Mac vs PC - Do the specs really match?

Mr Spew said:
Get an iMac then? Core2Duo is more than enough for what you need.
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I get 50fps on my macbook pro, I get 280fps on a quad core 3Ghz machine under linux. Thats the difference between an hour and 10 minutes which for me is the difference between practical or not.

Sure a brand new imac will be faster than my macbook pro but not that much faster. Obviously a q6600 would be slower than my 3Ghz quad core, so we'll say it does 200fps (I think it'll do better but lets be conservative). If a imac is twice as fast as my macbook pro (which is probably optimistic) then it does 100fps...still twice as long to encode.

Also, I design enterprise and ISP systems for a living, I have a pretty good understanding of what my requirements are and a core 2 duo doesn't meet them.
 
Get a Mac Pro! The mac mini is a waste of space, the iMac is merely adequate. Then again, I work in pre-press so maybe I'm a bit biased towards the top end ;)

Oddly enough, I prefer to use a PC at home. OSX would feel too much like work :P
 
UncleBob said:
Get a Mac Pro! The mac mini is a waste of space, the iMac is merely adequate. Then again, I work in pre-press so maybe I'm a bit biased towards the top end ;)

Oddly enough, I prefer to use a PC at home. OSX would feel too much like work :P
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I may yet do that, it just seems like overkill for what I want to do.

Question if anybody can answer, what is handbrake performance like in linux compared to OS X? ie. on the same machine, running handbrake from the command line, would OS X or Linux be faster in fps (assuming same settings etc.).
 
UncleBob said:
Get a Mac Pro! The mac mini is a waste of space, the iMac is merely adequate. Then again, I work in pre-press so maybe I'm a bit biased towards the top end ;)

Oddly enough, I prefer to use a PC at home. OSX would feel too much like work :P
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Actually if I could convince handbrake to spawn processes instead of threads, I'd buy 2x minis and have a crack at getting OpenMOSIX running on them to share the load...
 
This is why I have a MacBook and leave the encoding to an overclocked e6300. It worked out a lot cheaper and more practical than spending an insane amount on a Mac Pro.

I now have the option of throwing in a Q6600 if I want to do things a bit quicker.
 
SuperJ said:
How would you as mac owners' debate that point?
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The average Mac isn't made for tinkering with. The primary market for Mac's are consumers and professionals who will buy a machine for a purpose (Internet browsing and emailing, or video editing and rendering) and expect it to function the same in five years time without messing with anything.

Mac's have never been suitable for the techy geeks, the guys who like to go inside and prod about, replace a graphics card every now and then to play the latest games, etc. If you want that, then stick to a PC. Not everyone wants to prod inside, many are just happy with the fact that it works and does the job it's meant to.
 
The consensus (in my mind, at least) is changing though, the fastest laptop tested in a recent poll showed that (whilst running Vista) the MacBook Pro came out on top, despite not being the primary operating system for the platform. They have a closed-platform, for many like myself, this is extremely attractive because of the way everything works. Windows (Vista) seems to have gone that way slightly, but it still feels messy in comparison, pop-up windows and fiddly boxes don't make it entirely friendly.
 
I think it depends on your requirements and what suits them best.

For everything I do, except gaming, I use my MacBook Pro. For that I've found it quicker to use and more productive. I don't have requirements that say it has to be the fastest platform in terms of MHz or memory or even graphics power. My requirements are how quick I can do a task, how quick I can get to the desktop and pack it away again.

The reason I don't game on it is because I want it to not have any game patches/anti-copy protection/random crap that could endanger the stability (because I do my domestic accounts etc on it).
 
bigredshark said:
Because I'd like it to do it faster, I'm converting 2 hour DVD titles to watch on flights and such, yeah it does it as is but I don't want to have to leave it for 30 minutes to do it. I want to be able to convert in and throw it on my ipod in 15 minutes at most.

I'd also like to be able to export images from aperture a little bit faster.
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http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/24/review_elgato_turbo264/

£70 gets you an Elgato dedicated hardware video encoder.. problem solved?
 
I actually went through the same thoughts as the OP. I was all set to buy a 24" iMac and spend £1400 on it, and I thought, hang on a minute, what's the point in spending £1400 on a computer with the same spec as my year old Windows PC.

So what did I do? I decided to buy an 8 core Mac Pro instead (it will cost me £1600 with educational discount after upgrading the graphics to the nVidia 8800GT and adding WiFi and the second superdrive). which is amazing considering it's only £200 more than the iMac would have cost!
 
LordSplodge said:
Blah blah blah.

Buy a Mac use it for a bit them come back and tell me your "cheap" Dell box with Windows is any good.
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Having had plenty of experience with Macs, I can safely say that I still prefer PC hardware running Windows. Macs aren't the epitome of computing, they're just an alternative to the mainstream. Doesn't mean people can't (and don't) actually like using said mainstream product.
 
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