Richard,
Didn't mean to get into a platform war here...
Dear Simon (Re-posted as this never made it to the list or the archives!)
We all depend on hardware and software in the digital imaging world, so any independent tests of whatever platform should be of general interest provided we stick to facts.
Snip
I have no way of knowing if the tests these people put together (and I think it's fair to say it is a Mac orientated site) favoured the Mac or the PC. My understanding from what I've read on the site, is that all the boxes had to do exactly the same PhotoShop task using the same file. We can see for ourselves the dual Mac took 29 secs and the dual Xeon took 26secs.
All I'm saying is that the Photoshop 'bake-off' which Apple used in their hype was a (relatively) 'Real World' test. ( I say 'relatively' as a 600 mb file is on the large side...) They showed the G5 trouncing a leading edge PC using, I believe, Xeon processors. Clearly the boxes would be much more similar in performance if all Photoshop filters made use of both processors. But they don't. Therefore, (as far as running Photoshop filters is concerned ) in the Real World, the G5 trounces the PC. Period.
The reason I made the original brief posting was because some of us have been waiting with interest to see what independent testers made of the G5 when released. Computer industry hype has a habit of being an unreliable basis for making buying decisions.
It's well recognised that parts of PS work faster on one platform and faster on the other, and it follows that this is further complicated by what is optimized for multiple processors and what is not.
What would be really interesting would be to have a well planned set of PhotoShop test actions along with a 'standard' image, perhaps in a range of sizes. Perhaps a well respected cross platform expert such as Rod W-P could be persuaded to put something together we could buy. How about it Rod? Testing would then have far greater meaning when we quote times for the latest 'orgasmic' offering, or even after we have put in a raid array for example.
Add to this an industrial strength OS in the form of OSX and it's an easy decision for anyone buying a new system.
As a user of OS 9.2 I know where you are coming <G> Newcomers to digital imaging may not know that PC users have had great stability, multi-tasking, multi-threading and multiple CPU's for many years... NT4 now Win2K and it's sister OS, Win XP. Yes it's true that colour management was a bit of a bear with NT (not when using PS however) but those days are well behind us.
Add to *this* that you don't have to run any software created by a company which has been shown to have used unfair business practices in order to stifle competition and innovation etc, etc..
This has nothing to do with performance tests but I admit to liking MS less than Apple in this regard, but its all a matter of degree.
.
Let's not even mention the fabulous world of Open Source now open to Mac users like never before...
Is this really going to be a benefit to Mac users or just pie in the sky? Perhaps we had better hope that PS, Illustrator and In Design for Linux is along soon but even this ideal seems to be in some danger of being derailed by greed.
The lack of Viruses...
Perhaps that's a bit outside the scope of this discussion. Maybe the perverted skills of the virus writers are targeted towards PC's simply because they hit more users for their trouble. We all have our methods of keeping clean, just the same as having sound back-up policies in case of hardware problems etc.
Snip
I'm going to take a back seat now on this because others may feel reluctant to post to this topic with us both holding the stage!
Cheers
Richard -- Richard Kenward Digital Imaging...Quality drum scans for professionals. See Labs section at www.prodig.org (and email for pdf) +44 (0)1873 890670 =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
