RichM 0 #1 March 25, 2003 Adobe have run some comparisons of dual cpu MAC G4 vs. single cpu Intel P4 3.06MHz using Premiere, After Effect, Illustrator and Photoshop, available here. In summary the PC won by a large amount. This may help people who are on the verge of buying a system now for video editing; it is not intended to start a platform flame war. Although I can somehow sense it coming ... Rich M Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cajones 0 #2 March 25, 2003 Wow! A bit suprising that Adobe put this on their website. I can remember the days when Adobe was all about the Mac, turning their nose up at the "compatibles." It should be noted this test uses the Intel 850 chipset, not the much more common 845 chipset. If you go out and buy a Pentium 4 3.06GHz from your local merchant - chances are it will NOT be built with the 850 chipset - and you won't see these performance numbers (as well as greater chances of compatibility issues with Premiere). There are higher benchmarks coming from the new 7205 chipset, with dual-channel DDR. This chipset does not get along well with Premier, either, so don't jump into the cutting-edge stuff without bracing yourself for a trying battle with Premiere. On the much higher end of Intel, the 7505 chipset (Xeon) also has trouble with Premiere (but can be tweaked or hitched to work very well), but works well with Avid, including on-board firewire (with certain boards). The laws of physics are strictly enforced. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Spy38W 0 #3 March 25, 2003 Ech, I've been thinking about getting new stuff for a while now but am at a total loss on what to get. -- Hook high, flare on time Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cajones 0 #4 March 25, 2003 Are you going to build your own, have a local computer store build you one, or get one from Gateway/Compaq/Other? PM me with what you want to do, and I'll give you some suggestions. Make sure you include if you need a new monitor/keyboard/mouse (or keep the old ones), and what your budget is. The laws of physics are strictly enforced. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Spy38W 0 #5 March 25, 2003 Kewlio, thanks, PM'ing -- Hook high, flare on time Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rapper4mpi 0 #6 March 26, 2003 If you are getting into video editing, in my opinion, MACs are the only answer. I know of an absolutely incredible site online called www.smalldog.com. They have great prices and you can get "refurbished" MACs for a good price. They have packages just for video editing. Anyway, worth checking out. -Rap Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
newshooter12 0 #7 March 26, 2003 another place worth looking at is www.promax.com My brother and his friend bought a whole system, a couple monitors, decks, and hard drives through them. Great customer support from what they've said. Just my $.02 that if you want a system for editing it may be best to go with a complete system built for the specific NLE software. It has saved a lot of hastles for the people that I know. matt Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LouDiamond 1 #8 March 26, 2003 Having used a friends in the past and just picked one up myself, the Screenplay by Applied Magic is a very good NLE that has a very small learning curve and excellent output. It's strictly a NLE so if your looking for a machine to check e-mail,surf the web, etc, this is not the machine to go with. E-bay usually has one or two of them if buying new is not in your budget. http://applied-magic.com Hey Cajones, how comes the Eloy Boogie video, what's the soonest we can expect it?"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required" Some people dream about flying, I live my dream SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cajones 0 #9 March 27, 2003 The Eloy Boogie video is plugging along. I have some new things I'm trying to do with multiple angles that've created a pretty steep learning curve. I can picture it in my mind, so I'm sure there's a way to make it happen on the screen. I spent a few hours today just doing color correction and enhancements on captured footage, so that the angles will be closer in terms of color balance and contrast. I'll post a more accurate delivery date within a few days. By then I'll be ready to find out how far the duplicators are backed up. I've also been investigating the idea of making a limited run of DVD's. These would not be factory pressed, so compatibility would not be guaranteed with all set-top DVD players. No extras, no fancy chaptering - just a few DVD's for those who don't have VCR's and others who'll watch their tapes so much they get worn out. The laws of physics are strictly enforced. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ManBird 0 #10 March 27, 2003 Quote Adobe have run some comparisons of dual cpu MAC G4 vs. single cpu Intel P4 3.06MHz using Premiere, After Effect, Illustrator and Photoshop, available here. In summary the PC won by a large amount. This may help people who are on the verge of buying a system now for video editing; it is not intended to start a platform flame war. Although I can somehow sense it coming ... I can attest to this. I have a 1.7GHz P4 with the 845 chipset (Win2K), a 2 GHz P4 laptop with the 850 chipset (WinXP), and a dual 2.5 GHz G4 (OS X) (all OSes are very patched/current, the boxes have 1 GB RAM, the laptop has 512 MB). In every respect, both my PCs just slam the dual G4. Faster start times for the OS, and individual programs. Video is exponentially faster (though 500+ MB files tend to slow on my laptop with its 4300 RPM drive, but it still beats my Mac, and my 10,000 RPM SCSI drive on my PC box puts both other systems to shame on large files). 3D and audio, while drastically different, both have the same huge gap performance. Lightwave skips along for on the dual G4, and is smooth as shi*t on either P4 system. In music/sound production, I can endlessly pile channels on in various programs on my PCs, drop in unlimited VST plug-ins, etc, without thinking twice (especially on the laptop). In music production on the G4 (mainly MaxMSP), it really starts to crap out if I try to accomplish the same level of production, and ProTools is a DOG next to CoolEditPro (the most-related program for Windows). When it comes to vector graphics, it's no question. Illustrator, Flash, Freehand, CorelDRAW, etc, P4s just tear Macs apart due to the built-in floating point calculations on the processor. Raster graphics is the only marginal area. I get faster Photoshop startups on my PCs, but performance within raster editing programs really comes down to hard drive speed/buffer, rather than processor. That's the physical comparison. Physically, it's like Velocity versus Spectre. Aesthetically/preferentially, it doesn't matter. All that matters is the end product. If you can manage to swoop 300 feet on a Spectre, then stick with that Spectre. ;) I use PCs for EVERYTHING now. My dual G4 went from the development machine to the platform/browser testing machine. I'm using the same programs. The mouse moves the same. The keyboard types the same, The only real difference is that I get stuff done a lot faster. When I get 3 600 MB AVIs that need to be compressed and eventually make it into Flash, I'll have two SWFs on my PC before I'll have a single compressed video file on my Mac. OK. Done."¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯" Click Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
imdskydiver 0 #11 March 27, 2003 Where did you get the 2.5 GHz G4 , I thought the fastest they made was a dual 1.45 GHz . Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ManBird 0 #12 March 28, 2003 Sorry, typo. Dual 1.25. Must slow down... Another note: The tests with Premiere were done with every piece of Adobe software, and there were similar results across the board. Literally every program ran significantly faster on the PC. Apple claims that it's a bug in Adobe's software. That's a bad thing to say because A) no one is dumb enough to believe that there is the same bug in every one of their programs, when they have different programmers on different products and B) they really pissed off Adobe, which is Apple's lifeline in the market."¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯" Click Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyMan 7 #13 March 28, 2003 QuoteThat's a bad thing to say because A) no one is dumb enough to believe that there is the same bug in every one of their programs That is entirely possible, and not all that unlikely. Current applications are built layer up on layer, starting with a very low level functions, and getting to more user specific functions at a higher level. The lower levels are frequently called "architectures", and entire application suites will frequently share architectures. Not only that, but when writing for multiple operating systems, it's very common to simply write one piece of code, and have different compilers make the different OS specific calls. Levels of abstraction are built into the development tools, so that programmers don't call OS specific functions, they call the abstractions, and the compiler interperts the abstractions to hook into whatever features that OS provides. It might not even be a bug in the application per se, but a bug in the build process that results in inneficient code on one specific platform. _Am__ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ManBird 0 #14 March 29, 2003 Adobe's been writing apps for Mac for many, many years. A fundamental bug would have been caught by now. After thirteen years of programming, I can attest to that. Plain and simple, the hardware is slower. Bus and processor speeds are slower, and cache is smaller."¯"`-._.-¯) ManBird (¯-._.-´"¯" Click Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyMan 7 #15 March 29, 2003 There's a lot more to hardware then bus and processor speeds. I personally think these results are much more indicative of Adobe's focus on the PC platform then it is of any weakness in the Apple platform. _Am__ You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
freakydiver 0 #16 March 31, 2003 "Plain and simple, the hardware is slower. Bus and processor speeds are slower, and cache is smaller." On a Mac compared to a PC??? Are you sure about that??? About the only real fundamental change that Mac's have made in the past few years is to ditch SCSI. I'd imagine overall BUS speeds and Cache sizes are larger on a given Mac. Hell, I could be way off the mark though as I haven't really looked at a Mac in about five years since becoming a Win platform programmer though... Blu Skies -- (N.DG) "If all else fails – at least try and look under control." -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cajones 0 #17 March 31, 2003 This does hold some truth. The focus on the platform really revolves around the expansion of instruction sets on todays non-RISC platforms. By optimizing the code to more efficiently take advantage of the instruction sets embedded on the Intel, especially (ever notice the Adobe software checking processor architecture and instruction set on opening), more work can be done with fewer clock cycles. By definition, these instruction sets are not found on RISC processors. Data may have to make ten trips through the processor to make the same changes a single trip through the Intel processor does. The laws of physics are strictly enforced. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
