Mac Vs. PC

[ManBearPig]

Those PowerMac G5s or whatever they are called have absolutely awesome specs (and the monitor is sweet) and the case looks really well ventilated. I know its really expensive, but why dont more people who want the best computer have those Macs?

You could upgrade the RAM and get a couple sweet HDDs and it'd have way better specs. Not as much customizability though. So whats the problem, incompatability with games? eh?

 

[wakawaka]

Because its not the best computer?

 

[SLCentral]

Games + Macs = No. Everything else is so kick ass on a Mac, but not because of the hardware, but because of the OS. Top of the line Opterons will beat the G5 in most things.

 

[ohnnyj]

Cost prohibitive to many as well.

 

[Pabster]

Jeez, not this ridiculous debate again.

Why? Because people don't see the value in spending $5,000 on a machine that can be beaten in 98% of daily tasks by a $300 PC.

Maybe you live in Photoshop but the rest of us don't

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Hmmmmm.......
My PC runs too many different programs. You say that won't be a problem?
About $500 for a 3 year old vid card, $400 for DDR333, and $400 for a "superdrive" (a.k.a. pioneer a-04)?
Throw in a 1 button mouse, no upgradability, and a pair of Birkenstocks, and you've got a deal!

 

[ribbon13]

Opteron all the way baby.

The Dual Italy Opteron upgrade path is gonna make me pity the Mac-fanboy photoshop fool .

 

[The Boston Dangler]

The Apple website refers to PC's as "Frankensteins"
These people would much rather be seen in a New Beetle over a Shelby Cobra or Ferrari Enzo.
There is a biological term for these people: "vagina"

 

[batmanuel]

One big issue I have with the PowerMac G5 towers is their lack of internal drive bays. You can only add a single hard drive internally, so you can count out RAID-5. An nForce 4 Pro dual Opteron board in a nice case like a CM Stacker would make a much nicer basis for a content creation workstation than a PowerMac - especially if you loaded up the case with a nice SCSI RAID-5 array (or a 0+1 array of four SATA Seagate 7200.8s if you are limited in your storage budget).

It is also a bad choice for a content creation workstation because the only graphics cards available for the G5 are gaming cards like the X800 and GeForce 6800. If you are working with Maya on a Mac, you can't get a workstation class card like a Wildcat Realizm - a card that eats gaming cards for lunch when it comes to displaying complex wireframes and shaded models. Plus you don't have access to SLI on the Mac, so you can't chain a pair of Quadros together if you absolutely NEED the ultimate in polygon crunching power - like you can with a nForce 4 Pro board.

Also, Adobe has really moved away from Apple in recent years, probably because Final Cut Pro and Motion have enroached on Adobe's turf. You don't see the dominance of Macs in Photoshop like you used to, so as far as content creation goes you don't lose any capability by going PC anymore, since all the Adobe and Macromedia apps run equally well on both the Mac and PC platform.

Video editing is one place where Apple has an advantage, simply because Final Cut and Motion are so much better than any of the competing apps.

 

[vegetation]

97% of the world values the best bang for buck. PCs have this advantage due to its non-proprietary design, allowing for competitive action. Macs do not (although they were heading that way before Jobs ruined it) have this advantage, so the pricing is far too much for what people want to pay. It's as simple as that. Everything else falls under this issue, such as less software development, etc.

 

[Lorn]

I love my Powermac G5 - but then again all I use it for is getting creative work done. I work with heavy applications ranging from audio, design, animation and film - and most often multitasking between them. The Mac is the perfect environment for me to create efficiently without worrying about crashes, spyware, incompatabilities, etc. I get work done on my Mac. Period.

But you've got no idea how much I wish that I still had my PC so that I could play some HL2 and CS:Source.

 

[ribbon13]

That's exactly where dual opterons shine. Do all that work and play games. Upgrade to dual Opteron 280s, and it will easily smoke a Dual G5 2.7Ghz.

 

[imported_Lucifer]

Barefeats has been pretty reputable when it comes to Mac vs. PC. Here is a benchmark of the G5 vs. various PC's. Link

They also did a benchmark with the G5 against various PC's on Doom 3. I believe the G5 lost every test.

 

[Lorn]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
That's exactly where dual opterons shine. Do all that work and play games. Upgrade to dual Opteron 280s, and it will easily smoke a Dual G5 2.7Ghz.

Negative. The entire Windows OS is bad news for me.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I like Apple's products. I like AMD's products. I use them both. :beer:

 

[RichieZ]

mmm thats ok I have both, also pls note that iMac G5 will be getting an upgrade soon to get a 9600 instead of the awful FX5200. ANd OSX 10.4 Tiger, will speed it up quite a bit, even on a POS FX5200 (in my powerbook 12")

 

[SlitheryDee]

Quote from Barefeats.

"I often get asked to do price/performance comparisons on the Mac vs PC. It's hard to do since the price of the Windows PCs vary widely depending on the motherboard used and from whom you buy. I did go to @XiComputer for a quote on the AMD Opteron 252 (Dual 2.6GHz) with 4GB of memory, DVD burner, 10K Raptor boot drive, and 160GB data drive, a configuration that matched the Dual G5/2.5GHz Power Mac we tested. I also ran their numbers for the Intel Dual Xeon 3.4GHz system (same config):
The Dual Opteron 252 quote came in at $5593 (before tax and shipping).
The Dual Xeon 3.4GHz came in at $4197.
The Apple Online Store quote for the G5/2.5GHz Power Mac was $4870 + $179 for the 10K Raptor (ZipZoomFly) for a total of $5079. (Apple typically overcharges for memory. Buying the four 1GB PC3200 modules from sources at "sane" prices drops the overall price of the Mac to $4351.)"

Is this accurate people? Barefeats makes it seem as though there is virtually no price difference between equivalent high end dual core PCs and Macs.

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: Pabster
Jeez, not this ridiculous debate again.

Why? Because people don't see the value in spending $5,000 on a machine that can be beaten in 98% of daily tasks by a $300 PC.

Maybe you live in Photoshop but the rest of us don't

Funny how my winnie 3500+ and 1GB runs all Adobe stuff a hell of a lot faster than the G5 dual 2GHz with 1.5G in my office. Even if i did "live" in PS i would prefer a PC.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: homercles337

Originally posted by: Pabster
Jeez, not this ridiculous debate again.

Why? Because people don't see the value in spending $5,000 on a machine that can be beaten in 98% of daily tasks by a $300 PC.

Maybe you live in Photoshop but the rest of us don't

Funny how my winnie 3500+ and 1GB runs all Adobe stuff a hell of a lot faster than the G5 dual 2GHz with 1.5G in my office. Even if i did "live" in PS i would prefer a PC.

It sounds like your admin is a moron.

 

[homercles337]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: homercles337

Originally posted by: Pabster
Jeez, not this ridiculous debate again.

Why? Because people don't see the value in spending $5,000 on a machine that can be beaten in 98% of daily tasks by a $300 PC.

Maybe you live in Photoshop but the rest of us don't

Funny how my winnie 3500+ and 1GB runs all Adobe stuff a hell of a lot faster than the G5 dual 2GHz with 1.5G in my office. Even if i did "live" in PS i would prefer a PC.

It sounds like your admin is a moron.

Actually the man is a genius, but admin is not his primary role--science is. I have said it before and will say it again. Everything on this mac (dual 2GHz, 1.5 blah, blah) runs noticably slower than my 3500+ winnie, blah blah. I do the same sheet on BOTH machines EVERY day, why would admin stuff change this? Hell, im the admin, care to make optimization suggestions? Because this machine has not been messed with since it came outta the box. What kind of macophile is gonna drop to command line to optimize?

 

[RussianSensation]

Even if there are applications where apple computers are still faster today, soon for 1/4 of the price, P4 and A64 dual-core will pretty much make apple hardware really hard to like (unless you are really into niche software tools that only apple can provide).

 

[imported_bum]

Originally posted by: vegetation
97% of the world values the best bang for buck. PCs have this advantage due to its non-proprietary design, allowing for competitive action. Macs do not (although they were heading that way before Jobs ruined it) have this advantage, so the pricing is far too much for what people want to pay. It's as simple as that. Everything else falls under this issue, such as less software development, etc.

Just curious, how did Steve Jobs ruin that area of things? He obviously runs things different than most other guys, but he has also pulled the company out of a craphole in the last couple years.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Originally posted by: homercles337

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: homercles337

Originally posted by: Pabster
Jeez, not this ridiculous debate again.

Why? Because people don't see the value in spending $5,000 on a machine that can be beaten in 98% of daily tasks by a $300 PC.

Maybe you live in Photoshop but the rest of us don't

Funny how my winnie 3500+ and 1GB runs all Adobe stuff a hell of a lot faster than the G5 dual 2GHz with 1.5G in my office. Even if i did "live" in PS i would prefer a PC.

It sounds like your admin is a moron.

Actually the man is a genius, but admin is not his primary role--science is. I have said it before and will say it again. Everything on this mac (dual 2GHz, 1.5 blah, blah) runs noticably slower than my 3500+ winnie, blah blah. I do the same sheet on BOTH machines EVERY day, why would admin stuff change this? Hell, im the admin, care to make optimization suggestions? Because this machine has not been messed with since it came outta the box. What kind of macophile is gonna drop to command line to optimize?

Have you repaired permissions? Run Apple's disk utilities? Run Disk Warrior? Reset PRAM? Reset NVRAM? Reset PMU? Chachamacarena? Oh wait these things are supposed to work perfectly right out of the box without tinkering. My bad homie.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Originally posted by: bum

Originally posted by: vegetation
97% of the world values the best bang for buck. PCs have this advantage due to its non-proprietary design, allowing for competitive action. Macs do not (although they were heading that way before Jobs ruined it) have this advantage, so the pricing is far too much for what people want to pay. It's as simple as that. Everything else falls under this issue, such as less software development, etc.

Just curious, how did Steve Jobs ruin that area of things? He obviously runs things different than most other guys, but he has also pulled the company out of a craphole in the last couple years.

Umax? Daystar? Motorola? Power Computing?

 

[thunderroller]

not as good as windows