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PC vs. Mac G5 (pg. 4)
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| quote: | Originally posted by stefanoc
ok
its going to be a PC. mac costs lot more if i want to get a good one, plus i realized that i need a power mac (the one with the cpu box). and that costs + monitor.
now its pentium vs. athlon
last time i knew, pentium was better overall because it was more reliable. what are your opinions? |
go with athlon 64 |
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| DannyO |
^^^ Same, either that or check out the Opteron, been reading good things about them.
Unworldly, so your able to get Logic and Cubase for Linux?, I didn't know that, do you know of any other good music programs for Linux?, I plan on putting Linux back on my laptop when I fix it. |
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| jammer42777 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DannyO
^^^ Same, either that or check out the Opteron, been reading good things about them.
Unworldly, so your able to get Logic and Cubase for Linux?, I didn't know that, do you know of any other good music programs for Linux?, I plan on putting Linux back on my laptop when I fix it. |
Actually I wasn't aware of cubase or logic
More along the lines if roseguarden or Muse
roseguarden has a built in vst wrapper, and the vstis work /wine
(srry if you're not referencing my post) |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by GreenLight
The Mac OSX system is open based ... so if my version of Logic pro 7 was to crash during operation, it isnt going to drag the ENTIRE system down with it ... can't say that for windows |
Where have you been for the past 10 years? Application crashes in Windows have not caused system-wide crashes since the days of Windows 3.1.
Linux/UNIX are definitely better-designed in that if some *incredibly* sloppy programmer wrote software that ends up getting in an infinite loop and hogging 99% of the CPU and/or starts unwakeable and unkillable threads, you're almost always able to call up a console and kill the offending process. ALMOST. It's still a mystery to me why Microsoft has so far been unwilling or unable to create a special console or task manager that always has realtime priority.
Having said that, the number of times this actually happens is minimal - in fact, the only commercial program (that is, not counting untested versions of the ones I've written) that seems to do this is Cubase, and it happens on a very infrequent basis (maybe once every 50 times I run the program). And I also believe that in some cases, it's not the fault of Cubase but rather the fault of some particular plugin that was sloppily coded.
Anyway, I digress - the point is, Linux has it nailed down when it comes to keeping the system running, but Macs - despite being based on a GNU kernel - have actually obscured this functionality, making it no more stable than Windows XP is. That is, unless they've made a major change in the most recent Tiger version.
| quote: | Originally posted by DannyO
I don't know if this is still the same, but I remember Anandtech (I think) did a test with the P4 and AMDs, the test was to see how they would perform if they had no cooling, the Intel chips heated up but when they got to a certain temperature, the chip dropped its processing power right down so it didn't damage the cpu, where as the AMD chip just heated right up and ended up melting some of its core. |
That only happened with the early Athlon chips. There were many, many horror stories of people who had bought brand-new Athlons and forgotten to install their heatsinks or installed them incorrectly and they end up melting in about 10 seconds. Doesn't happen anymore with the Athlon 64/Sempron/FX/Opteron (it wasn't even happening with the older thoroughbreds).
A lot of people also tried to overclock them. Same deal there - the first batch of Athlons weren't designed to be overclocked and none of the Athlon motherboards supported it. I admit, AMD probably should have considered the possibility that people would try it anyway (creating solder bridges between pins on the chip, and so on), but if you ask me, if you try to overclock a chip that expressly says "do not try to overclock" then you deserve whatever the outcome of that is.
| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0915
I Honestly don't know where you kids are getting the money from, most of you seem to be close to the same age as me and I struggle just to go to local parties and go to school and feed myself, and I work full time and barely spend anything. |
I'm sure that if you took a look at these kids' credit cards and overdrafts, it would all make sense to you. :p I can guarantee you that less than 1 out of 10 have a net worth above zero - by the time they hit their mid-20s most of them have bad credit, ty apartments and are struggling to pay all their bills. Either that or they live with their parents and take the bus until they are 35.
I'm not criticizing people universally here, I'm sure that there are enough people who actually can afford their lifestyles. Many can't, though. |
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| DigiNut |
And as a final note here, I'd like to sum it up this way:
Macs are great computers for media production. There's no denying that. If the day comes where I decide I need (and can afford) a dedicated computer for production, it *will* be a Mac.
However, it really fries me when Mac users (especially the "born-again" converts) start lecturing the rest of us about how Windows PCs are totally unreliable and totally insecure and that Macs outperform Windows PCs in every benchmark, when there is no evidence whatsoever to support those assertions. In my experience, many - not necessarily all - but many of these people could simply never get their minds wrapped around the way PCs work and get them configured reliably and customized the way they want. Should they have to? Of course not! However, the fact that a Mac "makes more sense" to them does not necessarily mean that other people will feel the same way and certainly, in and of itself, does not make them better machines.
Macs have a lot of nice features that streamline the workflow in production and other areas (i.e. graphic design), but in this day and age they are neither faster, nor more secure, nor more reliable than a properly-configured Windows PC. Also, for anybody who was using computers back in 1986 when the Mac Plus and Mac SE were considered top-of-the-line, you'd realize that Macs have also come quite a long way and were not *always* such great computers - especially around the time Windows 95/98/NT4 was dominating the market and Apple was still using the "traditional" Mac OS, before OS X came out.
There is not one iota of doubt that a Mac has many advantages vs. a Windows PC. Just keep in mind that those advantages come at a premium of about 250% and that there are disadvantages that go along with them.
If you were buying a laptop for production I would say, definitely, without question, buy a PowerBook. For desktops, I really think that it's about even and that if you're on any kind of a budget, you really need to ask yourself if that extra convenience and fashion statement is worth the price tag.
That's all. |
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| BiG MiKE |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
No.
Yes, because they are artsy types and Macs are more "user-friendly" (which isn't even true anymore, but it's a commonly-held belief among those types).
Once again, no.
If you actually have any facts or benchmarks to support these assertions then by all means, present them. But simply going by the word of people you've met in university doesn't prove anything - where did THEY get THEIR facts from? Many self-proclaimed "industry professionals" are full of and just like to throw around buzzwords. And as for the professor who beta-tested Logic - what did you he was going to say, that the software sucks balls?
You're not even giving us second-hand facts, you're giving us second-hand opinions. Let's hear some evidence. |
Looks like Hai Lee got owned :haha: |
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| fr0st |
You guys crack me up, on the right we got the mac haters, and on the left we have the mac elitest. Ill summ everything up in a few words.
Mac
Cons
GFX cards cost alot
Not many games
alot of plugins are PC only(but this can be countered with mac only plugs)
low end macs to do compare to similary priced PC's(but this may change with intel partnership)
Pros
Much more stable the windows, yes you can get windows to behave nicely, but not without a lot of work.
OS is very efficient at multitasking(for programs that are optimized for this, live sucks on my g5)
PC
Cons
Windows is bloated and needs to be rewritten, i have constant crashes on my pc while not OS crashes(i rarely have those) but program crashes.
system needs regular maintenance to run properly.
pc does not read mac files(my mac can read a ntfs drive but windows cant read a mac drive)
Pros
A entry system is cheap(though it will not compete with a high end mac)
Pentium M kicks major as in the portable market(a powerbook can not compete with a similary priced pc, in performance)
very open ended lots of great free plugs and lots of support for lots of software
Great for games
My final words, if you have the money to shell out for a high end quad core mac the purchase it. If your not looking to spend that kinda money settle for a pc with less power. |
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| DannyO |
^^^thats sums it up perfectly IMO.
Digi, thanks for the info on the Athlons heat problem, I agree alot more with your last two posts, but just so you know, I ain't really born again, I'm just happy I got a computer that I don't need to think to use it, I used to be heavily into computers, but now I only want them for music/video stuff and the internet, and this mac meets these needs very well.
And in order to afford this computer (only 2g so its not exactly expensive), just gotta work hard, I do have some debt but in general I'm very very well off, got to feed alot of other hobbies, plus I don't go to clubs much at all, they just blow here. |
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| skot_e |
I think it was digi who made the point :
"It's not a question of the ease-of-use of creating viruses, it's a question of motivation: why would anyone want to write a virus for Mac OS when its penetration is going to be less than 3 percent?"
Surely that is reason enough to select a Mac, especially if you plan to use it to access the web, but at the end of the day who really gives a what computer you use to write tunes! What really matters is how they sound... |
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| Storyteller |
| quote: | Originally posted by fr0st
Much more stable the windows, yes you can get windows to behave nicely, but not without a lot of work. |
I don't agree, it takes me about 30 minutes to set op windows properly. I wouldn't call that a lot of work. I see my 1.8ghz outrunning some poorly configured amd systems which are in the 3200+ range while mine is only 2500+.
I've had one crash last year in my audio partition last year, which was because of a free piece of bad written software... Never had any problems.
Maybe it's more like: you need to know what you're doing when you want to properly configure a pc and apple comes properly configured already.. Dunno.
Are there really that much rumours on both sides of the fence to just say: Both OS' are good for music production?!
I think these days more actually released productions come from a pc than apple or hardware.
Why can't we just say: Oh I like PC/Mac better. It suits my needs better than a pc/mac did back then so I kinda got stuck on it.
That's good enough and could avoid these endless pro's & con's discussions. |
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| stefanoc |
theres no trick to saving money, you just dont spend it. i make $1,000 month and i sometimes save it. back in the days, i saved 700-800 a month (i know, its crazy), now im happy if i save 200.
i dont pay rent, but i pay for everything else (car insurancce, cell phone, credit card bill...)
i have a great credit score. u just have to know the right way to spend your money and amount you should spend. never spend more than you have, thats just plain wrong in this case.
storyteller:
how do you set windows in a way to perform better? is there a guide or anything, or does anyone know how?
im going with a PC because i figured a good mac would cost me high.
with the money ill be saving buying a PC, i can atleast get a decent soundcard, synth, etc... |
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| stefanoc |
also, is athlon 64 good for multi-tasking?
is it reliable? is the athlon 64 better than pentium 4 or are they about the same? i dont care about saving a few hundred bucks, i care about getting something more reliable.
thanks |
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