MAC vs PC... FIGHT !

[blashol]

mac guy says : "PC crashes" <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" />
pc guys says : "Mac powerless for same price" <img border="0" title="" alt="" src="images/icons/cool.gif" />

HAS ANYBODY TRIED SAME SESSIONS on BOTH to CHECK in a "SCIENTIFIC" way ?

I use a MAC G4 733 SCSI drive because i do websites and mac is cool for webdesign
-----FIGHT !------

[aziel]

No fight, bored of that...conclusion: same thing, diferent case... [img]images/icons/blush.gif[/img]

[mBoxLuvr]

I have the mBox at home, TDM at work.
TDM is on a Mac so thats out of the way.
My mBox resides on a G4 933 which also doubles as a DV workstation. My Dell 4100 1GHZ 3D/Compositing/DV workstation would like to also take advantage of the mBox but after numerous attempts...nadaa!!
I cant get pass the H\W Buffer Size error.
Depends on your present config.
Test the software on that box before buying or pray that it works.
Good Luck!

[G.roots]

The "scientific" analysis has been done a countless number of times for several years. I have over 10 years of experience building and testing high perfomance machines of both breads (Mac & PC). The power of a machine (at the hardware level) is measured in instructions per clock cycle. Now, this is where it gets fuzzy for most computer users. Different operating systems (i.e. Windows & MacOS) utilize these instructions cycles very differently which results in the actual computing power that the user sees. Now that MAC OS have slipped the stability advantance of past years, a PC can "clean the floor" with a MAC! So now, the true measure of computing value is instructions per clock cycle PER DOLLAR. Hands down, the past 17 machines that I have built (AMD based PCs) smoke ANY MAC out there and for HALF THE PRICE. I have the benchmarkets to prove it. Now I ask you, why would anyone want to pay twice as much money for half the power?

I am not trying to revive the age-old PC vs. MAC battle but I can never understand why people still insist on buying MACS. Don't get me wrong, MACs are good machines but THEY COST TOO MUCH for what they do! Plus, for every software title you get for a MAC, PCs will have at least 1000 times that. Running Protools, I have never seen a MAC that could even get close to the power of a properly configured PC. So you make the call, MAC or PC.

G~
Electrical Engineer/Musician

[Rock_Artist]

With Digi hardware it seems your performance can boost much better if you setup the machine correctly.

Mac people don't have to do much and even extensions tweaks won't make huge impact on performance (at least from my tests).

After having both for awhile I can say each has his own advantage.

Technology:
In speed and yes it's "Scientific" PCs rules. but this is less apple part than Motorola stopped providing faster machines. apple pretty much stuck behind while single pc cpu goes above 3ghz the single mac cpu can get 1.25 [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img] .

User Friendly:
All taste of the user. Still I like the mac look much more than the crappy pc look (even the hardware [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ). PCs seems like a "COMPUTER" while mac look more human designed to me...

Stability:
All the talks about macs more stable is bs.
I've bought a laptop mac i use with my mbox.
I've already reset more than I would on my XP Based PC (ok some would say it's because it's G3-300 but my PIII500Mhz is running now for 5days or something) it's all depends on how much you're poweruser that like to do too much stuff at a time.

Multi-Tasking:
I cannot tell about OS X because I use 9.2.2.
But upto 9.2.2 macs DO NOT know what is multitasking.

On PC I can run 50progs with 512MB RAM and kill my cpu but I'll know the system will last [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
On Macs it's hardware to even start multitasking and 9.x ram allocation is also very premetive.
let's wait for PT6 and OS X for true results.

For the Pro Tools user:
Macs looks better and works better with PT but my main system (LE) is PC. only because power.
If I need some missing effect I import the channel to the mac and print it but still After the need of 32channels with tones of plugs (about 50 and 3-4 reverbs/linEq/etc) you need a reliable system less than a nice looking mac.

But still for some people macs would be just enough.

Also macs cost more.
My 2.4Ghz price was 800$ (w/o screen)I could never find a performer mac in this price range.

However any TDM/HD user should go with Mac [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] .
Still G4-867 at work runs Mix Plus and can handle sessions nice with no probs.
when you ignore the CPU of the mac the macs would be better solution as there's more 3rd party support.

[blashol]

[img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] of course ---FIGHT--- is an image (stupid I admit it) [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] it's cool the way you are all hanging one this topic. things are certainly changing fast in PC world.

Are there any AMD Protools users who could compare it with Mac & pentium ? (for stability and compatible reasons?)

s'cuse my french alien accent

[Dale-c]

I primarily use an Mbox on an Imac but I also have installed it on a 2ghz P4 at work running XP pro. I would like to import the same session into the PC to really see the difference.
As far as speed? My 400mhz iMac (320MB) doesn't lag too far behind that P4 (512) in speed so I would imagine that a G4 933 or so would compare quite nicely. I will admit though that it does seem that with XP there is finally a good WIN OS for running Pro Tools. I didn't have any config trouble getting it to work on that machine but it matches the recommended specs pretty closely.
But you won't ever hear a guy say that a Pro Tools system won't work with his G4; it just won't happen.

[Bastiaan]

hmm....i thought the mirrored doors g4 have a slight problem... [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

I runt ptle on an AMD, and it rocks! There used to be a problem with the temerature of the processor being too high, so people tend to have that under close observation. But if you use a good fan, it runs fine. I have an amd athlon XP 1700+ with an ABIT KR7A mobo, and it simply rocks. The mobo + processor + 256 MB memory where something like $300, so that isnt that bad

[dbrunell]

A couple of observations, from a long-time computer user and network administrator.. I have used mostly Pee Cees in the 20+ years I have been messing around with computers, but I am always open to other platforms, when it makes sense in a given situation.

I will assume that our goal is to have a professional-quality, stable Pro Tools system. While this might be possible with a host-based system, that's not how the pros generally work. They prefer TDM, and for good reasons.

Software drives hardware. Not the other way around. When you have a single, specific application to run, such as Pro Tools, you want it to run on the best, most stable platform available. Pro Tools grew up in the Mac environment. It has matured on this platform and runs most stably on it.

Choosing a hardware platform and then seeing if your software will run on it is sort of like going to McDonalds and seeing if you can get some fine French cuisine. It doesn't work that way. If you want some fine French cuisine (software), you ask around and learn what restaurants (hardware platform) serve it.

Also, looking at the plug-in and application list on the Digi site, I see that there are a lot of them only available for the Mac. If you want to have the widest selection of plug-ins, run your PT on a Mac.

Sure, the current Intel-based hardware has more raw horsepower. But raw horsepower is not an overriding concern in a system where most of the processing power comes from plug-in DSP cards. In host-based systems, yes, but remember, we're talking about running Pro Tools on the *best* platform, with the best stability, and hardware/software support.

Just my 2 cents.
Doug

[rogerhavoc]

Originally posted by mBoxLuvr:
I have the mBox at home, TDM at work.
TDM is on a Mac so thats out of the way.
My mBox resides on a G4 933 which also doubles as a DV workstation. My Dell 4100 1GHZ 3D/Compositing/DV workstation would like to also take advantage of the mBox but after numerous attempts...nadaa!!
I cant get pass the H\W Buffer Size error.
Depends on your present config.
Test the software on that box before buying or pray that it works.
Good Luck!

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