Microsoft keeps macs around because if macs were gone, MS would have NO serious competition. (Maybe Linux will change that.) If MS didn't have any competition, they would definately get there butts grilled by the government even more so than they are right now.
Soccerman, that was my point exactly, the only way you will see the 80 or 160 performance is with at LEAST 3-4 drives in a striped RAID array. And if you can afford that, trust me it is not going into a mac, it will be going into a PC (server type) ususally running NT, NetWare or Linux. Especially since the only 80 and 160mb/s devices are hard drives, anything else or a hard drive that does not support the higer speeds, when put on the high speed chain will slow everything down to a crawl. Also Ben makes a good point, if you think that 'win'modems and 'soft'sound sucks on a PC, you have obviously never used a mac for sound or networking intensive tasks. Ooohhh, 'win'network cards, just the thought makes me sick to my stomach.
Soccerman, you?re not much in to decorating your PC huh?
Well... here I go?
Try a different shell for windows like Litestep. Here's the Interface you can achieve with this little program.
http://www.customize.org/list.pl?player=ls
I noticed that it was a bit faster then the explorer shell. It?s not nearly as bloated as the explorer shell, and I can customize the interface the way I want it. It'll take about a day or 2, but it?s very easy.
Now, to change the window GUI, go here and download window blinds and a skin that you prefer. There are lots of Mac GUI skins.
http://www.skinz.org/skins.php3?login=&id=&area=wb or here: http://www.windowblinds.net/
I haven?t played around with it too much, but the new skins looks pretty nice.
Here?s a screenie I took last year. Its win 98, with a crappy OSX skin.
http://www.geocities.com/ssp_11/wingui.JPG
If you can?t afford a Mac, this is the closest you?ll get to the Mac GUI.
Well... here I go?
Try a different shell for windows like Litestep. Here's the Interface you can achieve with this little program.
http://www.customize.org/list.pl?player=ls
I noticed that it was a bit faster then the explorer shell. It?s not nearly as bloated as the explorer shell, and I can customize the interface the way I want it. It'll take about a day or 2, but it?s very easy.
Now, to change the window GUI, go here and download window blinds and a skin that you prefer. There are lots of Mac GUI skins.
http://www.skinz.org/skins.php3?login=&id=&area=wb or here: http://www.windowblinds.net/
I haven?t played around with it too much, but the new skins looks pretty nice.
Here?s a screenie I took last year. Its win 98, with a crappy OSX skin.
http://www.geocities.com/ssp_11/wingui.JPG
If you can?t afford a Mac, this is the closest you?ll get to the Mac GUI.
BenSkywalker, macs are better for 3d applications in some respects. have you ever seen lightwave 3d on a g4. there is a reason the ucla film department uses g4's next their sgi's and not a single pc. lightwave rocks on a g4. not to mention bryce 3d. there was also a reason why myst was originally made on a macintosh. granted that was a long time ago. if you're using something like maya 3d or softimage like ILM uses, then a pc would be a much better choice. these applications don't rely heavily on the T&L calculation capabilities of the graphics card but rely more on the ability of the cpu to crunch floating point numbers.
As far as the the mac's answer to the agp bus with their 66 mhz pci bus, as far as i know, that's what our agp bus has been reduced to. All games can fit textures into local memory, and if they don't, a severe performance decrease results. As far as i'm concerned, agp is almost a failure in it's goal as to provide a means of sharing texture memory with system memory should the graphics card's local memory become flooded. so which is a better implementation? one that accomplishes the same thing as another one does with less or one that accomplishes the same thing with more?
And windows 98 kicking mac os in memory implementation? i highly doubt that. i've seen a mac up for more than 1 day without a reboot and without memory fragmentation. windows 98 is definitely not better than mac os' memory implementation, although i agree that windows NT is a much better implementation than either of them. at college, my friends always ask me "why does windows 98 slow down after a day or so of not rebooting?" i know several people who leave their macs on all the time, never a complaint from them. i do agree however that configuring the amount of memory given to an app in mac os is annoying to say the least.
"Besides that, the G4's weakest point when compared to the Athlon or PIII is raw FPU performance"
right, but this is what altivec is for. don't forget that intel is also getting around this with SSE as the limititations of the x87 fpu is approached as clockspeeds go up. i don't see this as a major issue given amd and intel also use vector instruction execution as a way around the weak fpu of today's cpus. also, when mac os X comes out, altivec will be implemented into the kernel, so that should boost things a bit. in this respect, amd, apple, and intel are all doing the same thing. any decent application designed for mac where floating point calculations are important are going to have altivec support period.
"File management, in particular, is much better under Windows then under the Mac OS"
oh yeah...there's that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows. hmmm. sucks if you're capturing video i guess. given that many people don't do that, it is rather annoying to say the least. and if you want to compare video compression which is very fpu intensive between a mac and pc, heh, well...let's just say the mac will kick some serious ass.
i'm not defending macs here, just trying to clear up what i believe are some misconceptions. i own a pc for a reason and not a mac.
borealiss0
As far as the the mac's answer to the agp bus with their 66 mhz pci bus, as far as i know, that's what our agp bus has been reduced to. All games can fit textures into local memory, and if they don't, a severe performance decrease results. As far as i'm concerned, agp is almost a failure in it's goal as to provide a means of sharing texture memory with system memory should the graphics card's local memory become flooded. so which is a better implementation? one that accomplishes the same thing as another one does with less or one that accomplishes the same thing with more?
And windows 98 kicking mac os in memory implementation? i highly doubt that. i've seen a mac up for more than 1 day without a reboot and without memory fragmentation. windows 98 is definitely not better than mac os' memory implementation, although i agree that windows NT is a much better implementation than either of them. at college, my friends always ask me "why does windows 98 slow down after a day or so of not rebooting?" i know several people who leave their macs on all the time, never a complaint from them. i do agree however that configuring the amount of memory given to an app in mac os is annoying to say the least.
"Besides that, the G4's weakest point when compared to the Athlon or PIII is raw FPU performance"
right, but this is what altivec is for. don't forget that intel is also getting around this with SSE as the limititations of the x87 fpu is approached as clockspeeds go up. i don't see this as a major issue given amd and intel also use vector instruction execution as a way around the weak fpu of today's cpus. also, when mac os X comes out, altivec will be implemented into the kernel, so that should boost things a bit. in this respect, amd, apple, and intel are all doing the same thing. any decent application designed for mac where floating point calculations are important are going to have altivec support period.
"File management, in particular, is much better under Windows then under the Mac OS"
oh yeah...there's that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows. hmmm. sucks if you're capturing video i guess. given that many people don't do that, it is rather annoying to say the least. and if you want to compare video compression which is very fpu intensive between a mac and pc, heh, well...let's just say the mac will kick some serious ass.
i'm not defending macs here, just trying to clear up what i believe are some misconceptions. i own a pc for a reason and not a mac.
borealiss0
I for one have never heard of a mac doing SMP, while some PC's can got 32 ways (32 processors) and some custom builds of WinNT or 2k can go even further. Can a mac do that? Sorry I don't think so.
Why does Apple insist on calling itself a revolution? Maybe in 1986 it was, but today if you don't lke Wintel go Linux/AMD or BeOS/AMD. Thats my real pet peeve with apples.
I've ran my Athlon 650 for about 2 or 3 days straight with out a reboot. I didnt knotice any slow downs or stability problems (even when playing games). This is before I installed win 2k.
"BenSkywalker, macs are better for 3d applications in some respects. have you ever seen lightwave 3d on a g4."
Yes, I've used Lightwave on a G4, it is a dog to put it kindly. If you are working with very simplistic models then it can handle it, if you want to do anything serious forget it. The OpenGL implementation in the Mac OS is still very weak and the performance in both rendering and modeling is not in the same league as a properly built PC.
"there is a reason the ucla film department uses g4's next their sgi's and not a single pc. lightwave rocks on a g4. not to mention bryce 3d."
Bryce runs well over twice as fast on a PC. The UCLA film department isn't known for their 3D CGI. SGI now ships PCs, running Windows(or Linux) instead of Irix along with their traditional lineup.
"if you're using something like maya 3d or softimage like ILM uses, then a pc would be a much better choice. these applications don't rely heavily on the T&L calculation capabilities of the graphics card but rely more on the ability of the cpu to crunch floating point numbers."
What modeling applications do you use? Every single one that you have listed relies very heavily on hardware T&L if it is available. Maya and SoftImage are not available for the Mac at this time, so you would definately need a PC or an Irix machine. SoftImage is currently owned by Avid, and still not available for the Mac, that should be telling of the marketplace.
"As far as the the mac's answer to the agp bus with their 66 mhz pci bus, as far as i know, that's what our agp bus has been reduced to. All games can fit textures into local memory, and if they don't, a severe performance decrease results."
Do you work with any visualization applications? When I'm dealing with 70MBs of textures in a scene, AGP comes in extremely handy. Severe performance decrease? What hardware are you using? nVidia's boards handle it extremely well, and if you are working with visualization applications using a consumer board they are your only logical choice.
"so which is a better implementation? one that accomplishes the same thing as another one does with less or one that accomplishes the same thing with more?"
A proper AGP card in a proper AGP slot. Macs now have AGP slots so this point is irrelevant. Also, AGP 2X has double the bandwith of the 64bit PCI slot, AGP4X has four times.
"And windows 98 kicking mac os in memory implementation? i highly doubt that. i've seen a mac up for more than 1 day without a reboot and without memory fragmentation. windows 98 is definitely not better than mac os' memory implementation"
I go weeks at a time without a reboot, what exactly are you talking about? Memory fragmentation??? How is the protected memory scheme on the Mac OS? Still doesn't have any, in the year 2000. Win98 may have many flaws in its memory management, but it is far beyond the capabilities of the MacOS. Most die hard Mac loyalists can agree to this, along with several major Mac publications.
"right, but this is what altivec is for. don't forget that intel is also getting around this with SSE as the limititations of the x87 fpu is approached as clockspeeds go up. i don't see this as a major issue given amd and intel also use vector instruction execution as a way around the weak fpu of today's cpus."
The G4 losing at anything clock for clock to an x86 chip puts it at less then half the real world speed. When you need to render an AVI clip having a chip that is twice as fast is a big difference.
"when mac os X comes out, altivec will be implemented into the kernel, so that should boost things a bit. in this respect, amd, apple, and intel are all doing the same thing. any decent application designed for mac where floating point calculations are important are going to have altivec support period."
IMHO AltiVec is the best SIMD set currently available, but it can't do everrything. There is oly certain tasks that it can aid in, and OS tasks on a 400MHZ-500MHZ CPU isn't going to be a major boost.
"oh yeah...there's that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows. hmmm. sucks if you're capturing video i guess."
WTF? Where exactly did you hear this? What 2GB limit of Windows? I hae files well over 2GB, what exactly are you talking about?
"and if you want to compare video compression which is very fpu intensive between a mac and pc, heh, well...let's just say the mac will kick some serious ass."
Depends greatly on the hardware and software you are using. SGI's PCs handle video compression extremely well.
"i'm not defending macs here, just trying to clear up what i believe are some misconceptions."
What misconceptions? I owned Macs since 1984, before that Apple][, up until last year when I decided that a box collecting dust was not worth while. I still work on Macs somewhat regularly, and they certainly haven't taken care of the issues that they have. They are great for certain things, they are absolutely the worst machines on the market for 3D visualization, and noone else is close to being as poor.
Yes, I've used Lightwave on a G4, it is a dog to put it kindly. If you are working with very simplistic models then it can handle it, if you want to do anything serious forget it. The OpenGL implementation in the Mac OS is still very weak and the performance in both rendering and modeling is not in the same league as a properly built PC.
"there is a reason the ucla film department uses g4's next their sgi's and not a single pc. lightwave rocks on a g4. not to mention bryce 3d."
Bryce runs well over twice as fast on a PC. The UCLA film department isn't known for their 3D CGI. SGI now ships PCs, running Windows(or Linux) instead of Irix along with their traditional lineup.
"if you're using something like maya 3d or softimage like ILM uses, then a pc would be a much better choice. these applications don't rely heavily on the T&L calculation capabilities of the graphics card but rely more on the ability of the cpu to crunch floating point numbers."
What modeling applications do you use? Every single one that you have listed relies very heavily on hardware T&L if it is available. Maya and SoftImage are not available for the Mac at this time, so you would definately need a PC or an Irix machine. SoftImage is currently owned by Avid, and still not available for the Mac, that should be telling of the marketplace.
"As far as the the mac's answer to the agp bus with their 66 mhz pci bus, as far as i know, that's what our agp bus has been reduced to. All games can fit textures into local memory, and if they don't, a severe performance decrease results."
Do you work with any visualization applications? When I'm dealing with 70MBs of textures in a scene, AGP comes in extremely handy. Severe performance decrease? What hardware are you using? nVidia's boards handle it extremely well, and if you are working with visualization applications using a consumer board they are your only logical choice.
"so which is a better implementation? one that accomplishes the same thing as another one does with less or one that accomplishes the same thing with more?"
A proper AGP card in a proper AGP slot. Macs now have AGP slots so this point is irrelevant. Also, AGP 2X has double the bandwith of the 64bit PCI slot, AGP4X has four times.
"And windows 98 kicking mac os in memory implementation? i highly doubt that. i've seen a mac up for more than 1 day without a reboot and without memory fragmentation. windows 98 is definitely not better than mac os' memory implementation"
I go weeks at a time without a reboot, what exactly are you talking about? Memory fragmentation??? How is the protected memory scheme on the Mac OS? Still doesn't have any, in the year 2000. Win98 may have many flaws in its memory management, but it is far beyond the capabilities of the MacOS. Most die hard Mac loyalists can agree to this, along with several major Mac publications.
"right, but this is what altivec is for. don't forget that intel is also getting around this with SSE as the limititations of the x87 fpu is approached as clockspeeds go up. i don't see this as a major issue given amd and intel also use vector instruction execution as a way around the weak fpu of today's cpus."
The G4 losing at anything clock for clock to an x86 chip puts it at less then half the real world speed. When you need to render an AVI clip having a chip that is twice as fast is a big difference.
"when mac os X comes out, altivec will be implemented into the kernel, so that should boost things a bit. in this respect, amd, apple, and intel are all doing the same thing. any decent application designed for mac where floating point calculations are important are going to have altivec support period."
IMHO AltiVec is the best SIMD set currently available, but it can't do everrything. There is oly certain tasks that it can aid in, and OS tasks on a 400MHZ-500MHZ CPU isn't going to be a major boost.
"oh yeah...there's that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows. hmmm. sucks if you're capturing video i guess."
WTF? Where exactly did you hear this? What 2GB limit of Windows? I hae files well over 2GB, what exactly are you talking about?
"and if you want to compare video compression which is very fpu intensive between a mac and pc, heh, well...let's just say the mac will kick some serious ass."
Depends greatly on the hardware and software you are using. SGI's PCs handle video compression extremely well.
"i'm not defending macs here, just trying to clear up what i believe are some misconceptions."
What misconceptions? I owned Macs since 1984, before that Apple][, up until last year when I decided that a box collecting dust was not worth while. I still work on Macs somewhat regularly, and they certainly haven't taken care of the issues that they have. They are great for certain things, they are absolutely the worst machines on the market for 3D visualization, and noone else is close to being as poor.
About that 2GB limit...um you stuck in 1995? Sorry buddy, I've got a 3GB homemade video here...and I didn't have to pay for a firewire card/firewire camcorder/extra harware to do it, my Asus 6600 Deluxe and my el cheapo camcorder did it just fine.
hmm.. that reminds me of something.. I don't remember, but WHY do DVD's have all their files in 1 gig size max? is it a limitation of Windows?
Actually on a few points he's got you.. I think! First off, the 64 bit PCI bus can be at 66 mhz, therefor it's 4 times as fast as PC's PCI slots (yeah except for those insane server ones), but thne AGP 1X comes along, and reduces PCI 64/66 lead by half. then AGP 2X catches it, then AGP 4X doubles it. ok?
Now, as for Mac's having problems with DMA'ing data out of the main memory, does this mean that they are x86? or is this common to both architectures?
Heh, just seeing if I can catch you slipping up on anything!
Oh and thanks for those links.. next question, do they slow down your computer at all? I mean, do they take up system resources?
Actually on a few points he's got you.. I think! First off, the 64 bit PCI bus can be at 66 mhz, therefor it's 4 times as fast as PC's PCI slots (yeah except for those insane server ones), but thne AGP 1X comes along, and reduces PCI 64/66 lead by half. then AGP 2X catches it, then AGP 4X doubles it. ok?
Now, as for Mac's having problems with DMA'ing data out of the main memory, does this mean that they are x86? or is this common to both architectures?
Heh, just seeing if I can catch you slipping up on anything!
Oh and thanks for those links.. next question, do they slow down your computer at all? I mean, do they take up system resources?
OS
Lifer
- Oct 11, 1999
- 15,581
- 1
- 76
"i've seen a mac up for more than 1 day without a reboot "
wow, a whole day huh? If I have to reboot, restart or shutdown at all, I consider it a bad day. (I'm running win2k right now) I've also run win95 OSR2 for half a month without a reboot/restart/shutdown, on a machine with 32 megs of ram. For the first week, I didn't notice any slow downs
"that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows"
Well, I just created a 2.5 gig swap file and I didn't have any problems. So much for the 2 gig barrier.
wow, a whole day huh?
If I have to reboot, restart or shutdown at all, I consider it a bad day. (I'm running win2k right now) I've also run win95 OSR2 for half a month without a reboot/restart/shutdown, on a machine with 32 megs of ram. For the first week, I didn't notice any slow downs "that thing called the 2 gig barrier in windows"
Well, I just created a 2.5 gig swap file and I didn't have any problems. So much for the 2 gig barrier.
here is some more info if you need to be convinced that macs are damn good in 3d, better than pcs in many respects. scroll to june 19th. this is also proof of smp macs. i haven't seen quad p3 or athlon add-in boards anywhere either, i've only seen quad or dual g3/g4 boards. do pc's have this? i haven't seen any. and yes arthurb1, macs have been put in massive parallel. it's called a beowulf cluster, and it can be done with macs, albeit hack and slash.
http://macosrumors.com/?view=recent
"Bryce runs well over twice as fast on a PC. The UCLA film department isn't known for their 3D CGI. SGI now ships PCs, running Windows(or Linux) instead of Irix along with their traditional lineup."
here you go. granted this site isn't well known, but reliable. scroll down to the bryce 3d test. the athlon kicks some serious ass here, so yes, the pc wins in this situation, but it's 2x the clock speed of the mac that isn't using altivec. the g4 without altivec implemented wipes the floor with dual p3 600's pitted against it. if 1 cpu can match 2 at the same task without the software being optimized for it, it's pretty self-explanatory. even then, the p3's are 200 mhz FASTER than the g4. if the pc gets t&l here, maybe it can catch up with the mac. and the reason sgi is touting linux is because sgi has been going down the tubes as far as sales are concerned for many years now. they can't afford to be as proprietary as they have been, which is why they've had recent offerings with a linux OS.
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html
"About that 2GB limit...um you stuck in 1995? Sorry buddy, I've got a 3GB homemade video here...and I didn't have to pay for a firewire card/firewire camcorder/extra harware to do it, my Asus 6600 Deluxe and my el cheapo camcorder did it just fine."
yes, i am stuck in 95. i got confused between fat16 and fat32. my mistake. i apologize. i am able to make over 2 gig files in NTFS and fat32. fat32 is limited to a couple of terabytes i think.
"Depends greatly on the hardware and software you are using. SGI's PCs handle video compression extremely well."
you do realize that you will be paying a crapload for an sgi right? a computer meant to do 1 thing and 1 thing alone, graphics. of course it's going to do it better than a lot of other computers that are meant for generic use. a 1500 dollar g4 computer will slap a pc silly for video compression. a p3 800 will get it's ass kicked by a g4 400 compressing video.
and win98 memory scheme? have you ever tried to develop software on a windows 98 platform. you'll soon notice that after your 10th recompile or so of the same program, resources will be lower than when you began with. got a memory leak? no problem with winnt. win98? out of resources.
"wow, a whole day huh? If I have to reboot, restart or shutdown at all, I consider it a bad day. (I'm running win2k right now) I've also run win95 OSR2 for half a month without a reboot/restart/shutdown, on a machine with 32 megs of ram. For the first week, I didn't notice any slow downs "
have you written software on a 98 platform? weaknesses in the os' memory implementation become apparent when you try to track down memory leaks because you can't recompile anymore. there's a reason why the recommended operating system for windows software development is windows NT and not windows 98. this is ms' recommendation btw. actually this could be an advantage to win98, when you're outta resources and can't do jack in this OS, it means that you have screwed up your code somewhere. i guess if you see that as an advantage =P i run winnt for more than a month at a time without rebooting. can't say the same for 98. what exactly do you do on that 32 meg machine? not much i think if it's just 32 megs...
"The G4 losing at anything clock for clock to an x86 chip puts it at less then half the real world speed. When you need to render an AVI clip having a chip that is twice as fast is a big difference."
get a p3 400 mhz cpu vs a g4 400 mhz cpu, do photoshop, bryce, vid compression, lightwave, premiere, or even our beloved rc5, and i guarantee that the p3 will get worked. you saw the benches i linked to yourself. i'm a bit confused. i'm not trying to sound like mr.knowitall or anything, but what do you exactly mean by "real world speed"? i don't think a k7/p3 400 can compress sorensen video at vcd quality in realtime, a g4 400 can (constant bitrate codec). and i think comparing video compression on a mac vs a pc is suicidal IMO.
and agp? wow, considering that a g4 can not only match, but surpass a pc in 3d with an inferior bus implementation is really something. i guess in some respects, pc's need all the help they can get.
"IMHO AltiVec is the best SIMD set currently available, but it can't do everrything. There is oly certain tasks that it can aid in, and OS tasks on a 400MHZ-500MHZ CPU isn't going to be a major boost."
there are certainly more than "only" number of tasks altivec can aid in. anything where the fpu is needed, which includes a LOT of software if i recall. that's certainly more than a few tasks... altivec also works for integer instructions as well. as i recall, integer is used in almost all operations. far more than a few operations i think.
"They are great for certain things, they are absolutely the worst machines on the market for 3D visualization, and noone else is close to being as poor."
tell that to the makers of starship troopers.
if you would also like a crapload of lightwave benchmarks for the g4 and see it beat some x86 cpus at 2x the clockspeed, then go here also
http://www.blanos.com/Benchmark/
http://macosrumors.com/?view=recent
"Bryce runs well over twice as fast on a PC. The UCLA film department isn't known for their 3D CGI. SGI now ships PCs, running Windows(or Linux) instead of Irix along with their traditional lineup."
here you go. granted this site isn't well known, but reliable. scroll down to the bryce 3d test. the athlon kicks some serious ass here, so yes, the pc wins in this situation, but it's 2x the clock speed of the mac that isn't using altivec. the g4 without altivec implemented wipes the floor with dual p3 600's pitted against it. if 1 cpu can match 2 at the same task without the software being optimized for it, it's pretty self-explanatory. even then, the p3's are 200 mhz FASTER than the g4. if the pc gets t&l here, maybe it can catch up with the mac. and the reason sgi is touting linux is because sgi has been going down the tubes as far as sales are concerned for many years now. they can't afford to be as proprietary as they have been, which is why they've had recent offerings with a linux OS.
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html
"About that 2GB limit...um you stuck in 1995? Sorry buddy, I've got a 3GB homemade video here...and I didn't have to pay for a firewire card/firewire camcorder/extra harware to do it, my Asus 6600 Deluxe and my el cheapo camcorder did it just fine."
yes, i am stuck in 95. i got confused between fat16 and fat32. my mistake. i apologize. i am able to make over 2 gig files in NTFS and fat32. fat32 is limited to a couple of terabytes i think.
"Depends greatly on the hardware and software you are using. SGI's PCs handle video compression extremely well."
you do realize that you will be paying a crapload for an sgi right? a computer meant to do 1 thing and 1 thing alone, graphics. of course it's going to do it better than a lot of other computers that are meant for generic use. a 1500 dollar g4 computer will slap a pc silly for video compression. a p3 800 will get it's ass kicked by a g4 400 compressing video.
and win98 memory scheme? have you ever tried to develop software on a windows 98 platform. you'll soon notice that after your 10th recompile or so of the same program, resources will be lower than when you began with. got a memory leak? no problem with winnt. win98? out of resources.
"wow, a whole day huh? If I have to reboot, restart or shutdown at all, I consider it a bad day. (I'm running win2k right now) I've also run win95 OSR2 for half a month without a reboot/restart/shutdown, on a machine with 32 megs of ram. For the first week, I didn't notice any slow downs "
have you written software on a 98 platform? weaknesses in the os' memory implementation become apparent when you try to track down memory leaks because you can't recompile anymore. there's a reason why the recommended operating system for windows software development is windows NT and not windows 98. this is ms' recommendation btw. actually this could be an advantage to win98, when you're outta resources and can't do jack in this OS, it means that you have screwed up your code somewhere. i guess if you see that as an advantage =P i run winnt for more than a month at a time without rebooting. can't say the same for 98. what exactly do you do on that 32 meg machine? not much i think if it's just 32 megs...
"The G4 losing at anything clock for clock to an x86 chip puts it at less then half the real world speed. When you need to render an AVI clip having a chip that is twice as fast is a big difference."
get a p3 400 mhz cpu vs a g4 400 mhz cpu, do photoshop, bryce, vid compression, lightwave, premiere, or even our beloved rc5, and i guarantee that the p3 will get worked. you saw the benches i linked to yourself. i'm a bit confused. i'm not trying to sound like mr.knowitall or anything, but what do you exactly mean by "real world speed"? i don't think a k7/p3 400 can compress sorensen video at vcd quality in realtime, a g4 400 can (constant bitrate codec). and i think comparing video compression on a mac vs a pc is suicidal IMO.
and agp? wow, considering that a g4 can not only match, but surpass a pc in 3d with an inferior bus implementation is really something. i guess in some respects, pc's need all the help they can get.
"IMHO AltiVec is the best SIMD set currently available, but it can't do everrything. There is oly certain tasks that it can aid in, and OS tasks on a 400MHZ-500MHZ CPU isn't going to be a major boost."
there are certainly more than "only" number of tasks altivec can aid in. anything where the fpu is needed, which includes a LOT of software if i recall. that's certainly more than a few tasks... altivec also works for integer instructions as well. as i recall, integer is used in almost all operations. far more than a few operations i think.
"They are great for certain things, they are absolutely the worst machines on the market for 3D visualization, and noone else is close to being as poor."
tell that to the makers of starship troopers.
if you would also like a crapload of lightwave benchmarks for the g4 and see it beat some x86 cpus at 2x the clockspeed, then go here also
http://www.blanos.com/Benchmark/
OS
Lifer
- Oct 11, 1999
- 15,581
- 1
- 76
"have you written software on a 98 platform?"
I've played around with MSVS for a class, but nothing with over 500 lines of code. I've used win9x OSes since OSR2 became available and a proper install of anything newer than the first release of win95 is not as bad as you describe it to be. I suspect exaggeration and/or you are doing something wrong. MSVS does take issue with not letting one compile if you don't save the project correctly or rename it, so maybe you should check up on that
"what exactly do you do on that 32 meg machine? not much i think if it's just 32 megs..."
Heh, easy for you to say now, half way through the year 2000. I don't own that machine anymore, I used that computer about three years ago, when 32 megs was the latest and greatest. I got good usage off that machine, I quaked, made my own mp3s (pre-Napster days), fiddled with AVIs, etc. I'm at a quarter gig of ram right now. So quick to judge and make assumptions
I got good usage off a similar spec'ed machine also, ran a FTP site off an OSR2 system, unattended for a week while I was on vacation. It never crashed or felt slow logging in, when I got back, the system was still purring.
I've played around with MSVS for a class, but nothing with over 500 lines of code. I've used win9x OSes since OSR2 became available and a proper install of anything newer than the first release of win95 is not as bad as you describe it to be. I suspect exaggeration and/or you are doing something wrong. MSVS does take issue with not letting one compile if you don't save the project correctly or rename it, so maybe you should check up on that
"what exactly do you do on that 32 meg machine? not much i think if it's just 32 megs..."
Heh, easy for you to say now, half way through the year 2000. I don't own that machine anymore, I used that computer about three years ago, when 32 megs was the latest and greatest. I got good usage off that machine, I quaked, made my own mp3s (pre-Napster days), fiddled with AVIs, etc. I'm at a quarter gig of ram right now. So quick to judge and make assumptions
I got good usage off a similar spec'ed machine also, ran a FTP site off an OSR2 system, unattended for a week while I was on vacation. It never crashed or felt slow logging in, when I got back, the system was still purring.
BoberFett
Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 37,562
- 9
- 81
Argh, I'd slap you silly borealiss0, but I'm not in the mood right now after spending all night at work debugging code in a language I don't know written by a guy that I just fired Friday.
BenSkywalker, help me out here and I'll jump in later to help settle this Mac lunatic down.
BenSkywalker, help me out here and I'll jump in later to help settle this Mac lunatic down.
"i haven't seen quad p3 or athlon add-in boards anywhere either, i've only seen quad or dual g3/g4 boards. do pc's have this?"
what do you think high end servers use, a pentium pro? i think not. win2k advanced server supports 32 processors, so i think its safe to assume that >dual systems exist. id like to see a quad g3/g4 outperform a dual 800mhz xeon 2mb cache, which is available to the average joe user, unlike a quad g3/g4.
"have you written software on a 98 platform?"
you want to talk about software with macs? u sure you want to go there?
and as i recall, when the g4's came out they were marketed them as 2x as fast as a pc, yet benchmarks only showed an 8-10% increase in speed in photoshop, pretty pathetic for the flagship benchmark. and if you think macs come anywhere close to pc's in 3d apps then ur smoking crack! lets see a mac get 160fps in quake3, oh wait, no q3 for macs (gee i wonder why!). and shortly after apple's outrageous claims of 2x speed over pentium machines were put to rest they switched their marketing campaign from performance to pretty colors, yep i said pretty colors. care to argue this?
and ive never seen such bias links. those quake benchmarks are comedy. lets compare them with firingsquad or anand and we'll see 20 or more fps for quake2 at same resolution. haha comparing fps on a dual mobo/ NT system, what a joke. get a pIII 933, with 64meg geforce 2gts on 1280x1124x32 w/ 4x FSAA on a win98 system and lets see the mac crash and burn. your link shows a g4 doing 61fps and theyre bragging about this!! omg!! LMAO!! who gives a shiz about 61fps. i can build a 61fps pc for 1/3 the price of a 61fps mac machine, gauranteed.
as for the x86 architecture being inferior, well yes its getting old but it still makes a mac look like a POS so what are you trying to say?
what do you think high end servers use, a pentium pro? i think not. win2k advanced server supports 32 processors, so i think its safe to assume that >dual systems exist. id like to see a quad g3/g4 outperform a dual 800mhz xeon 2mb cache, which is available to the average joe user, unlike a quad g3/g4.
"have you written software on a 98 platform?"
you want to talk about software with macs? u sure you want to go there?
and as i recall, when the g4's came out they were marketed them as 2x as fast as a pc, yet benchmarks only showed an 8-10% increase in speed in photoshop, pretty pathetic for the flagship benchmark. and if you think macs come anywhere close to pc's in 3d apps then ur smoking crack! lets see a mac get 160fps in quake3, oh wait, no q3 for macs (gee i wonder why!). and shortly after apple's outrageous claims of 2x speed over pentium machines were put to rest they switched their marketing campaign from performance to pretty colors, yep i said pretty colors. care to argue this?
and ive never seen such bias links. those quake benchmarks are comedy. lets compare them with firingsquad or anand and we'll see 20 or more fps for quake2 at same resolution. haha comparing fps on a dual mobo/ NT system, what a joke. get a pIII 933, with 64meg geforce 2gts on 1280x1124x32 w/ 4x FSAA on a win98 system and lets see the mac crash and burn. your link shows a g4 doing 61fps and theyre bragging about this!! omg!! LMAO!! who gives a shiz about 61fps. i can build a 61fps pc for 1/3 the price of a 61fps mac machine, gauranteed.
as for the x86 architecture being inferior, well yes its getting old but it still makes a mac look like a POS so what are you trying to say?
OS
Lifer
- Oct 11, 1999
- 15,581
- 1
- 76
"http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html"
I was just looking at the Quake 2 scores and they seemed a bit low. Those P3 and K7 scores were in the same league as my old P300mmx/TNT1 system So I deleted my config files and ran a clean Q2 timedemo and I got 78.8 fps at 1024, on my V3 2k@170 mhz. On a celeron running at 432 (6x72) mhz. You know something is up when a P3 600 with about the same video card gets over 20 fps less than my system. At best, the reviewer didn't know wtf he was doing. At worst, those numbers were cooked.
I was just looking at the Quake 2 scores and they seemed a bit low. Those P3 and K7 scores were in the same league as my old P300mmx/TNT1 system
So I deleted my config files and ran a clean Q2 timedemo and I got 78.8 fps at 1024, on my V3 2k@170 mhz. On a celeron running at 432 (6x72) mhz. You know something is up when a P3 600 with about the same video card gets over 20 fps less than my system. At best, the reviewer didn't know wtf he was doing. At worst, those numbers were cooked.
OS
Lifer
- Oct 11, 1999
- 15,581
- 1
- 76
"http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html", continued. . .
The Quake 3 numbers seemed fishy also. So I deleted my config.cfg and ran another set of benchmarks (I am using wicked GL tho). They didn't specify what settings they used, but the numbers seemed low enough so I set it to high quality and then upped the rez to 1024. I got 41.1 fps. On the same system listed above. You know, it's kind of odd that a cel 432 gets a higher framerate than a K7 800. Maybe I should write my own review proclaiming my celeron 432 to be faster than a G4 400, citing that webpage as a source.
Now that I think about it, those benchmarks were carefully chosen and set up to minimize any advantage the PCs had. I mean 1024 is such a crappy rez to compare CPUs at, it's almost entirely video limited. Damn those mac heads are manipulative little SOBs.
The Quake 3 numbers seemed fishy also. So I deleted my config.cfg and ran another set of benchmarks (I am using wicked GL tho). They didn't specify what settings they used, but the numbers seemed low enough so I set it to high quality and then upped the rez to 1024. I got 41.1 fps. On the same system listed above. You know, it's kind of odd that a cel 432 gets a higher framerate than a K7 800. Maybe I should write my own review proclaiming my celeron 432 to be faster than a G4 400, citing that webpage as a source.
Now that I think about it, those benchmarks were carefully chosen and set up to minimize any advantage the PCs had. I mean 1024 is such a crappy rez to compare CPUs at, it's almost entirely video limited. Damn those mac heads are manipulative little SOBs.
BoberFett
borealiss0
Looks like I need to go a bit more in depth here-
"here is some more info if you need to be convinced that macs are damn good in 3d, better than pcs in many respects. scroll to june 19th. this is also proof of smp macs. i haven't seen quad p3 or athlon add-in boards anywhere either"
Mac OS Rumors is considered a joke even amongst Mac loyalists. Go over to AI where they have discussed several such rumors that MOSR has brought up. This isn't proof, this is third hand information based on a rumor from a suposed source in a company that supposedly compared machines with non listed specs. Far from concrete, and not close to reliable information. How many different shows in a row has MOSR stated the G4e would debut? Extremely unreliable.
Dual and Quad add in boards- A complete joke. Look at the benchmarks here showing how poor the Celeron does on a 66MHZ bus with one CPU. With the add-in boards you are dealing with two or four CPUs on a 33MHZ bus, in an OS that does not properly support SMP. Not only that, it is cheaper to but a x86 mobo and two or four CPUs and run them properly under NT.
"here you go. granted this site isn't well known, but reliable."
The tests have been proven to be complete BS. Think that test shows a G4 running with dual PIIIs in Bryce? Guess again, Bryce is not, never has been, and with Meta's exit of the 3D market, never will be SMP aware. That was a single PIII, he needed to rig the test a bit more then what he did to impress anyone. None of his numbers are to be believed, check out his Q2 numbers and compare them to anyone's, they are complete and utter lies. I'm pushing well over 100FPS with an Athlon 550, and my GF DDR isn't that much faster then a V3 or TNT2. Also remember that the Athlon was an older model using less then half speed L2 cache versus fullspeed for the current chips, and last I was aware the HP offerings were using Irongate mobos.
"you do realize that you will be paying a crapload for an sgi right?"
Huh? From SGI-
". The Silicon Graphics 230 workstation is the first of the product family to ship and was originally priced at $2725 (U.S. list). With today's price reduction, an entry-level 230 workstation can now be purchased for $2,420 (U.S. list), an overall savings of 11%. Prices for higher-end bundles were reduced by as much as 13%."
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2000/june/230_price_slash.html
Seems to be quite close to Mac prices to me.
"a 1500 dollar g4 computer will slap a pc silly for video compression. a p3 800 will get it's ass kicked by a g4 400 compressing video."
Under what application, compressing what type of video, from what source, and using what hardware. You can't make a blanket statement like that and expect it to be accurate, it almost never is.
"and win98 memory scheme? have you ever tried to develop software on a windows 98 platform. you'll soon notice that after your 10th recompile or so of the same program, resources will be lower than when you began with. got a memory leak? no problem with winnt. win98? out of resources."
Yes, I have. I use Clear Sand Media Forge. Have you ever attempted to debug under the Mac OS?? Talk about a lousy memory scheme, when you reach a point where the application crashes, the OS almost always goes down. Under Win98, the majority of the time I three finger it and go on(if even that is needed). Lack of protected memory is one of the biggest flaws on the Mac OS. Of course NT is better then 9X, as are most other OSs, but the MacOS is by far the worst.
"get a p3 400 mhz cpu vs a g4 400 mhz cpu, do photoshop, bryce, vid compression, lightwave, premiere, or even our beloved rc5, and i guarantee that the p3 will get worked"
Make it a 400MHZ Athlon in Bryce, no problem. You also seem to be ignoring the most time consuming from a users point of view task in 3D, we'll get to that.
"you saw the benches i linked to yourself. i'm a bit confused. i'm not trying to sound like mr.knowitall or anything, but what do you exactly mean by "real world speed"? i don't think a k7/p3 400 can compress sorensen video at vcd quality in realtime, a g4 400 can (constant bitrate codec)."
And a Mac can't compress a raw 720x480 video feed to MPEG2 in real time. A properly equipped PC can. We can go back in forth for these types of tasks.
"and i think comparing video compression on a mac vs a pc is suicidal IMO"
Rendering being the key word in my quote. That is the process of converting the 3D scene and animation you have been working on into a video clip. For high end work using resolutions in the 8000x8000 range, such as film, with extremely complex scenes, this can take months on 1,000 CPU clusters. For the lower end tasks that you would use a PC or Mac for, it can be the difference between letting a clip render overnite and tying a mchine up for the entire following work day.
"and agp? wow, considering that a g4 can not only match, but surpass a pc in 3d with an inferior bus implementation is really something. i guess in some respects, pc's need all the help they can get."
This seems to be your largest misconception. All the numbers you have linked and seem to be looking at are render times for the final clip, we'll use render to file as both render to file and render to screen are accurate descriptions with render alone being commonly used. When you are working with models you are dealing with rendering to the screen, that is where the vastly superior graphics sub sytems obliterate the Macs, and it isn't close.
Try opening a scene in Lightwave in the 200K poly range and tell me how any Mac, no matter how much you spend on it to modify it, can push the scene. I'm talking about working on the model, this is where the Mac gets throttled, the actual work that the artists need to handle.
When you are trying to move an object and need to wait for four or five seconds before anything on screen happens, it slows you down, a lot. With a proper hardware T&L board, you can take that same scene and handle it similar to a gaming environment, pushing in the 15-25FPS range. No Mac can do this, not even close. Take a look at this chart showing four boards all quite a bit faster then the best available for the Mac right now-
http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?article_id=5000171
The top two charts are represenative of 3D modeling performance. Look at the difference between the non T&L boards and the two generations of GeForce board. In the range of ten times faster, that is hardware T&L, and that is the Mac's weakest point in the pro 3D world. All of these cards are better then the Rage128 Pro that is the best available in any BTO Mac.
The inferior bus implementation has to do with pushing polygons. Sure, if you want simplistic scenes with very low poly counts, then maybe a Mac would do fine. If you want to move into the high end, then you move to either x86 or up to the major iron ie Mips, Sparc etc. I'll run through a 3D application test that is cross platform, Cinema's, after I post this and post back with screenshots. Find any Mac, anywhere that can come close. I already know how the G4 500MHZ performs in comparison, it isn't close to my now obsolete Athlon 550 paired with a GeForce. I'll also post using both AGP1X and 2X so you can see why it is important(never tried it in this test, but I assume it will have an effect) to have greater bandwith. My PC doesn't have AGP 4X, but if you were to construct my PC today you could do it for about $1200, iMac price range for G4 destroying performance.
I looked over Chris' Benchmark page. Those are render to file benches, not working with models which is the weakes point of the Macs. Looking at those tests, the only one that truly matters, Ray Tracing performance, the Mac doesn't shine. While it does much better on a per MHZ basis then under many other applications(that has always been the case with LW) it still fails to be competitive with the fastest PC CPUs. A rather heavily overclocked G4 was the fastest machine listed for Macs, running at 640MHZ with 768MB of RAM that ran the test in 322 seconds. They have a single PIII 800MHZ with 256MB of RAM listed as completing the same render in 293seconds. That is well under the speed on Intel's flagship offering, and besting a heavily OCed G4. The fastest Mac that you can buy(that they have listed) is a G4 450MHZ taking 405seconds with 256MB RAM. They also have listed a PIII 750MHZ that takes 320seconds with 256MB RAM. The second fastest Mac you can buy against chips that are nearing the point of discontinued due to their age.
Starship Troopers? You are talking ages in the computer industry, things are significantly different now then they were one year ago, let alone when StarShip Troopers was made. The Mac market has only made very small steps since the introduction of the B&W G3s back in '98 while PCs have been accelerating faster then I can remember.
Edit:
Soccerman-
"Actually on a few points he's got you.. I think! First off, the 64 bit PCI bus can be at 66 mhz, therefor it's 4 times as fast as PC's PCI slots (yeah except for those insane server ones), but thne AGP 1X comes along, and reduces PCI 64/66 lead by half. then AGP 2X catches it, then AGP 4X doubles it. ok?"
AGP is 64bit 66MHZ Same bandwith for the 64bit 66MHZ PCI slot as AGP1X.
borealiss0
Looks like I need to go a bit more in depth here-
"here is some more info if you need to be convinced that macs are damn good in 3d, better than pcs in many respects. scroll to june 19th. this is also proof of smp macs. i haven't seen quad p3 or athlon add-in boards anywhere either"
Mac OS Rumors is considered a joke even amongst Mac loyalists. Go over to AI where they have discussed several such rumors that MOSR has brought up. This isn't proof, this is third hand information based on a rumor from a suposed source in a company that supposedly compared machines with non listed specs. Far from concrete, and not close to reliable information. How many different shows in a row has MOSR stated the G4e would debut? Extremely unreliable.
Dual and Quad add in boards- A complete joke. Look at the benchmarks here showing how poor the Celeron does on a 66MHZ bus with one CPU. With the add-in boards you are dealing with two or four CPUs on a 33MHZ bus, in an OS that does not properly support SMP. Not only that, it is cheaper to but a x86 mobo and two or four CPUs and run them properly under NT.
"here you go. granted this site isn't well known, but reliable."
The tests have been proven to be complete BS. Think that test shows a G4 running with dual PIIIs in Bryce? Guess again, Bryce is not, never has been, and with Meta's exit of the 3D market, never will be SMP aware. That was a single PIII, he needed to rig the test a bit more then what he did to impress anyone. None of his numbers are to be believed, check out his Q2 numbers and compare them to anyone's, they are complete and utter lies. I'm pushing well over 100FPS with an Athlon 550, and my GF DDR isn't that much faster then a V3 or TNT2. Also remember that the Athlon was an older model using less then half speed L2 cache versus fullspeed for the current chips, and last I was aware the HP offerings were using Irongate mobos.
"you do realize that you will be paying a crapload for an sgi right?"
Huh? From SGI-
". The Silicon Graphics 230 workstation is the first of the product family to ship and was originally priced at $2725 (U.S. list). With today's price reduction, an entry-level 230 workstation can now be purchased for $2,420 (U.S. list), an overall savings of 11%. Prices for higher-end bundles were reduced by as much as 13%."
http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2000/june/230_price_slash.html
Seems to be quite close to Mac prices to me.
"a 1500 dollar g4 computer will slap a pc silly for video compression. a p3 800 will get it's ass kicked by a g4 400 compressing video."
Under what application, compressing what type of video, from what source, and using what hardware. You can't make a blanket statement like that and expect it to be accurate, it almost never is.
"and win98 memory scheme? have you ever tried to develop software on a windows 98 platform. you'll soon notice that after your 10th recompile or so of the same program, resources will be lower than when you began with. got a memory leak? no problem with winnt. win98? out of resources."
Yes, I have. I use Clear Sand Media Forge. Have you ever attempted to debug under the Mac OS?? Talk about a lousy memory scheme, when you reach a point where the application crashes, the OS almost always goes down. Under Win98, the majority of the time I three finger it and go on(if even that is needed). Lack of protected memory is one of the biggest flaws on the Mac OS. Of course NT is better then 9X, as are most other OSs, but the MacOS is by far the worst.
"get a p3 400 mhz cpu vs a g4 400 mhz cpu, do photoshop, bryce, vid compression, lightwave, premiere, or even our beloved rc5, and i guarantee that the p3 will get worked"
Make it a 400MHZ Athlon in Bryce, no problem. You also seem to be ignoring the most time consuming from a users point of view task in 3D, we'll get to that.
"you saw the benches i linked to yourself. i'm a bit confused. i'm not trying to sound like mr.knowitall or anything, but what do you exactly mean by "real world speed"? i don't think a k7/p3 400 can compress sorensen video at vcd quality in realtime, a g4 400 can (constant bitrate codec)."
And a Mac can't compress a raw 720x480 video feed to MPEG2 in real time. A properly equipped PC can. We can go back in forth for these types of tasks.
"and i think comparing video compression on a mac vs a pc is suicidal IMO"
Rendering being the key word in my quote. That is the process of converting the 3D scene and animation you have been working on into a video clip. For high end work using resolutions in the 8000x8000 range, such as film, with extremely complex scenes, this can take months on 1,000 CPU clusters. For the lower end tasks that you would use a PC or Mac for, it can be the difference between letting a clip render overnite and tying a mchine up for the entire following work day.
"and agp? wow, considering that a g4 can not only match, but surpass a pc in 3d with an inferior bus implementation is really something. i guess in some respects, pc's need all the help they can get."
This seems to be your largest misconception. All the numbers you have linked and seem to be looking at are render times for the final clip, we'll use render to file as both render to file and render to screen are accurate descriptions with render alone being commonly used. When you are working with models you are dealing with rendering to the screen, that is where the vastly superior graphics sub sytems obliterate the Macs, and it isn't close.
Try opening a scene in Lightwave in the 200K poly range and tell me how any Mac, no matter how much you spend on it to modify it, can push the scene. I'm talking about working on the model, this is where the Mac gets throttled, the actual work that the artists need to handle.
When you are trying to move an object and need to wait for four or five seconds before anything on screen happens, it slows you down, a lot. With a proper hardware T&L board, you can take that same scene and handle it similar to a gaming environment, pushing in the 15-25FPS range. No Mac can do this, not even close. Take a look at this chart showing four boards all quite a bit faster then the best available for the Mac right now-
http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?article_id=5000171
The top two charts are represenative of 3D modeling performance. Look at the difference between the non T&L boards and the two generations of GeForce board. In the range of ten times faster, that is hardware T&L, and that is the Mac's weakest point in the pro 3D world. All of these cards are better then the Rage128 Pro that is the best available in any BTO Mac.
The inferior bus implementation has to do with pushing polygons. Sure, if you want simplistic scenes with very low poly counts, then maybe a Mac would do fine. If you want to move into the high end, then you move to either x86 or up to the major iron ie Mips, Sparc etc. I'll run through a 3D application test that is cross platform, Cinema's, after I post this and post back with screenshots. Find any Mac, anywhere that can come close. I already know how the G4 500MHZ performs in comparison, it isn't close to my now obsolete Athlon 550 paired with a GeForce. I'll also post using both AGP1X and 2X so you can see why it is important(never tried it in this test, but I assume it will have an effect) to have greater bandwith. My PC doesn't have AGP 4X, but if you were to construct my PC today you could do it for about $1200, iMac price range for G4 destroying performance.
I looked over Chris' Benchmark page. Those are render to file benches, not working with models which is the weakes point of the Macs. Looking at those tests, the only one that truly matters, Ray Tracing performance, the Mac doesn't shine. While it does much better on a per MHZ basis then under many other applications(that has always been the case with LW) it still fails to be competitive with the fastest PC CPUs. A rather heavily overclocked G4 was the fastest machine listed for Macs, running at 640MHZ with 768MB of RAM that ran the test in 322 seconds. They have a single PIII 800MHZ with 256MB of RAM listed as completing the same render in 293seconds. That is well under the speed on Intel's flagship offering, and besting a heavily OCed G4. The fastest Mac that you can buy(that they have listed) is a G4 450MHZ taking 405seconds with 256MB RAM. They also have listed a PIII 750MHZ that takes 320seconds with 256MB RAM. The second fastest Mac you can buy against chips that are nearing the point of discontinued due to their age.
Starship Troopers? You are talking ages in the computer industry, things are significantly different now then they were one year ago, let alone when StarShip Troopers was made. The Mac market has only made very small steps since the introduction of the B&W G3s back in '98 while PCs have been accelerating faster then I can remember.
Edit:
Soccerman-
"Actually on a few points he's got you.. I think! First off, the 64 bit PCI bus can be at 66 mhz, therefor it's 4 times as fast as PC's PCI slots (yeah except for those insane server ones), but thne AGP 1X comes along, and reduces PCI 64/66 lead by half. then AGP 2X catches it, then AGP 4X doubles it. ok?"
AGP is 64bit 66MHZ
Same bandwith for the 64bit 66MHZ PCI slot as AGP1X.First line of scores is using Cinema4D's software engine. First score is wireframe, second shaded.
Second Line is using hardware acceleration. First score is wireframe second is shaded.
Third line is rendering performance compared to a P133 in multiples
Fourth line is a comparison of sofware engine versus hardware. Higher then 1.0 means that software is faster ie 2.0 would meant that the software is twice as fast as hardware acceleration. This number is for wireframe performance.
Final line is the same as fourth except shaded performance difference-
AGP 1X-
436,862 - 111,470
844,094 - 598,010
7.16
0.52
0.17
AGP 2X-
444,862 - 110,988
991,378 - 546,044
7.16
0.45
0.20
AGP 2X was a bit slower in hardware shaded, though a decent amount quicker in wireframe. IME all scores fall within this benches variations and the demands are too low to make the added bandwith useful(AGP 1X should handle ~5 million polys fairly easily).
Link to bench specs(mine were run at 1024x768 16bit instead of 800x600)-
http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/benchmark_documentation.html
Anyone else want to download the bench, Mac or PC-
http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/benchmarks.html
The file is only 5MB, small even for dial up users(such as myself).
Second Line is using hardware acceleration. First score is wireframe second is shaded.
Third line is rendering performance compared to a P133 in multiples
Fourth line is a comparison of sofware engine versus hardware. Higher then 1.0 means that software is faster ie 2.0 would meant that the software is twice as fast as hardware acceleration. This number is for wireframe performance.
Final line is the same as fourth except shaded performance difference-
AGP 1X-
436,862 - 111,470
844,094 - 598,010
7.16
0.52
0.17
AGP 2X-
444,862 - 110,988
991,378 - 546,044
7.16
0.45
0.20
AGP 2X was a bit slower in hardware shaded, though a decent amount quicker in wireframe. IME all scores fall within this benches variations and the demands are too low to make the added bandwith useful(AGP 1X should handle ~5 million polys fairly easily).
Link to bench specs(mine were run at 1024x768 16bit instead of 800x600)-
http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/benchmark_documentation.html
Anyone else want to download the bench, Mac or PC-
http://www.maxon.net/pages/download/benchmarks.html
The file is only 5MB, small even for dial up users(such as myself).
"Microsoft keeps macs around because if macs were gone, MS would have NO serious competition. (Maybe Linux will change that.) If MS didn't have any competition, they would definately get there butts grilled by the government even more so than they are right now."
IMHO Microsoft likes to keep macs around in order to get people who have never used computers into the computer market. In hopes that they will soon learn enough about how to use a computer to finally make the move over to wintel PCs. Much like our esteemed colleagues here at AnandTech such as BenSkywalker, and others.
Microsoft was betting on people not being computer illiterate forever, and after becoming comfortable using computers, might switch over to superior wintel systems.
Too bad some losers just don't get it. They would rather pay more for an inferior system out of sheer ignorance.
By the way Soccerman, are you using a Mac right now or a win/intel or amd PC?
IMHO Microsoft likes to keep macs around in order to get people who have never used computers into the computer market. In hopes that they will soon learn enough about how to use a computer to finally make the move over to wintel PCs. Much like our esteemed colleagues here at AnandTech such as BenSkywalker, and others.
Microsoft was betting on people not being computer illiterate forever, and after becoming comfortable using computers, might switch over to superior wintel systems.
Too bad some losers just don't get it. They would rather pay more for an inferior system out of sheer ignorance.
By the way Soccerman, are you using a Mac right now or a win/intel or amd PC?
Well I was going to reply to that SMP and server staement, but Ben and josephstalinator took care of it for me. By 32 way I meant 32 processors in one machine. I would love to see Apple try and accomplish that. My personal favorite though is their joke of a printer port, and their lame attempts at using IDE in the later G3's and G4's since they finally realised that not everybody can affor dual 18.2GB SCSI drives. They also took USB, developed first for the PC, and they overcharge, they want $1500 for their 21" "studio" display. No thanks, I'll take a Sony G500 for less than 1k at onvia...I don't need to pay $500 for a clear blue casing over my monitor...
hehe I'm actually on an AMD K6-2 400@420 right now.. I just entered this thread because I thought Mac's were cool, though I didn't really know much about them (still don't), I just like em (must be that rooting for the Underdog thing again.. good ole AMD..).
hmm.. ok SSP, so Litestep is a replacement of your taskbar.. that's pretty much it? how do you change titlebar stuff with it (what I've been looking for, but can't find). It's actually a little bit more cumbersome IMHO then the windows interface.
BTW, I've had a small amount of experience with linux, so it appears to me that Litestep is kindof like KDE, or Enlightenment.. hard to describe though.
What I'm trying to find, is something that will change the buttons, Titlebar etc, so I can customize it. Is that what the Windowblinds thing is? it's a program that allows you to change the title bars etc? does it add a performance hit? I notice that Litestep is just a replacement of Explorer, so there really is no hit on there at all.
EDIT: I've tried WindowBlinds. it's what I was looking for! Are there other types of programs that do the same thing? I'm asking cause this one is slightly disabled (it's the shareware version I have right now). either that, or can someone get me a code
I definetly like this!
Now, if only I can find a user interface (shell) that I like (ala Lightstep), then I'll be happy! Is enlightenment available? Gnome? just curious.. I never got used to them in Linux, becuase there was soooo much that I needed to think about, having a different interface didn't allow me to learn it quickly.
BTW, I've had a small amount of experience with linux, so it appears to me that Litestep is kindof like KDE, or Enlightenment.. hard to describe though.
What I'm trying to find, is something that will change the buttons, Titlebar etc, so I can customize it. Is that what the Windowblinds thing is? it's a program that allows you to change the title bars etc? does it add a performance hit? I notice that Litestep is just a replacement of Explorer, so there really is no hit on there at all.
EDIT: I've tried WindowBlinds. it's what I was looking for! Are there other types of programs that do the same thing? I'm asking cause this one is slightly disabled (it's the shareware version I have right now). either that, or can someone get me a code
I definetly like this!
Now, if only I can find a user interface (shell) that I like (ala Lightstep), then I'll be happy! Is enlightenment available? Gnome? just curious.. I never got used to them in Linux, becuase there was soooo much that I needed to think about, having a different interface didn't allow me to learn it quickly.
Glad you like it Soccerman.
You can find a crack here. I dont think its worth 30 bucks.
http://astalavista3.box.sk/cgi-bin/robot/robot?srch=windowblinds&project=robot&gfx=robot
There are other programs out there that can do this (e-Fx - freeware). Go to http://www.customize.org for the skins and to download the programs.
You can download the themes for Litestep from customize. They have really nice themes. Its just like using Linux. You can customize all the buttons and shortcuts by editing the step.rc file. You'll learn all the stuff when you start to use it.
Oh, if you run in to problems when you try to run Litestep, go to system.ini file, and edit shell=C:\Litestep\litestep.exe so it would point to the Litestep file (directory and file name)
Hope this helpes.
BTW - I tried the Mac skin for windowblinds, and its pretty cool.
One more thing, go to windowblinds homepage to download the mac skins. Customize.org have crappy skins for windowblinds.
Enjoy, cause I got tired of it pretty fast.
You can find a crack here. I dont think its worth 30 bucks.
http://astalavista3.box.sk/cgi-bin/robot/robot?srch=windowblinds&project=robot&gfx=robot
There are other programs out there that can do this (e-Fx - freeware). Go to http://www.customize.org for the skins and to download the programs.
You can download the themes for Litestep from customize. They have really nice themes. Its just like using Linux. You can customize all the buttons and shortcuts by editing the step.rc file. You'll learn all the stuff when you start to use it.
Oh, if you run in to problems when you try to run Litestep, go to system.ini file, and edit shell=C:\Litestep\litestep.exe so it would point to the Litestep file (directory and file name)
Hope this helpes.
BTW - I tried the Mac skin for windowblinds, and its pretty cool.
One more thing, go to windowblinds homepage to download the mac skins. Customize.org have crappy skins for windowblinds.
Enjoy, cause I got tired of it pretty fast.
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