In anything reliable?!?!?! WHAT THE [-peep-] ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??? HAVE YOU EVER USED AN AMD OR APPLE SYSTEM??? I had the chance this past weekend compare a dualie Opteron vs a dualie G5 in first person, in very intensive uses. Well, actually, I used a few dualie G5s and a few dualie G4s. Oh by the way this was a very serious academic setting, we had to make our first of four yearbook deadlines (1/4th of the book) in order to save 10000 grand or so on printing. It's interesting how when the G5 systems were pushed even a little, they crumpled under the pressure. All three crashed over 10 times each in that 48 hour span. The 5 G4s each crashed about 10-15 times. Our lowly (budget-wise, at least) dualie Opteron didn't crash AT ALL and was a hell of a lot faster in every definition of the word for the photoshop work we had to do. Oh yeah, and it could open 100 some-odd pages in InDesign at once and still go on it's merry way working; the dualie G5s simply could not maintain stability or speed above 15 pages being opened; the G4s were actually quite good in this case, running an amazing 40ish pages at once and still being able to do anything else.
All machines were equipped with 2GB RAM and ATi 9600Pros, pretty clean installs of OSs (2000 and 10.2.8 [the Opteron system actually had Norton Systemworks and Internet Security running because it was out of the protection of the school's firewall]), and 2048x1536 resolution. I actually remember the head editor saying: "Eric, can you please let me use the PC, I'm getting sick of these G5s." I burned a CD to bring to the network, 600MB, 2Min 13Sec. When I burned a 594MB CD on a G5, nearly double the time: 3:47. At that point I got really fed up and went to my room to do my share of the work.
My machine (2.66 P4B, 1GB PC1066 RDRAM) ran nicely with about 60-70 pages opened, depending on the content of the pages. It also burned a 650MB CD in 2:21 and did not crash at all. Oh yeah, I run a ton of background proggies (mainly skinning and hardware monitoring) on my workstation partition. Of course, when I opened all those pages (I don't actually work like that, I just wanted to test it), I couldn't do too much else, except listen to some music, unlike on the dualies where I could continue to do other things (except on the g5s, they seemed to have an inherent problem with multitasking) even when they were maxed out.
Anyway, back to my original point: AMDs are reliable and can be supremely trusted in a serious academic environment. In my testing, I also discovered that G5s are not to be trusted when multitasking and G4s lack alacrity all around.
BTW, a dual 1GHz G4 system died on us (potentially motherboard or PSU, IT is too stupid to figure it out) and they are thinking of trashing it. I offered to take it for free but they weren't too keen on that so I said I'd potentially pay a small bit of money for it, so now they are trying to fix it (IT doesn't like me at all and will do anything to avoid being nice to me, probably because I call them stupid all the time), but chances are slim that they will fix it (they are THAT stupid). Anyway, there is currently an outside chance that I may get my hands on a decent G4 system for pennies essentially. If I do, that would be so cool, I could finally have the e-pussy I've always wanted (mine is all dry, unshaven and stinky; stupid case fans don't work too well so I have to keep my case opened, which is mad ugly especially since I have an ugly case already)! Oh yeah, it would help in my skinning a lot (i've been trying to get my PC too look as much like Panther as I can for a few months now). Or I could show it off and become a Mac fanatic for no aparent reason like the rest of them. Or I could just sell it and make ludacrous profit off of it (just like Apple does when the systems are all new and shiny). Or I could ignore it and bring up the point that I have a modestly priced P4 system being used instead of a high-priced G4 system. The ways to use a G4 are endless, too bad they are all pointless beyond the point of the purpose of improving my e-pussy.
Damn Rambus.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram