Operating Systems > macOS

Why my next computer won't be a Mac

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gnomez:
I'm wondering if on that 1st test page the Power Macs would have done a lot better in the 3D graphics areas (Quake 3 in particular) if they would have had GeForce 4 Ti 4600's like the Athlon did.  The GeForce 4 MX is just a little faster than a GeForce 2, from what I hear.  For fariness it also did show the Athlon with the GeForce 4 MX, and it still spanked all the other computers!  Damn.  Does anyone know when the G5 processor is coming out?  

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]

psyjax:

quote:Originally posted by Garden GNOME:
 Damn.  Does anyone know when the G5 processor is coming out?    

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: Garden GNOME ]
--- End quote ---


Actually, there are articles on that same site about the G5.

NJDevils:
<<<COLLEGE STUDENT HERE>>>

Hey bud, I was exactly in the same boat my sophomore year (about three years ago now). I am a computer scientist too, I am "supposed" to hate macs (fuck that theory).

But I took the plunge, bit the bullet, and I have been happy ever since (and this was during the times of MacOS!). It was damned expensive, I bought a used Powerbook G3 (Macs were more expensive back then). I just wanted something that works, all the time, with minimal effort(linux can be a pain sometimes), and thats what I got. My mac never crashes (okay, MacOS was a bit fussy), never complains, just a rock stable bud of mine now.

Software? Believe me, you'll find everything you need. Warez? okay..., think Limewire running Gnutella (but you didnt hear that from me). I hate pc games, but I think all the ones worth owning come over the mac anyhow.

Overall, I guess it depends on what you want. I wanted a no fuss computer for my personal use. My parents are totally into the iMac (and my dad is a staunch beigebox kind of guy), they are not computer savvy at all.

And let me just say this MacOSX will make a lot of converts out of a LOT of people.

Do it, if only for the ability to use an iPod.

Calum:
NJDevils, why are you supposed to hate macs? what's wrong with them?
also,  
quote:Originally posted by psyjax
But I'm not missinformed about speed. I have seen Mac g4 800's and 1gig PC's running side by side. I don't care how much power you got in that thing, the sheer amount of crap in Windows will slow the sucker down to a crawl, the fact that there is an avarage 3 click to 1 click ratio between operations in windows and MacOS actually adds up.
--- End quote ---

I'm not trying to correct you because you're being incredibly helpful to people in this topic, psyjax, but this is a misleading statement about chip speed.

An intel chip combined with windows is a lot slower than a comparable G* chip with macOS but you don't need to run windows on an i386 architecture. if you don't, you'll probably run a unix copy, and some of those are open source, so you can change the way it runs a lot by tweaking the system for your personal hardware.
So the software makes a big difference in speed. This problem is minimised with a mac, because the OS is optimised for the exact architecture it's running on (which you can do with linux, but of course you would need to do it by hand, whereas macOS is already there out of the box)
Plus, the pentium4 does blow goats, yes, and i will never own one. clock tick for clock tick, it often runs slower in tests than a pentium 3. Not always, depending on what program you're running, it's all about software being optimised for the resources at its disposal.

Also, AMD make what amount to i386 clones, except that their architecture is different enough that there's a significant difference in the apparent speed of an AMD chip compared with an intel one. AMD's chips do their calculations in a different way? or a different order? from intel ones... (i'm a little hazy on the technical differences, so forgive me for waffling here) and AMD chips tend to be faster, tick for tick, than intel ones.

Plus, linux can be run on a mac. i bet some other unixes can as well. I've never seen such a hybrid but maybe some of you have. maybe a true test of chip speed would be better with a mac and a PC both running the same distribution of linux? Has anybody here experienced a linux-running-mac? what is it like?

Really what i'm saying is just that a lot of factors go into it and i bet you could get a pc to run faster than a mac, under some circumstances. It depends on the software and hardware and also the physical workings of the chip (since PCs have the choice of more than one brand of chip).
New Macs tend to come with MacOS and be more or less fully optimised, while new PCs tend to be a patched up thrown together and hope it'll work type affair, so it's fair to say macs are faster, but there's a lot of different factors involved.

Not trying to correct you as i say, psyjax, but i thought some more expansion was needed in case some readers had limited experience of one or the other of the two platforms.

psyjax:
Ya I agree with you. I mean the AMD is a sweet processor. But like the guy in the article said computer speed is a bit imaterial. In the end it really depend's what software you are using, how optimized for your computer it is, and even temperature when you get right down to it  :D .

Garden GNOME is obviously interested in gameing and the like and surely the Athalon would be the way to go. But general computing I still propose the Mac. Earlier I suggested keeping his older PC for games and getting the Mac for other purposes.

None the less, I still wish I could find some better (up to date) Benchmarks than the ones I posted, seeing that while iteresting, they are not totaly scientific. (Bryce 5??)

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