Amd is the way to go the Turion are amd's answer to intel moble chips it is 64 bit and has very low power usage and very good battery life. I am a amd fan but will still give intel the lead on laptop chips for now but turion will change that soon. On the desk chips intel is not even close to amd. The top of the line intel chips run 800mhz faster than those from amd and still loose when you bench mark them. I bought my first mac in July and I like it but it not as fast as my intel laptop and no the turion was not out when I bought my intel laptop.
Intel Inside, Apple Outside
- Thread starter Mickwilli
- Start date
Apple will never run HL2 close to 86 machine that is why Mac is swithching to gain speed. You might gain speed for gaves with intel chips but intel can't come close to Amd on games, and any one know nothing run as fast in emulation mode.RGrphc2 said:Or because it's run on x86 chip, open up Virtual PC in full 100% emulation and run HL2 faster on the Mac then on the PC...
contoursvt
Registered
having owned only older macs (Quadra 950 and a B&W G3) but having built my own PC's since the days of 386, I can offer my experiences...
AMD has usually done well on paper. Lots of speed in benchmarks and that kind of thing but I find in actual real world usage, Intel systems tend to be more stable, multitask smoother and in general have more 'safety' built into them - for example if the heatsink fan fails or heatsink actually comes off. I think the majority of the stability is not due to the CPU but the supporting chipsets. Intel makes great chipsets IMO.
Also for some tasks, intel stuff is faster. Heck my friend just picked up an Athlon X2 4800+ which is one hell of a processor, on a dual SLI board, 1 gig DDR 400 dual channel..etc. He ran a photoshop test (some radial blur test) and asked me to run it as well and it wasnt even close. My nearly 1 year old dual xeon box (dual 3Ghz) cleaned his clocks 38 seconds for him vs 29 for me. Even with substancial overclocking, he could only bring it down to 32 seconds.... so when people say AMD is fast, it is but doesnt mean intel is out of the game. Funny thing is that dual 3Ghz xeons are only about 65% the cost of a single X2 4800+
AMD has usually done well on paper. Lots of speed in benchmarks and that kind of thing but I find in actual real world usage, Intel systems tend to be more stable, multitask smoother and in general have more 'safety' built into them - for example if the heatsink fan fails or heatsink actually comes off. I think the majority of the stability is not due to the CPU but the supporting chipsets. Intel makes great chipsets IMO.
Also for some tasks, intel stuff is faster. Heck my friend just picked up an Athlon X2 4800+ which is one hell of a processor, on a dual SLI board, 1 gig DDR 400 dual channel..etc. He ran a photoshop test (some radial blur test) and asked me to run it as well and it wasnt even close. My nearly 1 year old dual xeon box (dual 3Ghz) cleaned his clocks
38 seconds for him vs 29 for me. Even with substancial overclocking, he could only bring it down to 32 seconds.... so when people say AMD is fast, it is but doesnt mean intel is out of the game. Funny thing is that dual 3Ghz xeons are only about 65% the cost of a single X2 4800+
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
that ^^^^ is a very good example of the difference between workstation chips and desktop/consumer chips. i bet the athlon would play doom better.
when i was buying my computer, i of course looked into building myself a dual xeon rig, make a comparable pc to a powermac, for cheaper. except it turned out to be about a grand more expensive.
i got the powermac, and never looked back.
when i was buying my computer, i of course looked into building myself a dual xeon rig, make a comparable pc to a powermac, for cheaper. except it turned out to be about a grand more expensive.
i got the powermac, and never looked back.
contoursvt
Registered
Doesnt matter. My friend was bragging about his machine. His box is one year newer than my box and his processor cost considerably more than my two xeons. My board cost marginally more than his. Its dollar for dollar. Comparing an opteron setup that costs 2x the price is kind of stupid.
All costs are in canadian $$. The following is what it cost me to set up my box:
Xeon processors - $365 each (3Ghz, 1meg cache 800fsb)
ASUS NCCH-DL mainboard - $289
4x512mb DDR 400 - $60 each
So the fundementals to get this box running cost me approx $1260 plus taxes. These are prices from nearly a year ago.
My friend paid the following:
X2 4800+ $989
ASUS A8n sli premium - $211
2x 1gig - $260
So his setup cost him $1460 plus taxes....
Assuming he had gotten opterons. I'd say that a pair of opteron 248's would be about the same or in line with what I have for performance..
2x opteron 248's - $858
cheapest dual opteron board- $299 (only has one memory controller). For real benefit, opterons should have dual mem controller. That board is $429...
2gig registered memory - $424
So the absolute cheapest dual opteron setup would be $1521 plus taxes. This would probably get hurt pretty badly becuase it would lack the dual memory buses. For ideal dual opteron performance, you need t he good board which adds $130 to the price so now its $1631. Now we're between $350 and $400 more for a well configured opteron machine.
I got all prices from www.canadacomputers.com except for my xeon processors and board which were purchased from a local shop called pcvillage a year prior.
All costs are in canadian $$. The following is what it cost me to set up my box:
Xeon processors - $365 each (3Ghz, 1meg cache 800fsb)
ASUS NCCH-DL mainboard - $289
4x512mb DDR 400 - $60 each
So the fundementals to get this box running cost me approx $1260 plus taxes. These are prices from nearly a year ago.
My friend paid the following:
X2 4800+ $989
ASUS A8n sli premium - $211
2x 1gig - $260
So his setup cost him $1460 plus taxes....
Assuming he had gotten opterons. I'd say that a pair of opteron 248's would be about the same or in line with what I have for performance..
2x opteron 248's - $858
cheapest dual opteron board- $299 (only has one memory controller). For real benefit, opterons should have dual mem controller. That board is $429...
2gig registered memory - $424
So the absolute cheapest dual opteron setup would be $1521 plus taxes. This would probably get hurt pretty badly becuase it would lack the dual memory buses. For ideal dual opteron performance, you need t he good board which adds $130 to the price so now its $1631. Now we're between $350 and $400 more for a well configured opteron machine.
I got all prices from www.canadacomputers.com except for my xeon processors and board which were purchased from a local shop called pcvillage a year prior.
contoursvt
Registered
Its true, but I brought it up because I think apple has made the right choice by going intel. I believe its a more stable and mature platform.
contoursvt said:
IMHO a performance difference of 25-50% does not matter except for specialized applications and/or games. I used to use my laptop over the much faster and more expensive desktop machine. Then I got a Power Macmy first Macand shifted use to approx 50/50. Ease of use, lack of frustration, productivity take precedence in the absence of a significant difference i capabilities (say: Internet connectivity).
I'll take nice and user-friendly over fast any day.
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
Amen, brother... take away the "nice and user-friendly" and leave the fast and see just how productive you can be. Add the "nice and user-friendly" back in and cut the speed in half and see how productive you can be.dduck said:
My bet is that anyone would take the "nice and user-friendly" any day.
Johndoemanny34362
Registered
contoursvt said:
For games, 3d apps and pretty much everything else, AMD easily wins over intel any day. The sheer size of intel's share of the market (the avg computer consumer knows no other chip but the pentium) and it's dominance with processors caused apple to choose it over AMD. I think that they could have made the computers run faster by choosing AMD, but the industry is about money, not performance.
Also, intel processors are extremely overpriced compared to AMD's. 280 dollars will get you a mere intel 3.4ghz socket 775 p4, while AMD would give you super fast socket 939 A64 3800+. The 3000+ for heaven's sake is as fast (or even faster) as a 3.4ghz P4, yet is costs less than half the price! I will never buy an intel proc again, since i am a gamer. Intel officially sucks.
However, apple's move away from ppc will be good no matter what it chooses.
contoursvt
Registered
SuperTyphoon said:
For $339, I can get a 3.4Ghz P4 with HT and 2mb cache. For $350 I can get a 3800+ AMD socket 939. In my opinion, there is no contest and its a no brainer. The P4 3.4 wins hands down and I will explain why....
-stable and mature chipsets released by intel
-much smoother multitasking due to HT
-speed difference overall may be less than 5% so I dont really care
Oh and gaming performance... sure the AMD rocks but doing timedemos are pointless because when the game out of the time demo, they will both give you similar framerates. The AMD IS better for gaming which means, two years down the road it will scale much better than intel for the games. So when the intel 3.4 with the latest and greatest card (2 years down the road) may only manage 10fps in some game, the AMD can get 12fps. LOL great. Both cpus will suck for future games anyway so what do I care. Right now they will both run fine and the important thing is stability and multitasking for me and anyone who is not a 'gamer'. PS. in photoshop (according to PSbench results I've seen), a P4 3.0C is on par with an A64 3500+ socket 939. That is a pretty bad beating.
I think the most important reason for the switch to x86 is: GAMES! Not necessarily cheaper computers , but the interest is to attract a huge mass of gamers on Apple, virtually every game compiled for x86 would run on a Apple system with an Intel CPU. So Mac OS X (which is a state-of-the-art operating system) would be perfect not only for design, video processing, server tasks, everyday work in the office or at home, but also for playing games! I know gamers who invested thousands (!) of dollars in their PCs, and they would invest any sum, the only question is "Will these games rock on my machine?". Let's hope so!
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
PowerPC said:
Even though they would be running on x86 that doesn'rt mean that the games available for PCs now will run on an x86 Mac. If this were true, then Linux on x86 would be able to run them as well, which is obviously not the case.
What it might do is make it much easier for programmers to write low level gaming code on the x86 Macs since most of the games are coded for the x86 CPUs, not the PPC CPUs. Right now, it's tough since the two CPUs deal with byte-order differently. But having the same CPU will basically make the hardware issue of porting a non-issue. The only thing to worry about would be support for the OS.
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
actually, with all of the console developers now creating games in powerpc architecture, the opposite might happen.
and to 'PowerPC', macOS may be the most advanced OS in the world, but one thing it will never have, and is damn near required to play any game now, is DirectX.
and to 'PowerPC', macOS may be the most advanced OS in the world, but one thing it will never have, and is damn near required to play any game now, is DirectX.
contoursvt
Registered
gwynarion said:
...and how much money they saved by actually having a good selection of 'freeware' as opposed to shareware or how much money they saved by not having to drive 30 miles to get to an apple store or the one store that carries the software they need or how much they saved by being able to get replacement parts like system boards or power supplies for less than 1/2 the price of the computer. Oh and how much money is saved because if there is a board or PSU or processor failiure (in the unlikely event), you can usually get stock of something that day somewhere and not have to be down for days while parts are being shipped in or ordered.
I like I Mac but I also like my PC and I gotta say, if you know how to manage the machines and work on your own hardware, you get way more bang for your dollar with the PC and as for windows goes, if you're careful and not install things with trojans or viruses, XP is MORE stable than OSX. In my mind its not even close. I also support both at work and we have 3x as many windows users and I get about 1/3 the calls from them for little 'quirks' or issues. Granted the issues within OSX are usually resolved by a reboot but still... The number one issues I face with windows users is viruses and spyware. That I will deny but thats a user problem. The users that do not go to 'free music' sites or 'free warez' sites and such, dont call me with problems.
Heck I dont even run antivirus on my home machine and have not for over a year. I just changed my habits and locked down the machine a bit more. My server where I store my files has antivirus but I have not seen any probs since I stopped going to mystery sites that offer 'free' stuff. Once in a while I'll go to the trendmicro site and do an online antivirus scan which comes up clean. Even spyware is pretty much gone since staying out of the bad or mystery sites....
I'm just tired of people bringing up XP instability or security issues. Its common sense. Use a miniscule amount of caution and you'll be ok. If you dont, then you deserve what ever you get.
Lt Major Burns
"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
very true. i use osx because i feel windows is too dated, and also, yes because of the security. it is very easy to stay clean on windows, but it's also very easy for just one trojan to slip through. the one that hit my machine was msn plus!. everybody has this. i downloaded it, and got hit by the worst trojan i have ever seen
pop-ups in their hundreds a day, 30 icons that kept on reappearing on my desktop, folders created, toolbars added, systray apps added.
spybot and adware and mcaffee all removed it perfectly. until about 4 hours later when it was back. i am no novice when it come to pcs, but this one had me stumped. it took a complete system rebuild.
pop-ups in their hundreds a day, 30 icons that kept on reappearing on my desktop, folders created, toolbars added, systray apps added.
spybot and adware and mcaffee all removed it perfectly. until about 4 hours later when it was back. i am no novice when it come to pcs, but this one had me stumped. it took a complete system rebuild.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
The fact that the two operating systems are so different by nature is a major issue. The only thing that Mac OS X will suffer from is somthing that would affect any other UNIX or UNIX-like system. This is of course not including aything that Apple has done proprietarily such as Dashboard or anything else (remember the vulnerability from installing widgets?)
From my experience with UNIX-like operating systems, none of the applications are so tied to the low-level parts of the operating system. Windows, on the other hand, likes to install a bunch of files throughout the system that would not allow said applications to run properly (or at all) if those files were removed. Yes, DLL files do help speed up things, but at what cost? Sure, we can also talk about the library dependency hell that Linux suffers from, but the fact that it is a UNIX-like system means that you aren't running around as root all the time. Windows makes it VERY easy to make your account as powerful as the root account could be with the touch of a button.
MS needs to start from the ground up, as they are doing with Singularity (which to me seems like a UNIX-like OS if you read the information on it). Windows is definitely outdated no matter how pretty you make it. An apple (no pun intended) can looks as pretty as ever on the outside but be rotten to the core on the inside....this is the state of Windows even with Vista. I'm lookinf forward to see something more robust from Microsoft with Singularity, even if it is the company that makes the OS I dont prefer.
From my experience with UNIX-like operating systems, none of the applications are so tied to the low-level parts of the operating system. Windows, on the other hand, likes to install a bunch of files throughout the system that would not allow said applications to run properly (or at all) if those files were removed. Yes, DLL files do help speed up things, but at what cost? Sure, we can also talk about the library dependency hell that Linux suffers from, but the fact that it is a UNIX-like system means that you aren't running around as root all the time. Windows makes it VERY easy to make your account as powerful as the root account could be with the touch of a button.
MS needs to start from the ground up, as they are doing with Singularity (which to me seems like a UNIX-like OS if you read the information on it). Windows is definitely outdated no matter how pretty you make it. An apple (no pun intended
) can looks as pretty as ever on the outside but be rotten to the core on the inside....this is the state of Windows even with Vista. I'm lookinf forward to see something more robust from Microsoft with Singularity, even if it is the company that makes the OS I dont prefer.