How long before pc's reach Apple performance

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pm

Elite Member Mobile Devices
Jan 25, 2000
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I mentioned that in the last paragraph of my first post. I have a suspicion that Apple/IBM/Motorola are no longer publishing new Spec scores because the scores are not competitive. Why publish benchmark results that make your systems look bad?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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I like Macs, and have used some throughout the years. But for a reasonably priced machine, I don't think a Mac has EVER been as fast as a PC in real life use.

And the first Mac I tried was the very first monochrome one. The benefits of the earlier Macs was ease of use, but they were A LOT slower than DOS machines (obviously). When GUIs came around for Microsoft in a big way, the Mac GUI was better, but not really faster. And for the past several years, if you're talking games, a fast PC completely blows away any OS 9 based machine (not to mention that OS 9 is unstable). The PowerPC chips seem extremely fast, but the machine as a whole has never been stellar for speed, except for rare programs optimized for them. In fact, if you took a P4 1.4 and ran it against the fastest G4 using ALL of the Photoshop filters, I betcha the P4 would win on average. However, for some the P4 would suck @ss compared to the G4.

If someone is buying a G4 for speed, then s/he is fooling him/herself, unless the pocketbook is very deep. One buys a Mac for the GUI and the available software, features, and for personal preference.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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Interesting graph at Macevolution: For integer a PIII 550 beats a G4 450. I wonder if there is a similar FP graph somewhere.

P.S. pm, checked out your rig...

What? No P4? No Rambus? Heheh. :)

And I take it you don't like overclocking much... "933@933" ;) Hmmm... I wonder what your bosses would say if you did...
 

Dameon

Banned
Oct 11, 1999
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Quake III Runs on Both Macs and PC's... ask your bud what FPS he gets with his wonderful ATI vide card. (ha!)
 

Noriaki

Lifer
Jun 3, 2000
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<< Hmmm... I wonder what your bosses would say if you did... >>

Lol obviously not much if he gets away with using a Via chipset ;) Heheh sorry PM I'm just kidding :)
 

Galadala

Member
Nov 9, 2000
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All of you have neglected to mention one fatal Mac flaw...

Macs, essentially, cannot run more than one program at a time. Their OS is not Multi-Tasking like PCs using Windows ME for instance. Yes, you can have more than one program open, but only one program is actually doing something at the time.

If you check on this you will notice that it is true. Until Mac OS 10 is released, this will not be corrected.
 

A2KLAU

Golden Member
Nov 11, 2000
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Depends! Graphics and stuf it will take some time but with games and stuff the PC went past the Apples ages ago!
 

Noriaki

Lifer
Jun 3, 2000
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Are you sure Galadala? I thought MacOS uses Co-operative multitasking, inferior to Pre-emptive, but it is still multitasking more or less....

Are you sure it's not multitasking at all? I could be wrong easily enough.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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Well, I dunno if it's partially the software's fault, but if you run OGR on a slow OS 8 machine (7600/120), that machine essentially is useless for everything else. Yes, it CAN multitask, but it's slooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. (It's not just the hardware, since it runs Microsoft IE 5.0 for Mac just fine if nothing is running in the background.) On the other hand, there is no problem running OGR on a slow Pentium with NT.

I haven't tried OGR on OS 9, but I would imagine it to be similar (although you wouldn't be running OS 9 on a very slow Mac). However, people do report they can run OGR on OS 9 with a G3 iMac without a humungous hit (although it's still noticeable). On a PC, it is virtually undetectable, although contrary to popular belief there is a slight but measurable speed hit, especially with some programs.

All of these problems should be eliminated with OS X, but OS X will only run on the newest machines.
 

pm

Elite Member Mobile Devices
Jan 25, 2000
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<< What? No P4? No Rambus? Heheh. :) >>


I'm thinking some time in March or April. Intel is giving all it's employees free PC's and there's an $200 upgrade option to a 1.4GHz Pentium IV over the 1GHz Pentium III. For $200, I think I'll probably make the jump (the $200 also swaps Win2k for WinME and includes a top-of-the-line HP CD-RW).

As far as Rambus, I haven't been very impressed with Direct RDRAM technology. When I first saw a demo of it back in 1996, I thought it sounded great, but this has been one of those cases where my initial impression was good and since then my opinion has slid down. Still, it's just a technology not some form of ideology. If Intel will give me a Pentium 4 and 128MB of RDRAM, then I'll consider it.



<< And I take it you don't like overclocking much... &quot;933@933&quot; ;) Hmmm... I wonder what your bosses would say if you did... >>


I use my system for working from home. Speed is not essential (although I do throw around some pretty intensive integer apps occassionally), but stability is. Downtime on my home system is a very bad thing. I would imagine that Anand would never consider overclocking the system that runs this place. It's simply a poor trade-off when reliability is more essential than raw speed.


Back on topic, I was under the impression that MacOS 8 could multitask, just not very well.
 

The Wildcard

Platinum Member
Oct 31, 1999
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Hahaha, a benchmark for both apple and pc, lol, the only one Apple can come up with is a patehtic photoshop filter, lol.
 

Syborg1211

Diamond Member
Jul 29, 2000
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One of the only reasons I know people to buy Macs for nowadays is because it matches their room decor(they are girls of course).
 

PowerJoe

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
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The reason Photoshop runs better on Macs is because Adobe invests more on PowerPC optimizations than on P3/Athlon ones. If someone was to write SSE/SSE2-enabled filters for Photoshop, I believe the picutre would change... Sounds like a job cut out for Intel's compiler division.

-PJ
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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<< I use my system for working from home. Speed is not essential (although I do throw around some pretty intensive integer apps occassionally), but stability is. Downtime on my home system is a very bad thing. I would imagine that Anand would never consider overclocking the system that runs this place. It's simply a poor trade-off when reliability is more essential than raw speed. >>

Heh. I hear ya. Ironically, my most stable computer system EVER is my Celly 533A at 880 (65% overclocked). I know the CPU is stable (fine up to 920+ MHz), but it was always the OS that did me in.


<< I was under the impression that MacOS 8 could multitask, just not very well. >>

Yeah like I said on a slow Mac, OS 8 can multitask, but the &quot;not very well&quot; part is PAINFULLY obvious. Don't ask me why but that's just my own personal observation.
 

DABANSHEE

Banned
Dec 8, 1999
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&quot;The reason Photoshop runs better on Macs is because Adobe invests more on PowerPC optimizations than on P3/Athlon ones. If someone was to write SSE/SSE2-enabled filters for Photoshop, I believe the picutre would change... Sounds like a job cut out for Intel's compiler division.&quot;

Plus the G4 has a 1MB L2 backside cache (&amp; I read that the new ones that are coming will have a tri-level cache - on chip L1 &amp; L2 cache &amp; a L3 backside cache, although I don't know if the L3 cache will run a FSB speed like the L3 motherboard cache on AMDK6-3 super 7 systems, or if it will run at 1/2 the CPU speed like the backside L2 cache that the P2 &amp; the Athlon classic had) &amp; photoshop really loves big caches.

Still, I think on average, on a clock for clock basis the G4 beats the K7, P3 &amp; P4, but once rampability &amp; price are facted in the K7 &amp; P3 beat it for dead.

 

Modus

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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<< certain things? what it's 3 opp coded photoshop filters and being in fancy cases? >>

LOL :D

Anyways, the reason there aren't many serious cross-platform benchmarks between Macs and PC's is simple: Apple has no incentive to write one and get their ass handed to them, and Wintel sees so point preaching to the largely coverted public.

<< Steve Jobbs reality distortion field (tm) >>

LOL :D

Modus
 

Galadala

Member
Nov 9, 2000
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<< MacOS uses Co-operative multitasking, inferior to Pre-emptive, but it is still multitasking more or less.... >>



Here lies a definition of coopertaive multitasking:

Multitasking Explanation

The Mac OS has remained essentially the same since its original development, at least in terms of the way it handles multiple programs &quot;running&quot; at the same time. Granted it is true that the Mac OS can allow two programs to exist in memory at the same time and give the user the ability to switch between them, however it does not allow the OS to force the application to relinquish control. This leads to two very important points:

1. The operating system cannot control a program's operation and thus it is possible for it to take control of the CPU and force the OS to terminate the application. This means that the application is not properly written and does not &quot;cooperate&quot; wtih the other applications it can lead to problems.

2. Only one program can &quot;appear&quot; to execute at a time, where as OS's based on preemptive multitasking can make it appear as if more that one program is executing at the same time, by forcable switching between them very quickly (100's of times a second).

Basically Mac OS is just a &quot;pretty&quot; version of Windows 3.x, and we ALL know what that was like...
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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Have searched and still no sign of any comparisons between current intel/amd chips compared to apple. I would have expected to get something on the apple site when searching for amd or intel, perhaps they have moved on too quickly or apple and as such apple want to hide this from the consumer.