Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited July 2003
In that article, the G5 benchmarked @ 0.127MFLOPS/MHz w/1 cpu, and 1.29MFLOPS/MHz w/2 CPUs..
As compared to my AMD Athlon XP2200+ in my K7D Master-L (single CPU for now), at 2508 MFLOPS, or 1.39 MFLOPS/MHz with 1 cpu... and a dual AMD 2200+ system is <1/2 the cost of the Apple.
As I said. They're far, FAR too slow for the price, and Apple is being really selective about the benchmarks they release. The G5 is undeniably a decent computer. It's just nowhere near as good as they claim it is. It's performance is on par with last year's AMD Athlons at best, and, as I said, it costs more.
Until Apple produces a system that is as fast as a similarly priced PC, they're nothing but toys- I mean, you can't honestly expect me to take a company that sells products that performs like last year's PCs and cost 2x as much and then touts them as the best thing since sliced bread seriously, can you? Steve Jobs and the people that worship him like some kind of deity need to consult with a proctologist because they have their heads so far up their @sses that they can't even see the light of day. That's not to say that that statement goes for all apple users- just the ones that are firmly convinced that they're the best things ever and choose to ignore all the evidence that says they're flat out wrong.
Well, Apples had software written for them that did graphics and molecular displays (chemical chain displays) and DTP and video development quite well. they were tuned to display and audio uses. OS X is based part on BSDs and part on Linux and partly derived from older code.
BSD and Linux were not tuned to GUIs of fancy sorts for a long time, they were number crunchers that did Floating point quite well and ALU even better. As processors got tuned for more GUIish things, BSD and Linux were also thusly tuned.
But Apple did graphics that research labs needed first. And the older software was easier to port to newer gens of Apple than were Clones (for Pro-grade GUI'd software). And, they deemphasized the OS workload better than the PCs did, and emphasized the Application beinbg used more than PCs did.
The newer OSs for PCS changed this some, as OSs with smaller tighter cores came out that could run more modularly. BSD and Linux are getting so good at this that they can have 90% of what is only needed part of the time sleeping the rest of the time. Macs were good at that, and had less of an underlying load in the softwaredesgin and the hardware was partly designed to work with that software approach.
But, we are seeing a convergence, though ATI does make an AGP card for MACS (and the video circuitry in MACS handles more proportional load than even the PC video does). Sheer numbers matter a lot in figuring per unit cost. Because if you fab 10,000 versus 10,000,000 a month of a CPU, the smaller amount is going to cost you one heck of a lot more per unit asthe fabber is goign to have to retool things tomake thigns forother customers and then retoool for your run and you will pay a large part of the retooling costs built into your batch quote.
Apple is good for video and audio work still partly because the most used software is mature as heck. But as software gets more and more commnonalized as hardware gets used across different kinds of machines more and more (the MAC ATI card is a Radeon 8500)and busses get more and more commonlaized (Apple used SCSI variant HDs and other peripherals for a long time, while PCs used cheaper busses that flowed data in a more easily bottlenecked manner.), we will find more sameness in boxes. The busses and peripheral chips witllhandle more of the load than in the past, and the loads will be more by type within sub-bus than by loading the main busses with a larger proportion of the traffic. And Apple pioneered a large part of that for us. And dev of benches that measure end to end throughput need to be stressed more than segment or subfunction output benches.
Measure time from display request to showing of display instead of how many flops the CPU uses, then how many the GPU uses, then how fast the video data is pumped to a periphereal. Otherwise you get Apple benches on Oranges and versa what comparing more different than is obvious machines.
The whole strategies are different, and lend themselves to different uses. The Apple GPU does more for display, relatively, than the CPU when compared to a PC, so the GPU should bench as faster while the CPU need not do as much so need not be as fast. but the GPU will need more graphics dedicated (G)RAM in an apple than in a PC also, and GRAM is more expensive than plain old RAM. That is part of why some whole classes of users prefer MACS.
This is true, my mate works in a recording studio, and there are like 20 Macs in his place. Apparently the best sound software is only available on Macs, as Apple bought out the company that pruduces the software, and made sure that it was only released on Macs.... Clever apple, taking leaves outta MS's book
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Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited July 2003
The reason apples are still seen in recording studios and such is because as ageek and pyobile said, certain pieces of software are only available for macs. That doesn't mean the computers themselves are any good...
Right-- and complete information handling systems have THREE major subsystems:
1. People
2. Software (Includes such things as OS X, which is popular enough that a product called cygwin was made for PCs that allows OS X Jaguar to shell inside Windows and run about 2\3 as fast as a Mac can run it)
3. Hardware (If the first two work together and the hardware costs are not so high that the human will not pay them, then the thrid is not relevant to anything in the way of practicality)
Kinda like telling someone "my car is best and yours stinks," telling someone "your favorite brand of computer stinks" is a no-no because of part 1 of what defines a system (the user(s) that the other parts have to fit)-- IMHO. You get the Apple owner mad enough, he\she will load up the windows emulator and write and send you something mischevious.
For you and your uses, PCs make more sense-- for others, maybe not.
For me, Mac is easier to do DTP on than either the PCs or the Ataris I have more often used. In part because its displays are more easily and closely matchable to print media results than the PC or the Atari unless I spend 800.00-1200.00 for a very high end Matrox Quadro card. At that point, total system costs approach the Mac which has such video built-in as far as color calibration goes.
very nicecly put john, now i don't have any power here anymore, but if i did, thats the kinda stuff that gets you promoted to mod. pyoblie, your friend is a lucky git....if he can afford 20 macs all wiht Logic platinum on it...i really wanna try out that software, right now i'm still stuck with Cubase SX, not that it's that bad.
THX, but I know what modding is like, like to gab too much to carry a title. Will smooth waters if can, explain if can, but like toPEER-MOD better than having a title. Understanding mods best, because best mods are ourselves overall. So, tell why and don't rip too bad and we get down to the nitty gritty of systems. And that emphasis makes a site ROCK big time.
just for trivial information, the music software referred to above is called "Logic Audio", which is currently up to version 6, made by a company called Emagic, which was bought out by Mac, because Logic is the predominant audio production software period. (and as a user, it is damn good*) which, if you are a Mac user adds to your inflatad sense of superiority, or if you can't afford a Mac, make you think ".... f'n clever, yet evil bastards."
Logic is good enough that I'd seriously consider a Mac if I could afford just to be able to use newer versions of that one program.
*I still quite happily use 5.5 on my oh so miserably slow PC
Comments
edit: here we go NASA tests
As compared to my AMD Athlon XP2200+ in my K7D Master-L (single CPU for now), at 2508 MFLOPS, or 1.39 MFLOPS/MHz with 1 cpu... and a dual AMD 2200+ system is <1/2 the cost of the Apple.
As I said. They're far, FAR too slow for the price, and Apple is being really selective about the benchmarks they release. The G5 is undeniably a decent computer. It's just nowhere near as good as they claim it is. It's performance is on par with last year's AMD Athlons at best, and, as I said, it costs more.
Until Apple produces a system that is as fast as a similarly priced PC, they're nothing but toys- I mean, you can't honestly expect me to take a company that sells products that performs like last year's PCs and cost 2x as much and then touts them as the best thing since sliced bread seriously, can you? Steve Jobs and the people that worship him like some kind of deity need to consult with a proctologist because they have their heads so far up their @sses that they can't even see the light of day. That's not to say that that statement goes for all apple users- just the ones that are firmly convinced that they're the best things ever and choose to ignore all the evidence that says they're flat out wrong.
BSD and Linux were not tuned to GUIs of fancy sorts for a long time, they were number crunchers that did Floating point quite well and ALU even better. As processors got tuned for more GUIish things, BSD and Linux were also thusly tuned.
But Apple did graphics that research labs needed first. And the older software was easier to port to newer gens of Apple than were Clones (for Pro-grade GUI'd software). And, they deemphasized the OS workload better than the PCs did, and emphasized the Application beinbg used more than PCs did.
The newer OSs for PCS changed this some, as OSs with smaller tighter cores came out that could run more modularly. BSD and Linux are getting so good at this that they can have 90% of what is only needed part of the time sleeping the rest of the time. Macs were good at that, and had less of an underlying load in the softwaredesgin and the hardware was partly designed to work with that software approach.
But, we are seeing a convergence, though ATI does make an AGP card for MACS (and the video circuitry in MACS handles more proportional load than even the PC video does). Sheer numbers matter a lot in figuring per unit cost. Because if you fab 10,000 versus 10,000,000 a month of a CPU, the smaller amount is going to cost you one heck of a lot more per unit asthe fabber is goign to have to retool things tomake thigns forother customers and then retoool for your run and you will pay a large part of the retooling costs built into your batch quote.
Apple is good for video and audio work still partly because the most used software is mature as heck. But as software gets more and more commnonalized as hardware gets used across different kinds of machines more and more (the MAC ATI card is a Radeon 8500)and busses get more and more commonlaized (Apple used SCSI variant HDs and other peripherals for a long time, while PCs used cheaper busses that flowed data in a more easily bottlenecked manner.), we will find more sameness in boxes. The busses and peripheral chips witllhandle more of the load than in the past, and the loads will be more by type within sub-bus than by loading the main busses with a larger proportion of the traffic. And Apple pioneered a large part of that for us. And dev of benches that measure end to end throughput need to be stressed more than segment or subfunction output benches.
Measure time from display request to showing of display instead of how many flops the CPU uses, then how many the GPU uses, then how fast the video data is pumped to a periphereal. Otherwise you get Apple benches on Oranges and versa what comparing more different than is obvious machines.
The whole strategies are different, and lend themselves to different uses. The Apple GPU does more for display, relatively, than the CPU when compared to a PC, so the GPU should bench as faster while the CPU need not do as much so need not be as fast. but the GPU will need more graphics dedicated (G)RAM in an apple than in a PC also, and GRAM is more expensive than plain old RAM. That is part of why some whole classes of users prefer MACS.
John Danielson.
1. People
2. Software (Includes such things as OS X, which is popular enough that a product called cygwin was made for PCs that allows OS X Jaguar to shell inside Windows and run about 2\3 as fast as a Mac can run it)
3. Hardware (If the first two work together and the hardware costs are not so high that the human will not pay them, then the thrid is not relevant to anything in the way of practicality)
Kinda like telling someone "my car is best and yours stinks," telling someone "your favorite brand of computer stinks" is a no-no because of part 1 of what defines a system (the user(s) that the other parts have to fit)-- IMHO. You get the Apple owner mad enough, he\she will load up the windows emulator and write and send you something mischevious.
For you and your uses, PCs make more sense-- for others, maybe not.
For me, Mac is easier to do DTP on than either the PCs or the Ataris I have more often used. In part because its displays are more easily and closely matchable to print media results than the PC or the Atari unless I spend 800.00-1200.00 for a very high end Matrox Quadro card. At that point, total system costs approach the Mac which has such video built-in as far as color calibration goes.
John Danielson.
John Danielson.
just for trivial information, the music software referred to above is called "Logic Audio", which is currently up to version 6, made by a company called Emagic, which was bought out by Mac, because Logic is the predominant audio production software period. (and as a user, it is damn good*) which, if you are a Mac user adds to your inflatad sense of superiority, or if you can't afford a Mac, make you think ".... f'n clever, yet evil bastards."
Logic is good enough that I'd seriously consider a Mac if I could afford just to be able to use newer versions of that one program.
*I still quite happily use 5.5 on my oh so miserably slow PC