This time, DigitalVideoEditing is comparing the fastest (and cheaper) P4 released today, at 3.06 GHz, versus the fastest currently available Mac at 2×1.25 GHz. Has everyone noticed that Apple stoped using extensively the slogan “Mhz don’t matter” for months now?
Mac vs. PC, Part III: Mac Slaughtered Again
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
According to our benchmarks here, if you have an After Effects composite that needs, say, two hours to render on the Mac, it’ll take you about an hour and 10 minutes on this PC. So, in addition to the extra $1000 you must pay for the Mac, it will cost you plenty of time as well, especially while using After Effects. Time is money. After looking at these startling benchmark results, we have to gaze over at our beautifully-designed Macs and ask, “Is it worth it?”
The unfortunate truth is that, everything else being equal, a video house that uses the PC will be more cost effective and faster at the work they need to do than the video house that uses Macs. This is the thing that should have Apple terrified as creative work has been their traditional strong market.
1) The Mac is severely FSB limited. It’s got 1.3 GB/sec of front side bus bandwidth, compared to the P4 which as 4.2 GB/sec, a factor of three difference. You can bet this makes a difference when working with video.
2) Nice benifet from hyperthreading. Some early benchmarks showed little advantage, but there is a nice boost here. In some cases, quite significant (30% or so).
3) See, PCs can be quiet too
My room-mate has a Dimension 2.2 GHz and it’s whisper quiet. The thing doesn’t even have an active heatsink on its P4, just a huge passive heatsink and a large, and thus quiet, fan nearby. My PII-300 (which was a heat monster back in its day) had the same setup.
What is the status of Apple in the processor department. As I read OSNews and Slashdot, I see Intel and AMD getting faster, Linux getting popular with the hollywood editing and animation (fx and the like) crowd, I wonder what Apple is doing to counter all of this? They can’t sit on 1.x Ghz procesors forever. Their OS, while beautiful, could use the extra horsies to push the apps on top.
Just curious…
I am a big Mac fan and see no reason, for now, to move to the wintel. However I enjoyed reading this article and hope that many within Apple read this ASAP. Apple has a great OS, good hardware design (out side the CPU issues) and the best looking products on the market.
Apple had better do something and fast to get this CPU gap closed. Moto is just in the way and Apple needs to move onto bigger and better. The last thing we need is for MS to have any more of the market than they currently have.
W
I wonder if any of these Mac people have used a real high-quality PC. Something built with a lot of love and attention, like something from Alienware or Falcon. These machines have some very quality engineering, and in tangible ways, too. No user really cares if the PC BIOS is antiquated and hackish while Open Firmware is modern and featureful. The “elegance” of the PowerPC instruction set and the x86’s lack thereof really shouldn’t make a difference to the user. They don’t interact with those parts of the system. But the quality of a system’s case and how well designed and quiet the fans and power supply are, those things matter. On cheap PCs, those things are often short-changed, which isn’t the case with expensive Macs. I have a feeling that a lot of the inelegance people see in PCs have to do with the fact that the majority of PCs are cheap, ugly, rudely-built biege boxes, while all Macs are well designed and well put-together.
Macs look really great, and from my understanding the operating system is top notch (If I could only afford a mac). I am an operating system head and I have tried almost every intel compatible operating system. It’s too bad that Mac OS X is not available for other chips because it would certainly reign the desktop. But I do agree with apple’s philosophy of having everything made for everything else in the system. Its just too bad that a decent computer from them costs about $3000. I find their skimpyness on default included ram a weak point. I would get a iMAC if it would come with 512mb standard rather than 256mb of ram, that is nonsense.
The arguments with the Mac folks.
“Sorry man, my P4 2.83ghz is really freaking fast. I built the whole computer for like 700 bucks. My DDR is running at 200mhz. The damn thing just smokes. So how can you tell me that the dual G4 800mhz is faster?”
“It just is. The P4 is just not as fast. The G4 is a supercomputer. Mhz is a myth. Apple has the price performance ratio down, and as far as price/performance ratio, Apple beats the compition hands down. Linux? Whats Linux? Who cares if its *free*, the price performance ratio is better cos the megahertz myth this that and the other thing, deep pipelines this, shallow pipelines that, yada yada yada…”
Now I will admit, OS X is *pretty* cool. I like running Photoshop and Illustrator and all that, but over 3K for hardware that I can recreate (somewhat) for less than a grand is just absurd.
We also asked last week if OS X is slow. It sure is. Sometimes it is painful to work on. I use an OS X box at work all day long, and by the end of the day I am RUNNING home to get on my P4 running a recompiled version of Redhat 8. Running.
As sad as it is, I also look forward to using XP over it too. Because of speed.
I used to be an Apple guy, back from the Apple II+ days. I stuck with em for years. I was excited when they bought NeXT. OS X was fun for a week.
Journaling file system brings down performance 15-20%? Apple suggests not using it except for servers? Come on!
as another post mentions, the bus blows. as a mac user, i have to wonder why apple is throwing this cr@p at pro users. while the processor is not the fastest, much can be accomplished through bandwidth tuning. i am for one not budgeting any mac purchases until the processor and bus issues are dealt with. couple this with apple’s tendency to not offer upgrades for products such as webobjects (a point release at that), and i am not inclined to cut them any slack. sorry steve! good luck with the recession.
my thoughts? whatever apple does will be to little, too late — to counter the huge performance gains we are constantly seeing on the PC side.
Apple is certainly behind. I don’t think that people (consumers/business users) really care anymore though about MHz/GHz. 1 GHz is fast enough for word processing and browsing the web. Intel’s 3GHz beast will be met by apathy. Nonetheless, apple needs that new IBM chip so that it address that high end that they are obvisously going for. What apple really needs is a low rated chip (GHz) or multi core chip that kicks a much faster intel chips butt. If they get that, then they can make the GHz race even less relevant.
On the consumer side, i think apple is doing a good job of selling itself on ease of use, stability, integration with digital entertainment devices etc. I think those are more important for that segment than raw power. Despite the MHz difference i will still consider an apple for my next purchase. My person block is not MHz its $$$$$$ dollars.
“I am a big Mac fan and see no reason, for now, to move to the wintel. However I enjoyed reading this article and hope that many within Apple read this ASAP. Apple has a great OS, good hardware design (out side the CPU issues) and the best looking products on the market. ”
Truth is, Apple *obviously* doesnt care. They keep bungling business practices and continue to lose in every market where they used to reign as king.
Its terrible. I hate to see it happen. But they just cant get over the hardware sales jones and the absolute zealotry of their fan base who allow Apple to charge *double* for that hardware doesnt help at all.
If the fans of Apple would speak up and tell em to get it together it might help. In the meantime, people are quietly *switching* away from Apple to PC (hopefully Linux).
Switch. Its cool. You can have a real unix like operating system.
I like Apple, never owned one because of cost and the inablity to hack and tweak it, but I like Apple’s innovation. Guess what, GHz do matter…when Intel is running at 3.06 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, and 4.2 GB/s of bandwith, PPC would have to be more than 3 times more efficient (which it’s not that much more efficient) and have equivalent bandwith (apple’s not even close) to be competitive in content creation, servers (things like object orientated databases take a lot of horsies), and data proccessing…The reality is a desktop is nice at home, but Apple will never dent MS share until it captures buisness, and GHz do matter…Apple, please come out with a slick implementation of x86 hardware and use all those horsies to your advantage…I would buy OSX Jaguar in a heartbeat if it ran on my pretty dual athlon MP machine. (Yes it’s pretty-it may even rival *apple* looks)
Did anybody realized this, but Xserve benchmarks on the Apple site compare Xserve with Pentium 3 machines.
Sergio,
Could you please post the link…I wasn’t able to find it at apple.com.
sorry..
http://daugerresearch.com/fractaldemos/JPLXServes/JPLXServeClusterB…
Cheapest unix workstation or laptop your gonna buy from any commercial computer company.
Easiest to setup computer your gonna find anywhere
Best out of the box tools and applications.
Show me a single laptop that compares with the ibook from a PC maker. Thinkpads come close, but I can get a full flight worth of work done on my ibook, not half of one (thinkpad 310, t20, and 240 user).
Xserve is a low power, low heat, unix rack, which is tiny. Do you think companies were buying tualin p3 rack servers because of their performance over big heavy, hot, xeon systems?
Hell, their low end g4 tower is the cheapest dual proc workstation Ive ever seen.
Ever seen a cheap sun system that could outperform a high end pc in everything? Or SGI? or HP? Can you play warcraft 3 on a sgi? Or Max Payne?
I can wait for a high end apple desktop with ibm procs, and a 900mhz bus, and a nv 35 or whatever is out then. I can wait, and I will, and my ibook will still work and will last me quite a while.
everyone’s a bashing, many with good reason, but a word to you, trooth-teller, you’re obviously more troll than truth. apple is making some serious and laudable business moves and it seems that there is more to come.
so where’s your hard proof–and I mean beyond anecdotal–of this migration of people away from macs to PCs?
I checked out Alienware’s offerings a while ago, and I didn’t get past the initial sticker shock to actually dig in and see what they offer. The things make my Mac look dirt cheap in comparison.
I’m not going to claim you don’t get what you pay for, but they are sabotaged even more than Apple is by cut rate prices.
When I shop for Macs I expect one price range. When I shop for Sun, or SGI I am looking at an entirely different and higher price range (an economy workstation has a completely different meaning there). When I shop for a x86 based computer I consider anything over $1000 to be insanely expensive (unless it is running on Xeons).
Where is the proof Apple is gaining market share? Who holds/measures the latest market share figures? I strongly suspect their switch campaign is a smashing…disappointment.
Excuse me Siggy, but I will have to agree with Trooth-Teller. His comment, for the most part, was pretty realistic.
As for the truth about people leaving Macs, just go read the three big’s statistical companies about market share of the MacOS/X (check our archives, we have reported on it). Apple lost a huge share, they are now at around 2% of the OS world, while they were at 3.2% last year at the same time. That is a 35-40% loss, and I can tell you, it is huge loss. Apple seems to still make money by overpricing machines and selling them to the hardcore Mac buyers. But they don’t *gain* any significant new userbase, not even after the switch ads, in fact their sells was declined. Just go and read their SEC reports, you don’t have to listen to me.
For now, Apple might still make some money, but that won’t be the case for the future. They should act fast, they should do something.
Ahh thanks Eugenia. Yeh, so much for the hardcore Linux guys saying that OSX would bring in HEAPS of new users to their base in discussions on this site in the past. I always suspected they were losing market share.
And what would you expect them to say to they’ r custumers? “Hey, i understand you guys wanna buy an Xserve for your IT department, but we think you should know our products s*ck really bad… go talk to Dell, for you’ll be better of whitought us!” get real! any benchmarks published or in any way sponsered by apple are nothing but pure “propaganda”… i’m just hoping thoses G5 comme quick to try and make a diffrence….. otherwise apple will be the next Amiga.
I LOVE Aqua but I will not pay 3 times as much for it and the Mac hardware.
I bought Object Desktop from stardock.com and I have a beautiful system now that looks like Aqua. I get the genie effect, the custom tool bars and every thing. Sure it’s not a perfect rip.. Aqua still does things that OD doesn’t.. but ya konw what.. for $50.00, it beats spending $3,000 on a top of the line mac.
Total cost of my PC.
$450.00
When I shop for a x86 based computer I consider anything over $1000 to be insanely expensive (unless it is running on Xeons).
That price is too low . Expect VIA/AMD/Gigabit/Soyo/Abit junk at that price. 1500 $ (8000$ cdn) is a better price for a good all-round PC.
Having just got a ibook with OS X on it I can say that it’s superb 🙂 I’ve tried many OS’s and although Debian and BeOS are my favs for the PC, OS X is awesome.
My point ? It’s just that the software is incredibly well designed and works wonderfully, I think people would be more productive on OS X than on Windows. Clever software is all that matters in the long run. Apple will use faster CPUs and bus etc. soon enough. which will go well with their great OS. Yeah at raw rendering a P4 will win, it’s a dumb chip that happens to run fast 🙂 Itanium2 shows that better design == less MHz == faster.
The IBM/Apple (or a switch to AMD-x86-64) chip sounds interesting but I don’t think they should worry too much. Apple dual cpu is nice too. My 2 x 850 MHz Pentium 3 always beats my work Pentium4 in responsiveness and OS speed.
Just my thoughts, feel free to ignore them 🙂
Apple has OSx running on athlon XP’s.
http://www.macedition.com/nmr/nmr_20021112.php
MHz doesn’t matter, but it isn’t bad. MHz is design detail. More MHz will definately make a chip faster, just as more registers or wider busses will make a chip faster. What matters is end-result speed. The truth is, because of the type of code people run (poorly parallizable), MHz is one of the best ways to improve speed. Is the P4 bad because it trades IPC for MHz? Hell no! Intel saw the type of code people run, and realized that a highly-clocked chip would be faster than a low-clocked wide one. It’s an engineering decision. And it resulted in one of the fastest and cheapest chips available today. That’s *good* design if I ever saw it.
I have used Mac’s, PC’s and other computers( mostly PC’s running Windows ) since 1981 ( that’s 21 years, can you believe it! seems like yesterday…).
When the Mac first came out, it offered definite advantages over the PC. When the Mac II came out, it matched the PC’s color capability ( one disadvantage of the early Mac ).
When Windows first came out, it sucked. No competition on the graphics and “creativity” applications arena. However, when Windows 95 was released, Mac’s FINALLY had a competitor on their own ground ( graphics and creativity applications ).
Since then, Apple lost a lot of market share due to the equivilent ease of use of Win95 and then 98/98SE/ME ( actually, ME sucked, big time. Just a marketing version to make people WANT to upgrade to XP. It worked… ).
Apple should have bought BeOS. It would have gotten them to the current quality of OSX, about 3-4 years earlier, allowing them to stop the exodus from Mac sooner.
However, they DO have OSX now and it is quite an impressive OS. That, combined with excellent ( not just good ) hardware design, gets them back into the game.
Personally, since I had to give my PC to my wife ( her PC was VERY flaky ), I ONLY use my iMac G4 at home ( Win2000 at work ).
I have found my iMac G4 to work as quick or quicker than my equivilent PC and it doesn’t crash. It boots quickly and ALL of the applications to do the things I need to do, are easy and enjoyable to use.
I think that XP is a solid competitor to OSX, however, most Hardware companies don’t spend a lot of time on the hardware engineering, the way Apple does. There are exceptions, like the Gateway’s Profile 4 series and the Sony Vaio systems, however, overall, most PC’s are pretty boring and uninteresting when it comes to the hardware design issue.
With Microsoft’s dominant OS position, it makes sense for Apple to control the whole system and valid that they charge a small premium for making a system that works so well together. That being said, I do believe that the MHZ issue, valid or not, should be something that Apple addresses by closing the MHZ gap.
I believe that they can close the gap and will do so within the next 12 months. I don’t however, believe that a delay of 12 months in having that gap close, will cause those of us who use and are productive on Mac’s using MacOSX, to switch to a PC system. If it is still an issue in 36 months, then it would certainly be time to reevaluate the sitiuation, based on an average life span of about 3 years for most computers.
I do ramble….
I was just about to say that the base price for a very nice Alienware system is $2000, and a totally tricked out one is $2500. IMHO, that’s very reasonable for what is a very high quality machine. That said, you can also get a very well built Dell machine for $1000 to $1500. I’ve been a big fan of Dell ever since my sound card and modem stopped working one day (I was fooling with them…) and they came and replaced them a day later. And they’re really well built.
PS> To the guy who thought the G4 tower was the cheapest dual proc machine. I seriously suggest trying a local PC shop. A dual Athlon machine can be very stable, when built properly, and a local PC place will do that for you. And you usually get excellent service, much better than the big name companies who’s techs aren’t suited for much more than “My computer isn’t working….what’s a power cord?”
After all, a Mac can save Christmas!
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/janieporche.html
The Apple Switch ads are pathetic-i.e. Janie Porche saves christmas…a little hottie she is, but if you have to “download drivers,” all day to get pictures, you are stupid…The Switch ad that I hate the most is the the cop Andy Skowronski, he says “I had a PC…I couldn’t do audio, I couldn’t do video, I didn’t even know what cable I needed.” What a moron….seriously, Apple would have been a lot more succesful had they gotten “Switchers,” who had an IQ above 50. Personally, it is no loss to the PC (includeing BSD, Linux, etc) community that these idiots switched.
You dont buy workstations from your local asus retailer, its bad business sense. But for home use, sure.
You also dont compare apple/dell/alienware/hp/ibm to asus retailers. These are not little guys with low profit margins. These are guys whos products should not have any hardware issues in the first 6 months.
You call me a troll, yet I come with the proof. BTW: The reason I call myself ‘trooth-teller’ is because sadly Macintosh users cant handle the truth.
Here is one truth. I have been putting up with working in education for years as tech support lead, network administrator, and I see the ruins of the multitude of machines that are for all purposes useless.
I see the way Apple treats their education customers. The way they dump the trash on them (5000 series anyone?) They way… god its too hard to go on..
So I work hard in education to get people to switch.. To linux. Hey thats price performance for you.
So some facts, like you asked.
First of all read the article on Film Gimp. To hear that studios are switching to Linux en masse for content creation, doesnt look to good for Apple. Does it?
Next put this in yer pipe and smoke it:
“Giga is right, Steve Jobs&Co. is losing ground in important markets it once dominated, such as education. Sales to schools fell 12% year-over-year — despite huge publicity coups like persuading Maine to equip 241 elementary schools with wireless-ready iBooks. Overall, Mac shipments fell 14%, to 734,000, vs. the same quarter a year earlier. ”
This was of course reported all last week in the article “Why Apple Keeps on Clicking”. Url here:
http://www.thewmurchannel.com/money/1771678/detail.html
Next up do this little faux-scientific analysis:
Goto Google Groups and type linux in the search field. Write down the number of articles it pulls back.
Next type in “Mac OS X Server”. Note the number of returned hits. Also note when those hits were from. I get 1998-1999-2000, around the time when the first Rhapsody based OS X server came out, and people were wondering why they had to upgrade again in a year when the “real” OS X Server came out.
It may be unscientific, but no community in this day and age means no adoption. Its that simple.
Have you seen the switch ad where the guy says “Digital Audio and Video, you just cant do that on a PC!!”
The truth about this is, its just a plain lie, and its part of that market that Apple is losing left and right.
Do a search in the business section of news.google.com for “OS X Server adoption”, you will find it brings back nothing.
Look at what schools are doing with the adoption of Linux. Its everywhere. Oregon leads the way.
http://www.k12linux.org/
Where are the figures for Apple?
I know it sounds trollly, but it always seems to me that the Apple people believe marketing hype over reality. Thats fine. Its just not for me, thank you..
You asked for the facts and you get em. Not bad for a troll eh?
I do a lot of nonlinear editing. When I saw the 3.0Ghz Dells, I thought, Great. Options.
I like using a Mac. I find the interface more productive. But high-end PCs are better for pure rendering right now. So, I just buy a few PCs every so often and stick ’em in the closet, headless, with 100bT ethernet. They are Brains for After Effects.
See? Nice Mac interface and OS, speedy rendering. The Intel chips are fine. I just don’t like Windows… so I don’t use it. You *can* have both. (As for cost, if you’re doing DV, it’s a non-issue buying multiple boxes for the rates you’ll charge.. especialyl rendering time vs. cost.)
one blame motorola for this big problem and two wow I wish I had the money to buy not only top of the line dell but top of the line mac too.
1) the guy fudged the benchmarks.
2) FCP is better than after effects, anyway
3) You could have a 10 GHZ PC, and, unless you do something about it (Like installing LINUX), it will still be running Windows. I’d rather putter along in system 7 on a Quadra than deal with a creaky, ugly, user-hostile OS like Windows. And, trust me, after a year in OS X, doing system 7 would be painful.
Look at the new ‘switch’ ads. Apple is going for ease of use over power in marketing anyways. In more technical publications, like Dr. Dobbs, they are selling OSX as a Unix that ‘just works’.
If you want a powerful server/workstation on damn good hardware you usually buy a Unix variant, say HPUX or SGI. If you want cheap, fast server/workstations you go with Linux. I am not sure where Mac is supposed to fit in here.
That being said, if I had the money I would also have a Mac just to play with OSX.
I’m a lifetime Apple user but, as many of us have been saying for some time, Apple has to do something to speed things up. They are in a bind now. All options will take time – time that they have very little of. They do have a version of OS X for Intel, but can you imagine, in the short term, the upheaval that would cause? They can wait fo the IBM chip, but how long will that take? I don’t know. Apple has put dual processors in all Power Mac G4’s. The OS continues to improve. They’re getting lots of income from the iPod. The XServe is a good move. But, they cannot afford to wait much longer – they *must* speed things up. I’m concerned because it is important that Apple remain healthy – it’s good for computing on the whole – for choice and innovation.
>1) the guy fudged the benchmarks.
Please cut the FUD.
It’s about software, at least for me. It’s not how fast you do it, it’s what you can do. And before someone tells me the old “there is more software available for Windows than for Mac” story, I’d like to point out that I don’t really care how much software there is, as long as the software I want to use works and is easy to use.
My 11 month old 600 MHz iBook is enough for everything I do, including the photo editing I did in Photoshop for my summer job, and even my old 233 MHz PowerMac G3 can handle my 80-channel music projects. Of course, if all you do is very huge projects in After Effects, then a 3.06 GHz P4 is faster. Actually, it may be faster for most things, if you’re talking about the raw speed of the CPU/bus/etc.. But it doesn’t really matter anymore, because any computer I could buy today would be fast enough for me, so I choose to value different things, like stability, consistent user interface, compatibility and so forth.
And therefore, my next computer will be a Mac. It will do everything I need, and it will do it faster than my current Macs, but it will probably be slower than the 8.143 GHz P5 or whatever is available when I finally can afford a new computer, if you’re talking raw CPU performance. But still, I will be more productive than I would with any PC running any version of Windows so far, and judging by XP, I don’t think things will improve in the future either.
My point is, the P4 may be faster, but unless you’re doing nothing but lengthy CPU-intensive tasks, you shouldn’t really care.
True…software completes the package, but guess what…Mac cannot claim software superiority…XP Pro is very stable…and very easy to use…so is linux(although not as easy to use)…sorry but that is a lame argument.
> “Sorry man, my P4 2.83ghz is really freaking fast. I built the whole computer
> for like 700 bucks. My DDR is running at 200mhz. The damn thing just smokes.
> So how can you tell me that the dual G4 800mhz is faster?”
>
> “It just is. The P4 is just not as fast. The G4 is a supercomputer. Mhz is a
> myth. Apple has the price performance ratio down, and as far as price/performance
> ratio, Apple beats the compition hands down. Linux? Whats Linux? Who cares if
> its *free*, the price performance ratio is better cos the megahertz myth this
> that and the other thing, deep pipelines this, shallow pipelines that, yada
> yada yada…”
If someone were to invent a gun that shoots technojargon, he could rule the world…
> Apple is certainly behind.
Ya got that right.
> I don’t think that people (consumers/business users) really care anymore though about
> MHz/GHz. 1 GHz is fast enough for word processing and browsing the web.
Those users won’t want to bother with the Mac’s price premium, either.
> Intel’s 3GHz beast will be met by apathy.
When it is twice as fast as a Mac costing $1,000 more? I am sure that people who do digital video editing have lots of time to sit around on their butts waiting for the computer to complete its tasks. That must be why Macs have such pretty cases – their users need something to look at while they’re waiting…
> Nonetheless, apple needs that new IBM chip so that it address that high end that
> they are obvisously going for.
Considering how slow the OS is, they need the chip to address to the middle end, too.
And while we’re on the subject, the new IBM chip does not do eight instructions per clock; it does five.
> What apple really needs is a low rated chip (GHz) or multi core chip that kicks a
> much faster intel chips butt.
I do not see how a “low rated chip (GHz)” is going to kick the butt of a 4 GHz chip any time soon. A multi-core chip for the desktop seems like sheer nonsense; by doubling the amount of cores you double the failure rate. This in turn means a lot of wasted silicon, which drives the manufacturing cost of a successful chip up.
Eventually Apple will have to bite the bullet and use a chip with a significantly faster clock speed.
> If they get that, then they can make the GHz race even less relevant.
And what will Apple do when the P4 reaches 5 or 6 GHz?
> On the consumer side, i think apple is doing a good job of selling itself on ease
> of use, stability, integration with digital entertainment devices etc. I think
> those are more important for that segment than raw power. Despite the MHz
> difference i will still consider an apple for my next purchase. My person block
> is not MHz its $$$$$$ dollars.
Most people don’t have money to waste on a fancy case and some eye candy.
> Apple will use faster CPUs and bus etc. soon enough. which will go well with
> their great OS. Yeah at raw rendering a P4 will win, it’s a dumb chip that
> happens to run fast 🙂 Itanium2 shows that better design == less MHz == faster.
Please don’t become an organ donor.
> MHz doesn’t matter, but it isn’t bad. MHz is design detail. More MHz will definately
> make a chip faster, just as more registers or wider busses will make a chip faster.
> What matters is end-result speed. The truth is, because of the type of code people
> run (poorly parallizable), MHz is one of the best ways to improve speed. Is the P4
> bad because it trades IPC for MHz? Hell no! Intel saw the type of code people run,
> and realized that a highly-clocked chip would be faster than a low-clocked wide one.
> It’s an engineering decision. And it resulted in one of the fastest and cheapest
> chips available today. That’s *good* design if I ever saw it.
Aha! I knew it! Those little blue men are all being driven by stupid market forces instead of wonderful, saintly desire to make the ISA clean and pretty. Oh, those bastards! 😉
> My 11 month old 600 MHz iBook is enough for everything I do, including the photo
> editing I did in Photoshop for my summer job, and even my old 233 MHz PowerMac
> G3 can handle my 80-channel music projects. Of course, if all you do is very huge
> projects in After Effects, then a 3.06 GHz P4 is faster.
People used to say the same thing about horses. Those new fangled horseless carriages just break down all the time, and they ain’t good for much ‘cept racing which is a really dangerous sport. Why, I once knowed a man who crashed one of them thar motor buggies into a tree and was laid up for six months on account of his car broke an…
While I really appreciate Mac OS X on my powerbook G4 I bought used…
…I can’t justify a Dual 1.25GHz powerbook with a 23″ LCD monitor when it is *THAT* slow behind a *SIMPLE* desktop. They didn’t compare ‘like to like’ by comparing something like an IBM Intellistation dual proc graphics box to the Power Mac. With 2.4GHz Hyperthreaded XEONs, sucky or not, Win2k/XP would smoke Mac OS X on a Apple.
This from a guy who lusts after the power mac every time I see it. I don’t want another intel box, but then, jeezus people lower the price if they’re so slow in comparitive tests.
and for the record, these are the machines I use daily.
iMac 800Mhz FP, Powerbook G4 550, Athlon 1900XP (Windows), Athlon 1.33GHz Server (RH Linux 7.3), Dual 1.0GHz P3 Server (RH Linux 8)
Tom
OS X? Yes it is! Turtle! Turtle! Turtle! LOL
ciao
yc
Why is everyone blaming Apple for the processor speeds? Apple is not the one designing and building the processors. It is Motorola who right now could care less about the computer CPU business. They are so focused on the embedded chip market that Apple is losing out big time.
Unfortunately Apple should have seen this coming last year when all Motorola could muster up was 133mhz speed bump from the 500 chips (sad indeed). Maybe that is why the AMD boxes were shipped out to testers. I just hope Apple has something up their sleeves for Macworld SF or else people will never upgrade their Macs to OS X.
I do not know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of these stupid arguments about which is better. Why must these news articles always turn into a BITCH FEST?
Apple decides to not go mainstream (meaning x86 or even 64bit) but also doesn’t want to fork out the money for some proper CPU R&D that would allow PPC to be competitive, and “it’s not Apple’s fault?” – heck, whose is it then?
Motorola’s you say? You are DISILLUSIONED.
I’m gonna build a new Z80 computer and it won’t be my fault when Zilog won’t sell me Z80s running at 20GHz?
Get real. Apple is hurt here, not Motorola. Apple is the one who needs to take *a* decision.
My wife gets alot of different clothing
catalogs in the mail and every picture
of a computer is a mac.
There is one market share that the mac will
never lose out on.
217 GigaFlops! If we assume that a JPL GigaFlop is more or less the same as a Top500.org GigaFlop, that puts the 33-XServe cluster at #250, behind a Cray T3E900 and ahead of an IBM Power3. Not bad for Apple’s first try at Big Iron (no I don’t count the AIX machines from the coma period). The Velocity Engine just cranks, 32x128bit registers vs the small grab-bag of strap-on MMX/SSE=SUX registers: x86 is just out-classed. The maximum throughput of a bus is a nice thing, but it is *never* achieved in practice, and double/quad-pumping does nothing about latency. But above all, there are moral issues dealing with stolen HyperThreading tech and Intel’s co-collusionists convicted criminal Microsoft.
“Why is everyone blaming Apple for the processor speeds? Apple is not the one designing and building the processors. It is Motorola who right now could care less about the computer CPU business. They are so focused on the embedded chip market that Apple is losing out big time. ”
So yeah thats true, Apple is taking a beating cos of Moto, but Apple *is* to blame when they market these new machines to their *typically* (note I did not say all) clueless users, by saying smug lame ass things like:
“Ho hum, another day another Supercomputer….”
Come on, that hardware “speed” bump they released this fall (to much critique) was really really a SCAM. read: Pay for DDR, but our processor cant use it.
Nice one.
So stop thinking Apple is not to blame or that as a company its Mr Nice guy cos they use the Dalai Lama in an ad.
They still use incarcerated Tibetan monks in Chinese Gulags (prisons) to build the same parts that say “Made in China”.
Talk about irony eh?
Think different indeed.
Apple made the decision to close their systems and stick with Moto…That is why it is Apples fault…Dell uses Intel, but if for some reason they started to suck, Dell would very quickly move to a compatable and faster/cheaper solution…it’s called bad buisness practice and that’s why Apple will not regain the market share it has lost unless it pulls off one helluva trick…
I still don’t see Final Cut Pro for x86 system so, the benchmarks are not a hands down factor for your ultimate decision in digital video editing, at least not mine.
Apple made the decision to close their systems and stick with Moto…That is why it is Apples fault…Dell uses Intel, but if for some reason they started to suck, Dell would very quickly move to a compatable and faster/cheaper solution…it’s called bad buisness practice and that’s why Apple will not regain the market share it has lost unless it pulls off one helluva trick…
Apple made the decision to close their systems and stick with Moto
The G3 used in the iBooks is from IBM, so we have 2 supplier
But before that… how about some comparisons where the products are actually similar? Compare integrated UNIX platforms. I’m actually curious as to the price/power/performance differences between Macs and Sun boxes, and Macs and SGIs and the like. IBM PowerPCs w/AIX… No SGI lappys AFAIK but y’all get the point. Something interesting and new besides a horse that’s been flayed, flogged, drawn and quartered after being mercilessly teased about it’s corrective horseshoes…
Or is this one of those damned I brought it up so do the article moments?
1. People use Macs when they want to. Other people use PCs when they want to. Still others use both. Amazingly, folks still get into pissing contests and actual personal insults when defending their platform of choice/slamming somebody else’s.
That kinda behavior is… odd.
2. That said, I use Mac OS X, client and server editions. I use Windows 2000 Pro, Server and I used XP for a quick minute before I noticed it was slower than 2K on the same hardware. I don’t use linux – I think it sucks, from a looking at the code, working with it and programming for it perspective. This is the OS, not the apps.
All have their uses. OS X is very useful when you want to have the power of a UNIX operating system with ease of use and a wide library of quality, well-supported software programs. When you want to do your work using GNU tools, open somebody’s fraggingly complex word attachment and relax and play games. Maybe use the machine, right out of the box and you’re up with most of the software you’ll need.
It’s not the fastest platform out there, hardware or software wise. However, it is the best platform out there integration-wise. I’ve never timed how long it takes browsers to open or render pages. I just wait a second and it’s done. It’s the most effective UNIX variant I’ve used, and the server version is pretty friggin’ nice.
Windows? Windows works – it’s the lowest common denominator. I don’t like it, it feels clumsy and ill-conceived, but stuff works. 2K Pro only crashes occasionally, and I generally know how to make it behave. It crashes hard because of driver conflicts fairly often – mostly from demanding 3D games that make bad assumptions about the state of hardware or software installed (Hitman, for example – by default, it uses D3D for rendering… but my grocery store laptop has a Radeon that makes it crash. Duh, maybe autodetect and use OGL instead?!?). It’s ugly but useful.
Use whatchalike and feel comfortable with. Or at least refrain from flamin’ on/in a public forum. Let’s all work to keep the SNR as high as possible…
Peace,
‘Rithm
Come on, that hardware “speed” bump they released this fall (to much critique) was really really a SCAM. read: Pay for DDR, but our processor cant use it.
The new machines are cheaper AND faster than the old ones. How could that be a scam ?
I too hope Apple is reading this. Can they wait till the newest IBM chip comes out to do something? Not likely. They need to do something and now or alot of new switchees will be switching back, myself included.
‘If the fans of Apple would speak up and tell em to get it together it might help. In the meantime, people are quietly *switching* away from Apple to PC (hopefully Linux).
Switch. Its cool. You can have a real unix like operating system.’
Bah
“533 MHz FSB”<P>
The triumph of marketing over FACT! It’s a 133-MHz bus that can send 4 bits/line/cycle. The latency is exactly that of a 133-MHz bus, because that’s what it is. The high-end Macs actually clock their bus FASTER than the P4. Now it would be good if the Mac had quad-pumped bus, but really, folks — the x86 is spending all its time shuttling stuff in and out of its tiny visible register set so it needs the bandwidth. With 32 GPRs, 32 FPRs, and 32 Vector Registers, PPC is not so RAM-bunctious. Not even infinitely deep rename buffers can eliminate every load/store.
>”Why is everyone blaming Apple for the processor speeds?
>Apple is not the one designing and building the
>processors. It is Motorola who right now could care less
>about the computer CPU business. They are so focused on
>the embedded chip market that Apple is losing out big
>time. ”
Motorola is concentrating on the embedded market because they make their money there. Apple does not sell enough machines for Motorola to spend the large sums of money needed to improve the desktop performance of the PowerPC.
IBM might bring out a chip that is competetive but how many times have I heard that. G4 will beat Intel, no G5 will beat Intel, no IBM will beat Intel.
When Apple killed the clone business they also killed the only chance the PowerPC makers had of making money in the desktop market.
Cheers
David
I use Macs because of the Unix/Desktop environment provided, and because the dev tools are included with the OS. Plus I have a stable good looking fast computer. I mean I don’t need to save 50 min doing audio/media rendering. People need that I understand it, but it means nothing to me if Mac’s don’t do it as well as PC’s or as fast. (macs have never lacked on quality).
Besides I will continue to buy Apple hardware/software until there is an alternative as good as OS X on PC’s. Don’t tell me there is I’ll laugh at you because I’ve probably used it on my Athlon XP, which by the way hasn’t been turned on in a month.
Sorry, I wasn’t trolling, I was just expressing my opinion on why a lot of people will never leave Apple computers.
Do it like Sun. Release an X86 version and make it open source. People will develop software for it and the market share should be improving. If you want the full RISC Prossesor deal pay for it.
My 2 canadian cents.
I’m not sure what the point of the article was. The new Intel fixes the major problems with the P4 so:
1.25 ghz G4 ~ 1.6 ghz P3 = 1/2 speed of the new 3 ghz P4. You’d expect a 3ghz chip to about double the performance on single threaded CPU intensive apps.
The dual feature would help in that the Mac could do two of these operations at the same time with little loss of speed. That is say given a Photoshop transformation and an After Effect animation at the same time the Mac would be competitive since on the Mac the two would occur in parrellel while on the PC in serial. In other words dual systems contiune to be responsive under heavy loads. That makes the system much more pleasant to use and increases productivity it doesn’t raise benchmark scores.
I don’t know enough about how video people work to know if the work between rips is longer than the time it takes to rip; but:
if it is: dual will work better since the machine will stay responsive
if it isn’t: the rips should be offloaded to a dedicated machine.
In either case the user shouldn’t be locked up for minutes waiting for his machine to do rip work
PowerMac G4/800 DP Superdrive: $1777.77 for all you STUPID TROLLS and your “$3000” Macintoshes. That one has two Velocity Engines, and Mac Unix is like totally SMP, and Quartz runs the “eye candy” (hey, when it saves time finding interface elements, it’s more than “eye candy!”) on the GPU so you can use that nVidia or Radeon for something besides wanking^H^H^H gaming. My PeeCee was the most expensive machine per hour of use that I ever owned. I think it needs a new power supply to work again, but you know — it’s just not worth the trouble. My 7-year-old 7600 keeps chugging, it’s running Civ III (plus handling light server duty) on Mac OS X right now.
Apple made the decision to close their systems and stick with Moto…That is why it is Apples fault…Dell uses Intel, but if for some reason they started to suck, Dell would very quickly move to a compatable and faster/cheaper solution…it’s called bad buisness practice
That comment is bogus because Dell doesn’t make/sell/design their own OS. Dell is not responsible for moving an entire platform to a new CPU and having to move all the developers with them. All Dell does is buy parts from different manufactures and put their name on it. They don’t have to upgrade and design an OS.
As for Apple getting their asses handed to them..this should come as no suprise. We all know that Apple is woefully behind horsepower, and it looks like they will be for quite some time. Their only hope is IBM’s power PC 970 and to go 100% 64-bit before the wintel crowd does. And even that wont be enough. By the time the 970 reaches the market the P4 should be around 3.5-4+ Ghz. If the 970 does debut at 1.8 ghz even with a 900 Mhz FSB it will still be slow. Luckily for Apple the 970 is designed for multi CPUS. Maybe a quad 970 will narrow the gap.
Most people browse the Internet, read their email, and print a few documents now and then. These people care far more about having a computer that they understand and is easy to use than about having a computer that is fast.
I think Dell should have had the opportuntity to match Apple for same no of actual cpus, but I don’t think it would have made much of a difference. If Dell had had a dual P4 still at 3GHz (when is that likely to come out?), it would have been ONLY 4x as fast. Or Apple should have sent in a single cpu, the price might have been much closer but then 4x slower. In other words if Apples dual cpus were both busy during those benchmarks, the same should have been true for Dell since the apps were just recompiles of the same split source if they were in any way meaningfull.
As for Dell, I glad to hear about the serious noise reduction. I’ve used Dell P3 before & seen quality of engineering, the air ducting cowls etc.
I usually build Athlon boxes & get exactly what I pay for, noisy, overheating, unreliable junk, next time I just might let Dell do the engineering for once, but then I really don’t want XP on it to enjoy hyperthreading smoothness.
Now just imagine if Dell & Apple were one company!
(Submitting this on Opera 7 beta, & its damn full of bugs!)
I read a CNET article about the history of Apple last night. They have lost their great market share in a period of 10 years. I find it difficult for them to gain back their dominance, just because the PC landscape is not what it used to be.
I have never liked Mac OS 9 and lower. Yet now I like OSX, I like the look of the computer package they offer. I have liked using it the few times when I have walked into stores and tried it. I get the excitement I used to get when I bought my first computer Amiga 500 (haha I mentioned Amiga).
Yet I can’t seem to get myself to buy one. If I did buy one, I see myself with a flashy Mac, booting into a flashy new OS that I am excited about discovering. But when I want to get down to business I will boot up Virtual PC and I will be back in Windows. Why? Switching costs are just too high to get my new system fitted with software that I have on my PC, plus it would probably run slower.
Yet I can see my self purchasing an Apple customized Hammer system that would by default boot into OSX, but would also give me the option of booting into all other x86 OS’s. Could you imagine how much faster Virtual PC could be in such a system.
I also think they should probably reintroduce the CUBE, either people just didn’t like it, or it was ahead of it’s time (customer acceptance). I am seriously considering a Shuttle nForce2 CUBE.
Eugenia, down at the bottom you should probably change it to “View moderated down [Jokes Page
] comments”. Is that the same person who always makes the same ridiculous comments.
Mr. Toddo writes:
the x86 is spending all its time shuttling stuff in and out of its tiny visible register set so it needs the bandwidth.
Well, maybe. However, for any kind of large working set the x86 has a pretty spectacular bandwidth advantage. Here are results from Dr. McAlpin’s stream benchmark. A modern 1.25Ghz mac will score faster than the listed G4/867Mhz system, but I don’t think performance would scale 1:1 with its clockspeed improvement. Compare how the Duron’s scores changed with clockspeed improvements vs. bus improvements.
All results are in MB/s — 1 MB=10^6 B, *not* 2^20 B
——————————————————–Machine ID ncpus COPY SCALE ADD TRIAD
———————————————————
Generic_Duron_600-100 1 449.8 606.6 580.8 551.4
Generic_Duron_800-100 1 468.2 610.1 628.7 578.7
Generic_Duron_800-133 1 600.4 809.1 773.6 734.5 Apple_PwrMac_G4-867 1 629.8 615.9 609.4 680.1
Asus_Athlon_1333_A7M 1 941.2 592.6 727.3 685.7
Generic_Pentium4-1400 1 1437.2 1431.6 1587.7 1575.4
Asus_P4T533-P4-2800 1 1832.6 1736.2 2249.2 2249.2
Of course, even the modern P4-2800 has a little ways to go to catch up with the Cray Y-MP, a supercomputer of the early 80s. As to the G4 being an honest to gosh supercomputer, let’s see how well it fares against the old and new.
———————————————————–Machine ID ncpus COPY SCALE ADD TRIAD
———————————————————–
Apple…G4-867 1 629.8 615.9 609.4 680.1
Cray_Y-MP 1 2426.4 2426.2 3454.4 3396.9
Fujitsu_VPP5000 1 37780.0 35724.0 34595.0 37544.0
NEC_SX-5-16A 16 607492.0 590390.0 607412.0 583069.0
I really like my Macs, but it isn’t for the raw speed or the bandwidth. My TiBook’s well designed, quiet, and I get along very well with its operating system. Sure wish they compile the UI for Solaris one of these days.
Anyway, here’s to the IBM Power4! May it boost Apple back into the competition!
Oh, and McCalpin takes submissions. Check out the stream website:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/
OSNews readers probably have access to all kinds of interesting computer configurations. It would be great to see some more stuff up there.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
> 217 GigaFlops! If we assume that a JPL GigaFlop is more or less the same as a Top500.org
> GigaFlop, that puts the 33-XServe cluster at #250, behind a Cray T3E900 and ahead of an
> IBM Power3. Not bad for Apple’s first try at Big Iron (no I don’t count the AIX machines
> from the coma period).
Who’s talking about the XServe?
> The Velocity Engine just cranks, 32x128bit registers vs the small grab-bag of strap-on
> MMX/SSE=SUX registers: x86 is just out-classed.
128-bit? Outclassed? Do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?
> The maximum throughput of a bus is a nice thing, but it is *never* achieved in practice
And that makes real-world gains irrelevant?
> and double/quad-pumping does nothing about latency.
It is not supposed to, nitwit. What it does do is increase throughput, something which is very important in many modern applications.
> But above all, there are moral issues dealing with stolen HyperThreading tech
The people who produced the technology disagree; they’ve settled and licensed the technology to Intel.
> The triumph of marketing over FACT! It’s a 133-MHz bus that can send 4 bits/line/cycle.
> The latency is exactly that of a 133-MHz bus, because that’s what it is.
Well, duh. But people use 533 MHz to refer to it because they are functionally equivalent in terms of bandwidth.
> high-end Macs actually clock their bus FASTER than the P4.
But they transfer 1/4 of the data per cycle, which makes it a worthless distinction.
> Now it would be good if the Mac had quad-pumped bus, but really, folks — the x86 is
> spending all its time shuttling stuff in and out of its tiny visible register set so
> it needs the bandwidth.
Hold the FUD, please.
> With 32 GPRs, 32 FPRs, and 32 Vector Registers, PPC is not so RAM-bunctious. Not even
> infinitely deep rename buffers can eliminate every load/store.
But the Mac is still so far behind. Rejoice in the efficiency of your slowness all you like – it’s not going to make your hardware perform any better.
Gosh, I hope the next version of the comment system includes a preview button! Not to mention allows PRE tags…
Machine ID ncpus COPY SCALE ADD TRIAD
——————————————————–
Generic_Duron_600-100 1 449.8 606.6 580.8 551.4
Generic_Duron_800-100 1 468.2 610.1 628.7 578.7
Generic_Duron_800-133 1 600.4 809.1 773.6 734.5
Apple_PwrMac_G4-867 1 629.8 615.9 609.4 680.1
Asus_Athlon_1333_A7M 1 941.2 592.6 727.3 685.7
Generic_Pentium4-1400 1 1437.2 1431.6 1587.7 1575.4
Asus_P4T533-P4-2800 1 1832.6 1736.2 2249.2 2249.2
Machine ID ncpus COPY SCALE ADD TRIAD
—————————————-
Apple…G4-867 1 629.8 615.9 609.4 680.1
Cray_Y-MP 1 2426.4 2426.2 3454.4 3396.9
Fujitsu_VPP5000 1 37780.0 35724.0 34595.0 37544.0
NEC_SX-5-16A 16 607492.0 590390.0 607412.0 583069.0
> I’m not sure what the point of the article was. The new Intel fixes the major
> problems with the P4 so: 1.25 ghz G4 ~ 1.6 ghz P3 = 1/2 speed of the new 3 ghz
> P4. You’d expect a 3ghz chip to about double the performance on single threaded
> CPU intensive apps.
Silly jbolden1517.
The 3 GHz P4 performed faster with HyperThreading turned on, which makes it operate as two 1.5 GHz CPUs. And were we to test evenly, we would use a dual P4 3 GHz box, and the Intel-based box would absolutely toast the Mac while still costing less.
> The dual feature would help in that the Mac could do two of these operations at
> the same time with little loss of speed.
You just don’t understand, do you? The P4 operating as two 1.5 GHz CPUs beat the Mac with dual 1.25 GHz G4’s. Do you understand what HyperThreading is, or do you just run around trying to make fun of benchmarks that demonstrate the weaknesses of Mac workstations?
> That is say given a Photoshop transformation and an After Effect animation at
> the same time the Mac would be competitive since on the Mac the two would occur
> in parrellel while on the PC in serial.
Hello? The apps are not singlethreaded!
> In other words dual systems contiune to be responsive under heavy loads. That
> makes the system much more pleasant to use and increases productivity it doesn’t
> raise benchmark scores.
Wow, you managed to come to the same conclusion as the person in the article talking about HyperThreading! Next time read the article, dimwit.
> PowerMac G4/800 DP Superdrive: $1777.77 for all you STUPID TROLLS and your “$3000”
> Macintoshes. That one has two Velocity Engines, and Mac Unix is like totally SMP,
> and Quartz runs the “eye candy” (hey, when it saves time finding interface elements,
> it’s more than “eye candy!”) on the GPU so you can use that nVidia or Radeon for
> something besides wanking^H^H^H gaming. My PeeCee was the most expensive machine
> per hour of use that I ever owned. I think it needs a new power supply to work
> again, but you know — it’s just not worth the trouble. My 7-year-old 7600 keeps
> chugging, it’s running Civ III (plus handling light server duty) on Mac OS X right
> now.
Proof positive that toddo is an ignorant jerk.
> Most people browse the Internet, read their email, and print a few documents now
> and then. These people care far more about having a computer that they understand
> and is easy to use than about having a computer that is fast.
Most of them also care about price.
Not only are you clueless, you’re attempts at humor are just pathetic. MMX/SSE=SUX? Just plain not funny…
1) Intel has a small *visible* register set, true, but that just makes optimization harder. The P4 actually has 128 internal rename registers that map those 8 visible registers. This totally blows away the G4e’s 32 visible registers + 16 rename registers. This is most likely the reason AMD only chose to extend x86-64’s register set to 16. That appears to be enough for the compiler to optimize with as well as it’s going to.
2) The AltiVec unit in the G4 can hit something like 4 gigaflops. Each single precision floating point datum is 4 bytes. Assuming 128-bit SIMD, this requires 20 bytes per 4 operations, so you get 20 GB/sec to sustain full performance. Once your dataset falls out of the 256KB L2 cache, you’re hitting the 1.3 GB/sec FSB limit. At this point, the quality of AltiVec makes no difference. Even if SSE is only 1/4 as fast (and its not, it’s 50% to 100%), it’s still enough to saturate the 4.2 GB/sec of the P4’s memory bandwidth. They call it “streaming SIMD” for a reason. And note, latency has no effect here. For highly regular stuff like multimedia processing, which highly ordered accesses, the data-prefetching logic of the CPU hides the slightly increased latency.
Apple’s real argument now really is “there’s some stuff you can ONLY do on a Mac”. Though this probably wouldn’t make a good benchmark, it might be interesting to compare the best Windows video editor to Final Cut Pro, which Apple is spending a lot of time optimizing, or the best Window DVD Authoring solution to DVD Studio Pro.
> Apple’s real argument now really is “there’s some stuff you can ONLY do on a Mac”.
> Though this probably wouldn’t make a good benchmark, it might be interesting to
> compare the best Windows video editor to Final Cut Pro, which Apple is spending a
> lot of time optimizing, or the best Window DVD Authoring solution to DVD Studio Pro.
Hmm…well, the only problem is that kind of argument never seems to last long.
x86 has…<P>
Only 8 not-really-GP 32-bit registers (PPC has 32 really GP registers)
Only 8 FP regs (PPC has 32)
Only 8 64-bit MMX and…
Only 8 128-bit SSE registers (PPC has 32 registers @ 128 bits each for vector integer, vector float, and vector permute).<P>
That’s what I mean by “out-classed.” 32 visible registers versus 96.
I don’t know why the argument that “MACs dont crash with OS X” has any relevance nowadays. I have XP installed on a PIII 800 w/ 640 MB of RAM and it has not crashed on me. Unless someone is running a really low quality computer or the apps installed aren’t compatible with XP, this argument simply doesn’t hold up. The bench marks on the site were not thorough at all. They were only Photoshop and video editing benchmarks. Where are the other benchmarks? Among other things, games really test CPUs to the limit, I’m sure there are more than a few games to compare on PC vs MAC.
Apple has a lot of catching up to do now. Forget the MHz myth. Intel just came out with a 3 GHz P4 using a 533 MHz FSB. There is no way a G4 can -ever- match that. If the new P4 based system is about the same price as the G4 I’m sure most would buy the P4 w/o thinking about it. And if you don’t like Windows, there’s always Linux, the BSDs, BeOS, Solaris (for x86) …. and so on depending on which you like. As I said before, I’d like to get a MAC. OS X is nice. But where’s the value for my money? If I’m spending that much money on a system, I should think it should compare with similar offerings from a competitor. If I’m shopping for an expensive sports car, like most others, I’ll pick the most comfortable, fastest over the nicer looking but slower car.
I just went to the MAC Canada site and setup a base dual 1.2 GHz G4, 120 GB HD, modem, nic, keyboard, DVD/CD-RW, 1 Gig PC2700, speakers and no monitor. Total = $5,854.00 w/o extended warranty . Too pricey.
Ronald, isn’t your conversion rate a bit high? $1800 US = $8000 CDN? LOL
“PowerMac G4/800 DP Superdrive: $1777.77 for all you STUPID TROLLS and your “$3000″ Macintoshes.”
Ok FUDmaster.
Call me a troll, but I have just made for myself a P4 system that goes like this:
P4 2.26ghz
1 gig Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR
Radeon 8500LE
WD 120gig HD with 8meg cache
48X Lite-on burner
5:1 sound
ethernet
12 USB 2.0 ports
4 firewire ports
Optical out..
WHATEVER..
total cost: around $700. All name brand goodies.
So reading yer post, I fly on over to the Apple store, prompted by yer FUD, to rustle me up a $1777 computer that somewhat equaled my specs. Since you were calling us TROLLS.
And you know what Colonel McFUDMaster, to get even CLOSE to what I have (sans fancy plastic case mind you) costs about:
Summary
• Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25GHz w/167MHz system bus
• 1GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM – 2 DIMMs
• 120GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 – Apple SuperDrive
• Optical 2 – None
• ATI Radeon 9000 Pro dual-display w/64MB DDR
• 56K internal modem
• Apple Pro Keyboard – U.S. English
• Mac OS – U.S. English
Promotion Savings
-$260.00
Subtotal $3,339.00
Now thats straight from Apples site. Which Apples site did you go to? Now mind you, mine doesnt have a DVD burner, but I can add one of those for $250 -$275. Still, that comes in quite a lot less that $3500 figure now dont it? (with tax)
????
PS: My boss just came in all pissed off. He just spent $3500 on a TiBook. The first words out of his mouth were:
“This new computer is much slower than my old one.”
(A Wallstreet Powerbook). Thats sad. Its the new processor (G4), and 3 times the RAM.
Its true. Its a snail. He wants me to fix it. Its fresh from Apple.
linux wins!
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=7692/byt1035828368066/
Evidently x86 emits dense particles called “morons.”
“I wonder if any of these Mac people have used a real high-quality PC.”
In the audio world, a LOT of PC users have migrated over to the Mac.
– Kelly
Are you gonna sell hardware or software?
I *think* you’re into hardware.
If so, why compete with linux? Why come up with another variation of Unix? Don’t you think AIX, Irix, HP-UX and etcIX are all doomed to grow similar day by day to Linux until they’re one? Are you doing this, too?
There’s going to be a huge fight in the OS arena, as I see it.
I don’t know which side will you choose, but thanks for the Apple ][+. It was really great.
The reason why they compare against the P3 , is because the P3 is set up for multiple smp server tasking. This is the type of configuration used for network services on X86. There is some technical reason why the P3 is used instead of P4…i forget exactly what it is though.
>In the audio world, a LOT of PC users have migrated over to the Mac.
Link?
I know trolling gets you off, but it’s just plain mean misinforming people. What do you want to bet that sometime in the next few weeks I’ll get into an arguement with somebody who has no clue what he’s talking about because he read your posts…
Because Apple has the strongest brand in the computer industry. Zealotry is amok. Apple could make their machines slower, and they would still find customers. Maybe not switchers, but their faithful are loyal to the death. It’s about being part of the Mac Clique.
There’s always something for Macophiles to rationalize performance of non-Mac boxen to make them inferior. NTFS isn’t real journaling. IIS is full of security holes. Exchange sucks. Fit and finish sucks on x86. We’ve all heard these from Macophiles. Rhetoric mounded upon rhetoric. Some valid, some not so valid, some just downright silly.
The fact that people identify themselves with the brand/os they use is to me, a bit pathetic. I don’t care what OS’s other people use, I’m happy with mine (Win2K). I’m also not going to evangelize the OS I’m happy with, because it’s not necessarily the right one for others.
These petty little OS religion debates are getting pretty tired, if you ask me.
Blah blah blah blah. We’ve all heard this before, and there’s no reason beating a dead horse. In most every aspect, PC’s now are faster than Macs. Y’know, I think it’s really been that way since Intel introduced the 3.3v Pentium in 1994.
I have a PIII desktop, an AMD notebook, and an Athlon 1800 desktop. I also have a B+W G3. While the notebook gets the most use running Linux at work and on the road, when I’m at home, probably 75% of my time is spent on the Mac. No, it’s not fast. But it is *fast enough* and it has OSX.
I, as a guy who likes Unix-like OS’s, am far more productive in OSX than I am in Windows. And it’ll run all of these mainstream apps….
Maybe when Apple moves to Power4, there’ll be a reason to discuss this, but right now, it’s just a waste of bandwidth.
Apple is a bit like Alfa Romeo. Many years ago they made pricey, stylish and fast machines that killed the competition. Now their competitors make faster, cheaper and almost as stylish machines. Both companies have fiercely loyal customers who just don’t realise that the Toyota and Dell now makes cheaper and better products than Alfa and Apple.
[i]217 GigaFlops! If we assume that a JPL GigaFlop is more or less the same as a Top500.org GigaFlop…[i]
Sorry, but it isn’t.
First, Apple just *loves* to talk about single-precision operations in their altivec engine instead of the double-precision normal floating-point unit that everybody else uses. For double precision (which is usually necessary in science) an XServe has a PEAK performance of 2 instead of 15 Gflops.
Further, this benchmark is pointless for parallelization since it doesn’t involve much communication. The standard way it is measured on Top500 is the parallel version of LINPACK, and only systems with dedicated communication hardware come within a factor 2 from their peak performance.
Sure, this might be a very nice cluster if you really want to spend $100,000 to run a fractal demo, but for research programs that usually have to be compiled from Fortran code it doesn’t do very well.
Just wanted to point out that turning on hyperthreading on the new 3.06 CPU will not give you 2×1.503GHz CPUs.
Hyperthreading = 2 simultaneous incoming threads. Not two processors. The second thread, if not properly formatted could get dropped because it relies on the other thread, or something similar.
So your performance gains could be really a loss (appx. 5% or so) to a slight gain (about 10% or so) at this time. Unless SP1 on XP fixed something, XP isn’t really hyperthread aware because it just thinks it’s a second CPU.
What is really entertaining is running perfmon or something some time during some benchmarks. One ‘cpu’ will be the real one, at like 85% util for example, and the ‘second’ cpu (the hyperthread) will be at 20%
1) The PC isn’t dual-processor, while it may win in the benchmarks, I still don’t think it is fair. Make it a dual processor computer and compare then. Don’t have to be Xeons though.
2) Athlon XP wasn’t part of this benchmark. Yeah yeah, it is common knowlegde Macs are way slower than PCs, we (at least I) want to know which is the fastest in its class.
3) Macs uses a consumer card, while the PC a professional card for the GPU…. If the Fire was swapped for a Radeon 9700, I wonder how fast it would be. But anyway, this is Apple’s fault anyway.
But the Fire is NOT made for gamers, as the article noted.
evidently, you are a moron.
trooth-teller, I don’t know if you were mentioning specifically the price quote I gave earlier in your most recent post; however, I should mention as pointed out in my thread that I went to the Apple Canada website for a price quote (your quote is in US dollars). I also removed the Superdrive since it was close to or over $1000 CAN.
90% of the professional graphic houses out there seem to STRONGLY disagree with your assessment of Apple’s ability in that field. For amateur and home digital video editing, iMovie and Final Cut Pro are unmatched by anything in the PC world.
When did Apple ever use the slogan “MHZ don’t matter”, or anything like it?
W: I am a big Mac fan and see no reason, for now, to move to the wintel. However I enjoyed reading this article and hope that many within Apple read this ASAP. Apple has a great OS, good hardware design (out side the CPU issues) and the best looking products on the market.
I beg to differ. The OS design is very hackish in nature. Plus as pointed out by some Omni guy, its ABI is made for x86, which gives it a huge performance cutback. Then they use XNU. It removes the “niceness” or idealism in the microkernel process, while hindering its overall performance. For what? So that the kernel won’t have to be recompile to add in new modules.
In fact, only Quartz stays high in my books. It is fast, efficient. But for a nice hardware architecture, not only is the processor is slow, the bandwidth limit is low, it uses consumer cards for professional systems (GeForce instead of Quaddro, Radeon instead of Fire), and heck, even the built-in sound card fairs worser than the average C-Media built in sound card.
If Open Firmware is the only thing nice about Apple’s hardware, I wouldn’t buy it (plus, there is a open source project making a Open Firmware-compatible BIOS-replacement, you can use that albeit Windows won’t work).
anon: Macs look really great, and from my understanding the operating system is top notch (If I could only afford a mac).
Having a nice looking UI makes it top notch?
ryan: I don’t think that people (consumers/business users) really care anymore though about MHz/GHz.
Strange you should note two markets Apple doesn’t fair all that well either. The consumer market – Apple is good in that market, but is loosing a lot of market share due to its premium. The business side, Apple has little to no market share in that market.
Ease of use for the business or corporate market doesn’t make sales. In fact, even though Linux is harder to use, businesses would probably move to Linux if it had the applications.
As for stablity, from what I hear from the three only people using Mac I know personally is that Macs aren’t all that stable.
Dustin: I like Apple, never owned one because of cost and the inablity to hack and tweak it
That was true in the OS 9 days, but isn’t so now.
Dustin: I would buy OSX Jaguar in a heartbeat if it ran on my pretty dual athlon MP machine.
Doubt that would happen. Apple may move to x86, but they are sticking to the hardware making business. They can’t move to being a software business fast, they have to do it slowly. And they have yet to take the first step, allowing clone makers.
Evan: Show me a single laptop that compares with the ibook from a PC maker. Thinkpads come close, but I can get a full flight worth of work done on my ibook, not half of one (thinkpad 310, t20, and 240 user).
Before the update, I can name plenty. After the update, give it 2-3 months have we would have a iBook killer. One thing though is portable x86 vs. portable Mac is very different to desktop x86 vs. desktop Mac. Portables for x86 aren’t as commodotize as desktop PCs.
Xserve is a low power, low heat, unix rack, which is tiny. Do you think companies were buying tualin p3 rack servers because of their performance over big heavy, hot, xeon systems?
If you want something in the price and performance range of a XServe, you would get something much smaller and much more heat effiecient than a XServe.
Evan: Can you play warcraft 3 on a sgi? Or Max Payne?
Wow, two games on the Mac and suddenly it would beat UNIX servers and workstations. Of course PCs can beat these Suns and SGIs in performance, but can a Mac? Doubt it.
Plus, i doubt the Mac would penetrate this market in the first place. Mac OS X was built for a different market. It looks like crap in the UNIX workstation market. Linux on x86 or IA64 have a higher chance of beating these machines than a Mac.
nnooiissee: I checked out Alienware’s offerings a while ago, and I didn’t get past the initial sticker shock to actually dig in and see what they offer. The things make my Mac look dirt cheap in comparison.
Well, looking at the processor speed and then the price, and then compare it with the Mac isn’t how it is suppose to be. Try digging more into it and you would see the benefits of it.
Eugenia: Apple lost a huge share, they are now at around 2% of the OS world, while they were at 3.2% last year at the same time.
This means they aren’t gaining users as fast as Linux or Windows, but it doesn’t mean users are leaving the Mac.
imaginereno: Apple should have bought BeOS. It would have gotten them to the current quality of OSX, about 3-4 years earlier, allowing them to stop the exodus from Mac sooner.
I doubt that. BeOS would need much more work to become OS X than OpenStep would. Sure, the porting process would be cut off, but things like built in Postscript support, native CMYK support, multiuser, etc.
Poor Richard: 2) FCP is better than after effects, anyway
The same way SCSI is better than Ethernet? Gawd, you whole message become null and void with that sentence.
It and Dell are about the only companies selling anything right now in this slump. You DO know that Apple is the third largest selling computer brand in the world, don’t you?
Why are you people bickering about Mac vs. PC stuff? The world of computing needs diversity, innovation and competition. The loss of Be was a blow to this. The fact that Apple is around makes a difference. They need a processor solution. Why don’t we talk about that instead of what platform runs Warcraft best?
Actually, the PC was intended to be a closed system too. IBM was never going to allow clone manufacturers. Only reverse engineering by Compac changed this. Read your history.
“trooth-teller, I don’t know if you were mentioning specifically the price quote I gave earlier in your most recent post; however, I should mention as pointed out in my thread that I went to the Apple Canada website for a price quote (your quote is in US dollars). I also removed the Superdrive since it was close to or over $1000 CAN.”
My Quote is still (US dollars or no) about 3 grand cheaper than the competing Apple product. And judging by the benchmarks noted in this article, a competing Apple product that is far slower.
I am far from a Wintel suckup. Believe me. If you met me in person you would know. But everytime the Apple folks open their mouths Steves patented “reality distortion field” takes over.
READ: How the hell can 3500 bucks be cheaper then 700 bucks? Only in some alternate universe where logic does not reign.
The above poster was 100% correct. Apple has no more control over the chip manufacturer than any other PC manufacturer.