Are Macs *THAT* much better for editing over the PC?

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: malak
I'm a freak about my desktop. I can't have any icons on it at all. Everything has to match. My winamp skin is exactly like my toolbar. I make popup menu's that hold all my favorite apps in them for easy access. I couldn't live without things the way they are.

I hate stuff being on my desktop too. Just like my real desk, I only use it to hold stuff until I can put it away where it belongs.

Pic

Anyway, I'd love to use a dual G5 just to try it. The last Mac I used had OS8 or something on it. It was an absolutely horrible work experience (it made me late for class, kept crashing while it was printing). OSX seems pretty neat.

 

[imported_kwshaw1]

You can't rate computer speed by CPU speed alone. There are multiple optimizations for each CPU that can greatly change performance. If this wasn't the case, tell me how a Athlon 64 at 2.6GHz can out-perform the latest 3.6GHz+ Intel CPU's.

Depending on what comparisons you look at, the answer is that it doesn't. Like I've said several times, clock speed isn't everything...but it does matter!

http://www20.tomshardware.com/...221/cpu_charts-18.html

 

[thirdlegstump]

Damn some people still don't get my 24/7 sarcasm character. Oh well. I even made a thread awhile ago that stated never to take me very seriously.

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: kwshaw1

You can't rate computer speed by CPU speed alone. There are multiple optimizations for each CPU that can greatly change performance. If this wasn't the case, tell me how a Athlon 64 at 2.6GHz can out-perform the latest 3.6GHz+ Intel CPU's.

Depending on what comparisons you look at, the answer is that it doesn't. Like I've said several times, clock speed isn't everything...but it does matter!

http://www20.tomshardware.com/...221/cpu_charts-18.html

Toms Hardware = the most biased site out there (for Intel)

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Damn some people still don't get my 24/7 sarcasm character. Oh well. I even made a thread awhile ago that stated never to take me very seriously.

LOL, okay, sorry about that .

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Originally posted by: kwshaw1

You can't rate computer speed by CPU speed alone. There are multiple optimizations for each CPU that can greatly change performance. If this wasn't the case, tell me how a Athlon 64 at 2.6GHz can out-perform the latest 3.6GHz+ Intel CPU's.

Depending on what comparisons you look at, the answer is that it doesn't. Like I've said several times, clock speed isn't everything...but it does matter!

http://www20.tomshardware.com/...221/cpu_charts-18.html

Not trying to start anything kwshaw, but I was the one that had to tell you that clock speed isnt the most important part of the processor. I had to tell you several times.

 

[imported_kwshaw1]

Not trying to start anything kwshaw, but I was the one that had to tell you that clock speed isnt the most important part of the processor. I had to tell you several times.

You don't know anything about me if you think I didn't know that before you said it, but I've never seen you acknowledge that clock speed actually does make a difference. Enough already on this point.

Regarding the comment someone made about Tom's Hardware being biased toward Intel, that's funny considering they were firmly on AMD's side back when they were first making progress with the Athlon processor design, and have recently continued to make very positive statements in AMD's favor. But unlike some people they actually test all this using real hardware and software and report their results, and arguably more thoroughly than almost anyone else. You can believe their results or not, but they're published with all the details so you can assess for yourself exactly what they did. I've heard claims that Tom's Hardware is blatantly AMD-biased, so I guess it depends who you ask.

 

[hopejr]

I saw some AMD ads at the bottom of that Tom's Hardware page too. Interesting.

I've been away for a week, and come back to find people still posting to this thread. ROFL!!!

 

[SLCentral]

Originally posted by: kwshaw1

Not trying to start anything kwshaw, but I was the one that had to tell you that clock speed isnt the most important part of the processor. I had to tell you several times.

You don't know anything about me if you think I didn't know that before you said it, but I've never seen you acknowledge that clock speed actually does make a difference. Enough already on this point.

Regarding the comment someone made about Tom's Hardware being biased toward Intel, that's funny considering they were firmly on AMD's side back when they were first making progress with the Athlon processor design, and have recently continued to make very positive statements in AMD's favor. But unlike some people they actually test all this using real hardware and software and report their results, and arguably more thoroughly than almost anyone else. You can believe their results or not, but they're published with all the details so you can assess for yourself exactly what they did. I've heard claims that Tom's Hardware is blatantly AMD-biased, so I guess it depends who you ask.

Regarding the comparison between Intel and AMD, every other website/magazine I've seen gives the upper hand to AMD, including Maximum PC's latest issue.

 

[Dennis Travis]

hopejr, Amazing isn't it?

On the Toms Hardware subject, I know in the past I have seen the P4 score way different at Toms than all the other good sites. I am wondering if Tom does slant the results a bit due to what I have seen there and here on Anands. I take what Anand and his team say over most sites as I know Anand is a fair person and does in no way take bribes. Even in the few benches, mostly Video, where the top Intel is faster it's so close. It still proves that Ghz all by itself does not mean everything. It depends on the rest of the design of the CPU. And Synthetic Benchmarks really don't mean a lot.

 

[thirdlegstump]

It's all in the joint bus between the CPU and the monitor. If it's not well designed, then the signal never reaches the end user quickly enough resulting in perceivably slower performance. Because of the design of the Mac where graphics is literally a billion times stronger, it is perceptively faster because the results are drawn to the user much quicker than the Wintel platform. You cannot argue this in any way.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

You don't know anything about me if you think I didn't know that before you said it, but I've never seen you acknowledge that clock speed actually does make a difference. Enough already on this point.

Obviously, you dont know what I am talking about. You said:

Depending on what comparisons you look at, the answer is that it doesn't. Like I've said several times, clock speed isn't everything...but it does matter!

You did not say "several" times that clock speed isnt everything. If you go back and read your posts, you are acting like clock speed is everything. I am the one that was telling you clock speed isnt everything, but you let this fly over your head every time I said it. I know clock speed is important, but when someone goes around acting like clock speed is the only important thing about the processor, just like the way you were acting in your posts, I will tell you that it is not true. Because it isnt. If you would like me to quote what you said, acting like its the most important thing of the processor, and my responses telling you that its not, I will be MORE than happy to.

 

[imported_kwshaw1]

You did not say "several" times that clock speed isnt everything. If you go back and read your posts, you are acting like clock speed is everything. I am the one that was telling you clock speed isnt everything, but you let this fly over your head every time I said it.

Okay, I don't have time to go back and read all our posts word for word to see who said what. I did consistently try to make the point that today's 3+ GHz PC laptops will easily run circles around a 1.5 GHz G4 Apple laptop for most video production tasks, based on a wide range of published benchmark comparisons, first-hand user reports and so on. You've insisted on interpreting my remarks to be based on blind faith in the benefits of a high clock rate, which is apparently a pet peeve of yours. That's fine with me if you want to go on beating that drum, but it isn't going to change the fact that today's Apple laptops are lagging in performance compared to PC alternatives. For desktops it's arguably a closer comparison, but there again the evidence is in favor of the fastest PCs...some of which just happen to have about a 50% clock rate advantage. My focus is not as much on the clock rate as it is on performance results, but there is often a correlation between the two.

I'm going to do my best to refrain from commenting further on this point, so if you want to get your last shot in feel free to do so. I think we all know that this isn't what really matters for most people when it comes to comparing Macs and PCs for video production anyway, and we've pretty much beat that topic to death.

Peace.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Originally posted by: kwshaw1

You did not say "several" times that clock speed isnt everything. If you go back and read your posts, you are acting like clock speed is everything. I am the one that was telling you clock speed isnt everything, but you let this fly over your head every time I said it.

Okay, I don't have time to go back and read all our posts word for word to see who said what. I did consistently try to make the point that today's 3+ GHz PC laptops will easily run circles around a 1.5 GHz G4 Apple laptop for most video production tasks, based on a wide range of published benchmark comparisons, first-hand user reports and so on. You've insisted on interpreting my remarks to be based on blind faith in the benefits of a high clock rate, which is apparently a pet peeve of yours. That's fine with me if you want to go on beating that drum, but it isn't going to change the fact that today's Apple laptops are lagging in performance compared to PC alternatives. For desktops it's arguably a closer comparison, but there again the evidence is in favor of the fastest PCs...some of which just happen to have about a 50% clock rate advantage. My focus is not as much on the clock rate as it is on performance results, but there is often a correlation between the two.

I'm going to do my best to refrain from commenting further on this point, so if you want to get your last shot in feel free to do so. I think we all know that this isn't what really matters for most people when it comes to comparing Macs and PCs for video production anyway, and we've pretty much beat that topic to death.

Peace.

Can I ask you why you bought Apple's laptops into this? Thats has nothing to do with what I was talking about, nor did I bring up anything about video editing. You are missing what I am talking about. You said that you said "several" times clock speed isnt the most important thing of the processor. You didnt say this at all. In almost all of your posts, you were implying that clock speed is the most important part of the processor. And I was telling you it wasnt true, and you let it fly over your head. All you were thinking of was the clock speed, nothing else. In your post, and I quote:

Like I've said several times, clock speed isn't everything...but it does matter!

You never said this to begin with. I was the one who told you that clock speed isnt everything several times, and you disregarded it. I corrected you, by telling you I was the one who told you several times that clock speed isnt everything, and apparently, it ticked you off.

You've insisted on interpreting my remarks to be based on blind faith in the benefits of a high clock rate, which is apparently a pet peeve of yours.

All of your other posts consisted of thinking clock speed was everything. So it isnt blind faith, because I can prove it. If you would like me to, I will go back to the beginning of when you began posting, and quote everything you said, thinking that clock speed was everything. And I will quote my responses to them, telling you clock speed wasnt everything, and you will see that you disregarded my response everytime.

 

[halfadder]

Looking at the Latest PS7Bench results from Ars you can pretty clearly see that even a 1.25 and 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 doesn't do too well... on par with a 1.6 GHz P-M Dell D800 and slightly slower than a 1.6 GHz P-M IBM T40. (Still, it's not toooo horrible, considering how efficent and powerful the Pentium-M is at its low clockspeed).

But based on my own experience with my 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4, I can tell you that it does indeed work very well with iMovie and iDVD for editing and burning my home videos. And that's with my 4200 RPM drive! But keep in mind that each DV stream only requires 3.125 MBytes/sec.

I can also tell you that Photoshop CS. zooms on this PowerBook for the light duty home photos (3.2 and 5 Mpixel) and web resolution (800x600) jpegs I work with. Even though a dual 2.5 GHz G5 benchmarks more than 3x faster than my PowerBook at Photoshop, I probably wouldn't notice a huge difference because each of the filters I work with generally takes less than 1 second to complete anyway, many occur instantly.

For what little gaming I do on my PowerBook, I have also found it to be more than satasfactory. X-Plane, Enigmo, World of Warcarft, Halo, and UT2004 all work great, especially after the OpenGL updates in Mac OS X 10.3.7. (But gaming is something I generally do on my desktop PCs. Gotta have my HL2 and Doom3! And gotta have real desktop performance on a sweet 21" CRT!)

Basiclly, I feel that a 15" or 17" PowerBook probably offers far more power than most of its users would currently need. The fit and finish, in my opinion, are worth the cost. As a PC user, I bought mine out of curiosity and after being discouraged by most of the plastic PC notebooks I tried. Using an Apple has been a learning experience, but I have really enjoyed it and I would buy another PowerBook in the future, even at the current price. But I'm also a hardware geek and I wish IBM and Apple would get the G5 into the book ASAP! And my next purchase will be an updated PC first!

 

[hopejr]

Thin Lizzy: CALM DOWN!!!!! I also want to point out that you miss read the kwshaw1's last post. It wasn't about you having blind faith, but that you were saying that kwshaw1 was using blind faith.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Originally posted by: hopejr
Thin Lizzy: CALM DOWN!!!!! I also want to point out that you miss read the kwshaw1's last post. It wasn't about you having blind faith, but that you were saying that kwshaw1 was using blind faith.

I apologize. I act stupid most of the time.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: DV8
<< you have to hand it to MAC tho....they are inovators in just about everything PC's are playing catch up....they usually set the standards when it comes to creativity....look at the whole color thing with the G4's and now the clean lookin ipods and G5's....

You got to be kidding me.
The last years, Apple would still other companies tech and announce it as their own.
MS is way more innovative than apple.

 

[hopejr]

So Firewire, USB and the iPod were stolen, hey?

 

[hopejr]

NEWS FLASH:

iMovie HD and Final Cut Express HD are now out, and allow ppl to import and edit HDV straight from cameras in various widescreen formats too, without all this stupid conversion stuff that was necessary in the past. I think Macs are catching up again!!! Yippee!!!

http://www.apple.com.au/ilife/

http://www.apple.com.au/finalcutexpress/

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Cool! Thanks for the links. Very interesting.

 

[imported_kwshaw1]

Movie HD and Final Cut Express HD are now out, and allow ppl to import and edit HDV straight from cameras in various widescreen formats too, without all this stupid conversion stuff that was necessary in the past.

That's very good news for Mac users, and I'm actually glad to hear it. But just for the record, a report on this at www.hdforindies.com indicates that Apple is in fact converting to an intermediate codec:

"The HDV is read in from the tape in real time, but then it is transcoded to an all i-frame intermediate codec. The reason for this is that within the HDV data structure, one "clean and whole" frame is recorded, then the next 15 frames are recorded as changes from the previous frame. So if you want to know what a frame looks like that is 12 frames after an I-frame, you have to calculate what the prior 12 frames looked like going back to that I-frame. Time consuming and problematic. So the usual fix for this is to transcode to a different codec....When you want to go back out to HDV, you have to transcode BACK to HDV from the intermediate codec. "

Personally I'd say it's good that Apple is using this approach, because editing native HDV files is very processor intensive and hence reduces editing performance.

What's strange about this is that there's no official word yet on support for HDV in FCP-HD, which is making people who own that software a little peeved. Hopefully that will be remedied soon.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

I should be coming. Just scroll all the way down on this link and it says HDV support is coming.

 

[imported_kwshaw1]

All of your other posts consisted of thinking clock speed was everything.

For what it's worth, it honestly wasn't my intention to imply that clock speed is everything, so if I gave that impression then I wasn't writing my posts clearly. But it is definitely true that clock speed is one important factor in computer performance, and you must surely know that.

This is particularly an issue right now for laptops, which is why I kept mentioning them as one area where PCs have an advantage over Macs for video editing. It's not just because PC laptops have more than twice the clock rate of Apple laptops that they have a performance advantage, but it is a big part of the reason. Apple's processor design may help make up some of the difference in some situations, but not enough to overcome the full generational gap between Apple laptop processors and PC laptop processors. This doesn't mean you can't do good video editing on Apple laptops, but at least for now you can do certain things better on PC laptops. We'll get a better sense soon just how the two platforms compare for portable HDV editing, and that'll be about as good a test as we can get whether Apple can hold its own in practical terms without a G5 laptop.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
MS is way more innovative than apple.

Microsoft sells more money worth of product in 5 days than Apple does all year. They have the money and resources to innovate just as much as anyone else.

Here's what bugs me though, Microsoft has been making the XBOX for many years now. And they've been making mice and keyboards for decades. So why didn't they come out with a PC version of something that looks like the Mac Mini?? They could have done it just like the XBOX: initially sell it at a slight loss but make back the money on software sales (MS Office, MS Money, etc). After production and sales are up, they would break even, and after awhile they would profit. They had the resources to do this 2 years ago and yet they let Apple beat them to it?

I want my paperback book size $250 Microsoft PC.