A litte questions, PC-MAC

[Madevilz]

What kind of person should look for a PC, same questions for MACs.
I heard Mac is better for working, like for graphic designing.
And PC better for gaming since it has better compability.
Your opinions?

 

[se7en1ne]

Supposedly years and years ago Macs were better for graphics. Not true anymore. Macs are overpriced and from my personal experience, nowhere near as stable as a PC running XP. The only thing they have going for them in my opinion is the way they look. If looks are the most important thing to you, buy an overpriced Mac.

 

[kidicarus74]

Supposedly years and years ago Macs were better for graphics. Not true anymore. Macs are overpriced and from my personal experience, nowhere near as stable as a PC running XP. The only thing they have going for them in my opinion is the way they look. If looks are the most important thing to you, buy an overpriced Mac.

you're kidding right? I've never seen a windows box in the word that was MORE stable than OS X. But, contrary to what se7en1ne says, I own both a windows box (A64 3500+) and a new G5 with OS X... using photoshop on both, the dual 2.0 ghz G5 is far faster when applying filters and doing large scale modifications than the windows machine. And in Adobe premier the speed margin is even greater, once again favoring the G5. Add in the fact that both spyware and viruses generally don't target OS X (i'm not saying there aren't viruses or spyware for mac because there are, just a significantly smaller number). PCs are however better gaming machines but not because of graphics or speed, but simply because there is a far greater variety of games developed for the PC platform. What it boils down to in the end is personal opinion, i love both, so i have both. Macs aren't any more overpriced than equivalent Dells or Alienwares, they just cost more than building your own PC because there is only 1 maker of mac hardware, and that's apple... I would venture to say that most of the enthusiasts that hate OS X feel the way they do because they've either never used it or only used it a little bit and it differs so greatly from windows that it takes some adjusting. So, whichever one a person likes better and feels more comfortable with is the one they should get.

 

[emorphien]

Macs used to be better than PCs for a lot of the media work but that really started to change when Win2k came out. Since then I'd say Macs really fell behind until they brought out the G5 and now it's a pretty even fight between comparable hardware.

You do get less for your money with a Mac. You can build an impressive dual processor station with more RAM and HDD as well as with an additional optical drive and better video card for less money than a stock dual G5. That said, you can't get a Mac with crappy hardware (other than perhaps the laptops which is a different situation) like you can a PC. Either from a vendor or home built, crappy hardware is one of the biggest stability concerns in Windoze PCs.

The operating systems are both pretty good these days and I honestly don't have much preference between the two. Before OS X and Win2k came out both were pretty atrocious. You can still run in to some major systems failures with either, but they generally require a combination of things to happen. Windows does require more maintenance than OS X, but I find it a rather trivial task and with some common sense applied it's not a problem.

In graphics and media there's not much difference between the two. You'll start seeing difference with proprietary software, or software with optimizations for one system or another. This can result in the P4, Opteron or G5 cleaning the floor with the others depending on the software's optimizations. For gaming, a lot of popular games are coming to Mac now, but PCs still hold the vast majority of that market so I'd have to agree they're probably "better" for it.

The biggest deciding factor would be which OS do you prefer, and is there any special software or hardware you would need that doesn't run as well or at all on one of the systems?

If I were rich I'd build a dual Opteron workstation, buy a Dual G5 Powermac and also have an IBM T42p and an iBook... I think those represent the best of what each kind of system has to offer with regard to my specific needs.

 

[se7en1ne]

you're kidding right? I've never seen a windows box in the word that was MORE stable than OS X. But, contrary to what se7en1ne says, I own both a windows box (A64 3500+) and a new G5 with OS X... using photoshop on both, the dual 2.0 ghz G5 is far faster when applying filters and doing large scale modifications than the windows machine. And in Adobe premier the speed margin is even greater, once again favoring the G5. Add in the fact that both spyware and viruses generally don't target OS X (i'm not saying there aren't viruses or spyware for mac because there are, just a significantly smaller number). PCs are however better gaming machines but not because of graphics or speed, but simply because there is a far greater variety of games developed for the PC platform. What it boils down to in the end is personal opinion, i love both, so i have both. Macs aren't any more overpriced than equivalent Dells or Alienwares, they just cost more than building your own PC because there is only 1 maker of mac hardware, and that's apple... I would venture to say that most of the enthusiasts that hate OS X feel the way they do because they've either never used it or only used it a little bit and it differs so greatly from windows that it takes some adjusting. So, whichever one a person likes better and feels more comfortable with is the one they should get.

No, I'm not kidding. I used Macs at school in my Photoshop and 3d modelling classes. They suck as far as I'm concerned. That's my OPINION though. Constant crashing does not equal stable in my book. At home I run XP. I NEVER have problems with XP. I can't even remember the last major problem I've had with it. So Macs apply photoshop filters faster? Who cares. Most filters are toys for noobs to play with. You're comparing a dual 2Ghz G5 with an A64 3500+. I'm pretty sure that's not an even playing field

 

[emorphien]

You're comparing a dual 2Ghz G5 with an A64 3500+.

I'm pretty sure it's not fair to compare 2 processors to one given they are fairly similar. Two G5s versus two Opterons would be a better match.

The funniest thing is that Adobe generally favors Pentium 4s (with hyperthreading) these days and responsiveness on them compared to dual G5s or opterons is surprisingly good. I'm not sure how long that will last and I've not done extensive comparisons to Pentium Ms since comparing desktop to mobile isn't entirely fair. The Pentium Ms will clobber the Powerbook G4s however.

 

[kidicarus74]

ost filters are toys for noobs to play with. You're comparing a dual 2Ghz G5 with an A64 3500+. I'm pretty sure that's not an even playing field

a) inverting the colors on a 400" x 400" banner at 1200 dpi will take a while no matter what the system

b) comparing vendor prices (not diy builds, cause that isn't possible with apple), the dual 2gig g5's and athlon 64 3500+ systems are equally priced... and that's what i'm comparing...

anyway... in a windows environment, the software has to support smp, so photoshop under windows will always send it's threads to one processor, not both. OS X natively supports smp, and as such all software's threads can be divided amongst the processors

 

[Mojo]

Another thing:

Not all macs are overpriced. The iBook 12" is actually a really good buy now.

 

[unhappy_mage]

a) inverting the colors on a 400" x 400" banner at 1200 dpi will take a while no matter what the system

that's because of disk speeds, not processor... by my math, that's 400*400*1200*1200 * 3bpp = 691 GB.

unless you have that much memory, that means you have to read that much in and write that much out. if you're on an array that does 200MB/s, this means 6912 seconds of waiting regardless of processor speed.

oh, and inverting colors is a spectacularly bad example. unless I'm doing something wrong, it should go something like this:

for (1 to height)
for (1 to width)
pixel.r = 255 - pixel.r
pixel.g = 255 - pixel.g
pixel.b = 255 - pixel.b

this is o for n pixels. Something like a blur or Gimp's cubify filter is more processor-dependent.

basically, pick a better example next time