Mac user shocked at OSx86 speed!

[reikiwes]

I am a Mac user with an iMac G5 (1.8 Ghz, 1.5 GB RAM, 10.4.6) and an iBook G4 (1.42 Ghz, 1.5 GB RAM, 10.4.6). I am in love with the Mac and OS X, so I just decided to install OSx86 on my old Dell Dimension 2400 (2.2 Ghz, 512 MB RAM). The install went without a hitch (10.4.6 GoatsecDVD install), and now... well... honestly I am a little shocked. MY THREE-YEAR OLD, $299 DELL, with ONE-THIRD the RAM RUNS OS X MUCH FASTER THAN EITHER OF MY NEWER MACS!

 

Does anyone have a similar experience? The Dell runs many of OS X's components and apps faster than either of my true Macs (which I still feel are MUCH more "responsive" than XP on that same Dell.) But load up OSx86 on that ole' Dell and it FLIES!

 

The biggest speed boost I notice is regarding the finder and System Preferences panel. I simply cannot believe the speed with which the Dell boots into OS X and how quickly applications run! It is amazing.

 

Do I feel a little "taken" by Apple with their claims of superiority of the G5 chip and it's speed? Eh. It SURE doesn't help to install their operating system in a computer I was so FED UP with that I originally purchased new Macs to REPLACE the piece of {censored}, only to have it run FASTER and BETTER than the two computers I purchased as replacements. Wowsa. Of course, the Dell sure LOOKS like {censored} against the Macs, but it sure is keeping up in terms of performance. Amazing.

 

Anyone else have similar experiences? I can only image what kind of performance you people are getting on dual cores and newer, faster custom boxes with REAL graphics cards. LOL!

[munky]

dude, i recently built a machine just for osx:

 

- Intel D945GTPLR (i945 chipset)

- Pentium D 920 (2.8Ghz dualcore)

- ATI X1800XL PCI-E 256Mb GDDR3

- 160Gb SATA-300, 8Mb cache HDD

- DVD +/- RW

- etc etc

 

And it is simply incredible. The *only* things this machine wont do are Sleep (reliably) and talk to my powerbook via firewire. Apart from that, it totally IS a mac - and damn fast at that.

 

Im using it for Aperture work, and I simply cannot fault it.

 

True, the whole thing cost me around £600 (roughly $1120), but worth every damn penny.

 

 

Sell all of your machines and build a hackintosh. Or alternatively wait for the new Intel Mac Pro

[BuXb]

I have been using both Macs and PCs for years, and I have realized a long while ago (by my own expreience, and by studying relieable tests) that Steve Hobs & Crew have simply been *lying* to everybody for a *long while* when talking about the superioity of PPC etc.

 

Why did that work? Because most Mac users are/ have been *artists* (Grafics-Design, Video cutting etc), so they were/ are much rather oriented towards the *surface* of things rather than the *inner values* - and therefore could much easier be blinded by fancy looking hardware and a pretty GUI of the OS X.

 

It has taken Apple waaaayyyyyy too long to move from the cheesy Classic to X, and again it has taken them way too long to move from the sloooowww PPC over to the current standard of speed (Intel or AMD).

 

No, you are not the only one, but most of you long time Mac users have been lured and seduced by superficial appeals and stimuli (which has been Apple's intention), and now you are finally waking up !!

 

All of that (along with what you have found out) is why I refuse to ever buy a *real* Mac again!! Totally overpriced, compared with what one can buy in any hardware store. Now, due to the move over to Intel, the truth can finally not be veiled anymore by the liers over at Apple, because *everybody* now (not just the specialists with test equipment, hardware & software) can experience the gigantic boost in speed - which I am *very very* happy about, believe me !!

 

So, good morning, reikiwes - welcome to the "real world" ..

[amdprophet]

I totally agree with you BugsBunny. I've got a lot of friends who argued until they ran out of air that the PowerPC chips have always been faster than the x86 platform chips. Now that I proved to them that x86 processors are faster, my friends deny they ever said that x86 wasn't faster. I however would buy a Mac laptop because of the sleek, professional design. The laptops really aren't that expensive, and they've got some of the best battery lives.

[jgrimes80]

I've got a friend who went the OSX86 route... I can't say I'm not impressed...

 

He has those faster dual core Intel chips (Xeon I think) and the damned thing was blitzing fast. Last I talked to him, he said he was going to "clock" it so it goes faster(?)

 

The laptops Apple turns out are acceptable, but their desktops/towers better get MUCH better... After seeing the machine my bud built (like 2-3k); If the new tower isn't impressive, I'm planning on the same PC route if it's still possible for a workstation. All these much better options are available, WHAT THE HECK IS APPLE WAITING ON??!!

[INFNITE]

not really surprising considering Apple already says that iMac Core Duo is 2-3x faster than iMac G5 and MacBook Pro is 4-5x faster than PowerBook G4. Now, the question is when the hell will Adobe and Microsoft make universal binaries of their softwares. Office and Photoshop are both pretty sluggish running under rosetta. That and the lack of WMV support from Flip4Mac, which is starting to {censored} me off. Other than that, I love the speed of OS X running on my MBP

[moseschrist]

inifinte, for wmv you can install windows media player for mac... it works under x86 without rossata

[amdprophet]

Sure the Mac desktop systems are faster than the laptops, but I still wouldn't buy a Mac desktop system mainly because you can build a much faster system for half the price. Like munky said, his system basically IS a Mac. Hopefully within the next few months, when the EFIx86 project is fully working, the average joe will be able to turn his PC into a Mac 100% without the name brand. Laptops are totally different though. You can't really customize a laptop case to look as nice as the MacBook and MacBook Pro. For this reason, I'm trying to get a MacBook Pro.

[myzar]

This thing of turning a pc in to a Mac makes me laugh hard. huh there isn't this difference anymore and i doubt it ever existed unless what made a Mac was a powerpc chip. About the thread theme what can i say welcome to real world

[amdprophet]

A PC running Mac OS X still isn't a Mac because of two things:

- It wasn't made by Apple

- It doesn't have Apple's very useful EFI

[Jeezoflip]

Well i mean...it makes sense. PC's have faster hardware, such as processors and usually have more ram. Whereas mac's highest processor right now is like what...a G5 at 2.5ghz for the PowerMac G5? And most PC machines today are shipped with a processor of around 2.8ghz, maybe more. It makes sense obviously when people are getting xBench scores of about 100, when the new macbook pros get around 60.

[myzar]

A PC running Mac OS X still isn't a Mac because of two things:

- It wasn't made by Apple

- It doesn't have Apple's very useful EFI

 

It wasn't made by Apple , assembled by apple you mean , apple doesn't make any part or anything, apple just assembles generic hardware

 

What's usefull in efi ? i don't see any use in efi at all, zero , nada , it's just another form of protection used by apple, if you mean that having efi support on generic hardware would break another apple stupid protection i can agree on that. But it's not like efi has any real usefulness for the user

[jgrimes80]

Well i mean...it makes sense. PC's have faster hardware, such as processors and usually have more ram. Whereas mac's highest processor right now is like what...a G5 at 2.5ghz for the PowerMac G5? And most PC machines today are shipped with a processor of around 2.8ghz, maybe more. It makes sense obviously when people are getting xBench scores of about 100, when the new macbook pros get around 60.

 

you can't really compare a desktop to a notebook.... the Core Duo is about as good as it get with only 1"

 

2.5GHz Quad Core will kick most of the competition's ass... but it's an arm an a leg

 

2.8 dual cores? I don't think so... the chips are good, but for the money you pay, they could be much better.

 

It wasn't made by Apple , assembled by apple you mean , apple doesn't make any part or anything, apple just assembles generic hardware

 

What's usefull in efi ? i don't see any use in efi at all, zero , nada , it's just another form of protection used by apple, if you mean that having efi support on generic hardware would break another apple stupid protection i can agree on that. But it's not like efi has any real usefulness for the user

 

As far as I know, nobody makes any of their own hardware... I think designed by Apple is what is meant. The only Mac that is outsourced is the MacBook...

 

EFI would eliminate the need for patching... at least that's how I understand it

[INFNITE]

A processor that's 2.8ghz isn't necessarily faster than a processor at a lower clockspeed. My MacBook Pro (2.0ghz Core Duo) destroys my 2.4ghz P4 Dell when it comes to processor intensive processes (like iTunes encoding, which is 25x on my MBP and 11~12x on my Dell) or QuickTime encoding, on which my MBP renders 1080 HD H.264 video with no hiccups. Also, i wouldn't trust Xbench scores too much at this point due to the lack of optimization for the Intel platform. For example, Ars Technica reports that MacBook's beat MacBook Pro when it comes to OpenGL Graphics Test on Xbench, which doesn't even make sense. Also, Ars Technica has MacBook Pro scoring a 100 on Xbench, not 60. I'll run my own test later on, but MacBook Pro's are certainly faster than you think.

 

Personally, I feel the thing that places buying Apple above hacking a PC to run OS X is the overall user experience. Instead of having to get a hacked version everytime, just push software update and voila. Every hardware component is designed to work perfectly on Apple machines, and then you have the gorgeous designs brought to you buy Jonathan Ives and the Apple industrial design team.

[fOZf8]

Well, you SHOULDN'T compare desktops to laptops, but you can, and if the laptop comes out on top, you got yurself a winner....but yeah, laptops take up an extra 10% of system resources simply by being ON, wether on battery or not.

 

Anyway, I never thought PPC Macs were faster than x86 based machines due to components, that much was obvious...it's always been the fact that Apple proprietizes hardware and focuses on far more optimized low-level driver coding and integration for that specific hardware. I mean, it's the exact opposite of why windows machines are great IMO, you can slap almost any damn hardware out of a dumpster into a windows PC and make it work...it just won't be near as optimized as a Mac...there are always exceptions based around skill and driver hacking etc etc, but Apple's have always seemed to run faster because they just worked right, and dang smooth and graceful at that.

 

SO, with that in mind, it only makes sense to assume that Apple coding an OS around faster hardware than before will result in a faster machine than the equivelant XP running on that same machine....now if they would also allow for the same massive hardware receptibility that Windows does...well then, maybe windows WOULD be obsolete for the end users like us....oh, yeah, they'd have to start recoding all of the Mac based games to run Okay first though

[A Nonny Moose]

I have been using both Macs and PCs for years, and I have realized a long while ago (by my own expreience, and by studying relieable tests) that Steve Hobs & Crew have simply been *lying* to everybody for a *long while* when talking about the superioity of PPC etc.

 

Why did that work? Because most Mac users are/ have been *artists* (Grafics-Design, Video cutting etc), so they were/ are much rather oriented towards the *surface* of things rather than the *inner values* - and therefore could much easier be blinded by fancy looking hardware and a pretty GUI of the OS X.

 

It has taken Apple waaaayyyyyy too long to move from the cheesy Classic to X, and again it has taken them way too long to move from the sloooowww PPC over to the current standard of speed (Intel or AMD).

 

OK, so you're saying that because OS X (which was done using GCC compilers that were tailor made for X86 architectures) is slower on a PowerPC chip, they must suck, right? Uh, wrong, considering that MacWorld's speedmark tests consistently show the G5 towers to be the fastest Macs around.

 

Processors are only as fast as the applications that run on them. That's always been the secret behind all these applications running infinitely faster on PowerPC processors vs their comparably equipped Intel counterparts. Since OS X was originally designed (up until GCC 4.0) for x86 architectures, of course it would be a hell of a lot faster on that kind of architecture as compared to the PPC processors.

 

It doesn't mean that one is inferior to the other. Both processors have their own strengths and weaknesses that savvy developers take advantage of and continue to take advantage of.

[Jeezoflip]

OK....but. you get my point...right?

[bluedragon1971]

Well i mean...it makes sense. PC's have faster hardware, such as processors and usually have more ram. Whereas mac's highest processor right now is like what...a G5 at 2.5ghz for the PowerMac G5? And most PC machines today are shipped with a processor of around 2.8ghz, maybe more. It makes sense obviously when people are getting xBench scores of about 100, when the new macbook pros get around 60.

 

Are you forgetting that Xbench is calibrated to a 2.0Ghz G5 getting a score of 100? Not sure from their description if that is a single or dual G5 though.

[jgrimes80]

Are you forgetting that Xbench is calibrated to a 2.0Ghz G5 getting a score of 100? Not sure from their description if that is a single or dual G5 though.

 

There is also the QUAD!

[myzar]

There is also the QUAD!

 

That doesn't hold a candle against a quad opteron box, cmon sj lyed to you , it's ok we always laughed at mac users , for the rest of the world this isn't news. The good news is that he's a damn lucky boy and conroe/woodcrest will trounce anything for prolly atleast 1 year or 6 months if amd speeds up the k8l project

[BuXb]

MacWorld's speedmark tests consistently show the G5 towers to be the fastest Macs around.

totally correct. But Apple's comparisons with PCs were bogus because they benchmarked the dubble-processor G5 with the "fastest available" single processor PC, and then saying that "the most current G5 is the fastest computer around". If they had correctly benchmarked against a dubble processor PC with the fastest available intel cpu the G5 would have looked like a dwarf!

Since OS X was originally designed (up until GCC 4.0) for x86 architectures, of course it would be a hell of a lot faster on that kind of architecture as compared to the PPC processors.

"would be" ? That's exactly what I am saying, it IS a "hell of a lot faster". The step back to the roots of the OS way waaayy overdue.

Both processors have their own strengths and weaknesses that savvy developers take advantage of and continue to take advantage of.

True again. But what are people using their computers for? For 99% of that usage the fast intel architecture is much more appropriate. The advantages of PPC cannot outweigh the disadvantages anymore due to IBM/ (Motorola)'s lagging behind with developing the PPC speedwise.

PS: what is "A Nonny Moose" ?? (I'm from Germany - Moose is a type of elch, but what the ** is 'nonny' ??)

[munky]

A Nonny Moose is a play on the word 'Anonymous'.

[BuXb]

A Nonny Moose is a play on the word 'Anonymous'.

you guys shouldn't do stuff like that, this is meant to be an international forum ..

[merak]

look at my signature..it's veeeery good at the moment..fixed the problem wiv resoultion it's gorgeous..yeah..no sleep

[BuXb]

look at my signature..it's veeeery good at the moment..fixed the problem wiv resoultion it's gorgeous..yeah..no sleep

u mean you didn't catch any sleep because of messing around too much with x86, or your machines sleep modus doesn't work in x86, but I guess both .. !?