BreakmanX.com

BTW, thanks for making this personal with my picture.

Just kidding hehe. But, seriously, that's what Star Wars will do to you. Especially in this rather large dosage.

Well, it kinda sucks you have to go out and buy a whole new mouse to replace the one Apple sent you, but you gotta do what you gotta do. That said, the Logitech Mouseman Pro cordless is an excellent mouse, the exact same one I use at home. It does indeed eat batteries with a vengeance, but I've found that lithium batteries tend to last about 3 times as long, and make the mouse weigh less at the same time. It's a couple more bucks, but it's better than the mouse going dead mid-game a few weeks after you replaced the batteries.

We can go on and on about clock speeds and RAM maximums, but I think you're missing the point, Apollo. This is a gaming forum. We talk about games, on all platforms, console, PC, and even Mac. And the overriding rule among gamers is this: if you want to play a certain game, you choose the game, and base the hardware around it. Not the other way around. You don't buy a console just to have the console, you buy the console because you know it'll have (or already has) games you want to play (unless you're a hardcore fanboy, but that’s another debate). The same goes for PC/Mac. If I want to play, say.....Battlefield 1942, or Grand Theft Auto III? What do I do? Buy/Build a PC, of course. The fact that the latest and greatest Apple machine can do this or that is irrelevant to me. It's the same reason you do your gaming on an X-Box and your computing on a Mac.

My rant earlier (the one with all the pictures) was not directed at you, Apollo, and I hope you didn't take it that way. My comparison between Apple and PC expansion was not meant to mean that I'm gonna need all those slots, or that I need more than 500 GB of hard disk space. My point was that Apple did an extremely shitty and biased comparison of the two platforms.

But, all that aside, what are the specs on your Apple? Not meant to be offensive if the specs are sub-par (God knows we’ve all used/owned shitty computers), but I’m really just curious.

(Richie takes a seat, pops the top on a Dew, and takes a break from rant writing for now, or until the Dew runs out)

EDIT: Now that I've taken some time out, I'd like to give an amen to Break, who said that the whole debate is a matter of opinion. Apollo can go on about his G5 and his statistics, and I can go on about games and advertising, but in the end, I'm still gonna stay up till 4 every night playing Galaxies (which Mac dosen't have, by the way), and Apollo is still gonna do whatever it is he does with his computer. However, if any lives have been dramatically altered by this thread, please, let me know.

I know why you look familiar! The Dead Poets Society!

lol break. i was thinking he looked more like an Agent or a programmed cyborg straight from Apple. lol, jk apollo. nice suit. (what's the building you're standing in front of anyway?)

Richie wrote: But, all that aside, what are the specs on your Apple? Not meant to be offensive if the specs are sub-par (God knows we’ve all used/owned shitty computers), but I’m really just curious.
... Apollo is still gonna do whatever it is he does with his computer. However, if any lives have been dramatically altered by this thread, please, let me know.

Well, since you asked. I own a powermac G4 Quicksilver. It has dual 800MHz G4s, a 133MHz system bus, 768MB of 133MHz SDRAM, a superdrive (burns DVDs at 1x), an internal 80GB ATA drive, two firewire ports, a 64MB GeForce 4xAGP graphics card (can't remember exactly which model), an external 120GB LaCie drive, Harmon Kardon soundsticks w/isub, a 17" Apple studio display, a pair of Sennheiser HD-590 headphones, an first gen. 5gig ipod, and a APC UPS LS-500 battery/surge backup.
and it looks like this:


and what do I do on this system you may ask? Well, I do lots of things. But I like to do Photoshop, Final Cut pro video editing, DVD creation with DVD SP, iphoto for catologing my digital photos, and a few other things. Oh, and I use microsoft office when I have to. Office for mac works great.and, believe it or not, I do play game son my mac. I've played Myst 3, unreal tournament, max payne, the sims, Warcraft 3, medal of honor, soldier of fortune, several small shareware/freeeware games, and am currently playing through bloodrayne. So thats about it.

Realm wrote:lol break. i was thinking he looked more like an Agent or a programmed cyborg straight from Apple. lol, jk apollo. nice suit. (what's the building you're standing in front of anyway?)

thanks. I think I look good in a suit.
the building? well, its not a building but lets see if this looks familiar to you:

ah, cool. never been there, but it's on my to-do list. btw, nice desk. (and it's....clean....very unnatural for a teenager, more evidence for my cyborg theory )

Yeah, the suit is bad ass. I just was gettin ya back for jeerin my pic. You look like a secret agent

Well, since it seems that the debate has stopped and both sides have had their say. I guess its safe to call some conclusions. Both sides agree that the Windows PC platform has the gaming market on a computer. The 90+% market share that windows enjoys guarantees that most every game will be available for it. Also, I believe that both sides will admit (some more hesitantly than others) that the G5 has the superior power and ease of use. It certainly has the aesthetical appeal.
The argument has not centered around the operating systems which drive these platforms (mac OS X and windows XP) and, because very few people on this board have had the opportunity to use both for an extended period of time, we cannot draw any conclusions which both sides will completely agree upon.
as break so aptly put it:

BreakmanX wrote: Its all a matter of opinion. Its an argument that cannot be won.

That it is. Its a matter of preference. I prefer to use the system with more power, ease of use, and stability. (my school is getting a dual G5 next month for video editing. So, technically this is a correct statement. I will be the chief user of that machine.) And the others here prefer to use a Windows PC because their favorite games are made for it. Its as simple as that.

Hey Guys, I’ve just read all your posts with a great deal of interest. As I mentioned, I’ve just moved houses, and I have some guest staying with me for a while, so it been really hectic and I haven’t really had much of a chance to get online, yet alone write a decent reply (it usually takes me a couple of hours) to all the stuff that’s been going on.

In this post, I hope to address a few things with the G5 vs P4 vs Opteron hardware argument, and to briefly enter into the software argument too.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I really don’t believe (and you shouldn’t either) that a Dual G5 system is 2.2x faster than a Dual Xeon. Before any such claim about a system performance can be believed, real independent testing needs to be done. Apple contracted Veritest to benchmark the G5 against the Dell systems so they aren’t really independent - On the first page of the Veritest report, it says: "Test report prepared under contract from Apple Computer". Every result that you see on the G5’s website is misleading. It’s all outlined here. I don’t really want to repeat too much of what that Author says, but I will give a small snippet.

[quote=”http://www.haxial.com/spls-soapbox/apple-powermac-G5/”] Not ready to be fooled, I found this March 2003 Sharky Extreme article by Vince Freeman. As you can see, Sharky Extreme says they achieved 334 fps, which is much faster than the 275 fps that Apple claims the Pentium 4 3.0 GHz achieves. My suspicions were confirmed: Apple is deliberately attempting to mislead its customers again.[/quote]

Since this is primarily a gaming site, I’ll include this graph from Apple and this quote from the article I listed above regarding Quake3. I think it demonstrates how Apple purposely de-optimized the Intel systems for their tests.

Anyway, we could argue until we are blue in the face about the hypothetical performance of each system. Give it a month until the G5 is in some independent reviewers hands – then we’ll see how it really performs against the P4s and Xeons. And to make thinks even more interesting, we’ll see how it compares in September against the Athlon64 too.

It seems the system I priced before was a bit questionable, and honestly, I just picked the absolute cheapest prices with specs at or above the G5. As Apollo pointed out “…you left out some key components (case, fans, heat-sink, power supply, etc. and all of these things are minor costs)”. It seems I did leave out the Case, Power, etc. when I priced the system. My only excuse is that I’m an idiot and it completely slipped my mind. So I’m going to re-price the system, and try to match a PC machine exactly to the top of the line G5 (the M9032LL/A).

This time I’m going to use brand name pieces, instead of miscellaneous brands, so that should make sure I only get top quality equipment. I will use newegg.com for prices – newegg is renowned for reasonable prices and is a very trustworthy dealer. So without further ado, I present the specs and cost of a new Xeon system that is as identical as possible to the new G5.

DVD Burner: NEC DVD +/- RW 4x DVD Recordable Drive - $185

HDD: Seagate 160GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Barracuda 7200 - $159

RAM: CRUCIAL MICRON 512MB 64x64 PC 3200 DDR RAM - $89

Mobo: Supermicro SUPER X5DAL-TG2 Motherboard - $455
1x 8xAGP Pro 1.5V, 1x 64-bit PCI-X(100MHz),1x64-bit PCI-X(66MHz), 2x 32-bit PCI(33MHz)
1x Printer, 2x Com, 2x PS/2, Up to 6 USB2.0
RAM:4x DDR 266/200 Max 8GB ECC or Non-ECC
IDE:2x ATA 100 EIDE
SATA: 2x Silicon Image controllers support 4-port Serial ATA ( RAID 0, 1)
Onboard LAN:1x Intel 82546EB Gigabit Ethernet
Up to 8 GB ECC registered DDR-200/266 memory in 4 DIMM slots

CPU: INTEL Pentium 4 XEON 3.06GHz 512K 533 MHz - $497.00 * 2 = $994
Fan and heat sink included.

Video: ATI RADEON 9600 PRO EZ version 128MB DDR DVI+CRT+TV 8X AGP RETAIL - $148

Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum - $167
6.1 surround, optical in/out, analog in/out, 2 firewire

Wireless Comm: Netgear WG511 802.11g 54 Mbps Notebook Wireless PC CARD - $54

Modem: Aceex V.92 Full Duplex FaxModem PCI Voice, Data, Fax Modem 56000bps - $9

Arctic Silver's NEW Premium Silver Polysynthetic Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 3 - $13

Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth - $130

Total: $2403

Well, I must say that the final price amazed me. Before I started, I assumed the total for a top of the line Dual Xeon system would be much closer to the $3000 mark. Granted, again I left out the case and power supply, but with a $600 margin you can grab yourself a pretty snazzy case and power supply – one that looks similar to an Mac case. Or a generic case and 400watt power supply only cost about $50 these days anyway. And I suppose you might want to add $100 for a copy of Windows XP –although you could use Linux for free. So, the basic conclusion to find from this is that you can build a somewhat comparable Xeon system for quite a significant amount cheaper than a new G5.

But how comparable are the two systems? The Xeon can’t physically support as much ram as the G5 and the 800mbps Firewire port is a Mac exclusive for the time being. The Xeon system I made however does have bonus such as hardware RAID, 2 IDE controllers, and 6 USB2 ports. But for all practical purposes, this system is nearly identical to the top-of-the-line G5 (same ram, HDD, video card, burner, etc…). Note that when I say same Video Card, I mean the chip on the card is the same (ATI send the same Radeon Chips to Manufacturer who then build the controlling boards around them) and thus Video performance is going to be essentially the same.


However, it’s not fair to compare the Xeon to the G5. Let’s face it – the G5 architecture is just superior to the Xeon. The Xeon is based on the P4 architecture, which is in terms of computer hardware, is ancient (the P4 was launched in Nov. 2000). The G5 is Fresh-off-the-Press with the latest and greatest technology inside it – including the AltiVec instruction set, a 1GHz bus, and hyper-transport technology, not to mention being a 64-bit processor. At this time, there really isn’t a consumer chip that can compare to the top of the line G5 (although, its arguable that the top of the line G5 is aimed at professionals not consumers right now).

The only processor for PC on the horizon that is comparable to the G5 is the AMD Athlon64 (Athlon64 is the consumer version of the Opteron). The G5 and the Opteron/Athlon64 are very similar processors, they are both 64-bit and both utilize the hyper-transport memory controller on die. To get cost estimation of an Athlon64 system, I priced a system based on a top-off-the-line dual Opteron.

Stuff from other system minus Processor and mobo = $954
CPU: AMD Opteron Model 244 1.8GHz 64-Bit - $826.00 * 2 = $1652
Mobo: MSI Dual Opteron Processor Server Motherboard - $452
Total2 = $3058

The motherboard I choose isn’t exactly feature rich like the G5’s is, but I think it accurately reflects the price. Until the Athlon64 hits the market, we aren’t going to see nice Motherboards for it that support SATA, Firewire, and 8x AGP pro (although, I’ve never heard of ‘pro’ before. I assume it just gives you more power (watts) to your card? Correct?).


So what conclusion is all this drawing to?
Is the G5 the fastest Consumer Computer on the market?
I doubt it. It’s one of the fastest – the Xeon can still out perform it in many situations if optimized correctly.
Does the G5 have the best Architecture of a Consumer Computer on the Market?
Definitely and with out question – Until the Athlon64 comes out.
Does the G5 give you the Best Performance per Dollar?
Not really. You want the top of the line G5 you have to spend $3k. You can upgrade from your current system to an Athlon64 for about $1500. You can get a brand new Xeon without all the bells and whistles (such as SATA, Firewire, etc) for under $1500 and still have a machine that can outperform a G5 in certain situations.
Is the G5 a good deal?
Depends what you want. For the home user, probably not. For the gamer, definitely not. For the professional video editor – yes!
Should I buy one?
No, wait and see the Athlon64 first.


I still believe that because Apple controls both the hardware and operating system, the Apple systems will run better and more fluidly than the XP systems, just as they do today.
It is for this reason that I compared the Mac to the Xbox. All humor and insults aside, a console or a Mac you have one big advantage over a PC, and that is all the hardware inside has been engineered, by one company, to work optimally with all the other hardware inside the box. Compared to a PC can have parts from dozens of different vendors inside and who have never collaborate with each other to ensure optimization. PC software obviously has to be much more scalable to work on the hundreds of possible different systems configurations, so you are going to loose some ‘fluidity’ in exchange for the scalability. That being said, I find my XP system to be perfectly fluid as it is, and my limited experience with OSX is that it isn’t really anymore fluid that XP is.

Regarding the fairness of Apple Advertising again. Richie snagged us this image from Apples Website

Once again, they’re not comparing Apples to Apples here (excuse the pun). The Mac has beautiful slim Serial ATA cables, where as the PC they’ve pictured uses an ugly mess of wide IDE cables – to be fair they should have compared a PC with SATA too.

I can’t go on writing, I’m exhausted. I’m sorry, I’ve starting to loose my focus and my will to keep writing (plus I have a bunch of people bugging me to come away from the computer). I have to go, but I will come back in about 12 hours and fix the formatting of my post. I do enjoy these mega-post arguments that seem to erupt occasionally on forums. It’s so nostalgic of a big argument between Break, Jack, RU, Siege and I from DDRSTL about the Gamecube… Anyway, I’ll just leave by saying that the G5 is a decent system – if you like Macs.

BTW, Apollo, what’s your story? I don’t believe we’ve really met properly. Are you a student, professional, what? I’m EMP. I’m 19, studying Software Engineering at Newcastle University, Australia, and my favorite platform is the PC.

Apollo wrote:It certainly has the aesthetical appeal.

I disagree. I would take any of these over the G5, in that department. Voodoo are the masters of case building. Their cases are at least as clean inside as the G5, if not more so.

Thanks for that post EMP. Nice job configuring a dual xeon for that price. I am a little skeptical that windows XP pro (XP home doesn't support dual processors) could be had for $100. but I know you could just steal it off the web for free so I'll let that go. I would also be hesitant to configure an opteron server system and call it the same as the athlon64. We don't know what all the athlon 64 will have and what it will support yet. Specualtive comparisons aside, that was a great post. very fair and well done. But remember that, just as you said that the xeons could outperform the G5 so can the G5 outperform the xeons when the software is optimised for it. and the mac development community is likely to optimise their products for the G5, just like they recoded their programs for OS X and the G4's Altivec core. So it really does come down to what your doing with the computer.
The Home User -- uses AOL, MS office, and does casual gaming. They would be good with either the imac G4 or a basic PC. and they are the type who don't care about computers as long as they work. (and, ironically, they are the vast majority of computer users out there)
The Pro User -- demands power and maximum efficiency from his/her computer. Their jobs depend upon deadlines, and they need a computer that will be powerful, easy to use, runs their pro software, and that they are familiar with. They use tools like the Adobe Apps (photoshop, illustrator, etc.), ProTools (audio production), Avid/Final Cut Pro (video editing), and MS Office. They could choose either computer and be o.k. But if they work in a creative or multimedia field. Then the choice is Apple's G5.
The Gamer -- spends all his extra waking hours playing whatever the hottest, newest, and best games are. Demands that his system be compatable with the latest games and have the best graphics money can buy. The clear choice is the PC. (for now... it'll be interesting to see what the future holds)

For Break: I'll admit that the voodoo systems do have an element of style. But they are also extremly expensive. (the top of the line towers start at $3700!) They cost a lot more than comparable macs. Apple designs its systems with both beauty and functionality in mind. The apple designs are a merger of aesthetics and usefulness. The very fans inside a G5 are designed by apple and are computer controlled to make an extremely quiet case. The voodoo systems look like they were designed by a community college student working on his art degree. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in this case I would have to go with Apple.... ANY Apple over a voodoo system.

Evilmagicpirate wrote:BTW, Apollo, what’s your story? I don’t believe we’ve really met properly. Are you a student, professional, what? I’m EMP. I’m 19, studying Software Engineering at Newcastle University, Australia, and my favorite platform is the PC.

I'm a high school senior at a local private high school in Alabama. I'm 17 and have been using macs for only a little over 2 years. I want to study either astronautical engineering or computer engineering. (problems are, I don't enjoy math and I don't like coding either.) I'm not sure which college I'm going to yet but I have a good shot at GaTech. I want to go to MIT or Caltech but those are really stretch schools and there are two or three other wild card schools which i will apply to.

Whatever man...I'll take my AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Barton with my nForce 2 motherboard, 1 Gig ram, 120 Gig HD, Audigy 2 plat., and GeForce 5900 Ultra Pro over a G5 any day of the week. Guess what, i don't have a job that requires me to be efficient, i play games on mine. As fun as playing medal of honor and bloodrayne seems, I played MoH 2 years ago on my pc, and bloodrayne about 8 months ago on my xbox (and it sucked).

And do you really think that 2 milliseconds difference on calculations is really going to cost someone their job? Sounds like someone has an inferiority complex going on here....accompanied by some wang envy.

Face it man, G5 isn't going to change jack shit in the computing world, and everyone knows it. Intel's gonna bust out a new chip by the end of the month (or AMD) and they're gonna make the G5 look like a triscuit.

BTW, my system only cost me about $1500 w/ case and everything including software like Windows XP and office XP. So shove it. My computer's better than yours and it cost me half that yours does

-Jack

Sigh...
You guys wanna know something?
You're all dorks.
You guys can turn into real pricks when you get riled up about things like this, all of you. I mean, I'm a real nerd, so I can usually appreciate this type of discussion, but after reading the miasma of cynical and dogmatic diatribes that are in this topic, I came to one solid conclusion:
WHO FUCKING CARES?
Use the computer that's best for YOU. You don't need to convince everyone that your computer is better than theirs; it doesn't make your penis any bigger. Different strokes for different folks, ok? Macs are not better than PCs, PCs are not better than Macs, Amigas are not better than Macs, etc. etc.
And for the love of God, if Apple tried to tell you guys that 2 + 2 = 4, you'd be like "Bullshit!" I admit, some of Apple's claims are a little far-fetched, but you don't even give them a snowball's chance in hell. You've already judged and decided Apple's claims before they even make them. You don't even believe it's possible for Apple to best your beloved game machines, so anything they claim to the contrary is automatically wrong. Give them a chance will ya?
And Apollo. Give it a rest. I'm a dedicated Mac user, have been all of my life. I have owned only Apples and Macs, and will continue to buy them as long as they keep making them. But you're even annoying me. Apple users don't need to evangelize to everyone, especially seasoned computer users who know both OSes and have plenty of experience with both. I know Break and Richie have a lot of negative experience with Apples, as their were the tech support for their school districts and had to deal with Macs that crapped out on a regular basis. Now, personally, I don't see how their Macs could possibly crap out as often as they say they do, as I've never seen or even heard of Macs behaving this way, but they say it is. With Mac experience like that, would *you* want to own one?
<innocent sweet little girl voice>So would everyone please just shut the hell up.</creeping everyone out>

Q wrote:You're all dorks.
You guys can turn into real pricks when you get riled up about things like this, all of you

thank god someone finally said it. Mr. Trelane, you rock.