Macs -???

[SolraBizna]

Quote: from Dman on 12:33 pm on July 1, 2003[br]What I am wondering is why there are so many Mac gamers here. The PC is faster, has better games, and is so much more popular than Macs. And what is with Mac OS X anyway? We've got Linux for our modern Unix interfaces anyway!
Sorry, but I hate Macs. (as you may be able to tell)

/me takes a very, very deep breath

Here's a small comparison between my dinky little iBook and one of the school PC's.

My iBook, BTW, is a 300MHz G3 with an ATI Rage Mobility L graphics card running Mac OS 9.2.1, and the PC is an 850MHz Pentium III with an ATI Radeon ninety-something-hundred running W2K Professional Edition.

Bored in computer class, wrote small fractal terrain generation program with OpenGL display. Compiled with VC++ *shudder*. Ran. It (eventually) worked. Generated a 2049x2049 matrix of doubles with it. Rendered. Ummm...and rendered. And rendered. Added timing code to make sure: took almost 30 seconds to generate & render!

Brought source home on floppy. Compiled on iBook. Compiled with Metrowerks C *shudders only a little less*. Ran. Generated a 2049x2049 matrix of doubles. Rendered...stared dumbfoundedly at gene-render time. Only about 35 seconds! So. Here we stand. 300MHz G3 + Rage Mobility (total crap) took 35 seconds, and 850MHz Pentium III with Radeon took 30 seconds. So, how is it that my "crappy" little Mac can almost hold its own against a PC with an infinitely superior graphics card and almost three times the clock-speed? And with Apple's incredibly stupid OpenGL drivers on Mac OS 9 as well? [/rant]

BTW, now have 1.2GHz dual-processor G4 with a Radeon, run Warcraft III at full quality at 1600x1200:32 and WOW. Now if I only had more than 256MB of memory.... I have yet to try Uplink on it though.

P.S. Hate MacOS X? So did I. Then I saw (touched, etc.) Panther (10.3). I instantly changed my opinion on the subject. I'll start using it regularly as soon as it's released to the public...or when Apple fixes that dumb Startup Disk bug.

(edited for accuracy)

(Edited by SolraBizna at 7:49 pm on Aug. 18, 2003)

[Stewsburntmonkey]

I should point out that both of those systems are well less than optimal, not just the iBook.  Also the video card difference is largely negated by the fact that you used OpenGL as ATI is an equal oportunity employer when it comes to crap OpenGL performance.  Also that is about the performance you would expect from those systems.  The discussion of the Mac CPU vs the PC's is in another thread here (the "I want a Mac" thread I think).  :)

[Shade of Blue]

yeah, well, having read both topics and having owned macs all my life, i have concluded that a Mac with any set RAM, MHz, and recentness of applications used could easily blow an equally endowed non-Mac out of the water.  

feedback?  :-}

[Stewsburntmonkey]

Actually a Mac will outperform an identically equipted PC (assuming here that the chips would have the same Mhz rating).  That is the way the architecture of the two chips work.  The thing is the PC chips are able to achieve higher speeds than the Mac chips.  In general Macs can perform equal to a PC at 1.5-1.8 times their speed.  :)

[WraithSniper]

Quote: from scutum on 7:35 pm on July 30, 2003[br]have you seen the new 64mb mac? the fastest in the world. its only for calculations though, not games.

There was a joke that Louis Black once said, it was something about how most people have high stress levels due to hearing someone say something insanely stupid and then walk off, so that the person who has just heard this insanely stupid comment is forced to think about what was going though that person's head, instead of being able to ask them what the hell is wrong with them.
You just say something insanely stupid. Why? Why would you do a thing like that? What the hell was going through your head?? That's just pure...
/Wraith's head bursts from stress
For those of you who actually believed that idiot, no, the G5 is NOT just for math. It can run any program that any other mac can run. Only better. A lot better. By better, I mean faster. Why faster means it can't play games, I have no idea what made you think that. Hell, that's probably now the best mac for games. The G5 can do anything that any other mac can do. Including gaming.

[Shade of Blue]

Quote: from WraithSniper on 11:10 pm on Aug. 19, 2003[br]

The G5 can do anything that any other mac can do. Including gaming.

can do anything any other computer can do, for that matter

[tabasco boy]

i really doubt what your saying there. i'm sure a g5 can't do a BSOD

[Shade of Blue]

Quote: from tabasco boy on 10:22 pm on Aug. 20, 2003[br]i really doubt what your saying there. i'm sure a g5 can't do a BSOD

a what?
any other personal computer.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

No it will probably be a Pretty Multicolor Screen Of Death, knowing Apple.  :)

[Redbaron]

Being another Mac evangelist it's hardly surprising that I'll come down on the side of the Mac.  Now that we have OS X we are getting SW coming out quicker and more comprehensively so hopeully we'll soon catch up with the 'Dark Side'.  I have a PB G4 15" for work and I am very attached to it, it doesn't have the new ambient light sensor or backlight but the viewable area of the screen is excellent and the performance on OSX is very good.  I confess I have to take my watch off whilst using as it chips the paint on the lip of the case.  The other drawback is the ports on the back end if you put a cat 5 cable in with the plastic guard on it's a bugger to get out again (which may be why the ports are on the sides in all the new models.)
As for OSs well I sat down in 1986 in front of a Vax tried to use it and failed then I found an SE20 (not the postal area in SE London!) and lo there were things to attempt and buttons on the desktop to click so within a couple of weeks you could navigate your way around it.  Anyone whose last experience was OS9 I would strongly advise trying OSX for a little while, OS9 was convoluted and had many components that were obsolete but still necessary purely because code had been written on top for things this made it cumbersome and inefficient.  OSX when used properly is far slicker manages memory and processor better.  The places I support who've migrated say it's hugely improved their productivty rate.  So yah boo to Gatesy!

[TheDuke]

If I had the money, I would have both a PC and a mac.

[Shade of Blue]

i dug up an old SE/30 in my attic...heh....

it's pretty nice.

[Redbaron]

SE30s rock.
By the way the G5 can do a BSOD -the default screen in OSX if you don't get as far as the kernel extensions is blue, so Apple have kindly built that in as a crisis emulator to keep us in step with our PC cousins.

[Shade of Blue]

Hahah..........very true...


and, nice quote, baron.    We mac users sure know what's up.
Heheh.

[Ionas]

Good point there, some two-three posts back. The mac shareware games industry makes up for any [nowadays quite small] shortcomings in available games. With companies like ambrosia [brought us Uplink, and, even more importantly, Escape Velocity Series] and Spiderweb Soft [Exile, Nethergate and Avernum series of games, ugly-as-sin shareware rpgs that outlasts, outperforms, outdistances, outdetails and outfunctions Nwn, Baldur's Gate series & Lionheart together], I'd say the mac games market is oversaturated with goodies... Escape Velocity Nova and some of the Spiderweb Soft games have recently been made available for pc [from 2 up to 10 years after their mac releases, I might add  ]. Try them, and see for yerself...

(Edited by Ionas at 3:41 pm on Oct. 25, 2003)


(Edited by Ionas at 3:42 pm on Oct. 25, 2003)