On Feb 28, 2012, at 4:09 PM, BW~Merlin wrote: > I have never understood this argument that MACs are better for multimedia and > everyone I have asked have said "I don't know they are just better". They > use the same processors now (Intel) and the same graphics cards (nvidia or > AMD) and the same software (Corel or Adobe) which have been used in Windows > machines for years. For the same price point a Windows machine will be much > better equipped and yet this myth as I believe it to be of MACs being better > for multimedia work keeps persisting. Does anyone know of a solid case where > a MAC is better?
Today it makes little difference, for the reasons you've sited; the predominance in Mac users tracks back to the days when there was a big difference. Up until the adoption of Intel chips by Apple, the Motorola chips were better graphics processors for really esoteric reasons. For the neepers among us, if I get a fact wrong, feel free to correct. The first issue was a "pipeline" issue, i.e. Moto's data words were shorter than Intel's back in the day. So if a Mac dropped a data bit and got a checksum = false, it resent 8 bits. If Intel dropped a data bit at the end of a 24 bit word, it had to resend 24. Over the long haul, that added to the time for rendering overhead. Secondly, Motorola Floating Point Operations Per Second (Flops) were at a higher rate as part of the chip design so at similar clock speed, Motorolas were faster. Lastly, the design of the I/O between motherboard and graphics chip and the associated busses were more efficient. So, back in the days of the early Motorola 68000s v. Intel 286/386 Macs were better for graphic use. Ask the old timers about how long it took to do ray tracing. So, that's why the Mac developed more Mac users in that community. Years of using Macs and by the time PCs caught up for graphics, why bother switching? When the G4 and Intel Macs started to show up, the Mac pretty much put Apollo and Sparc out of business. When a $5,000 computer could render as fast as a $30,000 dedicated work station . .; . Today it would be a question of what you're more comfortable with. The price is about the same because you'd have to beef up a PC in memory and video upgrades to match at Mac out of the box, but after that it's which OS you're happier with. Best, R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
