Mac faster than PC?

The Pentium M (Centrino) at 1.6 GHz actually smokes 2+ GHz P4s and even Athlon XPs. There was an article on The Register and/or The Inquirer that points to a news group thread in which people posted times for SETI work units. Indeed, the Pentium M beated all the desktop CPUs (most impressive is it beat an Athlon XP 3000+) and SETI is very FPU/memory bus intensive.

But why is it so powerful? 1 MB on-die L2 cache :)
 
I dont know. I saw some test of the Centrino vs faster P4's and yes it was very impressive but I dont recall it being as fast as the 2.8 and 3ghz P4's but non the less very very impressive. I think that Intel is using the Laptops as a testbed before ramping up the speed maybe on a slightly altered desktop version? Just my speculation of course.
 
Originally posted by contoursvt
Of course apple laptops are the fastest. I'm sure that a 3.0Ghz P4 laptop with a 533Mhz bus and integrated Radeon 9000 is just too slow to compete. Ya that must be it or did we not think a 3Ghz laptop existed?

Oh wait, Mhz myth right.... clock for clock its considerably slower. Too bad its 3x the clockspeed so it more than makes up for its inefficient design ;)
Click to expand...

You surely are confused if you think that such a computer is actually portable/laptop... Of course it is in the looks area... But what about battery? Can it last for more than 2 hours with that mighty 3GHz performance? :p Or even 1&1/2 hours? :rolleyes:

My bet on the Wintel/Amd side would be Centrino or Athlon...

Then again my TiBook 1GHz/DVD-R is fast enough and lasts long enough too! :p
 
Last time I checked, a laptop had a power supply so when the battery icon looks a little low, I wouldnt have much trouble reaching over and plugging it in. Also while it may not last much over 2 hours under heavy use, what do you expect for 2x the performance?

If I judge a laptop on battery life alone, then I'll go for a Transmeta based one. Sure it will crawl but damn I can get almost 10 hours on some brands. (Fujitsu with its extended battery).
 
Intel won't turn Pentium M into a desktop CPU, that would mean they are admitting that their were wrong about the P4 core, because Pentium M is just a P3 core with the larger cache and SSE2. What would make sense is Intel putting Pentium M in blade servers. I think it was Sun who was planning on using mobile Athlon chips in their blades.
 
I'm a 11 year PC user.. and 8 month mac user...

Mac navigateable by keyboard? NO... You can't hit Y or N for yes, no prompts, or tab between choices. Yes there's full keyboard access, but it's not the same as dropping menus quick in Windows. I believe Apple's reason is to simplify the OS for idiots. Because Advanced users are only a small portion. Windows is FULLY keyboard navigatable.

Speed isn't an issue? Mac OS X UI is SLOW... Even on my top of the line Powerbook it's still not snappily responsive as my P4 1.8Ghz running Windows XP. Usually a slow UI has to do w/ not having enough ram.. but both machines have 512mb.

It all depends on what choices you want your UI to have. I like my powerbook because of the design considerations. The fact that I have UNIX apps at my fingertips. The battery life sucks ass though. It's practically unusable. (2 1/2 hours?... dwindles when you do anything intensive). I'm use to it because I use to have a decked out Inspiron 8000 (1600x1200 15" screen p3 800 cdr, dvd, 512 30gig) that was pretty bad. Much heavier though.

The TWO biggest reasons Mac OS X rules is Adium X and Safari. Being the primary applications I use, they are by superior than anything on both systems because of their tabbing and keyboard navigation. Plus with Mac I don't have to see 15 flashes AIM windows at the bottom of my screen. (Do you know how annoying that is?)

IPhoto, Address Book, Ical, Itunes, etc are also great. Mail.app pisses me off so much though. Outlook Express is better.

Anyways, there's pluses and minus on both sides.

The best site i've ever seen to compare Windows XP and Mac OS X is http://www.xvsxp.com

It even has a animated gif with the speed of the scrollbar (way slower on Mac OS X). What a great site.

I think Apple's current direction is a software developer. Font Book looks so much easier and simpler to use than anything I've seen. I believe they're moving in the direction of Microsoft.
 
Some of Apple's policies and OS changes seem microscopically soft (shorten it and you'll understand :)). And rightfully so: at times, Microsoft does get something right. But much more frequently, Apple innovates a wonderful product that has lasting repercussions throughout the computer industry, sending imitators scrambling to, well, imitate.

A 1600x1200 pixel resolution on a 15" screen? Was that at all hard to read?

I believe Apple has addressed a number of the speed issues with Panther. Upgrading may make you happier.
 
You know, I've never had a game developed by Microsoft crash. I'm talking Motocross Madness, Age of Empires series, etc. Perhaps their game development team should switch places with their Windows development team.

Hey arden do you work for Apple? I always hear you telling people to wait and buy Panther, or Buy a G5, and such :p

Regarding UI speed and smoothness, I've bitched about OSX UI ever since 10.1 to 10.2.6. The UI in Windows XP is faster sure, but OSX is "clean". By that I mean when under heavy load, you can actually see windows and widgets being redrawn in WinXP. Also when under high load and trying to move windows you might see trails it leaves behind when in the middle of drawing. That garbage never happens in OSX's UI. It's nice and clean.... but just too slow.
 
mmm AOE... :D one of my favorite games

A 1600x1200 pixel resolution on a 15" screen? Was that at all hard to read?
Click to expand...

Nope... it was very nice.. it's IBM's UXGA screen... Dell still ships it. I have good eye sight.. it might be worse for someone else. Gave me a LOT of room on the desktop
 
Lycander, I wish I worked for Apple. Those are merely suggestions of how to get more performance if one is willing to pay the price for it.

There are certainly things you can do to speed up OS X's UI, though better hardware is usually the best. You can enable window buffering, use a theme besides Aqua, disable clock cycle-consuming tasks, disable certain effects, um, overclock your computer... but these usually take more technical know-how than the average user possesses.
 
Except for overclocking, I've already done everything you suggested and I posted a screenshot in that "yet another desktop" thread.

I finally accepted the fact that the OSX UI is slow, but like I said, it's very clean which compensates.
 
I believe that under XP or 2000, the slowdown in the UI is due to lack of RAM and hard drive swapping. As long as you're not swapping, there is no reason for the UI to be slow.

Also, the number one thing that makes any system feel slow is the hard disk. So if you're going to end up swapping to a hard drive, you'd better make it a 10 to 15K SCSI drive.

Also, the user interface in OSX (10.2) is noticably slower than XP. I'm talking 3-4x slower. That may or may not bother some but I personally like a responsive system which is why I went all SCSI. I like immediate feedback without delay so for someone like me, OSX will be a little annoying at times. It does look better but I'm not willing to go that much slower for a pretty face.

Also stability of Win2k and XP is very good. Just as good as OSX in fact - as long as you're keeping the system in check. Make sure you have antivirus running and make sure you have the latest security update. Once thats done, then the system cannot really be comprimised.
 
Originally posted by contoursvt
Also, the user interface in OSX (10.2) is noticably slower than XP. I'm talking 3-4x slower. That may or may not bother some but I personally like a responsive system which is why I went all SCSI. I like immediate feedback without delay so for someone like me, OSX will be a little annoying at times. It does look better but I'm not willing to go that much slower for a pretty face.
Click to expand...
I'm the same way. I like the snappy GUI. To me, that = how fast the computer is.

I recently stuck a Radeon 8500 in my G4 450, and didn't notice any huge improvement gains in this area. What is the MHz (or GHz) rating for the Mac OS X interface to appear snappy? Like, at least comparable to Windows or Mac OS 9.
 
Its funny but I actually disable the 'themes' service so that XP starts to look more like win2k. It speeds up just a tad after that.

I have used OSX on a 1Ghz G4 with a GF4 MX and it was not bad. I mean slower than a 1Ghz PC but kinda OK to use in terms of GUI speed. I dont know if the Geforce line is better or worse for desktop speed but this computer was fine. Felt more like a PIII 600 with a 1/2 decent video card running XP. I'm sure the 1Ghz G4 overall is a way faster system but the GUI speed felt the same.

As I said before, the thing I've noticed that speed up the system the most is a really fast hard drive. I'd easily give up my faster CPU for a slower one before losing my 10K and 15K scsi drives.
 
The iWhining seems to never stop...

Bah! Get over it people and buy new Macs like at least a Dual G4 or even better even a single G5 :rolleyes: Then wait a bit for Panther and we will have this discussion again :p

It is no secret that in order for OS X to perform better needs optimization... Damn, why no one is complaining with the speed of OS 9 compared to ANY Windows versions? They are actually the same GUI technologies therefore they produce almost the same results in responsiveness, that's why! I want to hear from you iWhiners when LongHorn will be out... Oh, wait! This is at least 1-2 years down the line :eek:

OS X GUI is slow my behind! :D
 
Hulk, are you going to fund these new G4's and G5's? I sure could use one...

One thing I can't stand in Windows is its mouse tracking. It's just so inaccurate, it's hard to pinpoint something on the screen. Every Mac I have ever used has had much better mouse tracking than every Windows machine I have ever used. I don't know why, either.

I also like how the Mac hides the cursor when you type.
 
Originally posted by hulkaros
The iWhining seems to never stop...

Bah! Get over it people and buy new Macs like at least a Dual G4 or even better even a single G5 :rolleyes: Then wait a bit for Panther and we will have this discussion again :p

...

OS X GUI is slow my behind! :D
Click to expand...
Maybe you could post some helpful information, like what I asked for in my original post. What do you think is the minimum Mac for great GUI performance? Because a 450 MHz G4 Sawtooth with a Radeon 8500 still is sluggish when I'm resizing windows. And I don't whine about it - I acknowledge the problem, however.
 
hulk, try to keep with the serious discussion here, less rhetoric please ;)

im glad to see some open mindedness happening in here, doesnt happen very often in these discussions :)

some osx gui tips to help make things a tad snappier and/or get rid of unnecessary graphics effects... although they come with their own minuses, having to install 3rd party software

-change minimize mode to scale, the sucking is just too slow to handle

-get a dock manipulation program, i like to get rid of the transparent block, and the arrows. Also turn off the bouncing icon. I have literally no icons in my dock, until an application is launched and running.

-get launch bar, for fast launching of apps, its a great app, once you get used to it, you will never use anything else (its all keyboard nav ;))

-windowshade x and fruit menu both have a couple options i like.

-in fruit menu, i disable all their bull and only disable animated menus... this gives menus a much needed pop, instead of fading into view

-window shade is more of a subjective thing, if you like the old windowshade effect in classic, which i do, because sometimes, minimized or hiding windows are hard to find :) also you can disable shadows with either this, or shadow killer, this gets rid of window shadow. (less alpha blending for you old mac users i believe)

- change themes to a theme that has opaque windows and menus, once again, less alpha blending

- maximize ram, plain and simple ;)

- change swap to another hard drive if possible.

i'm sure there is stuff i forgot. will this make the GUI as snappy as an optimized windows GUI? probably not, but it might help out a bit. if there are any alternatives to the APE apps i suggested, i would love to hear about them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top