Battle Royal: Mac Vs. PC

[Castor Troy]

"It's the person who makes the videos, not the computer" -Aluminum Studios

I'd still be making videos on my P1 133 if I still had it.

[Unit 423]

Wow - in all the other threads on PC vs. Mac that I've read, I have never heard such a well thought out response before. Bravo, dwchang.

By the way, here's a webcomic that addresses the Mac switch commercials. This is not posted for commentary, but rather for the sake of humor and how personal this issue becomes for some people.

[dwchang]

Wow - in all the other threads on PC vs. Mac that I've read, I have never heard such a well thought out response before. Bravo, dwchang.

Thanks!

I do have a degree in Computer/Electrical Engineering from the #2 Unviersity in this, so I better know what I'm talking about . Sorry if that sounds like bragging.

Either way, thanks! I pride myself on *trying* to be helpful and present good, fact-supported arguments.

[alternatefutures]

Actually, as far as I know, "more fair benchmarks" have not been done as the G5 ain't actually out yet. The results were gleened from comparing Apple's numbers to numbers Dell, Intel, HP and others reported to SPEC. I think Apple's problem was they were looking for an unoptimized playing field (at least at first glance) and used the common misconception that using the same compiler on different architechtures eliminates a variable, and so I suspect not only did they screw over the Intel chip, but also their own (to what degree, I'm not sure). All reports of the G5's speed, fast or slow, should be taken with a grain of salt. The fact is, we really don't know at this point, we only have what Apple's released, which ain't much. Again, wait for people to get their hands on the thing before coming to a conclusion.

WhereNext: Back when the G4 was the high-end of Macs, you could buy a Dell with Avid Xpress Pro for the same price as a Mac with FCP, gaining more performance and a better NLE. Vegas 4.0 is no slouch either, and it looks as though Premiere Pro is a good start for Adobe catching up to FCP with vastly improved audio, color correction, and motion tools (provided it's stable, considering it's supposidly rebuilt from the ground up, I would hope so). In fact, going with a Mac now is risky, as you only have two players in the NLE arena there; Apple and Avid (Adobe didn't want to go through the expense of porting Premiere Pro), and Avid's attitude is along the lines of "Sure, you can run our stuff on a Mac, but why would you want to when you can put them on a PC?" So it's highly likely that FCP and FCP Express may be your only options on the platform in the near future, in which case, Apple's got you by the balls. Anyway, in the software arena it's looking like the differences between NLEs are far smaller than they were only a year ago, so it's simply a matter of which one you feel more comfortable with, as they all perform roughly the same.

[dwchang]

Actually, as far as I know, "more fair benchmarks" have not been done as the G5 ain't actually out yet. The results were gleened from comparing Apple's numbers to numbers Dell, Intel, HP and others reported to SPEC. I think Apple's problem was they were looking for an unoptimized playing field (at least at first glance) and used the common misconception that using the same compiler on different architechtures eliminates a variable, and so I suspect not only did they screw over the Intel chip, but also their own (to what degree, I'm not sure). All reports of the G5's speed, fast or slow, should be taken with a grain of salt. The fact is, we really don't know at this point, we only have what Apple's released, which ain't much. Again, wait for people to get their hands on the thing before coming to a conclusion.

I've already read a number of thorough reviews on sites like Ars Technica (fairly technical) and links have been floating around the Inquirer and Slashdot for like 2 weeks. Others have bench-marked it which is why Apple was caught red-handed. As for the compiler, that's not all that was changed. As I stated in my reply (which came from the article I posted), Apple disabled things on the x86 sided and enabled things on their end with extra libraries and so on. This is quite a bit more than just a compiler. In fact, they even show the results when these things are turned off and both the current P4 and Athlon smoke it.

Let's not even get into later in Q3 when the Athlon 64 and Intel Prescott will be released. These are both major steps up for our respective companies and the G5 has to compete with it till the next architecture revision (which is quite a few years off). From what I've heard Prescott and Athlon 64 wlll be fairly close to each other (hopefully AMD will pull ahead ...not in Mhz, but performance), but the G5 will once again lag behind.

I will say this though, I think the G5 is a major step for Apple and did close the gap. Dumping Motorolla and going with IBM's processor was a wise decision.

As I said earlier though, it all comes down to what you're comfortable with. If you can't use FCP, it's kind of pointless to buy an insanely fast computer and efficient software when you can't efficiently use it. This was brought up by NightOwl and is the bottom-line. We can argue about speed and performance till the cows come home..and believe me I'm sure Apple and PC people would.

[madmallard]

so the athlon 64 is basically going to be like every other cpu put out?

in the sense that all x86 start with very basic 8086 instructions and then kick into high gear, the althon 64 will still operate x86 programs?

[dwchang]

so the athlon 64 is basically going to be like every other cpu put out?

in the sense that all x86 start with very basic 8086 instructions and then kick into high gear, the althon 64 will still operate x86 programs?

The Athlon 64 was designed to be an x86-64 processor with both 64-bit and 32-bit capabilities. As many of you know, Intel's "Itanium" processor has VERY poor 32-bit capabilities. Since the industry has not fully adopted 64-bit as standard (not even close) for things like databases and so on, AMD decided to create a CPU with good (hell, even better than current Athlon) 32-bit support (for current things) and good 64-bit processing (for the future). It was designed from our fundamental belief of "Customer centric innovation."

Basically, we aren't forcing you to go to 64-bit processing (which many have argued was what Intel was *trying* to do with it's considerable weight). Since you have both capabilities, you could easily stay with your current 32-bit software and once you had the money, resources and needs for 64-bit computing, you could do so without buying new processors. This is what our customers said they wanted and thus, this is what we delivered.

Now this has to do with Big Business and servers (the Opteron Line), but it also follows with the Athlon 64 (the consumer line). 64-bit computing has not taken off yet. Your programs are still programmed with 32-bits in mind. HOWEVER, when 64-bit computing *does* take off (and it will be soon since Microsoft will release a 64-bit Windows soon), you can keep your current Athlon 64 processor and it will function the same (to you), but in fact it's now operating in 64-bit mode.

So the short answer to your question is, yes it can still run x86 software. The Itanium cannot, but that is more for servers. In terms of comparing Intel and AMD, basically the Athlon 64 is just our next Athlon just like how Intel releases more and more P4's. It's just that this has more stuff on it . However, let me re-iterate that to you, the user, it will be the same since it *can* operate in 32-bit mode. And once programs are in 64-bit, the only difference you will see is improved performance (since I *assume* 64-bit software will be more efficient).

I hope this all makes sense.

[milatchi]

click

This is a discussion on the mac and pc I had, I am a mac user by the way.
Apple clearly has the better operating system(MacOSX doesn't crash nearly as much as Windows) but I am skeptical about their hardware but we will see how things turn out..[/url]

[alternatefutures]

The main reason OS-X doesn't crash as much as Win XP is because 99.9% of all Macs are manufactured by Apple and there is a vastly limited number of hardware options for it. If OS-X was released for the x86 platform, where you have dozens and dozens of bargain basement builders putting together systems with low quality RAM plus legions of manufactures making peripherals with vastly varying quality standards, you'd find OS-X crashed just about as frequently as XP. Plus, I have a theory that system stability is affected by pheromones. There are many Mac users who have x86 based-systems crash on them an inordinate ammount of time, then you have people like me, who can bring an entire room full of G4s to crashing halt just by stepping in the door. It's been documented, you DO NOT want me anywhere near your Mac or bad things WILL happen to it. I have irrepairably damaged some Macs just by using the basic text editor. Meanwhile, my 98SE system is highly stable. Thus, I believe there exist such things as Macintosh and x86 pheromones which determine the stability a user will experiance. Sure, laugh now, but when I win the Nobel Prize for my discovery I'll be over to gloat.

[dwchang]

The main reason OS-X doesn't crash as much as Win XP is because 99.9% of all Macs are manufactured by Apple and there is a vastly limited number of hardware options for it. If OS-X was released for the x86 platform, where you have dozens and dozens of bargain basement builders putting together systems with low quality RAM plus legions of manufactures making peripherals with vastly varying quality standards, you'd find OS-X crashed just about as frequently as XP. Plus, I have a theory that system stability is affected by pheromones. There are many Mac users who have x86 based-systems crash on them an inordinate ammount of time, then you have people like me, who can bring an entire room full of G4s to crashing halt just by stepping in the door. It's been documented, you DO NOT want me anywhere near your Mac or bad things WILL happen to it. I have irrepairably damaged some Macs just by using the basic text editor. Meanwhile, my 98SE system is highly stable. Thus, I believe there exist such things as Macintosh and x86 pheromones which determine the stability a user will experiance. Sure, laugh now, but when I win the Nobel Prize for my discovery I'll be over to gloat.

Interesting theory .

As for the "serious" part, alternatefutures is right. Apple limits itself in hardware (as in you can *only* buy from them..which leads to price inflation) and thus you can't truly compare the two 1:1. One might find it advantageous, but again...price inflation and generally not as high-performance parts.

At the same time, I'm sure you will agree though that Windows does have it's fair share of problems. I have a number of friends who have worked for Microsoft and the core Windows kernel has quite a few memory problems inside of it. In fact, some of these are basic things like not de-allocating memory properly and so on. However, I will be the first to admit that it is getting better. Ever since moving to an NT kernel (or some variation), I have had 10x less crashes and so on. So...hopefully they'll continue down this way.

Regardless, I'll stick with my x86/PC since I am more familiary with it, it has more software I want and I can buy parts for reasonable prices (and have a choice).