Mac? Pc? Whats a story and what's real.

[dani_17]

Hi All!!

I have a little "debate" here. One of my friends bought a new iMac laptop. I asked him why did he buy a mac when he could get one of the new HP laptops. He told me that the iMac was faster and so, besides it's so nice an so beautifull... whatever.

My question is, if you ask anyone that uses a mac, specially graphic designers and video editors, they'll tell you that his mac can beat my lousy windows pc without taking a sweat.... but is it a myht or is it propaganda?

Take this 2 links

http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/cgi-bin/getframeletter.cgi?/2002/11_nov/reviews/cw_macvspciii.htm

The first one is the homesite of the new PowerPC G4, dual 1.45 CPU.

The second one is a comparision of that same $3,600 Powerpc with the $2,964 Dell Precision Workstation 350.

That confuses me. Apple's website show some sort of benchmark saying the apple pc is 30% faster than Dell Dimension 8250...

Now really, this is not about being mac or being pc, it's about truth. Is Apple lying to people and really selling nice cases and eye candy or is really Machintosh an option comparing it with the pc you could build up with the same price tag??

Just waiting to hear your opinions.

 

[agissi]

Dell Dimension 8250 specs:

Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor up to 3.0GHz with Hyper-Threading and 533MHz system bus for lightning-fast speed.
Memory: 256MB to 1.5GB Dual Channel RDRAM for ultimate performance.
Sound: Premium Soundblaster® Live! and Turtle Beach® Santa Cruz soundcards and Harman Kardon® speakers with subwoofers for high-quality sound.


I think they're full of it. Apple ppl are always so....stuck up

(no offence to those better apple ppl)

Can anyone explain how the hell a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with HT technology can out do a rubbish 1.45Ghz (apple) computer? by 30%!?! Maybe if that P4 was loaded with 8MBs of RAM, ya - I could understand that. But, its not. Ok so the apple has dual CPUs, well the P4 has HT technology. Plus, the average person goes "Woha! two 1.45Ghz cpus, that must mean its really 2.9Ghz!". Well Im sure everyone here knows thats not the case....typical apple.

 

[negroplasty]

Agreed. I don't understand how they can say Macs are better for graphics and graphics design when there are Windows computers with ATi 9800 PROs and NV35s. Anyone care to explain? I could just be me misunderstanding, but are they referring to the power of Macs or layout and simplicity of the OS and software. (obviously there will be some more difficult software)

 

[LNCPapa]

It is propaganda. I am both a PC and Mac user - have several of both. Using optimized versions of identical software on both platforms the PC will be faster. Don't believe the hype. I've noticed that a good portion of Mac users are elitists. I have used a dual 1.25 Ghz mac and I will put a 2.66 P4 ahead of it any day. Don't get me wrong, I feel they both have their place and are both very capable platforms, but the whole "My Mac is faster than your PC in Photoshop and/or any other graphics application" is total crap. The overhead of Jaguar along with Quartz is amazingly high.

LNCPapa

 

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by LNCPapa
It is propaganda. I am both a PC and Mac user - have several of both. Using optimized versions of identical software on both platforms the PC will be faster. Don't believe the hype. I've noticed that a good portion of Mac users are elitists. I have used a dual 1.25 Ghz mac and I will put a 2.66 P4 ahead of it any day. Don't get me wrong, I feel they both have their place and are both very capable platforms, but the whole "My Mac is faster than your PC in Photoshop and/or any other graphics application" is total crap. The overhead of Jaguar along with Quartz is amazingly high.

LNCPapa

Well put. Both platforms have their ups and downs.

 

[Rick]

I have had the pleasure of getting famliar with Macs recently. I can tell you that recent Apples cannot match the tops speeds of current desktops.

They really do "feel" faster than a comparable clocked PC usually (500MHz PowerPC vs 500MHz PC, for example), but the fact is Apple just doesn't have speeds fast enough to make up for the difference between 3GHz and 1.5GHz right now.
The G4 is faster than modern PC processors clock for clock, but in a battle of 1.4GHz G4 vs Athlon 2800+.. I'm pretty sure the Athlon would mop the floor from what I've experienced.

The Mac sports some good technology and is built on a very solid platform. These are the major pros of the Mac. People usually recommend Apple computers for "Video editing" and "Graphics" and I feel that at one time, this was justified.. But now I feel that this is just old propaganda that has stuck around for a few years and remains the last bit of any substance Pro-Mac users have to cling to. The Mac just isn't what it used to be when compared to the evolution of the PC.

Another intersting tid bit is if the Mac is so great and Apple really has something going for them, then why are they switching over to Intel/AMD processors? This is some pretty shocking news that has recently cropped up... It sounds like Apple may end up to be a PC clone if they don't play it safe.

One of the reasons the Mac is supposed to be "faster" in graphics programs is because it has a "VPU" (Vector processing unit) and special media extensions based on super-computing.. While the G4 is an elegant CPU design, it does not have the brute force of PC processors which rely on their FPU for most calculations.

Apple computer are not all bad.. Don't get me wrong. Like Papa said, they have their place. It is just not in my house. I have to say the worst thing about the Apples is the unecessarily large price tag. Also, their "prettiness" can be debated.. I find most of their designs a little too "fruity" for me... Like the iMacs that look like easter eggs.

 

[dani_17]

I also don't like that much the design of the mac's. I'd rather make a nice window to my case and put in some illumination

I had the oportunity, finally, of trying the dual 1.24 G4 yesterday and it seems very fast. But insided freehand or photoshop there are moments you have to wait....

 

[young&wild]

Its a really complex thing to explain...if you are really keen on knowing why and how? You show do some reading on the articles regarding the following items: RISC(Reduced Instruction Set Computers) and CISC(Complex Instructions Set Computers).

 

[Project2501]

I've been working with PCs for years and I also try to get my hands on macs as well. Dual proc macs and all, yeah they run fast but so do my windows pcs...overall the factory mac will run faster than your average pre manufactured pc stuffed with complete crap from the get go, but I guess the average user that buys a pc from a commercial they see on tv with good financing would never notice the slight performance differences. I'm a fan of the mac yes but I am more of a fan of PCs simply because you can build a PC from scratch way easier (AND WAY(understatement) CHEAPER) than you ever could a mac. the funny thing is that mac claims so much preformance for sometimes THREE times the price of a windows pC with arguably the same performance. complete propaganda, catering to the artsey starbucks coffee drinking people that think they are fringe but really are sheep led along with the rest. simply and plainly, as far as price and performance, macs still suck. Amen

 

[LNCPapa]

I now have had the pleasure of using Dual 1.42 GHz Macs (we got some in at work) and I would STILL put a single proc 2.66 GHz P4 ahead. I don't have a 3.06 so I can't compare it to that [donations welcome!]

LNCPapa

 

[naplesX]

woops - bad post

 

[DonBel]

Good info

This is exactly the discussion I was looking for. I am a PC user but have done work on Mac's so I have a little knowledge of both. I recently had a long and heated discussion with a good friend of mine who uses Mac's and insists his Mac is just better. I tried to explain to him that a 2.0 GHz Mac can't be as fast, all other things equal, as a 3.2 P4 and that hertz was a pretty good benchmark of speed regardless of the chip architecture.

He argued that the Mac chips were so far superior that hertz meant nothing.

I may be wrong and would love to get some technical info to pass on to him about the differences in the CPU's of the two systems.

Also, I think graphic artists have used Mac's so long that they ARE easier for them to use compared to PC's so it becomes sort of a self-fullfilling statement that they are better for graphics. I've used Photoshop on both and it is the same thing in a different package with the two systems. I don't find the GUI of Mac any easier to use than Windows--just different.

 

[Crimsonite]

Adobe PhotoShop is much easier to use on Mac, because it allows user to hotkey every single command in it. And it opens up faster on Mac.

But if you just compare PC and Mac based on raw CPU power or system speed and/or gaming, digital video editing and data processing, PC owns Mac in all of the above fields.

 

[DelJo63]

This thread is 'a religious debate': eg, frequently emotional and views express ones belief system. These seldom change anyone's views.

Personally, the whole idea of "Is X faster than Y" is of little practicle value.
Similar questions are "What's the best xyz?" These questions can only be address in the context of specific criteria.

All of these have answers which are relative to the reader - - it all depends on what YOU what to do with it.

For the wife, we got a Machintosh w a y back in '89. Great desktop publishing software. It was easy to learn and maintain. We've gone thru three upgrades on it and now run an eMac(G4). We're happy.

I run a mini-tower, P4 with dual boot: Windows and Linux. It's and R/D system with various servers (Apache, MySql, SAMBA) and a flock of development stuff, eg: PHP, Java, Perl. Wouldn't be without it.

I also have a Toshiba laptop that is very practicle.

awe heck, I even confess to working on IBM-Big-Blue, and you're not going to
beat those tera-flops!

Last comment: Even if a new computer technology was given away free to anyone asking, all the users would need to learn a whole new system. The human factor costs will out weigh the hardware and software costs, which is
why old legacy systems still exisit. Only new applications can justify these expenses.

Please, be happy and enjoy whatever you have :giddy: