“[We] can easily enjoy the best of both the Mac and Windows XP worlds on a single system–as long as that system is an Intel Mac. Apple’s own Boot Camp Public Beta allows you to install Windows XP SP2 onto an Intel Mac, giving you a dual-boot system. Parallels takes a slightly different approach with its Parallels Desktop for Mac, a virtual machine application. CNET Labs ran a few of its home-brewed benchmarks on a MacBook Pro with the Mac OS, Boot Camp, and Parallels Desktop to see how application performance stacks up between the three.”
Had one the other week.
Virtually, if you want 3D acceleration, go Bootcamp, if you can live without it and just use it for normal quick apps, then use Parallels.
Both are pretty good, but Bootcamp is a heck of a lot faster than Parallels, and parallels is pretty fast.
I wouldn’t use less than 2GB of RAM though, makes it nicer.
The best is to run Linux in a VM and connect to it with the native X of Mac OS X. Like that you get sth out of your dual core CPU as well. No 3D still but it’s fine by me. I can not wait for my shiny new MacBook Pro to come back from repair to try it out…
Since when is the Rosetta PPC -> Intel emulator a “native” environment ???? Rosetta is a PPC to Intel emulator.
(Rosetta is a translation process that runs a PowerPC binary on an Macintosh using an Intel microprocessor—it allows applications to run as nonnative binaries.)
Rosetta offers a NON-NATIVE approach, indeed.
To be fair, that was CLEARLY acknowledged in the article, right below the chart. Still, for an emulation environment Rosetta’s performance is pretty good.
The article mentions not being able to benchmark Quake 4 in Parallels because it lacks DirectX. Does this mean they also used DirectX for the native Windows benchmark and compared the results to OpenGL on OSX?
If so, I wonder about the validity of their other benchmarks, and I see I’m not the only one (Umbra’s comments about Rosetta).
There is no direct x verion of quake 4 running on pc or mac, the writers of the article dont know what they are talking about. Of course there is a direct x version of it running on the xbox, but that is a console.
Edited 2006-06-25 23:13
There is no direct x verion of quake 4 running on pc or mac, the writers of the article dont know what they are talking about. Of course there is a direct x version of it running on the xbox, but that is a console.
Quake 4 (and other id engine games) don’t use Direct3D for graphics, but they do use DirectX for sound and input.
Sorry, maybe it’s just me but those numbers don’t tell me anything, and that’s ignoring the fact that they’re benchmarking mac os x’s photoshop running under the rosseta emulator (duh)
Take photoshop. In a perfect and unrealistic world, those numbers would be the same under both operative system, since it’s the same program. Of course, this isn’t the case.
So, where does that difference comes from? Maybe the application needs to read a lot of data from disk, and one of the operative systems sucks on heavy disk I/O?. Or maybe it’s using some native win32 functions and on mac os x it uses cross-platform non-performant glue? (or the reverse) Or maybe the windows version is compiled with Microsoft compiler and the Mac OS X version with the gcc/ibm compiler, and we’re benchmarking compilers, not apps? And then there’s this stupid trend of using 3D games to benchmarks OSes in the same platform, when games are all about 3D and it’s the driver quality who is going to influde more than any other variable, not the OS.
Sorry, but if I see a “photoshop under XP vs photoshop under mac” benchmark where XP/mac loses, I’ll think that Photoshop sucks under XP/mac, not that XP/mac sucks.
>Strictly speaking, our Photoshop CS2 test isn’t >completely fair. The Mac OS version of the app does not >run natively, but instead runs under Apple’s Rosetta >emulation layer. But the Mac version still outperforms >the Windows XP version on Parallels.
They didn’t ignore fact it was running in Rosetta. But it was still faster as Parallels emulation and Parallels even emulated x86!!
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Pixel image editor – http://www.kanzelsberger.com
I know I’ll probably get flamed for this, but oh well.
I’ll never buy another Mac notebook until Apple puts 2 button on their trackpad. I bought an iBook about 18 months ago and the 1 button mouse annoys the heck out of me. Holding down a key and clicking the mouse button is less intuitive than just having the second button – in my humble opinion.
I think the 1 button mouse on the Macbook will be even more annoying for people who want to use MS Windows on their Macbook. I run a Linux distribution on my iBook and simply can not stand using the 1 button trackpad. I have to use an external mouse – which isn’t always convenient.
I am not going to flame you but would like to point out that there are third party products to allow you to tap regions of the touch pad for the second and third button (SideTrack is my choice).
This does not help you in Linux but perhaps something similar has been done?
The latest MacBook not only supports holding two fingers on the touchpad and clicking the button to emulate a second mouse but with Parallels this very feature is also enabled in Linux and Windows (or any other guest OS for that matter).
I’d like to see a trackpoint on portable Macs since I’m not fond of touchpads, but as far as I’m concerned, the MacBook touchpad does everything I need it to do even if it only has got a single button.
On the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros, there is an option to turn touch-click into right-click. Personally, I love the Macbook trackpad. It’s enormous, making it usable with either hand in the standard typing position. Two-fingered scrolling is also awesome.
Your post almost verges on “off-topic”, but I have to agree that it’s rather silly that while Apple have conceded that a two-button mouse is a necessary feature (the Mighty Mouse), their laptops are still only one-button.
Anyway, is yours a 17-inch Macbook? Seems this model features a right-click feature, though its a little… odd…
http://macnewsblog.com/2006/05/can_your_macbook_pro_do_this.html
Apple did not design the iBook or any other product to run anything else but Mac OS X, if you have been using Apple products long enough you will know that and adapt…
Buy a mouse with two buttons on it…
or heck, I have an IBM Thinkpad, and it has 3 buttons..
you know, you just have to adapt…..
“I think the 1 button mouse on the Macbook will be even more annoying for people who want to use MS Windows on their Macbook.”
Well, until Apple produces one, your stuck with the current set-up….
or you could just buy a thinkpad or some other portable computer DESIGNED to run Windows…..
That was me flaming you buy the way, just helping you out
I still think this debate on one button mice and trackpads versus two or three button miice and trackpads is close to a waste of time…
Apple clearly sticks to their one button approach, even though it is a decision comparable to a fictive decision of PC makers to stop producing multi button hardware although there is arguably a need for a second (or third) mouse button (on both Windows and Mac OS X).
Microsoft clearly intends the use of multi button mice, which is why virtually all mice are designed for this purpose…
Apple designs Mac OS X to provide contextual menus that are accessible via right clicking although there is nothing but an emulated right button to click…. This is a lack of design coherence between Apple’s products and I do not get it…
What is the gain of restricting userss like that, if not the expected sales of Mighty mice which is rather a new product even….
Edited 2006-06-26 14:53
I for one love the one mouse button on my Powerbook and old iBook. I find it much more comfortable to rest your hand on as it is raised only a little bit and a solid piece of material. If they somehow did something like with the mighty mouse (which i have no issues with at all), I wouldn’t have an issue.
As it is, you rarely need to right click in OS X as it is. Yes, if you run XP on the new Intel Macs that might be a problem, but OS X really limits the times you’ll ever have to. And with system wide and intuitive keyboard shortcuts, there is even less of a reason to have to.
The correct number of buttons for a mouse is three, with two in X you’ll just be emulating three and shortchanged on the experience. If the middle button happens to scroll so much the better.
well, not exactly as i don’t have the numbers in front of me. I can tell you that i love my macbook pro, but apple drastically underclocked the video card because of the inharent heat issues. When i boot into windows and check my clock speeds it tells me that my video card is something like…. 304 and 297 mhz (give or take, as i said, it’s not in front of me) as far as the gpu and memory speeds respectively. I know this is way way way lower then what the default clock speeds are on the x1600 mobility and when overclocked in windows it performs drastically better….. my 3dMark scores went up over 1/3 when i overclocked and i didn’t push it at all, i didn’t increase voltage at all.
So what were your 3dmark scores? Curious. Thanks.
So what were your 3dmark scores? Curious. Thanks.
On my MacBook Pro with dual 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, and non-overclocked GPU… from memory, 3DMark06 scores were around the 1450 mark. It did significantly better on the CPU benchmarks than the GPU benchmarks (unsurprisingly).
With the Quake 4 benchmark, I’ll bet that the Mac version ran faster because they enabled SMP on it – I suspect (but don’t have the game to check) that SMP is enabled by default on Mac OS X but disabled on Windows.
What is the point of comparing native Windows XP software speeds under bootcamp and emulated OSX PowerPC software speeds under Rosetta? Interesting but not fair at all.
Among the problems already outlined by all of you here, there’s another major one …
OS X has two CPU cores at its disposal — Windows XP within Parallels has one.
Once Woodcrest aka Xeon 5160 /Core 2 Duo aka Conroe enter the channel this will not matter.
I don’t mind the fact that the article put the Rosetta emulated Photoshop in there. That gives me a good idea how well it runs at the moment under OS X (before the native one comes out), and also the bootcamp XP score gives me some idea how fast the OS X native one will run…
By the way, the one button trackpad is annoying. I don’t mind though as you can set it up for two button functionality as has been pointed out numerous times too… The two finger scroll rocks (if you can get it)…
keep in mind, i only ran 3dmark 03, but my stock scores were around 4200 and i was able to get it up to 6700 no problem with overclocking and no increase in voltage