivers (just uses extensions to simulate such).

Basically all of the Mac OS's defects are essentially what Windows 3.11 had. Make no mistake, Mac OS is still running 15 year old code and hence behaves as such.

 

[Zucchini]

Ah thats basically what i've read, i'm too lazy to look it up though

 

[BenSkywalker]

Nice post BFG10K

Every point he brings up is quite valid. If you are extremely delicate with your computer, then the MacOS may be fine, but the fact is that Win9x, as poor as it is in many cases, is the overall better OS from a technical and real world standpoint. Anyone with a Mac in doubt fire up six IE Windows and the media player of your choices and listen to some MP3s

The performance question is NOT Apples to Oranges. We all dot things with our computers, either the Mac or the PC will end up being faster(unless they tie), it is a completely valid comparison.

First myth to get out of the way, PCs are not that slow at Photoshop. In fact, if you go through and bench filter by filter a top of the line PC against a top of the line Mac the PC will win more then it loses.

Quake3 the Mac is pathetic and sickly. It truly is an embarassment that they could be so increibly slow, even clock for clock. Don't take my word for it, dual G4 450MHZ CPUs pushing a whopping 52.7FPS at 640x480 16bit(with a Radeon)? That is slightly better then half of what my single Athlon 550 hits.

CAD and 3D visualization the Mac is also very poor at. Unfortunately I don't have any links to any Mac sites to offer some comparisons on this one, anyone that cares to try and render a scene or object using raytracing or radiosity on both a top of the line Mac and a top of the line PC and see for yourself. The G4 is quite frankly a slug when it can't use AltiVec.

RC5- The G4 rocks, this is one test that clearly deomstrates that AltiVec can boost performance significantly. No CPU available for PCs, not even the 1.2GHZ Athlon, can come too close to a single G4 500. Of course, you don't do anything with RC5, it just kind of runs in the background.

Apple is behind in nearly every possible way at this time. I think you will find that the consensus in the Mac arena is that they have plenty of good software(which they do), but would like to be able to match PCs in the hardware department. The main draw of the Mac has always been the GUI(don't get fooled into thinking this makes for a great OS), and until the last couple of years the excellent performance. Clock for clock the G3 was quite a bit faster then the PII at most tasks, and they had the MHZ lead for a while(G3 300MHZ was available before the PII 300). Times have changed, Apple is very clearly trailing PCs in the performance arena.

 

[dew042]

..and another thing... mac is well on its way to working parallel processing with the dual G4. Sure AMD and intel use dual proccessors to work a SINGLE process. Can imagine if Mac could go parallel? REAL parallel programming would kick the living crap out of any linear processing speeds intel and amd could come up with...

on the issue of the opposing OS's I will say this: The Windows 9X kernal is a nightmare and matainence is NOT easy. Why would the average END-USER want to be subjected something as user un-friendly as windows? I doubt anyone is willing to venture that windows 98 is easier to use than macOS of any version. And I also know that the average user does not have the time for the constant gliches and difficulties you can run into quite easily in windows. I had old macs and they never were on the fritz. I won't say they are solid like Unix, but they are overall a hell of alot more stable then the average windows system.

bravo to all those out there having intelligent discussions....

 

[BenSkywalker]

<Former Mac user rant mode>

&quot;my apologies to anyone in this forum who was actually here for a real academic discussion instead of just flaming and why MAC &quot;sucks&quot;....&quot;

Macs, for this audience, DO SUCK. Is that so hard to understand? What specific points of academia involving why they suck for this audience would you like? Inferior AGP implementation, lack of available video option, sickeningly poor 16bit stereo sound(no 3D)? Or would you like to speak of the OS itself? We could also go into the horrible memory system performance, the extremely weak real world non SIMD FPU of the PPC compared to current x86 offerings, what technical aspects would you like to discuss? The summary will not change.

This is NOT a forum for John Q Public who is too stupid to tell the difference between a CD-ROM and a cupholder. This is NOT a forum with a lot of people who simply browse the web(though there are a few). This IS a forum where many gamers visit, and for that Macs do suck.

And the single most important aspect that binds more of us then anything else WE BUILD OUR FVCKING OWN. Read Anand's reviews, look at all those motherboards, why do you think that is? With the extreme bashing numb nuts Steve Jobs constantly dishes out to PC users and enthusiasts you should be quite surprised that the community is anywhere near as tollerant as they are. Tell SteveJ to get his head out of his @$$ and stop being such a megalmomaniacal(is that a word?) pr!ck and maybe some people here would consider running PPC hardware(though the Mac OS is still laughable for most of the users here).

&quot;People have trouble figuring out Windows of any version&quot;

Here? I find that highly unlikely. We are not in some AOL chatroom filled with types of people who burn themselves and sue for companies not making things moron proof.

&quot;The Windows 9X kernal is a nightmare and matainence is NOT easy. Why would the average END-USER want to be subjected something as user un-friendly as windows?&quot;

WTF is so hard about Windows? Drop to command line *nix for a while and gain some perspective. You want an average end user? Why are you here? If this was a forum for average end users you would find the tone quite different. This is a place where people tear their processors apart so they can lap them for better contact with their 2lb heatsink combined with three fans to squeak out that extra 10MHZ. You are in the wrong place.

&quot;I doubt anyone is willing to venture that windows 98 is easier to use than macOS of any version.&quot;

For what I do? Win98, WinNT, Win2K and even Linux is easier then the MacOS. Rebooting simply because an application goes down is a pain in the @ss, a lot bigger pain to me then taking the time to set a machine up properly. Set it up right once, and you shouldn't have anywhere near the problems you do with the MacOS.

I started out on Apple][s, went to Macs, and used them for about ten years before moving to PCs. I have a lot of pent up hostility having to deal with the sh!t that Apple would dub &quot;quality&quot;. OSX is the first chance for Apple to claim some sort of technical superiority for quite some time, and even then they will have a lot to prove against most of the other current OSs.

</Former Mac user rant mode>

Macs do do many things very well, but for 99% of the posters on this forum, they are lousy in pretty much every way they could be.

 

[Theraven]

Most of you don't seem to know that the new G4E run at 1 GHz and that the G4 500 MHz has only 3W of thermal output, which really can't compare the Intel processors

 

[Workin']

This is akin to a Holy War and the 2 camps shall never agree. On anything.

I recently got a Mac (don't ask...) and have been shocked at how much the little monster crashes! After all the propoganda about Macs being so stable and easy to use, I find that it is less stable (at least OS 7.5.5 and 8.1) than any Win 9x platform I have ever used. The dumbest thing about them in my opinion is the 2-forked file system. Data fork and Resource fork? WTF?? Anytime you send a file as an e-mail attachment or over the internet, it gets screwed up unless you archive (binhex or whatever) it first.

I have a computer consulting business that targets small businesses, and I get a large amount of business helping people transition from Macs to PCs, but NO business (not a single case in more than a year) going from PC to Mac. That's gotta be for some reason. Oh right, it's (mainly) because Mac stuff costs 2X as much as PC stuff for equivalent performance.

 

[Cknyc]

C'mon guys whats all the arguing about we all know deep down inside which is better. I ran a computer lab a year ago with many macs, those f_ckers do crash more often than win9X machines. I found my palm pilot to be more useful than those machines. Oh well to each his own. They make them because people buy em. Dont ask me why..

 

[Brandino]

MoralPanic, you could NOT build a machine like that for 3k

But dollar for dollar, i think AMD/Intel is superior. For a $3000 G4, i could use that $3000 and build a AMD/P3 1000mhz at least, GF2 Ultra, 512mb ram, 15000rpm SCSI drives, etc, etc.

ok, P3 1 ghz was 450 bucks the last time I checked, GF2 Ultra was about the same thing, 512 mb of ram is about 400, ONE 15k rpm scsi drive is like 700 for just 1 18 giger, and if you have two thats close to 1500 bucks right there. Total that up and that's already pretty damn close to 3000. Your system would be much closer to 4000 when you're actualy done adding all the controler, case, motherboard, scsi drives, monitor etc.

just to let you know, I'm not trying to be a jackass

 

[Zucchini]

i'm still waiting for a stylish pc case .. mac has that down atleast.. plus nifty how their towers open up.
I'm also waiting for a silent %#@ pc, i'm getting sick of hearing all the fans.. once these probs are solved.. then yes pc's are better then macs.

 

[Eug]

Mac OS 8 sucks. I haven't really used Mac OS 9, but what I've seen of it, it also sucks.

Win 95 sucks. I put them at about equal level for stability. Win 98 is superior, and Win 2000 puts all of them to shame.

However, having seen the alpha and beta of OS X, I am VERY interested to see what the release version can do. It looks solid, and it is gorgeous - makes Windoze 2000 look like a Mac truck in terms of visuals. Linux is a geek OS, and given its complete lack of slickness in its current form, will remain a geek OS for a long time. Even the dumbified Corel Linux looks like a joke aesthetically.

For a web head with no hardware knowledge however, a Windoze box is not always a good thing. Most of the web designers I know were trained on a Mac, and know their way around the Mac OS quite well. If they do 3D work however, it's on an NT box. Most couldn't care less how fast Q3 ran though. Hell, the standard 1-button mouse wouldn't even be useful for Q3.

I run an o/c'd PC with Arctic Silver and Alphas, etc. using Windows 98, and will remain so. However, one thing I've liked about SOME of the Mac stuff is style. I've always thought that PCs just look like crap, both for the exterior aesthetics and for the OS. Gimme a break. Personally I think Microsoft should hire more graphics designers. Even their website looks cheesy. At least to me, looks matter. For my new home I won't be caught dead having any sort of beige PC in the place other than in the home office. I'd consider a Cube in the living room, but never a beige PC. However, the Cube is a ripoff I'll probably just end up getting a nice black laptop for some wireless surfing action.

 

[Noriaki]

<< Clock for clock CPU-wise they are, but for total system performance (ie real world perfomance) a P3/Athlon will kick a similarly clocked G4s butt and cost half the price. Ignore the theoretical CPU benchmarks like SETI and RC5, and the selectively picked Photoshop filters Jobs runs. And don't even get me started on that POS Mac OS. >>

This about sums up my opinion as well.
The other thing I'd like to point out is that many people talk about clock/clock performance of a G4 compared to an x86, well I much prefer to compare price/price. Well..no contest.
Besides, I won't let Dell or Gateway or Compaq or HP build my computer for me, why would I let Apple? I build my own machines and decide what goes in them, I don't let anyone else decide, whether they want to decide on a K7, P3, G4 or hell a cyrix.

 

[Optikal]

TheRaven: Most of you don't seem to know that the new G4E run at 1 GHz

Does anyone know if this is true?

 

[Noriaki]

What the hell is a G4E? a Dual G4 box where 500+500=1Ghz?

And what's up with the style issue?
Come on...those macs are an eyesore...I must admit the newer G4 silver/grey (sort of the colour of an Intellimouse Explorer) are OK, but bright hideous orange/purple/pink/green? Ok I dunno about you but I got over the &quot;I want to dye my hair pink&quot; phase when I was about 14.
My computer is a tool, it sits on the floor under my desk. I play games and work and chat with it, but it's not a fashion statement. My walls in my room are nice plain off-white (as most walls are) and my PC is a nice off-white. Very simple and plain, I don't have people coming to my house to admire my choice of PC colour, much less my office...
I like it when my machine blends into the room...and if you are telling me an iMac blends into your room, your room has some issues...

But anyhow, what colour you want your case is your own decision. There are lots of places online you can get &quot;neat&quot; looking cases for a PC and many of the well designed ones have a blended front panel that has a whitish colour front panel so your drives don't look stupid.

 

[Zucchini]

a Dual G4 box where 500+500=1Ghz?


Hmm that sounds like apple marketing to me Dual p4 1.5's should be called 3ghz pc's hahaha

 

[Spoooon]

I don't know about you guys, but I think my case with do-it-yourself blowholes, fanbus, and baybus is plenty stylish! I'd take my chassis over a &quot;Cube&quot; anyday. By the way, if you own a PC and want a cube, you should check out that case from Yeong Yeang(????). I tried to find a link, but had no luck.

 

[BFG10K]

BenSkywalker:

If you are extremely delicate with your computer, then the MacOS may be fine, but the fact is that Win9x, as poor as it is in many cases, is the overall better OS from a technical and real world standpoint.

Yep. You get these Mac guys claiming they &quot;never have crashes on their Macs and that Windows crashes every five minutes&quot;, but that's because they only ever run one program at a time or know exactly how to work around their system deficiencies. Also they are lying about the stability of their Windows systems.

In a realistic usage situation (such as a University computer Lab) Mac OS totally blows. At my Uni it's expected that anyone logging into to a Mac will experience at least one crash per sittting.

After switching to PCs from being a Mac power-user I have found Windows 98 to be far more stable and reliable than Mac OS, and there is just no comparing Mac OS to Windows NT/2000.

In fact, if you go through and bench filter by filter a top of the line PC against a top of the line Mac the PC will win more then it loses.

It's all part of Jobs's propaganda. He only runs the Photoshop filters which have the heaviest Velocity Engine (AKA Altivec) enhancements and minimal SSE enhancements. Also Photoshop is a native Mac program which was horribly ported to PCs.

The PC version of Photoshop is still using its own memory manager scheme because it required it to circumvent Mac OS's dinousar static memory allocation shceme. It would be far faster and more efficient to just let Windows handle everything (like it does for all other programs) but Adode have done such a crap job they couldn't even be bothered removing it.

Quake3 the Mac is pathetic and sickly

In fact all 3D games on a Mac will run slower than a similar clocked PC. A G4 500 on a 100 MHz system bus is smoked by a Celeron 500 system like mine running only on a 66 MHz system bus, and is totally demolished by a Duron/Athlon/Pentium3 system.

The reason is because of inferior drivers and inferior motherboards which have low memory bandwidth, and mainly because the PPC doesn't support write combining so Macs achieve very little throughput across their PCI/AGP bus compared to PCs.

RC5- The G4 rocks, this is one test that clearly deomstrates that AltiVec can boost performance significantly.

Unfortunately for the G4 RC5 is yet another one of those theoretical CPU programs which don't show real world performance in any way just like Seti, Bytemark and the rest.

dew042:

I doubt anyone is willing to venture that windows 98 is easier to use than macOS of any version.

I am and I'll say it. Windows has a better interface than Mac OS, in every way. Mac OS is too simplistic, lacks options and forces you to work in one specific way.

but they are overall a hell of alot more stable then the average windows system.



I don't think so.

Would you be the one who will go and tell them that they have a bunch of crappy computers?

I don't know what you're on about, but it looks like you're attempting to pull off a combo attack of strawman and smokescreen arguments. The only problem for you is that it's not working.

my apologies to anyone in this forum who was actually here for a real academic discussion instead of just flaming and why MAC &quot;sucks&quot;....

Pardon? Did you even read my post which describes the technical deficiencies of Mac OS? Better yet did you understand each point? Surely you're not trying to tell me that post wasn't academic?

Theraven:

Most of you don't seem to know that the new G4E run at 1 GHz

Err no. Motorolla are struggling to even get 550 MHz G4s out the door. That fabled 50 MHz speed bump they promised months ago is nowhere to be seen. Yields of the G4e are extremely poor (worse than the G4) and less than 1% of all the units even make it above 500 MHz.

Basically BenSkywalker has said what I wanted to say but I'd like to add this: Macs are over-priced, underperforming iTarded, iFruity pieces of plastic which run a 15 year old dinosaur OS and have no options or competition at all.

They are run by a monopolistic dictator (Jobs) who constantly spouts &quot;think different&quot; and acts like &quot;think stupid&quot;, feeds the public BS propaganda benchmarks and makes wild performance claims. He tells the customers what they want rather than letting them decide for themselves, and charges even more after he provides less options.

Apple is a monopoly and can do whatever they like. If they didn't have their fanatical niche market they would have died a long time ago.

 

[dew042]

BFG10K:

pseudo-intellectual and academic are two very different things.
i can't remember the last academic discussion i had where bullsh*t. was included.
i certainly didn't mean to attack you, but seeing as how 'civilly' you responded i don't feel so bad now.
i stated an opinion. i tried to raise some issues. perhaps my arguments have holes. perhaps its even misinformed... sorry if i am just blantantly wrong. i thought forums were for open discussion, NOT putdowns and &quot;why i am always right...&quot;


and yes i did read your second post..well written i must admit. your first post was utter tripe though... calling the MacOS names...that's REALLY academic, and quite mature.

congrats. you win.

 

[pen^2]

YES YOU COULD OVERCLOCK A MAC. i did help overlocking a G3 that belongs to a firned of mine... i would assume the same for the G4. with that beings said, is it just me thikin macs are BUTT FUGLY? i would take a PC with a good looking antec case over pompously toyish looking macs :|

 

[Looney]

<< I had old macs and they never were on the fritz. I won't say they are solid like Unix, but they are overall a hell of alot more stable then the average windows system. >>



The vast majority of Window problems are device driver problems... that's why with WinME and Win2k, they've placed such importance on certification of drivers.

Now, the reason why most people have crashes in Win9x, is because of drivers... i know plenty of people, who from the very first day they bring their computer home, never add a new hardware to their computer (thus no new drivers), and their system is more stable than my Win2k system which i'm always adding new things to (in the last 2 months i've gone through 5 video cards). The reason why Macs don't crash as often (which i think you have deluded yourself into thinking, i've used Macs at the university all the time, and i get crashes all the time) is because they have less driver issues. Why do they have less driver issue? because they have less 3rd manufacturers making products for the Mac. If the Mac had as many manufacturers making products for the system, i guarantee you that they'll be just as much driver conflicts, and just as much crashes. I would rather take a PC and have all these hardware availability, and put up with the occassional headache, then go with Mac and have NO OPTION whatsoever.



<< The self-righteous-know-it-all behavior that goes around here is really tiresome. the idea if something is not the absolute best, then its crap and has no place in the computing world, is ignorant and quite unbecoming of a group people as intelligent, and bright as this community has to offer. >>



Who's been self-righteous? A question was asked in this forum of 'Are Macs faster than PC's'... and that's not a simple answer. This was asked in a primarily PC dominant forum, so of course it'll be a bit biased... but hardly any posts have been insulting, unlike YOURS.



<< Stop the self-righteous crap and get your heads out of your ass >>





<< ignorant and quite unbecoming of a group people as intelligent, and bright as this community has to offer. >>





<< Does putting others down make you feel good and warm inside? if it does i feel sorry for your pathetic lifestyle >>



And you're loading Win95 onto a 486 system with 12mb of memory? Maybe you should get your head out of your ass and learn a bit about the PC world. Is that how you base the stability of Win9x? On systems as obsolete as that?



<< my apologies to anyone in this forum who was actually here for a real academic discussion instead of just flaming and why MAC &quot;sucks&quot;.... >>



Did you not read the title of the thread before coming in here? &quot;Are Macs faster than PC's&quot; ... does that sound like the title of an academic discussion? And if you are attemping to turn this into an academic discussion, what have you contributed?

 

[Noriaki]

<< The reason why Macs don't crash as often (which i think you have deluded yourself into thinking, i've used Macs at the university all the time, and i get crashes all the time) is because they have less driver issues. Why do they have less driver issue? because they have less 3rd manufacturers making products for the Mac. If the Mac had as many manufacturers making products for the system, i guarantee you that they'll be just as much driver conflicts, and just as much crashes. I would rather take a PC and have all these hardware availability, and put up with the occassional headache, then go with Mac and have NO OPTION whatsoever. >>


Heheh...I don't expect my VCR or Microwave to crash and it has as much in the way of hardware selection as a Mac I'd like to see MacOS support 1/4th the hardware Windows does and see how well it runs then.