Battle Royal: Mac Vs. PC

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 12:55 pm

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 · Post by **dwchang** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 1:57 pm

sixstop wrote: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 · Post by **milatchi** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:17 am

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 · Post by **alternatefutures** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:42 am

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 · Post by **dwchang** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:16 am

alternatefutures wrote: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).

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:41 am

And I'm sure it doesn't hurt you can occasionally get kick-ass processors most of us likely haven't heard of yet to play with...

You would make for an amusing 'switch' commercial, though. "I'm Daniel Chang, and I work for American Microdevices."

For the foreseable future, I'll be sticking with a PC (non-Apple PC, to be completely correct about it) simply because the jump to the Mac (both in the cost of the computer and all-new software) is prohibitively expensive in our current financial situation. If I ever get the opportunity (and funding) to do any more professional work though, I'll likely get a nice Mac to do it on. This of course means I'll be using my PC for a loooong time.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:45 am

Ashyukun wrote:You would make for an amusing 'switch' commercial, though. "I'm Daniel Chang, and I work for American Microdevices."

Grrr....

Advanced Micro Devices

Ashyukun · Post by **Ashyukun** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 12:02 pm

Heh. Oops, sorry.

milatchi · Post by **milatchi** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:15 pm

I don't really think that bargain basement hardware has that much to do with Windows crashing as often as it does. Not everything for the Mac is OEM Apple stuff. My RAM is not manufactured by apple or anything. I have 128mb of Samsung RAM and 512 of Joe Blow's RAM I also have a MIDIMan 1296 Audio card (again not manufactured by apple) The impression that apple is a completely closed hardware architecture is not true. Don't get me wrong Apple is pretty proprietary Ever since the "Clone Wars"(The period from about 93-97 when Macintosh Clones were made and hurt apple profits) but we have processor/processor upgrades, Media Drives, memory, Video, all of which can be bought circumventing apple.
Although it bothers me that "ATI" is the only retail manufacturer of Macintosh video cards ("nVIDIA" only does OEM through Apple) but besides "ATI" and "nVIDIA" who else is their really?

I have seen many a PC clone go bad *cough* "Magitronic" because of hardware but I don't think this is why Windows crashes like it does.

ongakuka · Post by **ongakuka** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:45 pm

Larg0 wrote:Macs = Better editing software and faster (with the G5).

PCs = Better encoding software and cheaper.

So long,
Larg0

ps. I choose Macs. I love mine.

Macs have just as good (if not better) encoding software, it's just it costs $$$ vs. the freebie stuff/gpl things you can get for PC :/

DVD Studio Pro mpeg2 encoder, Divx 5.06 Pro (5.06 actually made divx creation worthwhile!), Sorenson..

the free ffmpegX is nice if you do mpeg1/2 stuff (not as good as DVDSP, or tmpgenc), but sucks for divx. The divx/mp3 encoder sucks. Divx.com's version w/ mp3 encoder is very nice.

--

dwchang: HT-disabled, underscored g4/amd performance, etc..

Disputed benchmarks everyone's referring to:
http://www.haxial.com/spls-soapbox/apple-powermac-G5/

This is the Apple response:
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/06/2 ... 26&tid=181

And here's a NASA benchmark of the g5:
http://members.cox.net/craig.hunter/g5/
*keep in mind that all systems are utilizing a single cpu, even if the system has 2*

I don't consider myself a Mac zealot - I'll use whatever performs the best w/ the minimum of headache and hassle; at the moment and in my situation, that's a Mac.

Nice to see a significant speed increase over my existing dual 1ghz