<strong>That's about spot on. I've always heard that the G4 does more with it's clock cycles than the pentium. I just want to know how they stack up in the real world with regard to processing power. I'm a bit tired of content creation and photoshop benchmarks and I really don't know why anyone needs 130 fps to play a game.
Thanks for all your input.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, my friend, I can safely say that they stack up very well indeed. I use at home a G4 single 867Mhz PowerMac and a P4 2.0Ghz. the mac is actually a lot smoother quicker and nicer to use even though for games the PC comes on top (even though not by the hugh gap one would expect to see). the point of real world performance is where I think Macs win hands down - when using many apps at the same time and doing things simultaneously such as browsing, writing text, working in a design or Audio app all at the same time - as long as you have enough Ram on a Mac running OS X performance will not degrade and the almost perfect multi tasking will make the workflow so much better and quicker then on my PC, with windows 2K on the other hand, if you try launching a new app or working on an image file while IE is stuck with some dodgy JavaScript web site or while Outlook is doing one of its hysteria attacks (which it does every other hour) the whole system will lock until these MS apps recover... the system becomes unusable and the whole thing just grinds to a halt, also windows performance degrades with time - i.e if I dont reboot my PC every couple of days - playing UT will become a nightmare and everything will hang forever...
I think that the hugh design advantages of OS X go a long way towards compensating for the slight disadvantage in pure CPU performance.
<strong>playing UT will become a nightmare and everything will hang forever...</strong><hr></blockquote>
So they can both keep up playing three year old games? Gee, I'd hope so.
I understand what you're saying, but perhaps none of you have used quality PC hardware? Or XP? They're far from great, but when combined with the speed they make for a very attractive package.
So they can both keep up playing three year old games? Gee, I'd hope so.
I understand what you're saying, but perhaps none of you have used quality PC hardware? Or XP? They're far from great, but when combined with the speed they make for a very attractive package.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Dude, lets not get into the boring old PC vs Mac argument...
Just to clear things up - I do use quality PC HW - my PC is a very nice reliable Dell with P4 2Ghz a good quality MoBo (intel 845) and a Radeon 7500. is a very good workhorse and where I work (a major software development company - developing mainly for windowz) we use hundreds of exactly these boxes -as servers, dev machines and as Test machines... I do know windows very well - I have tried XP and I work all the time with - Linux, W2K, Windows .Net ...etc...etc....blah..blah...
Bottom line is - a modern decent PC running XP or W2K is a fine package but a decent G4 with OS X is even better! and I say that as a multi platform user/engineer.
You guys really shouldn't be hyping up the 970 so much. I'd be suprised if it meets even half of the expectation level that's meted out here. I hope like hell that I'm wrong, but I can't percieve the 970 being any more than a modest competitor to whatever Intel/AMD's offerings are by the time of it's release date.
I agree, all the hype about the 970 may be just that, hype. Even if Apple uses it in their systems will it really end up in the iMac or would it go in the ultra high-end PowerMac? It doesn't sound like any of the 64 bit processors will be ready for the consumer for at least a couple of years after they're released. If that's the case then there will have to be a stop-gap measure to meet demand.
PCs will always be better at games. Even a fast Mac with a good graphics card won't be as good as a PC of average speed and graphics, just because games are optimized for PCs.
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.
<strong>PCs will always be better at games. Even a fast Mac with a good graphics card won't be as good as a PC of average speed and graphics, just because games are optimized for PCs.
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I totally agree! if the game developers put as much attention into optimizing Mac versions of their games as they do with the PC versions - games would probably be twice as good on the Mac - just imagine Games that properly use multi-processing and ALTIVec...LOL would rip through any 600000000 Ghz P4 PC.... as it stands they dont really have a reason to bother (since the market is so small)... I too just got an Xbox and its much more fun then any PC out there I could buy for 200$ so I use my mac for real stuff and the Xbox for fooling around.... having said that - a decent fast G4 WILL run most games very nicely... totally adequate for a non addicted occasional gamer... dont you think?
The thing that always strikes me as odd these days, when I read discussions on Apple's horrible slowness these days, is apologies. 'Oh, but OSX this' 'Oh, iLife that'. We are turning into snobs, who care about nothing else but getting the best looking toy. Some of you make it sound like speed is not an issue. It is, in so many ways. Like iTunes encoding. Again, I realise the iBooks may be the weakest brother in Apple's product line, but encoding at 4x, 5 if you're lucky on a one year old computer... The iMovie experience someone mentioned. Sluggishness everywhere. And ultimately, as Apple seems to be intent on positioning itself more into the pro digital video world, they really are laughable, because the P4 does run circles around dual, triple, quantububble G4s combined.
The thing that is probably most striking is that speed used to be the number one distinguishing feature of the Mac, or, if you don't agree, it was very high up there at least.
Ads apologizing for having toasted the Pentium II with a G3 in public, anyone? Why is it so hard for many of us to admit that Apple is sucking big time right now, with the notable exception of their 'pro' laptop line (which is ACCEPTABLE - but don't speak about these PlayDoh Barbie iBooks they make, with processors that should be powering 8 button calculators in Africa).
Repeat after me: "Comparing to entirely different processor architectures is absolutely impossible unless you write an operating system and optimize it as much for both of the platforms, and you write applications and optimize them as much for both of the platforms. Then - and only then - you can seriously compare the two platforms."
In the Mac OS X / ppc32 vs. Windows XP / x86-32 case, this cannot work. The operating systems are based on different kernels (Mach vs. NT), have different user lands (FreeBSD vs. NT) and different GUIs (Aqua vs. Luna). They have different applications and few (such as Photoshop) run on both, and even then, they aren't optimized in the same ways (Photoshop is optimized for the Pentium 4 ISSE extensions and for the PowerPC 74xx AltiVec extensions, which you cannot compare directly).
The real question a consumer needs to ask is "what processing power do I need?". Look at the applications you are going to use. In 90% of the cases, you'll end up with surfing, e-mailing, a bit of word processing, and that's it. A Mac or a PC from 2000 will suffice. Heck, even older machines.
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Culdn't agree more ! Who cares about super fast gaming on a Mac/PC if what you *really* should do is buying a (cheaper) PS2, XBox, ...
So are we done with the 'PC's are better in gaming then Mac's' routine now ? <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
The real question a consumer needs to ask is "what processing power do I need?". Look at the applications you are going to use. In 90% of the cases, you'll end up with surfing, e-mailing, a bit of word processing, and that's it. A Mac or a PC from 2000 will suffice. Heck, even older machines.</strong><hr></blockquote>
if this is true then why do 95% of people buy a PC? how many people really ask questions like that? if a Mac OR a PC will suffice then why the automatic 95% choice of a PC?
[quote]Again, I realise the iBooks may be the weakest brother in Apple's product line, but encoding at 4x, 5 if you're lucky on a one year old computer<hr></blockquote>
Huh? I can get up to 10x on my 400MHz G3.
The 970 won't be slow. Whether it'll be incredibly fast remaind to be seen.
if this is true then why do 95% of people buy a PC? how many people really ask questions like that? if a Mac OR a PC will suffice then why the automatic 95% choice of a PC?</strong><hr></blockquote>
ahh finally a fellow programmer posted in a thread
& called the macheads for the snots they are
a mac/ppc is slow period...live with it
but it also has a lower power consumption & runs
cooler
so try to use both x86 with either win2k or osx
on the ppc & pick the one that works for you.
you dont necessarily need a 2ghz box.
im running a p3 650 & it runs fine (c++/delphi/oracle9i & a few games)
unless you are doing some major rendering work
or running a large db
if its all db related then a x86 box with linux or freebsd will hold up wonderfully & will be much cheaper than a ppc box
now to the first line in my post..
by being snooty the mac community only turns people away.they are forgetting that osx is largely due to freebsd on which it is based, otherwise mac wouldnt be around much longer.
the mods might do well to crawl out from under their rocks & add a programming or gaming forum
as suggested earlier so we get some technical expertise in here instead of listening to childish rants....
i like ai & read it on & off but recently it seems to have devolved into mindless pc bashing
its nice to see some sane people post once in a while, but they may not be inclined to post or help out.
Everybody posting here saying that raw processing power doesn't matter ("good enough" and whatever) would do a 180 degree about-face if Macs become faster than PC's again (in benchmarkable, verifiable ways like as in the Golden Age). It is an important factor.
Back in the Golden Age (when x86 was getting toasted by PPC [for real]), none of us would ever have said that the raw processing power of a PC didn't matter. "Uh, yeah, Macs are faster, but it really doesn't matter." Sure. <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
We're on the losing side of the curve right now, but so what? There are many more reasons to prefer Mac's over PC's. Don't be afraid to admit that Mac's, in general, are slower than PC's and that it sucks that they're slower. You can bet Apple thinks it sucks, too.
I've never really been exposed to any instances myself where I can definitively say, "wow, that PC runs circles around my Mac". A couple of my friends down the hall have 2.5GHz P4s and they don't seem at all faster than my dual 1GHz G4, aside from being a tad snappier overall. We play Warcraft III sometimes and there's no difference in loading time or gameplay performance that I can discern.
pc side im also running a 1.2ghz amd & its more than fast enough for everything i do
the powerbook 800 feels roughly equiv to my
dell p3 650mhz laptop when im running win2k under
vpc for all my seondary coding
games wise its no contest win2k blows away osx by far...mainly due to the fact that directx is much more mature at this point than the equivalent libs for osx. osx will catch up over time
(i may be wrong on this one the pbook is not exactly a gaming machine)
so no i dont think a 2+ ghz cpu is all that its cracked out to be or even necessary for regular users apart from raising your electricity bill
<strong>I've never really been exposed to any instances myself where I can definitively say, "wow, that PC runs circles around my Mac". A couple of my friends down the hall have 2.5GHz P4s and they don't seem at all faster than my dual 1GHz G4, aside from being a tad snappier overall. We play Warcraft III sometimes and there's no difference in loading time or gameplay performance that I can discern.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly my point...
I have used many supposedly MEGA fast PCs and I have never really noticed a real difference in speed compared to 867mhz and above Macs....
Just as a note - I have just had a long play with a friend's 12" PBook and I ran quake 3 on it at 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit color and it ran damn smoothly without any lag or problems - now show me any PC at this size and with a super drive that can do that.... FinalCut also was beautiful on that 'slow' piece of Mac hardware.....
Yeh we need faster CPUs soon but Macs are still very appealing .... and as I said the OS goes a long way towards compensating for the lack of CPU horsePower!
Try burning a DVD while playing Quake on a PC laptop for 1999$ lets see how far you get....
Comments
<strong>That's about spot on. I've always heard that the G4 does more with it's clock cycles than the pentium. I just want to know how they stack up in the real world with regard to processing power. I'm a bit tired of content creation and photoshop benchmarks and I really don't know why anyone needs 130 fps to play a game.
Thanks for all your input.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, my friend, I can safely say that they stack up very well indeed. I use at home a G4 single 867Mhz PowerMac and a P4 2.0Ghz. the mac is actually a lot smoother quicker and nicer to use even though for games the PC comes on top (even though not by the hugh gap one would expect to see). the point of real world performance is where I think Macs win hands down - when using many apps at the same time and doing things simultaneously such as browsing, writing text, working in a design or Audio app all at the same time - as long as you have enough Ram on a Mac running OS X performance will not degrade and the almost perfect multi tasking will make the workflow so much better and quicker then on my PC, with windows 2K on the other hand, if you try launching a new app or working on an image file while IE is stuck with some dodgy JavaScript web site or while Outlook is doing one of its hysteria attacks (which it does every other hour) the whole system will lock until these MS apps recover... the system becomes unusable and the whole thing just grinds to a halt, also windows performance degrades with time - i.e if I dont reboot my PC every couple of days - playing UT will become a nightmare and everything will hang forever...
I think that the hugh design advantages of OS X go a long way towards compensating for the slight disadvantage in pure CPU performance.
<strong>playing UT will become a nightmare and everything will hang forever...</strong><hr></blockquote>
So they can both keep up playing three year old games? Gee, I'd hope so.
I understand what you're saying, but perhaps none of you have used quality PC hardware? Or XP? They're far from great, but when combined with the speed they make for a very attractive package.
<strong>
So they can both keep up playing three year old games? Gee, I'd hope so.
I understand what you're saying, but perhaps none of you have used quality PC hardware? Or XP? They're far from great, but when combined with the speed they make for a very attractive package.
Dude, lets not get into the boring old PC vs Mac argument...
Just to clear things up - I do use quality PC HW - my PC is a very nice reliable Dell with P4 2Ghz a good quality MoBo (intel 845) and a Radeon 7500. is a very good workhorse and where I work (a major software development company - developing mainly for windowz) we use hundreds of exactly these boxes -as servers, dev machines and as Test machines... I do know windows very well - I have tried XP and I work all the time with - Linux, W2K, Windows .Net ...etc...etc....blah..blah...
Bottom line is - a modern decent PC running XP or W2K is a fine package but a decent G4 with OS X is even better! and I say that as a multi platform user/engineer.
And thats all before the 970.....
Ack, double post. Delete that earlier one.
[ 02-08-2003: Message edited by: Utmost ]</p>
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.
<strong>PCs will always be better at games. Even a fast Mac with a good graphics card won't be as good as a PC of average speed and graphics, just because games are optimized for PCs.
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I totally agree! if the game developers put as much attention into optimizing Mac versions of their games as they do with the PC versions - games would probably be twice as good on the Mac - just imagine Games that properly use multi-processing and ALTIVec...LOL would rip through any 600000000 Ghz P4 PC.... as it stands they dont really have a reason to bother (since the market is so small)... I too just got an Xbox and its much more fun then any PC out there I could buy for 200$
The thing that is probably most striking is that speed used to be the number one distinguishing feature of the Mac, or, if you don't agree, it was very high up there at least.
Ads apologizing for having toasted the Pentium II with a G3 in public, anyone? Why is it so hard for many of us to admit that Apple is sucking big time right now, with the notable exception of their 'pro' laptop line (which is ACCEPTABLE - but don't speak about these PlayDoh Barbie iBooks they make, with processors that should be powering 8 button calculators in Africa).
Repeat after me: "Comparing to entirely different processor architectures is absolutely impossible unless you write an operating system and optimize it as much for both of the platforms, and you write applications and optimize them as much for both of the platforms. Then - and only then - you can seriously compare the two platforms."
In the Mac OS X / ppc32 vs. Windows XP / x86-32 case, this cannot work. The operating systems are based on different kernels (Mach vs. NT), have different user lands (FreeBSD vs. NT) and different GUIs (Aqua vs. Luna). They have different applications and few (such as Photoshop) run on both, and even then, they aren't optimized in the same ways (Photoshop is optimized for the Pentium 4 ISSE extensions and for the PowerPC 74xx AltiVec extensions, which you cannot compare directly).
The real question a consumer needs to ask is "what processing power do I need?". Look at the applications you are going to use. In 90% of the cases, you'll end up with surfing, e-mailing, a bit of word processing, and that's it. A Mac or a PC from 2000 will suffice. Heck, even older machines.
<strong>
But I don't really care. I don't play games much. My brother (also a Mac user) just bought an XBox because it's way better than any gaming PC he could buy for $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Culdn't agree more ! Who cares about super fast gaming on a Mac/PC if what you *really* should do is buying a (cheaper) PS2, XBox, ...
So are we done with the 'PC's are better in gaming then Mac's' routine now ? <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
<strong>Sigh.
The real question a consumer needs to ask is "what processing power do I need?". Look at the applications you are going to use. In 90% of the cases, you'll end up with surfing, e-mailing, a bit of word processing, and that's it. A Mac or a PC from 2000 will suffice. Heck, even older machines.</strong><hr></blockquote>
if this is true then why do 95% of people buy a PC? how many people really ask questions like that? if a Mac OR a PC will suffice then why the automatic 95% choice of a PC?
Huh? I can get up to 10x on my 400MHz G3.
The 970 won't be slow. Whether it'll be incredibly fast remaind to be seen.
[ 02-09-2003: Message edited by: Stoo ]</p>
<strong>
if this is true then why do 95% of people buy a PC? how many people really ask questions like that? if a Mac OR a PC will suffice then why the automatic 95% choice of a PC?</strong><hr></blockquote>
answer: $$$$
ahh finally a fellow programmer posted in a thread
& called the macheads for the snots they are
a mac/ppc is slow period...live with it
but it also has a lower power consumption & runs
cooler
so try to use both x86 with either win2k or osx
on the ppc & pick the one that works for you.
you dont necessarily need a 2ghz box.
im running a p3 650 & it runs fine (c++/delphi/oracle9i & a few games)
unless you are doing some major rendering work
or running a large db
if its all db related then a x86 box with linux or freebsd will hold up wonderfully & will be much cheaper than a ppc box
now to the first line in my post..
by being snooty the mac community only turns people away.they are forgetting that osx is largely due to freebsd on which it is based, otherwise mac wouldnt be around much longer.
the mods might do well to crawl out from under their rocks & add a programming or gaming forum
as suggested earlier so we get some technical expertise in here instead of listening to childish rants....
i like ai & read it on & off but recently it seems to have devolved into mindless pc bashing
its nice to see some sane people post once in a while, but they may not be inclined to post or help out.
//end rant
thanx for reading this
Lemon Bon Bon
Back in the Golden Age (when x86 was getting toasted by PPC [for real]), none of us would ever have said that the raw processing power of a PC didn't matter. "Uh, yeah, Macs are faster, but it really doesn't matter." Sure. <img src="graemlins/cancer.gif" border="0" alt="[cancer]" />
We're on the losing side of the curve right now, but so what? There are many more reasons to prefer Mac's over PC's. Don't be afraid to admit that Mac's, in general, are slower than PC's and that it sucks that they're slower. You can bet Apple thinks it sucks, too.
faster than osx (i use kde)
so more likely the aqua layer could use some
optimization rather than adding crap on top
(metal look & feel & uneccesary eye candy)
pc side im also running a 1.2ghz amd & its more than fast enough for everything i do
the powerbook 800 feels roughly equiv to my
dell p3 650mhz laptop when im running win2k under
vpc for all my seondary coding
games wise its no contest win2k blows away osx by far...mainly due to the fact that directx is much more mature at this point than the equivalent libs for osx. osx will catch up over time
(i may be wrong on this one the pbook is not exactly a gaming machine)
so no i dont think a 2+ ghz cpu is all that its cracked out to be or even necessary for regular users apart from raising your electricity bill
<strong>I've never really been exposed to any instances myself where I can definitively say, "wow, that PC runs circles around my Mac". A couple of my friends down the hall have 2.5GHz P4s and they don't seem at all faster than my dual 1GHz G4, aside from being a tad snappier overall. We play Warcraft III sometimes and there's no difference in loading time or gameplay performance that I can discern.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly my point...
I have used many supposedly MEGA fast PCs and I have never really noticed a real difference in speed compared to 867mhz and above Macs....
Just as a note - I have just had a long play with a friend's 12" PBook and I ran quake 3 on it at 1280 x 1024 with 32 bit color and it ran damn smoothly without any lag or problems - now show me any PC at this size and with a super drive that can do that.... FinalCut also was beautiful on that 'slow' piece of Mac hardware.....
Yeh we need faster CPUs soon but Macs are still very appealing .... and as I said the OS goes a long way towards compensating for the lack of CPU horsePower!
Try burning a DVD while playing Quake on a PC laptop for 1999$ lets see how far you get....