mac vs pc

[Tommunist]

I'm not going to even think of buying a mac. Why? Because I don't know of any way I could build one myself. But I am a curious guy and can't seem to find an unbiased opinion out there about which is better, the pc or the mac. Lets say you spend 2k on a mac and then spend 2k to build yourself a pc. Which is going to be better? (I'm having a "discussion" with one of my friends who is starting to turn towards a mac and I'm not so sure they are worth the extra money they seem to cost.)

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

 

[CMRvet]

that depends on what application are you going to run on it.

However, with the current PRO monitors, RAID, Graphics cards and better prices I think that the PC's are really taking some advantage over MAC's.

I know some graphics designers and they are divided: some of them say "mac or nothing" and some others say: "todays PC's are OK for graphics"

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

 

[flamethrower205]

And then other graphics designers say PC or bust. I've tried Macs (the latest ones) and they are slower than hell in graphics compared to my system. It's rather pitiful really, for my system now is worth maybe 1.5K, whereas these were 5K machines.

What if you had admin rights to life?

 

[Tommunist]

wow. exactly what sort of graphics are we talking here?

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

 

[eden]

Problem is they don't know how to build Macs. They simply have no imagination, no creativity INSIDE the box. It's all SDRAM, 128MB, poor Geforce 2 cards, little DirectX 8 presence, and speeds that just don't seem to scale. IIRC they were supposed to be over 1.5GHZ, but they're only at 2/3rd of it.
I don't know why are they like this, they're worse than Rambus in getting better technologies OUT THERE.

--
"Let Go." -Avril Lavigne

 

[AndrewT]

they don't worth the extra money and they do break down just like wintel machines.

Try both and see. Some people like MAC because it cost more and they like to have toys that cost more to show others they can have it, guess missing personality can be replaced with expensive toys to get attention in some circles.

There is a few softwares that run better on MAC than Wintel, but if you don't use any of them then there is not one reason to bother changing from something you got to know well.

They spend a fortune on advertising, they make it back on high priced products. :lol:

<font color=red>Got a silent setup, now I can hear myself thinking.... great silence</font color=red>

 

[flamethrower205]

Let's see, I tried 3D graphics, 2D w/ Photoshop, and video editing. All of em sucked big time.

What if you had admin rights to life?

 

[dhlucke]

You won't get a straight answer here.

<font color=red>God</font color=red> <font color=blue>Bless</font color=blue> <font color=red>America</font color=red>

 

[jihiggs]

i think you can get a straight answer here, but not very informed. i doubt any one here has actually done any unbiased tests. that sounds like a job for tomshardware.com!

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[CMRvet]

MAC vs PC benchmarks, read it <A HREF="http://www.digitalpostproduction.com/2002/07_jul/features/cw_macvspc2.htm" target="_new">here</A>

"Conclusion:
As you see, the dual Athlon is still the fastest PC we've tested, but the single Intel P4 2.53 GHz machine runs a close second, and even beats the dual Athlon on some of the tests. And, as expected, the Mac dual 1GHz G4 could not even come close to keeping up with these two PCs. Even though the P4 machine has only a single processor, it was easy for it to leave the dual-processor Mac far behind"

<b>(<font color=yellow>as good as it looks</font color=yellow>)</b>

 

[FUGGER]

Things have changed

Newest Macs have DDR now, no single processor systems available, Geforce 4MX is standard and Radeon optional.

OS X is preloaded now. The case is trick and has wireless and gigabit capabilites out of the box.

Macs run photoshop/illustrator/quark/ applications better due to the dual CPU w/ quad altavec in the G4 CPU. Not much in terms of games and the selection of software that is available on the PC.

Apple has enough business to survive, they continue to develop new products even though they are behind by almost a year in technology.

It is possible to overclock the CPU by pulling the CPU and bridging the jumpers on the bottom side increasing the multiplier not th FSB.

The new Imac is a laptop in that silly round case. was an easy conversion reducing production costs and sticking with standard hardware available.


You are limited to what your mind can perceive.

 

[johnnyx]

I have to admit, macs have some cool and handy features, but the performance you get isnt that great. My freind and I had a lond discussion about what is better and we calculated that you could build the fastest athlon or P4 system for about half as much and that is with the sam amount of ram and dual cpu's. Personally, I would never spend money on a mac. You cannot customize them (case mods and such) as easy, you cannot upgrade them and they dont run as much software. The only reason i would ever buy one is because of the dual 23" displays I could run. That would be tight!

If an orange was driving a racecar would it peel out? www.jxfiles.com

 

[imgod2u]

Newest Macs have DDR now, no single processor systems available, Geforce 4MX is standard and Radeon optional.

While the newest G4's do use DDR memory, the FSB of the PPC G4 processor is still SDR, only the L3 backside cache uses a DDR channel and that has its own dedicated DRAM memory to feed it. In short, it doesn't help that much.

Macs run photoshop/illustrator/quark/ applications better due to the dual CPU w/ quad altavec in the G4 CPU.

The benchmarks over at digitalvideoediting.com (someone listed another one above) says differently. The P4's SSE2 units are a lot more versatile and useful than AltiVec ever was or is. When you're dealing with precision applications that take heavy use of 64-bit FP math, AltiVec becomes useless as it cannot handle 2x 64-bit FP SIMD vectors, only 4x 32-bit. SSE2, on the other hand, can.

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.

 

[compuhan]

Macs have always been geared to graphic and video pros. My graphics design buddies all use macs simply because that is what they have been trained on at school and because it is the industry standard. The graphics industry has traditionally been rooted in the mac platform. This is apparent as mac systems come out of the box properly calibrated for graphics use (color temperature match).

Of course, another target of macs are those who think macs are so easy to use.

Design aesthetics win points too (and adds to the price I imagine).

Games are also lacking on macs, though this is changing somewhat. Choices are limiting in many ways also. As you said, you can't really build a mac.

Quality is better than name brand, even regarding beloved AMD.

 

[Tommunist]

interesting article there. I was suprised to see the dual mp 2000+ perform so well. I was also suprised that the single P4 could do so well but I suppose those applications must have been memory intensive???

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

 

[billd222]

hahaha.
Dont even bother with MAC. I love all the pretentious MAC users who believe that their system is so superior to PCs. It makes me laugh. PCs are faster , less expensive, more customizeable, have more hardware available, have more software available and are generally faster. Mac used to dominate the graphics industry and I stll see people desperately clinging to that idea. (sad really)
Sadly is that Apple just caught onto the idea of dual processors a little less than a year ago, PCs have been doing it since what NT? I have used Apple machines and they have crashed plenty of times they are not these invulrenable user friendly machines that they try to make themselves out to be.
I also love all those apple "switch" ads where they take some moron who is too dumb to work a computer and blames it all on the PC. "Oh my PC was so confusing I didnt know what was going on how do you open microsoft word? Oh my god it's so confusing!" LOL
Also think of upgrading, with a PC you might actually have to <gasp> open up your case and swithch out a video card. With a mac you just throw away your whole tangerine/blueberry imac and drop a few thousand on another one.

-Bill D.

__________________
Rock me Amadeus,

Bill D.

 

[imgod2u]

interesting article there. I was suprised to see the dual mp 2000+ perform so well. I was also suprised that the single P4 could do so well but I suppose those applications must have been memory intensive???

I would say it's SSE2. As I mentioned above, the ability to do 2x 64-bit FP Vectors is incredibly useful in video editing programs. But when you come down to it, does it matter why it's faster?

"We are Microsoft, resistance is futile." - Bill Gates, 2015.

 

[flamethrower205]

That's funny though, cause a friend of mine uses Adobe Premeire on his Mac, and he has to go to the menus, select, so forth. W/ pc, right click, select, done. Most mac users don't know how to setup their comp to use different mice, plus it dun go with the styling. Then for 3d apps, last time I checked, many of em had the same interface as on PC, so I don't see what the dilio. Furthermore, Macs aren't stable, hell, my friend has lost numerous prjects b/c his system crashed. My XP system is fine so far, and I've been running XP for quite a while now (only time system dies is when there's a power outage). IMO, the guys who use Mac just want some dumb pretty interface, and turn off any possibility that they can use Windows b/c they think it's too hard and thuse refuse to learn.

What if you had admin rights to life?

 

[FUGGER]

For the majority of us we will never take that step backwards and use a mac. We are all spoiled on x86 based systems and we have tasted the wide variety of software and hardware available.

Mac is faster in the above applications, I use both and have benched side by side 533 G4 vs 3.1Ghz Rambus P4.

You are limited to what your mind can perceive.

 

[FUGGER]

Macs are far from stable, I agree. I find more software/OS errors than hardware problems.

You are limited to what your mind can perceive.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

"turn off any possibility that they can use Windows b/c they think it's too hard and thuse refuse to learn."

Ya but isn't that the majority of people in the world? lol!

umm yes macs suck. Especially when you have to spend 5000 dollars everytime your system gets to slow because you can't upgrade it where i can just spend 300 bucks and pop in a faster chip for a PC. PC means modulairity! ok maybe not .... *shrugs*

it's almost a DUH how much macs suck! common use a brain! lol!


Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by xxsk8er101xx on 10/21/02 08:38 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[flamethrower205]

Amen to upgrades!!

What if you had admin rights to life?

 

[Tommunist]

I second that!

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

 

[flamethrower205]

Oh come on, you're supposed to go "I hear ya brotha!!" Once held an entire sermon on how camping is a natural evil in counterstrike while playing for fun hehehehe.

What if you had admin rights to life?

 

[Tommunist]

I'm afraid I haven't developed online "flavor" just yet. I'm from the NH. not exactly the multicultural capital of the world. But I can say things like:
"That is whack!!!"
and
"Bling!! Bling!!"

It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.