P4 vs. G5


it was noted to me today from erik, who is an expert on all things speedy and to do with computers, that the benchmark tests that apple did for the G5 vs. P4 were not truly representative of reality. this doesn’t surprise me — companies bend stats the way that is advantageous for their own purposes — all stats are subject to interpretation.
here is a link to some of the tests that barefeats.com did:
barefeats.com/pentium4.html
now, just judging from the url, the people organizing this seem biased towards the pentium4 — why isn’t it p4vsg5.html or something like that? look a little further and you’ll see the site is hosted on a Mac G4. so take a look..
personally, i don’t really care which is faster, as long as they’re both driving eachother to BECOME faster. apple has been the turtle traditionally, but seriously, there is no benefit in being slow and steady in this race. this is about pure and raw speed. computers have become to the graphic artist what a ruler is to an architect. if i have time to think of a different way i want something to look on an 11″x17″ 300 DPI photoshop document while the computer is executing the previous edit, the computer is too slow.
it’s gotta be that fast for me to make magic with it. okay?! now computer makers.. get back to work!!

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6 Comments

  1. lol. apple sucks.. is that what you mean?
    Apple G5 is a good processor… almost a “God Processor”. If there are better P4 that isn’t importante. I just know that Apple was made to turn my life easier… and in that way…
    I would never buy a P4.. and i prefer my 1ghz G4 to a 3.2 or 3.4 Intel P4.
    Only Apple users can rate their apple..
    About the tests… i dont believe they are false. Many magazines tested the new 3.2 P4 and it won 2.0 G5… but they never said anything about the 2.5…. so.. who is cheating who?

  2. It’s a matter of preference I suppose. My preferences aren’t to play into the Mac stanglehold.
    Apple is the sole maker of both their hardware and their OS. I don’t like that. As we saw when Apple changed over from Apple Serial to USB… they didn’t care to use both their proprietary serial connection AND USB to bridge the change over, no they expected people to throw away all their peripherals for new… USB-Apple serial converters didn’t hit the market for 3 months after that.
    Apple is too proprietary for my taste. The PC world is FULL of hardward to customize you computer any way you choose. Apple even requires you to use their “Airport cards” if you wish to go wireless. And the reward for using their products is small choice at 3 times the price.
    Their hardware is somewhat impressive, I like that their motherboards cycle at even integers to their Processors, however their Memory is WAY out of sync.
    Here is the breakdown of Current Macs (11/15/04)
    CPU (GHz): 1.8 (3) 1.8 (9) 2.0 (5) 2.5 (25)
    FSB (MHz): 600 (2) 900 (4) 1GHz (2) 1.5GHz (8)
    MEM (MHz): 400 (1) 400 (2) 400 (1) 400 (4)
    What that means is that for the ‘Fastest’ Mac, the processor cycles 25 times, the motherboard 8 times and the memory cycles 4 times before they sync. (Each of the () numbers represents cycles to sync)
    Fortunately on the PC side, you have much wider range of hardware to configure and cobble together to get things to sync up quicker ie:
    CPU: 3.2 GHz (8)
    FSB: 800 MHz (4)
    MEM: 400 MHz (1)
    This means that with EVERY cycle of the memory it syncs with the motherboard and CPU, EVERY sync of the motherboard syncs with the CPU. This is far more efficient, and sometimes efficiency is more effective that raw speed (But whoops! the CPU is faster too, hmmmm)
    And Finally, to restate, I can buy whatever hardware I want, not what a boardroom tells me to remortgage the house for. I get to KEEP all my peripherals if my computer manufacturer changes the color of them.
    Choice is good. Choice leads to competition; competition (usually) leads to improvement.

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