I need Mac vs. PC benchmarks!

[Jumpem]

My roomate has become a complete Mac zealot. He keeps going on and on about how his 733mhz G4 is faster than a Pentium4 2.0Ghz. Someone please help me! I am so tired of hearing how great Macs are. I need to show him they aren't all that.

 

[FishTankX]

IN day to day usage, I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference between a Pentium4 running WindowsXP and a G4 733 running OS X 10.1...

When doing video editing, the G4 might be slightly faster.

In dirty, hard work the G4 might take about half of the victories.

In Altavetc optomized apps, the G4 wins hands down.

In unoptomized/SSE2 optomized apps, the P4 destroys the G4 hands down.

The thing that you have to realize though, is that the two are champions of two completly different realms. CISC and RISC Or Windows/Apple's OS's. Apple's are nice machines, and they do somethings better than PC's. Alot of people are used to 'em, and will use nothing else. Just like I *will not* use a Mac because i've never used one and I don't know how. I don't care if someone offered me a dual 1GHZ G4 for 1500$, I'd rather have an AthlonXP 1800+ or a Pentium4 2.0A rather than a G4 running OSX. It's my choice, because I choose not to own a Mac, I need my gaming and my apps that are PC exclusive, and I have nothing I want to do on a Mac that I can't do faster on a PC.

For some people, it's the other way around. "I need final cut pro, I need the G4's speed with MPEG-2 encoding/decoding and I need OSX because I'm not used to WindowsXP." and honestly, these people I can understand. If I was them, I wouldn't even touch the PC architecture.

It all depends on what software you wanna use. I'd say that for day to day use you wouldn't notice the difference between a 2.0GHZ Pentium4 and a G4 733. Nor would you notice the difference between a 1.4GHZ Thunderbird and a 2.533GHZ Pentium4. Not in the apps that I use anyways. (Internet explorer/Word/Excel/Winamp/Emulators) So just tell him to respect your choice of the PC platform and tell him that you'll respect his choice of the Mac platform and you both can live in peace.

 

[Mingon]

When doing video editing, the G4 might be slightly faster.

Absolute rubbish, a G4 cannot keep pace with a P4 2.0ghz unles it is using 64mb sdram, a 5400rpm hard drive and the test is running a non-descript photoshop filter. For more information go over to arstechnica and have a look in their battlefront forum and if you can find it the arstestbench discussion which had lots of g4/p3/t'bird/xp/p4 benchmarks

 

[Lucky]

benchmarks

 

[krackato]

Originally posted by: Mingon

When doing video editing, the G4 might be slightly faster.

Absolute rubbish, a G4 cannot keep pace with a P4 2.0ghz unles it is using 64mb sdram, a 5400rpm hard drive and the test is running a non-descript photoshop filter. For more information go over to arstechnica and have a look in their battlefront forum and if you can find it the arstestbench discussion which had lots of g4/p3/t'bird/xp/p4 benchmarks

Actually, using Final Cut Pro 3 and a G4 500mhz or faster, you have access to Final Cut Pro's ability to show previews of various effects (cross-fading, titles, etc.) in real-time. This will save you huge amounts of time as you tweak the image exactly as you want and then, when finished, hit the render key and go relax for a few minutes after a non-stop 2-5 hour editing session as FCP renders everything.

As far as video editing goes, it's so much easier, so much more useable, so much more powerful on the Mac than on the PC that it's depressing.

 

[aswedc]

Originally posted by: Jumpem
My roomate has become a complete Mac zealot. He keeps going on and on about how his 733mhz G4 is faster than a Pentium4 2.0Ghz. Someone please help me! I am so tired of hearing how great Macs are. I need to show him they aren't all that.

Just ignore him - Platform zealots are just like religous fanatics, they deflect logic without even thinking about it for a second. He'll say any benchmark you find showing a PC is faster is somehow inaccurate, and then he'll come back a day later with some benches 'proving' Macs are faster. Spend some time around the Battlefront on Ars and you'll see what I mean....

 

[aswedc]

Originally posted by: krackato

Originally posted by: Mingon

When doing video editing, the G4 might be slightly faster.

Absolute rubbish, a G4 cannot keep pace with a P4 2.0ghz unles it is using 64mb sdram, a 5400rpm hard drive and the test is running a non-descript photoshop filter. For more information go over to arstechnica and have a look in their battlefront forum and if you can find it the arstestbench discussion which had lots of g4/p3/t'bird/xp/p4 benchmarks

Actually, using Final Cut Pro 3 and a G4 500mhz or faster, you have access to Final Cut Pro's ability to show previews of various effects (cross-fading, titles, etc.) in real-time. This will save you huge amounts of time as you tweak the image exactly as you want and then, when finished, hit the render key and go relax for a few minutes after a non-stop 2-5 hour editing session as FCP renders everything.

As far as video editing goes, it's so much easier, so much more useable, so much more powerful on the Mac than on the PC that it's depressing.

True - but thats primarily a software thing. If Premiere didn't suck so much...

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: krackato

Actually, using Final Cut Pro 3 and a G4 500mhz or faster, you have access to Final Cut Pro's ability to show previews of various effects (cross-fading, titles, etc.) in real-time. This will save you huge amounts of time as you tweak the image exactly as you want and then, when finished, hit the render key and go relax for a few minutes after a non-stop 2-5 hour editing session as FCP renders everything.

As far as video editing goes, it's so much easier, so much more useable, so much more powerful on the Mac than on the PC that it's depressing.

I'v used Avid on a pc and it does everything in real time editing dv movies, so I wouldnt say the pc is slow at video editing.

and add this to the pc and then you can say goodbye to the mac

 

[Jumpem]

Thanks all very much! I think I'll just follow everyones advice and let it go. I don't think showing him benchmarks would get anywhere other than starting an argument. But thanks for the help, I'll head over to Ars and take a look around now.

 

[Adul]

there was a banchmark of dual g4 vs dual athlon mp1800 and the athlon won a majority of the tests.

 

[Stealth1024]

I used OS 10 on a "server" mac (G4 ???) the other day (based on Unix) and I rather liked the experience. If Macs weren't so expensive (one with more features than a stupid iMac..) I would to get one...