Raw processing power is not irrelevant, but it is only one factor to consider when comparing machines and platforms. In addition to ease of use, one should look at the efficiency of one's workflow.
In my view, unless you are doing high intensity rendering of large video or 3D files, the Mac is still the way to go. For all of the supposed improvements in Windows XP, I've found it to be a royal pain in the neck. Has anyone ever tried to move large files from a Novell server to a Sony VAIO desktop or its attendant cd-rw? I have, and it rarely works quickly. Often it doesn't work at all. I can't begin to describe to you the frustration I've felt during countless "Bill Gates moments," as I've found myself waiting and waiting only to have the system stop responding. All anyone can do at that point is mumble, "He has $55 billion and I still can't transfer a file...."
I spend several hours a day working among teachers in a Media Lab with 12 VAIOs and one Macintosh G4 Quicksilver. The folks who outfitted the lab decided to phase out Macs and use the Sonys as "ultimate multimedia machines." The less expensive Sonys would allow teachers to do more multimedia/video projects more efficiently--or so it was argued. In practice, the Sonys have been a bust, at least for video work. Just the other day we had yet another teacher complain that she could not transfer her video to the VAIOs via iLink/Firewire. By comparison, the Mac is constantly in use, and the tech coordinator who instructs faculty on multimedia projects has come to rely on the Mac exclusively. As our program expands, we have convinced the powers that be that more Macs are needed. Eight are on order from the Apple store, and we will be outfitting them with After Effects 5.5, Final Cut Pro Express, and a host of other worthy applications. My only wish is that the 970 were already available--render times are still too lengthy on the Mac--but I would much rather work on a machine that works, and works gracefully, than one that purports to do what it cannot.
<strong>different encoders... different ballgame...
get the same (heavily optimized of course) encoder for both machines and then go to town...
iTunes encoder is adequate, but not nearly the best out there in terms of speed OR audio quality...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I use the LAME encoder (along with other things) across different platforms to get an idea of compier and CPU performance. For the systems I have numbers for, iBook-700: 4.0215x, G4-800DP: 4.1911x given lame -b 160 -m s
An old Athlon-850 (the old style, not the thunderbird) manages just over 6.5x with the same options. A Pentium Pro-150 0.997x and a Pentium MMX-166 0.7901x. There was not much performance improvment using the LAME with MMX and nasm support vs the native C/gcc. I compiled LAME under windows with Intel Reference C Compiler with vectorization turned on and got considerable speedups but unfortunately I don't have the results in front of me to post.
The surprising thing to me was that G4 barely outperforms G3 - interesting given the G4 100MHz advantage in this case.
A G3 will perform clock for clock with a G4 except on Altivec specific tasks. In some cases, they will be faster, such as in the case of the iBook-800 (with 512k L2 cache) beating the Powerbook 12-867 (with 256k L2 cache). Plus, the G3 draws less voltage (which translates directly into longer battery life).
As for comparison to PC performance, the Mac lags on the high end, but is very good on the low and middle end. Laptop performance is also very good compared to the PC world.
(By "real-life" I simply exclude the selected series of Photoshop "benchmarks" from the Apple site)
But seriously, from all the repeated 'Mac vs PC discussions' that I have had over the years (and there have been hundreds), I've learnt that the benchmarks mean nothing. They're irrelevant. Simply put: people who buy a Mac, buy it for the overall experience and usability. Perhaps 'amicability' would be a good word. And people who buy a PC, buy it for completely different reasons.
Anyway, for me personally, that's the closest that this debate will ever be to 'resolved'
I think some people are confusing 2 issues. We can agree that the MacOS offers a superior experience to windows. But even in dp setups, the Motorola chips lag behind Intel and AMD. Apple's only shortcoming is that they stuck with Moto for so long.
<strong>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..... </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.... </strong><hr></blockquote>
My understanding is the computations done by game engines don't really benefit from Altivec, Carmack has made several comments regarding this.
[quote]<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 $200, and it allows for multiplayer as well. PCs you have to network.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree, which is why I bought an XBox, but what is that last line? You have to network XBoxes too... either locally or via the internet, just like a PC. Because an XBox is a PC...
Comments
<strong>Try burning a DVD while playing Quake on a PC laptop for 1999$ lets see how far you get....</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's amazing, I must say!!!
In my view, unless you are doing high intensity rendering of large video or 3D files, the Mac is still the way to go. For all of the supposed improvements in Windows XP, I've found it to be a royal pain in the neck. Has anyone ever tried to move large files from a Novell server to a Sony VAIO desktop or its attendant cd-rw? I have, and it rarely works quickly. Often it doesn't work at all. I can't begin to describe to you the frustration I've felt during countless "Bill Gates moments," as I've found myself waiting and waiting only to have the system stop responding. All anyone can do at that point is mumble, "He has $55 billion and I still can't transfer a file...."
I spend several hours a day working among teachers in a Media Lab with 12 VAIOs and one Macintosh G4 Quicksilver. The folks who outfitted the lab decided to phase out Macs and use the Sonys as "ultimate multimedia machines." The less expensive Sonys would allow teachers to do more multimedia/video projects more efficiently--or so it was argued. In practice, the Sonys have been a bust, at least for video work. Just the other day we had yet another teacher complain that she could not transfer her video to the VAIOs via iLink/Firewire. By comparison, the Mac is constantly in use, and the tech coordinator who instructs faculty on multimedia projects has come to rely on the Mac exclusively. As our program expands, we have convinced the powers that be that more Macs are needed. Eight are on order from the Apple store, and we will be outfitting them with After Effects 5.5, Final Cut Pro Express, and a host of other worthy applications. My only wish is that the 970 were already available--render times are still too lengthy on the Mac--but I would much rather work on a machine that works, and works gracefully, than one that purports to do what it cannot.
---------------------------------------------
Growing Polemical in Nashvegas
<strong>different encoders... different ballgame...
get the same (heavily optimized of course) encoder for both machines and then go to town...
iTunes encoder is adequate, but not nearly the best out there in terms of speed OR audio quality...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I use the LAME encoder (along with other things) across different platforms to get an idea of compier and CPU performance. For the systems I have numbers for, iBook-700: 4.0215x, G4-800DP: 4.1911x given lame -b 160 -m s
An old Athlon-850 (the old style, not the thunderbird) manages just over 6.5x with the same options. A Pentium Pro-150 0.997x and a Pentium MMX-166 0.7901x. There was not much performance improvment using the LAME with MMX and nasm support vs the native C/gcc. I compiled LAME under windows with Intel Reference C Compiler with vectorization turned on and got considerable speedups but unfortunately I don't have the results in front of me to post.
The surprising thing to me was that G4 barely outperforms G3 - interesting given the G4 100MHz advantage in this case.
A G3 will perform clock for clock with a G4 except on Altivec specific tasks. In some cases, they will be faster, such as in the case of the iBook-800 (with 512k L2 cache) beating the Powerbook 12-867 (with 256k L2 cache). Plus, the G3 draws less voltage (which translates directly into longer battery life).
As for comparison to PC performance, the Mac lags on the high end, but is very good on the low and middle end. Laptop performance is also very good compared to the PC world.
<a href="http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2680"; target="_blank">http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2680</a>;
<a href="http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3982"; target="_blank">http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3982</a>;
<a href="http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3601"; target="_blank">http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/3601</a>;
<a href="http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/478"; target="_blank">http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/478</a>;
(By "real-life" I simply exclude the selected series of Photoshop "benchmarks" from the Apple site)
But seriously, from all the repeated 'Mac vs PC discussions' that I have had over the years (and there have been hundreds), I've learnt that the benchmarks mean nothing. They're irrelevant. Simply put: people who buy a Mac, buy it for the overall experience and usability. Perhaps 'amicability' would be a good word. And people who buy a PC, buy it for completely different reasons.
Anyway, for me personally, that's the closest that this debate will ever be to 'resolved'
<strong>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.....
Now we have something we can agree on.
<strong>
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.... </strong><hr></blockquote>
My understanding is the computations done by game engines don't really benefit from Altivec, Carmack has made several comments regarding this.
[quote]<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>
I agree, which is why I bought an XBox, but what is that last line? You have to network XBoxes too... either locally or via the internet, just like a PC. Because an XBox is a PC...
[ 02-13-2003: Message edited by: serrano ]</p>