why are macs so goddam expensive???

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 2:51 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote: ...

Yeah, but it's still not x86

The trouble with x86 architecture is that it's got so many legacy issues. In order to get more power out of it you've got to squeeze more transistors into it. More transistors = more electricity and more heat.

ASM on the x86 is horrible too. You get the feeling of having to jump through hoops to get things done.

Bluey · Post by **Bluey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:07 pm 0

/me strokes the shiney little thing sitting on the desk in front of her

I love my (borrowed) 12" Powerbook!

Surfr · Post by **Surfr** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:30 pm 0

If you want to make comparrisons. Try to make real comparrisons. comparing a UniProcessor 32bit CISC processor with a 64bit RISC processor in an SMP configuration is silly at the best of times, so try and give it a fair shot.

PC Users: How much would I expect to pay for an IBM or Dell or Alienware machine speced like this:

dual Opteron 1.8Ghz processors
512 MB RAM
250 SATA
Windows XP Pro
Visual Studio .net (or whatever MS give away as a free C,C++,ObjC,Java compiler and IDE)

or how about a P4 laptop comparrison with a 12" iBook ?

You can't say "my uberfast homebuilt Duron box was cheaper than your G5". It just isn't the same.

Bog · Post by **Bog** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:35 pm 0

That's a specious argument, Surfr. If Macs were available in Dual 3.4GHz variants, then that's what I'd be comparing. I'm simply stating that for CPU-intensive work, the fastest available Mac simply isn't commercially viable. Not in a business sense, anyway - it's just far too expensive for the job it can do. If you *don't* need to buy as much processor grunt as is hugely possible, and if you can afford a G5 in the first place, then over the course of (say) two years, then I've been told that the lower maintainance demands will help pay for the machine.

But that's not my field. My statement stands.

Surfr · Post by **Surfr** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:49 pm 0

I've got another bone to pick

Why are Suns so expensive? I can go out and buy a top of the range Apple G5 for 4K but if I want a similar spec from Sun they want 9K for it!!

*And* I't won't run photoshop

What's that all about then ?

gravy · Post by **gravy** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:53 pm 0

Bog wrote:
Off at a tangent but how does your home setup work?
All the machines have the LightWave ScreamerNet client installed - that's a distributed rendering tool, so all the CPUs in the building (and once in the back garden. I love wireless) can chomp on the same scene.

The workstations are on a KVM, and live under my desk. The faster machine (the Â£600 one) has the Matrox card in it, so that's Edit 1. If I've got Lots of 3D to do, that's the machine I use - the faster LW's interface is working, the faster and more easily I can do my job. If I've got multiple gigs or a multi-part job on, I'll have the Quick Workstation doing rendering, while I keep setting up more scenes on the slower Athlon, or on the Lappy.

The lappy's a very competent 3D rig in it's own right, but it's screen's very squad (15.1" 16:9), so that's mainly used for road trips, or sitting quietly in the corner churning out frames. Sometimes, though, it's quite nice to sit in the back garden and work, so that suits If it turns out that my wireless range will reach to the new Italian restaurant at the end of the road, then VNC is getting put on all my boxen again

I'm re-juggling a little, as there's now a row of 3 machines under my desk - there's a P3 800MHz which has my old DPS Perception card in it, which we'll call Edit 2 for now. Seeing as it's still living here for whatever reason I figure I might as well get the extra dozen or so frames an hour she can still turn out - it all helps.

Was that what you were asking?

Yep, just interested.

Is there a linux version of Screamer Net? When I've done anything disk / memory intensive (compilingh mostly) I've found linux to be a lot faster than windows. Might be worth a go getting a linux distro on the 800mhz machine and have it sit there as a render node.

Post by **Snakey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:55 pm 0

I was trying to stay out of this, but...

Surfr wrote:If you want to make comparrisons. Try to make real comparrisons.

This also isn't a real comparison

But still...

Dell PowerEdgeTM 1600SC
IntelÂ® Xeon Processor 2.40GHz
256MB ECC DDR SDRAM (max 4GB)
80GB IDE HDD (max 1 TB)
1 Year Next Business Day Service

Â£374

Dell don't appear to do AMD stuff, but thats a pretty low price for a pretty decent base spec.

teamonkey wrote:The trouble with x86 architecture is that it's got so many legacy issues. In order to get more power out of it you've got to squeeze more transistors into it. More transistors = more electricity and more heat.

Fair enough, it would be nice to see them completely strip all the 16-bit stuff out of it, because its just not used these days, apart from maybe in the BIOS. You'd get people moan cos they wanted to build a MAME cab and run DOS on it, but still.

teamonkey wrote:ASM on the x86 is horrible too. You get the feeling of having to jump through hoops to get things done.

Sorry, mate, but thats just total bollocks.

Speaking as someone who's probably coded more x86 ASM in the last 4 years than most people have in their lives... Horrible it is not.

How can you compare x86 and PPC and say stuff about "jumping through hoops"? PPC is RISC, for christs sake. It'll take you at least 5 instructions to just call a subroutine, whereas on x86 it takes just one.

PPC:

1+2 : lets get the subroutine address.
3: oh shit, it doesn't stack return addresses. Better do that myself.
4: w00t! call the subroutine!
5: mmm, better get that return address back...

x86:

1. Call.....

Incidentally thats also the reason I just laugh at people who are still saying stuff like "PPC is faster than x86 at the same clock speed"

RISC is old hat imo. It was a good idea at the time - simple system means instructions run in 1 cycle and it can be clocked higher. It will take you more instructions to do stuff but all in all it will still be faster.

Except that doesn't apply anymore, 80% of x86 instructions also run in 1 cycle, they clock higher than PPC anyway, and you have all the benefits of a nice, friendly CISC architechture to go with it. Altivec? The P4 has MMX,SSE,SSE2 - Altivec is no advantage.

The only thing wrong with x86 is the FPU unit, which is a twat to code for in ASM. But its still no more of a twat than doing pretty much anything in PPC IMO

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:56 pm 0

Bog wrote: But that's not my field. My statement stands.

Yeah in your field. There are fields where the Mac
does quite well. Bioinformatics, 2d graphics, video,
audio.

Killer software on the Mac:

http://www.apple.com/logic/
http://www.apple.com/motion/
http://www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro/
http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/
http://www.apple.com/shake/

The best OS:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

Pro users:

http://www.apple.com/pro/

Science:

http://www.apple.com/science/

Developers:

http://developer.apple.com/

For some users it makes sense.

Post by **Snakey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:00 pm 0

Kemper_Boyd wrote:For some users it makes sense.

And this is the point

Its no good saying "if all people want to do is word processing", thats not good enough. Why pay more for a mac when you can word process on anything ?

It's the stuff like Kemper mentioned, where there is decent software on the Mac, and probably not so decent software elsewhere.

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:10 pm 0

Snakey wrote:How can you compare x86 and PPC and say stuff about "jumping through hoops"? PPC is RISC, for christs sake. It'll take you at least 5 instructions to just call a subroutine, whereas on x86 it takes just one.

I wasn't comparing x86 to PPC. I was comparing it to something decent... like 68k

Snakey wrote:Its no good saying "if all people want to do is word processing", thats not good enough. Why pay more for a mac when you can word process on anything ?

Because it's a more pleasurable experience to do word processing on a mac than on a Windows box.

gravy · Post by **gravy** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:12 pm 0

Something I reall appreciate about the macs are the low maintainance requirements.

The thing I have of most value is time. Nothing I can do can stop me spending it and I'm never going to get it back.

Since Jo has moved onto the mac the amount of amateur hour MIS I've had to do has collapsed to zero. There was always stuff going wrong with the PC and it's not like Jo is a computer spaz either.

Yeah, they are slower and more expensive but some of this is like comparing a subaru to a bentley where the same argument applies

Then again I will be getting a PC soon to play Half Life 2

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:18 pm 0

gravy wrote: Then again I will be getting a PC soon to play Half Life 2

Exactly. There's reasons for having both. I'd even suggest
people get a Linux box too.

p.s. More quake?

Post by **Snakey** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:23 pm 0

teamonkey wrote:I wasn't comparing x86 to PPC. I was comparing it to something decent... like 68k

I'll let you off

68k is a bastard of a chip, tho. I spent years coding the thing and loved it. Even the chips themselves - the huge fuckers - for some reason I love looking at them. But fuck me is it a twat to emulate

Theres like 3 or 4 ways of getting the same result most of the time - its not just CISC, its more like "lets cram as many instructions as we can fit into this bugger"

Most of them are completely redundant, but you can guarantee some bugger will use them.

After about 6 years of coding the thing, and 7 years of trying to emulate it, I'm *still* finding new strange things it does.

Anyway, bit OT

sty · Post by **sty** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 8:56 pm 0

Snakey wrote:68k is a bastard of a chip, tho. I spent years coding the thing and loved it. Even the chips themselves - the huge fuckers - for some reason I love looking at them. But fuck me is it a twat to emulate Theres like 3 or 4 ways of getting the same result most of the time - its not just CISC, its more like "lets cram as many instructions as we can fit into this bugger"

we used to joke that the 68040 had a "Recalculate Spreadsheet" opcode

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:53 pm 0

People buy Mac's for a number of reasons, including:

1) Their style
2) Ease of use
3) They don't like PC's
4) They don't like Microsoft
5) They think their Mac's are better than PC's

Some reasons people buy PC's are:

1) Software compatibility
2) Gaming
3) Lower price
4) Overall standard acceptance
5) Existing relationships with resellers

Both a PC and a Mac will get you from point A to point B. It's just a Mac will do it with more style, albeit only running on diesel.