Mini Apple VS PC Orange

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apoderapoder
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey there,



I know it's impossible to compare Apple processors to those of PCs but just for the sake of interest I was just wondering what a 1.42 ghz Mac Mini would equate to in a PC processor. I'm looking into getting one (Mac mini) and I would like to get an idea of it's preformance in PC terms since thats the only platform I've known all my life. Hopefully I'll be convinced to switch but the specs on the mini right now make it a tough decision.



Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    cdoverlawcdoverlaw Posts: 73member
    Ok

    Well i got a 1.2ghz ibook and it performs better than my Atholon XP 2500 which is overclocked to run at 2.08ghz.

    But remember its the whole platform thats under question not just the hardware, for example a well written operating system for the PC may outperform my ibook. Windows isnt known for its ability at being lightning fast etc.

    Also http://pulsar.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/Gr..._myth_320f.mov is a great video to watch, it will explain alot about the performance etc and about the Mhz myth.

    Also i heard that the PowerPC line of processors uses a greater number of registers in the processor than in intel and AMD's X86 archtecture which allows better performance (i am not 100% if this is true)



    Jonathan

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  • Reply 2 of 3
    wingnutwingnut Posts: 197member
    Well, there's no way that a G4 is faster than a faster K7, probably not even a similarly clocked K7. Comparing performance is difficult at best, since few programs carry over from Windows to Mac. As far as general 2D stuff, Mac seems to open programs a little bit slower, but not so much that I find it annoying. Games are still best on an x86 machine. FYI, Warcraft on my 1.42ghz mini plays perfectly fine on my 17" widescreen (1280x768 ), and Quake 2 plays well enough at the same res. I can't speak for photoshop, as I don't own that proggie.



    If you're not a big gamer, the mini will do you well, especially with a faster HD installed. The mini is a great intro system into the world of Macs. I tried one this January and loved it enough to buy a G4 iBook to match. Eventually, my plan is to sell my mini and buy a Powermac.
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  • Reply 3 of 3
    socratessocrates Posts: 261member
    Quote:

    Games are still best on an x86 machine.



    That probably has nothing to do with processor speed. I think it's largely attributable to two factors:



    1) Most games on Windows use DirectX which is better optimised (at least on Windows) than OpenGL.



    2) Because the games are primarily designed to be released for the PC market, they are better optimised for Windows, including, in some cases, deep architectural decisions which cannot easily be altered by the team that ports the game, especially given the short dealines they have compared to the original development team.



    If you look at the specs for ported games, the Mac specs are invariably higher than the Windows ones, even for things like graphics cards, which are exactly the same hardware on both platforms.



    Similarly it isn't really fair to compare programs like Photoshop because each version is optimised for certain platform specific features such as Altivec, which are probably more influencial on performance than processor speed.



    The only fair test is to use benchmark programs that have been tuned for each processor by experts, but while these will give you a fair comparison of processor speed for various tasks, they still won't tell you how well your favourite programs will perform.



    In the end the best real-world applicable test is probably to judge for yourself how 'snappy' your programs feel on the two platforms.
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