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Anyone out there using macs of any kind? Im thinking of getting one for running 3d software. Are they faster then a same spec pc? Any help please.
Gwizz wrote:
> would one of the new emacs or imacs have enough power? or would a second hand power
> mac G4 1ghz be better?
The slowest eMac available is a 1.25GHz G4, so no: a 2nd hand 1GHz G4 wouldn't be better. And the new iMacs have G5's which are even better.
The "e" in eMac stands for "economy", so they're just a cheaper way into the Apple way of life ...
For your average user - word processing, web browsing/authoring, games, music etc. - an iMac would be ideal.
I use a 1.25GHz lampshade-style iMac ( [URL]http://timmargh.net/computers/images/img_1627.jpg[/URL] ) with 768MB of RAM for website building, Photoshop, music, photo manipulation etc. and it suits me perfectly. Of course, we can always use more speed but I never find myself waiting too long. As for reliability: I haven't restarted it for nearly three weeks now (it sleeps at night).
> would one of the new emacs or imacs have enough power? or would a second hand power
> mac G4 1ghz be better?
The slowest eMac available is a 1.25GHz G4, so no: a 2nd hand 1GHz G4 wouldn't be better. And the new iMacs have G5's which are even better.
The "e" in eMac stands for "economy", so they're just a cheaper way into the Apple way of life ...
For your average user - word processing, web browsing/authoring, games, music etc. - an iMac would be ideal.
I use a 1.25GHz lampshade-style iMac ( [URL]http://timmargh.net/computers/images/img_1627.jpg[/URL] ) with 768MB of RAM for website building, Photoshop, music, photo manipulation etc. and it suits me perfectly. Of course, we can always use more speed but I never find myself waiting too long. As for reliability: I haven't restarted it for nearly three weeks now (it sleeps at night).
i'm using one for some work at uni...
i hate it. the feel of it, the look of the desktop, the apps, the lot.
the bouncy icons are cool though.
i hate it. the feel of it, the look of the desktop, the apps, the lot.
the bouncy icons are cool though.
The budget wont be reaching to a 2.5ghz duel processor, after reading the artical in micro mart (october 7th) im thinking of getting a second hand power mac. Im not sure what sort of mac i need to be looking for, and after reading the interview with Ian fullwood in the latest 3d world im even more confused as this guy is doing some amazing looking work for lucas arts, converting all their reference material into 3d using lightwave on an apple mac G4 867mhz, geforce 3 64mb, and 768mb of ram, are macs that good? would one of the new emacs or imacs have enough power? or would a second hand power mac G4 1ghz be better?
Back to original topic: ask Turbonutter - he's a Mac fan and an expert on what they can and can't do.
;^)
;^)
That's what they say. But they obviously are BSing people with that one. It used to be true, probably. The 1400XP ran at something like 1.2 GHz, but did 1.4 times as much work as a 1 GHz Athlon. This was probably always true through the Palomino and T-Bred era.
Barton core Athlon's however are basically given a rough number. For instance, the 2400XP T-Bred ran at 2 GHz. The 2500XP Barton ran at 1.83 GHz. The Barton is a T-Bred with 512 KB cache as opposed to the T-Bred's 256 KB. Benchmarks show that the extra cache makes a difference on average of around 7%. Of course, the usefulness of cache memory depends on the application more than anything.
Basically from the Barton onward AMD just raised speeds and added some to the rating. It isn't an accurate rating against a P4 or an original Athlon. It was a rating against the P4 that gave a roughly equivalent performance and kept AMD selling CPU's.
Or at least that is my take on it anyway, nobody knows for sure how AMD really rates their CPU's. Look at the Athlon 64's for further confusion. Same clock speed but 1 MB cache as opposed to 512 KB cache is apparently worth 200 points on the rating. Except, that extra cache only translates into approx 5% extra performance, not 10%.
Barton core Athlon's however are basically given a rough number. For instance, the 2400XP T-Bred ran at 2 GHz. The 2500XP Barton ran at 1.83 GHz. The Barton is a T-Bred with 512 KB cache as opposed to the T-Bred's 256 KB. Benchmarks show that the extra cache makes a difference on average of around 7%. Of course, the usefulness of cache memory depends on the application more than anything.
Basically from the Barton onward AMD just raised speeds and added some to the rating. It isn't an accurate rating against a P4 or an original Athlon. It was a rating against the P4 that gave a roughly equivalent performance and kept AMD selling CPU's.
Or at least that is my take on it anyway, nobody knows for sure how AMD really rates their CPU's. Look at the Athlon 64's for further confusion. Same clock speed but 1 MB cache as opposed to 512 KB cache is apparently worth 200 points on the rating. Except, that extra cache only translates into approx 5% extra performance, not 10%.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> (albeit AMD rate their
> processors roughly according to equivalent P4 performance, such that
> the 2.2 GHz XP chip is the 3200XP).
I thought it was measured against the AMD Athlon series??? (Correct me whether I am wrong)
> (albeit AMD rate their
> processors roughly according to equivalent P4 performance, such that
> the 2.2 GHz XP chip is the 3200XP).
I thought it was measured against the AMD Athlon series??? (Correct me whether I am wrong)
What NB said: OS X is great and bomb-proof, choice of games is limited but getting better slowly.
If you don't want to do nerdy things like overclock or modify your hardware, and if you don't want to run PC games, then Macs are the best bet for most people. Far harder to break, easier to use and they look better.
I can generalise and say an Apple is better than a PC at xxxxx. Depends what type of Apple you go for. But few things are more powerful than the Dual 2.5 GHz Powermac G5. You need at least dual Xeons at 3.2 GHz, or dual Opterons to equal that sort of performance. But clock for clock anyway an Apple is faster, in much the same way that AMD processors are faster clock for clock (albeit AMD rate their processors roughly according to equivalent P4 performance, such that the 2.2 GHz XP chip is the 3200XP).
OS X incidentally is my favourite operating system. At its core it is based on linux, or more precisely one of the BSD variants. I think anyway. It is more stable and looks a hella lot better than Windows, in fact, it is all round better.
And of course the other boons to Apple machines is that they are very rarely susceptible to viruses as most are targetted at Windows, and they look great.
I can generalise and say an Apple is better than a PC at xxxxx. Depends what type of Apple you go for. But few things are more powerful than the Dual 2.5 GHz Powermac G5. You need at least dual Xeons at 3.2 GHz, or dual Opterons to equal that sort of performance. But clock for clock anyway an Apple is faster, in much the same way that AMD processors are faster clock for clock (albeit AMD rate their processors roughly according to equivalent P4 performance, such that the 2.2 GHz XP chip is the 3200XP).
OS X incidentally is my favourite operating system. At its core it is based on linux, or more precisely one of the BSD variants. I think anyway. It is more stable and looks a hella lot better than Windows, in fact, it is all round better.
And of course the other boons to Apple machines is that they are very rarely susceptible to viruses as most are targetted at Windows, and they look great.
I've only used Mac OS 9 (I don't like it), X is supposed to be brilliant but I havent tried it so I don't know whether it is a viable alternative to other Unix Distributions such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD (as recommended by one of our webby guys).
Anyone out there using macs of any kind? Im thinking of getting one for running 3d software. Are they faster then a same spec pc? Any help please.