[Spliff]

Macs vs PC: Performance Report

This is a shootout between the fastest Macs and PCs using pro digital photography_software. It's 14 pages long, so here's the conclusion:

Photographers who shoot with the 14n or DCS 760 are still able to work more quickly and process files faster on a PC than on a Mac. Even C1 Pro, despite being optimized for the Mac, is still measurably faster on a PC.

Ultimately,_the Mac tied or led the PC in 19 of_the 77 tests that comprise this report. Put another way, the PC was faster in 58 of_77 benchmarks._

And this is comparing desktop machines. Though we haven't published specific performance numbers for laptops in this report, we did run a Mac Powerbook and a Dell laptop through a subset of the same tests. The15-inch Powerbook G4, powered by a G4/1.25GHz processor, was thumped in every test by a Dell Inspiron 8500 and its P4-M processor running at 2.6GHz. Until Apple is able to stuff a G5 processor inside one of its sexy Powerbook cases, portable Macs are likely to remain noticeably slower than their PC counterparts.

Laptops aside, the combination of faster hardware and better software has brought about a significant performance jump for pro digital photographers using the Mac. And while the PC is still quicker overall, the Mac is at least back in the race.

Apple may make its next move this week if it announces faster G5 processors as expected during MacWorld. But with Intel's next-generation Pentium 4 processor (codenamed Prescott)_looming, and the rumoured introduction of the Tejas processor at speeds of 5 to 7GHz possibly before the end of 2004, Apple, in conjunction with G5 chip maker_IBM,_will have to work harder than ever to keep pace with Windows-based computers.

I'm not bothered too much by the G5s performance, but seeing the 15" Powerbook getting trounced by a Dell laptop is depressing.

[gorickey]

The Mac has OS X on it....that's enough of a test to win me over...

[Spliff]

Originally posted by gorickey:
The Mac has OS X on it....that's enough of a test to win me over...

Don't get me wrong, I'd never switch to a PC as long as Apple exists. OS X is amazing. I just want Apple hardware to consistently outperform PC hardware for a change.

[Axo1ot1]

As far as the powerbook goes, how many professional image crunchers do you know that work exclusively on a laptop? Not a lot I'll wager. As for overall speed, it's reduced in Apple laptops, but that doesn't mean they're not better than PC laptops for many things. Video editing springs to mind. It's really kind of a joke to try to do pro viedo on a PC laptop, though it's entirely feasible and widely done with the mac.

[MindFad]

June couldn't get here any faster, huh? "...3GHz in one year..." Power Mac will probably get updated in the coming month or so, and the machines are plenty competitive as it is. And they come with OS X. Meh.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Spliff:
codenamed Prescott

If they think they're gonna sell any of those in the UK they're gonna have a shock. Here's the UK's current Prescott:



He's the lard-o-matic deputy prime minister and he does things like this when people throw eggs at him:



Makes Ballmer look sophisticated, no?



Oh. And I wouldn't care if PC's were 100 times faster than Macs. They don't run OS X.

[thunderous_funker]

The summary doesn't do the comparisons justice. In lots of those 58 benchmarks where the PC was faster, we're talking about 4.2 seconds compared to 4.4 seconds or 40 seconds vs. 60 seconds.

After reading that report I'm left with 2 conclusions:

1) The G5 at 2.0Ghz compares quite favorably to a P4 at 3.06Ghz. That's some chip.

2) The results seem to say more about the software utility involved than the underlying hardware. Consider how Apple trounces the P4 in Photoshop tests but loses tests with the "Nikon Capture Tool" or "Canon Viewer Utility"

Nothing to get too depressed over.

Hell, if your seconds are so very precious that a minute here and a minute there really make that much difference, you should be setting up a render farm instead of using a workstation.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
The results seem to say more about the software utility involved than the underlying hardware. Consider how Apple trounces the P4 in Photoshop tests but loses tests with the "Nikon Capture Tool" or "Canon Viewer Utility"

Does that mean that the Mac programmers that Canon or Nikon hire are less talented than the PC programmers?

[benb]

Originally posted by Spliff:
Does that mean that the Mac programmers that Canon or Nikon hire are less talented than the PC programmers?

And/Or Canon and Nikon don't spend much time optimizing their software for the Mac and/or PC.

Since when are these benches useful? This is like PC Magazine's Word Scrolling Test.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Spliff:
Does that mean that the Mac programmers that Canon or Nikon hire are less talented than the PC programmers?

Programming something that works and somethign that works brilliantly are two very different things.

One is also substantially more expensive than the other.

It has almost nothing to do with talent.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
Programming something that works and somethign that works brilliantly are two very different things.

One is also substantially more expensive than the other.

It has almost nothing to do with talent.

So, because Apple has such a small market share, Canon and Nikon put more work into their PC photography apps compared to their Mac versions?

[Apple Pro Underwear]

thanks for the link, spliff!

it shows that indeed, you are correct: we have to catch up.

it also shows: we need to catch up...but not by a large margin.


the test is kind of flawed in that it's testing the processor with obscure software though. if the g5 got trounced with a top 10 consumer productivity software program either in creative or office use � then i would have fully conceded that the G5 is still massively under powered.


g4 laptop vs dell laptop : straight up performance wise, i agree that it is comparatively slow. quite slow. but laptops are different than desktops. Apple makes a great laptop due to it's other functionality such as size and weight. i certainly think that Apple should get their shiznit together and make a faster powerbook as best they can before the value/functionality ratio becomes too great.

[iNub]

Originally posted by Spliff:
So, because Apple has such a small market share, Canon and Nikon put more work into their PC photography apps compared to their Mac versions?

That's pretty much it.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by Spliff:
So, because Apple has such a small market share, Canon and Nikon put more work into their PC photography apps compared to their Mac versions?

Why are you asking me?

Look at the performance disparity with the various photo tools. Obviously there are some serious differences in how well each tool is optomized for hardware.

This test doesn't tell us anything about Apple's hardware. What it tells us is that certain photo utilities run better on P4's rather than G5's.

This test tells us more about the 2 ports of the utility than it tells us about hardware.

Come on, let's at least pretend to use a bit of scientific thinking here.

Summary:

If you want to know which platform runs which photo software faster, consult the test.

If you want to know which platform is inherently faster, consult spec tests or some other objective performance measurement.

[starman]

For all we know the developers could have accidentally shipped debug versions of their apps.

Mike

[MindFad]

Aren't those like courtesy apps anyway? Like that glass of water they give you at restaurants?

[scaught]

Originally posted by starman:
For all we know the developers could have accidentally shipped debug versions of their apps.

Mike

L
O
L
!

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Aren't those like courtesy apps anyway? Like that glass of water they give you at restaurants?

Yeah, but Mac users have to drink out of the toilet.

[scaught]

theres alot more to "power" than processors.

lockit.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by scaught:
theres alot more to "power" than processors.

lockit.

[Gee4orce]

Why is it that hardware and software companies want us to think that graphics pros do nothing but go at Photoshop 100% all day, and that the merest difference in performance is going to make them jump ship ?

The graphic designers I know are more concerned about style and creativity, and in any case spend so much time playing with their fluffy desk toys, shooting hoops, chatting up women over the phone, talking about and listening to the latest in drum'n'bass, or otherwise larking about that you'd need a computer out of Star Trek to make up for lost time....

[solitere]

Originally posted by Spliff:
Does that mean that the Mac programmers that Canon or Nikon hire are less talented than the PC programmers?

Atleast Canon scanner drivers and software have been poor written for OS X.

[Troll]

Wouldn't it be better to time photographers doing their jobs on each platform, i.e. how long does it take them to get their camera working with the OS, log their photos, correct them, get connected to the Internet, mail them back to their employers? I was interested to see at the Cricket World Cup last year, that more than half of the photographers there were using PowerBooks.

I'm not a professional but I have a little tale to tell. Last year I went on a ski trip and took my PowerBook with me. Everyone had a digital cameras. Each evening, we'd plug in each camera and download the photos (using iPhoto but the same applies to other software). Every camera worked out of the box. At the end of the holiday, we pressed burn and made a CD for each person and the photos were on the web through .mac within 10 minutes of connecting to the Internet.

This year, a friend of mine decided to take his brand new Windows laptop along so I left mine behind. Half the cameras didn't work because we didn't have the right drivers or something. The files had to be copied manually off the cameras that did mount. One Samsung camera started its numbering system from 0 every day and we had to manually renumber the files passing by a swap folder. We used ACDSee which is nice but not a scratch on iPhoto. Rotating photos could only be done one image at a time, slideshows were clunky and amatuerish and we didn't find an easy way of playing music; certainly no iTunes-type integration with any music player. Finally, when we wanted to burn (he had a DVD burner), we found that Nero didn't have the right drivers either. Did I mention the noise this thing made (fans on full all the time) or the fact that its battery lasted 2 hours tops (okay, it had a 15 inch screen) or that it weighed an absolute ton?

On day three, my girlfriend arrived with her new G4 iBook. It just worked and it kept going off battery for 6 hours on a charge! The geeks who wanted to tinker with settings and "try this" or hunt for viruses still fiddled with the PC. The rest used the Mac. When it came to burning the photos at the end of the week once we had an Internet connection again, the guy whose laptop it was insisted on burning a CD himself because his drive was "double the speed" of my girlfriend's combo. Needless to say she had burned a CD and put her photos on .mac through iPhoto before he had even had Nero teed up to start burning. He had to use some shareware he downloaded to do thumbnails and then use some other software for the webpage and then some ftp software to publish ... he still hasn't put the photos up on his site!

ACDSee displays the photos faster than iPhoto. That is visible and no doubt measurable. Same way the PC versions probably performed better in those tests, but when you look at the time taken to achieve the task (collate all photos and share them), the $1,000 iBook way outperformed the $2,000 PC.

[deekay1]

Originally posted by Troll:
Wouldn't it be better to time photographers doing their jobs on each platform...

yes, and then look at the results! because that is what it's all about.

one of the main reasons i still use macs (and hate working on pcs) is because the results i get are so much better. even if i use the same apps (like phtoshop, freehand, illustrator etc.), for some strange reason, i get far better results from my g4.

i really don't know "why", but i suspect the whole design of the os has a much larger impact on your level of "work" than the often mentioned mhz, benchmarks etc.

i never really look at what the pc world does, because i'm neither interested in games, or mhz numbers etc. what i'm interested in, is how this machine will help me get my work done, the way I WANT IT TO LOOK! and that's almost impossible for me to do on a pc.

one thing i don't like about all of these "iapps" is that they make too many decisions for you (as far as filemanagement etc. goes). this is a good strategy for beginners/consumers, but for people who actually know what they are doing more of an impediment than an actual help, imho.

[Eriamjh]

Hmmm. Some of the benchmarks in that test show the single 3.2GHz P4 to be faster than the dual P4 by a decent margin. What's up with that?

[mitchell_pgh]

The current hardware is on par with PC hardware.

I'm simply happy that we are in the same ballpark!

[Apple Pro Underwear]

the software may have contributed to the performance ratings but if you look over at the PM forum �_the G5 does not win every benchmark.

i think Spliff has a valid point in that this is the year we blow the roof off PC performance, blow the roof off the value/performace ratio and finally control their own destiny in terms of qualifying itself as the true alternative to Windows instead of a bit player.

come on folks! now that Apple does have the G5 we should leave that old attitude behind and be more agressive in our though process.

[Troll]

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:
control their own destiny in terms of qualifying itself as the true alternative to Windows.

I can't see that there is a more "true alternative" to Windows than Mac OS. I don't see how benchmarks have any correlation. Do people really care that one machine can check spelling on a 10,000 page document half a second faster than another? There is nothing that I can do with the Windows PC I use at work that I can't do with my Mac and neither of them is too slow for me. The Mac is already a viable alternative if you ask me - far more viable than Linux or Warp or even Win NT.

[Gee4orce]

Troll, that is a great story. But you (and your pals) are terrible geeks for taking laptops on holiday

[typoon]

Well in real life tests using Photoshop I know for a fact from a power user friend of mine who has both a Dual 2Ghz G5 with 4 gigs or RAM and a Dual P4 3.6 with same amount of RAM that his G5 consistantly trounces his P4 in Photoshop and a few other apps. So using obscure aps like the ones they used isn't too accurate for me in comparing the machines.

[Troll]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
Troll, that is a great story. But you (and your pals) are terrible geeks for taking laptops on holiday

:snigger: Tell that to my boss! Actually, my digital camera only stores 40 odd photos and you tend to take lots when trying to capture just how good a snowboarder you are ... or aren't (which is what the photos normally reveal no matter how good that jump felt). Need somewhere to dump all those photos of my mates soaring 2 inches above the powder.

[Uday]

In my experience the PC is a loser.

I have a Dell laptop + docking sattion at work and a powerbook and iMac at home. I also have a Nikon 5000 digital camera. The provided software stinks even on the PC. The Dell fails to recognise the camera unless the AC adaptor is also plugged in. I did contact Nikon UK about this but they could not solve it (nearly a week wasted - these things are not taken into account on the comparison tests) .

With my powerbook and iMac it really is just plug and play and the printing is far superior in terms of colour.

[osiris]

It would be nice for a change to see a bottom level G5 or mid-range PB totally destroy a PC in all tests. No excuses. Apple seems to be more focused on mainstream consumer products than raw speed these days.

If the G5 matures as quickly as it appears on paper, we should regain the speed champ title. At least for a few weeks.

[benb]

Originally posted by osiris:
Apple seems to be more focused on mainstream consumer products than raw speed these days.

Yea, no kidding. They haven't even deployed an entirely new architecture with the fastest available desktop bus, SATA, PCI-X, or HyperTransport in the last 6 months. Nor have they updated the XServe in ages, or even put one ounce of effort into writing their own clustering software. Not only that, but I can't seem to find any Mac with Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, 802.11b/g, or FW800.

The nerve.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by benb:
Yea, no kidding. They haven't even deployed an entirely new architecture with the fastest available desktop bus, SATA, PCI-X, or HyperTransport in the last 6 months. Nor have they updated the XServe in ages, or even put one ounce of effort into writing their own clustering software. Not only that, but I can't seem to find any Mac with Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, 802.11b/g, or FW800.

The nerve.

Were you being sarcastic?

[Troll]

Originally posted by benb:
Yea, no kidding. They haven't even deployed an entirely new architecture with the fastest available desktop bus, SATA, PCI-X, or HyperTransport in the last 6 months. Nor have they updated the XServe in ages, or even put one ounce of effort into writing their own clustering software. Not only that, but I can't seem to find any Mac with Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, 802.11b/g, or FW800.

The nerve.

You forgot that they haven't bothered to get involved in producing supercomputers or distributed computing.

[benb]

Originally posted by MindFad:
Were you being sarcastic?

No.















Alright, you win! I can't go on lying to you anymore! I was, I was!

[osiris]

Originally posted by benb:
Yea, no kidding. They haven't even deployed an entirely new architecture with the fastest available desktop bus, SATA, PCI-X, or HyperTransport in the last 6 months. Nor have they updated the XServe in ages, or even put one ounce of effort into writing their own clustering software. Not only that, but I can't seem to find any Mac with Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2, 802.11b/g, or FW800.

The nerve.

They are still slower. Yes, the nerve, especially with that feature set and at the price offered.