I thought all Mac users drove Volkswagons. What are you guys doing on a Camaro board?

 

Amen.


I don't know how Dell vs. Apple entered this, but peeps who want to lay down the law speed-wise with a PC DO NOT buy Dell.

They build their own.

There you have touched on the crux of the discussion.

1) Apple folks want to buy something nifty looking that makes them feel different. Great. You're different. Meanwhile my PC is going to up and crush the performance of anything you care to buy from Apple... and whatever you happen to buy next, I'll crush it too. Little trip online to Newegg and we'll have the latest and greatest drop-shipped to my door.

2) Major-manufacturer PC folks want to buy a tool that completes certain tasks at a good price. The tasks may be technologically simple (word processing) or complex such as just running Doom3 at playable fps.

3) PC power users will BUILD what they want specifically to do certain things as well as possible... my computer is used for two, very particular things:

Recording music.
I play guitar and write music. I use Cakewalk, and Cakewalk is PC. ProTools has all kinds of nifty features but is pricey (without much of a return for a hobbyist like me). Cakewalk and the PC shine at being flexible and inexpensive - with no loss of sound quality.

Games.
I play games, and enjoy them. It's a good release valve to machine gun a few virtual Islamic extremists or virtual ***** from time to time, and I'd like an ultra-low ping and ultra-high fps while I do it, thank you very much. Meaning that there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD I'm going to do it with a Mac.

4) There is no such thing as a Mac power user. You get a box, and I hope you like what's in it... because upgrading it is nearly pointless.

 

I thought they all drove Insights and Prius's....

Chris

 

You are wrong on so many counts. I feel sorry for you guys, because you've been mislead.

1. "Upgrading a Mac is nearly pointless." 2. "There is no such thing as a Mac power user."3. "Macs are more expensive."Funny joke. Too bad you can't spell Volkswagen.

 

K, simple contest...

PC vs. any Mac you care to mention, FPS vs. FPS on Doom3.

Here's a previous report... oh, and let me mention that this is from March, and that Nvidia has released their latest graphics cards which run in SLI to replace the 6800 Ultra(s) tested here.

http://www.barefeats.com/doom3.html

Some more telling comments:

"1. Though the G5 Power Macs held their own in the CPU tests, they brought up the rear on the 3D GRAPHICS tests graphed above. One reason may be the fact that all 3D games on the Mac run under OpenGL. The same game running on the PC using DirectX is almost always a lot faster."



Wait a second... isn't DirectX a product of... GASP... Microsoft???? The Evil Empire that can only produce buggy, nasty, non-workable, over-priced software????


When they went SLI with the 6800 Ultras, the following occurred:

"4. We had two of the GeForce 6800 Ultra cards in the Intel Dual Xeon and AMD Athlon FX55, so we were able to try out nVidia's SLI multi-gpu technology where you bridge two cards in adjoining PCI-Express slots. Once you enable the mode in the display driver, your graphics processing sub-system now has dual processors.

Though nVidia says performance will be "up to 2x," keep in mind that the bandwidth is shared and the memory of each card mirrors the other. In other words, there is no gain in bandwidth or memory capacity by linking the cards. The gain is in adding a second graphics processor. That's still a good thing. We saw an impressive 73% jump on the AMD Athlon FX55 in Doom 3 and 54% in UT2004 Flyby when SLI was enabled."


34-36 fps is a significant compromise in playability vs. a machine running at 106 fps. Alternately, you can disable the eye-candy so as to not bury the Mac due to it's woeful lack of 3D graphics power, or turn it full up on the PC and retain playability.


Read it and weep. Like I said, PC's OWN the game market, and games are what is pushing technology right now.

 

Great, PC's are terrific game consoles. Unfortunately, we need to do much more on our computers than play games, and in most functions, PC's prove far inferior and (gasp) slower.

And if the games are driving the market, then why are PC users stuck using a spit-shined version of Windows NT?

As a car enthusiast, you should know that raw speed does not equal the better machine. Speed can be had cheaply and easily. It's the overall design that matters.

 

Let's have another simple contest now.

Mac vs. PC, take a screenshot and format it as a PDF without any commercial software that didn't come with the computer.

It takes less than one second on a Mac. It's a three-key combination. PDF is the native screenshot format.

Right now you're all laughing at me, because it's a stupid, pointless little contest. Why would you ever need to do that? But that is exactly my point. To non gamers, your little contest seems just as stupid.

If I don't care what fps I get in Doom 3, because I'm not a gamer, then why the heck do I care that some computer other than the one I plan to buy gets better Doom 3 framerates? Oh, right, I don't.

The nVidia Quadro 4500 in the top-of-the-line PowerMac is a pretty damn good video card. I don't know what kind of fps it pulls in any game, but I know it's a crapload faster than my Radeon 8500, which performs just fine for most of my needs. (I say most because OS X 10.4 takes advantage of pixel-level shading to accelerate the GUI, and that feature wasn't supported before the Radeon 9xxx series).

If you absolutely must have bleeding-edge performance at all times, then yes, a PC is probably the way to go. Typical of the market, there aren't any Mac-compatible SLI cards yet. There will be, probably very soon, and then I think you should make your Doom 3 comparison again. I'm sure the PC will still win, but it won't be quite as embarrasing. You've chosen to make your comparison at a time when a revolutionary new technology is available for your platform, but not the competition. That works in your favor, but it won't last long. Mac SLI cards will be out soon.

 

The latest generation of games drive computers harder than pretty much anything else you can come up with.

Because it works.

And apparently according to the data, it works better than a Mac does at it.

If you disagree, I'd love to see the data.

Because I search for speed in vehicles, I am an enthusiast.

Those who are not in search of speed might as well be buying refrigerators.

Unless it's fast, it's an appliance - and I really couldn't care less how "sexy" my toaster is.

 

That's just plain wrong. Scientific simulation applications for weather, nuclear technology, astronomy, etc. all require more CPU power than games.

Here's the thing: Games are written to run exactly as fast as the computer can go. It's called real-time simulation. Anything you do on your computer that requires you to wait is therefore more intensive on some component of your system. Ripping MP3s, converting DVDs to DIVX, whatever. If it doesn't happen pretty much instantaneously, then some component of your system is holding it back. There may not be anything faster anywhere on the market, but it's still being held back.

Server applications are one of the biggest drivers behind multi-processor and multi-core technology, because they typically use a lot of threads.

Games are easily the biggest driver behind video card technology. They have influence in other areas, but this is really the only area where games are truly the driving force.

Raw processing power (clock speeds and such) doesn't really have a specific driver behind it. Everyone benefits, and it is driven by the market as a whole. Games, scientific apps, MP3 ripping, etc. all have a share.

Unfortunately, every gamer on the planet seems to think that FPS in the latest and greatest game is the only reasonable means to measure performance.

 

If you shove a huge engine into a Fox-body Mustang and make it do the 1/4 mile in 10 seconds, is it automatically "better" than a Corvette Z06?

Data is nice, but doesn't always match reality. If it did, we could just search the back pages of Motor Trend, and choose the one with the best numbers as our favorite.

I know PC's are "faster." I also know that whenever I use a PC, whether for burning CD's, printing pictures, editing movies or anything else that is not playing KOTR, I can expect it to take longer and involve more frustration.

 

Here you are again, thinking that your corner of the world is the only place to go.

A know a guy with a mint condition 1908 Buick. It gets passed by snails, but he still drives it to car shows in his area. Is his car an appliance? Is he just another driver, and not an enthusiast?

Wake up, open your eyes, and realize that your opinion is not the only one.

If games are the most important thing to you, then by all means, keep your PC. It's the right computer for you.

My priorities put the Mac ahead of the PC in a lot of ways, so that's what I buy.

 

Not all computers. Personal computers. In personals, games have pushed more technology into the box than anything else in the last few years.

My bet right now is that Doom3 resulted in more dollars spent on upgrading video cards, RAM, microprocessors and motherboards than any other piece of software... ever.

I'd be interested in other perspectives, but I think that one is a no-brainer.



It's not the ONLY reasonable means, but it sure is the most evident. I've seen other benchmarks, but the rubber really hits the road there - RAM, motherboard, video card, sound card, microprocessor. Now, the sound card isn't going to hurt you too much at all, but a killer video card is useless without the micro, RAM and motherboard to back it up.

Video editing is another exceptionally intensive activity. I don't do any of it, so I don't really care, but I'd love to see a full-tilt PC compared to a top Mac in video editing.

 

I was about to make a similar comparison. I bought a 2002 Z28. It's in very nice condition, and it looks good. It's pretty darn fast. It gets amazing gas mileage. It handles well. And it's going to last me a long time.

If my only priority was to go fast, I could have bought an old Moo-tang and had it in the 9's for a lot less money. It would be ugly, it would have ugly road manners, it would get crap gas mileage, and the body would only be in good enough condition to pass tech inspection.

And hey, if going fast is your only priority, then fine.

Most people with 9-second Mustangs have another car they drive every day, though.

 

That's not a fair competition, because there isn't any PC software that can compare to the stuff they use on the Mac.

Then again, last I knew, SGI is still the best, for now. Lord of the Rings was done on Macs, though, so we can't be far behind.

 

Nah, I'm talking about home stuff.

There's a whole different world of machines for certain other applications. CAD used to be one of them, but Unigraphics has pretty much moved away from Unix boxes into Intel/Windows platforms.