[pliny]

There's nothing in these PS 8 benchmarks that makes them useless; that is hyperbole.

The G5's whip the other machines by good margins.

[blackwind]

The problem is that there is not much that makes Apple's Photoshop 8 benchmarks useful. That is the problem when one tries to combine a number of results into a simpler "general" result without giving the details of the smaller number of results. Various interpretations of data are possible (as I pointed out earlier, some tests are more relevant than others for different people); however, with only a "general" score, only one conclusion is basically given.

If the potential customer's workflow exactly matches the one Apple used, then the G5 is the obvious choice as it does whip the other machines by good margins (ignoring the hard drive issue). The problem is that no one knows what Apple's workflow model is.

Essentially, the result Apple gives is kind of like MacWorld's Speedmark scores. You get a general idea of what is being tested, but you don't know what are the most important factors in the score.

I suppose it is a problem of convenience. Not many people are too interested in all the details, so a simple score is what many people use to make a decision.

Generally, the reason why most people consider documented (and hence, reproduceable) tests is the fact that all possible disclosure of information is given for one's own analysis.

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One last point is that for small files (files that don't hit the scratch disk), most computers are fast enough. Actions take seconds or fractions of seconds, so the user is the bottleneck. For large files (files that hit the scratch disk), the hard drive is the most important factor, so just get any computer and a RAID 0 array...

[zubro]

The speed is something, right, and the $ difference is huge!

Of course you should go for the Windows machine, but, it is a Windoes machine...

If you want to do more than Photoshop (and I am shure you will) and if you can afford the Mac, go for it.
I will always advice you to buy an Apple machine as I am an "eternal" (over 15 years) Mac user. I did work from time to time on Windows but it has and is still always a bad experience.
In my opinion, you should also strongly consider the "Image Core" of the coming Mac OS.
I think it will change a LOT of things in the graphic world.

[tonywong]

With all due respect to all the discussions regarding which machine will be faster for whatever benchmark, I don't think that miccocan (the original poster) is getting any benefit from all the wanks who pull their units out to see who's is larger.

Please try not to confuse the issue with malware, XP configs and the like. Presumably his centrino laptop is configured correctly and he is sufficiently educated about viruses and the like.

Can we stay more directly on topic and those that do not have any direct and real experience with Photoshop on windows and macs please go and start a new thread of your own? PS Bench doesn't cut it for this type of discussion. Issues of benefits such as colour calibration and workflows should be more important than minor performance differentials.

Please remember that this discussion is centered around whether this fellow should spend 3x the amount of money on a mac 1.8sp vs. a 3GHz P4 machine for PS work. Anything else is a threadjack.

[UnixMac]

Originally posted by tonywong:
With all due respect to all the discussions regarding which machine will be faster for whatever benchmark, I don't think that miccocan (the original poster) is getting any benefit from all the wanks who pull their units out to see who's is larger.

Please try not to confuse the issue with malware, XP configs and the like. Presumably his centrino laptop is configured correctly and he is sufficiently educated about viruses and the like.

Can we stay more directly on topic and those that do not have any direct and real experience with Photoshop on windows and macs please go and start a new thread of your own? PS Bench doesn't cut it for this type of discussion. Issues of benefits such as colour calibration and workflows should be more important than minor performance differentials.

Please remember that this discussion is centered around whether this fellow should spend 3x the amount of money on a mac 1.8sp vs. a 3GHz P4 machine for PS work. Anything else is a threadjack.

I think that this was basically answered adnauseum here Speed on Photoshop

so, lets all start a new PC vs Mac thread elsewhere now.