"Neil Gould" wrote in message ...

[...]

I don't know how you get from $1400 to $3000 by adding a case, video card,
RAM, HD and OS. Much less what the top-end G5 is likely to go for. Has
anyone seen prices yet?

Prices are posted on Apple's web site.

Here's a Dell quote:

Dell Precision™ Workstation 450 Desktop

Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processor, 3.06GHz, 512K Cache
1GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC (2 DIMMS)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Media using NTFS
120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache™
(2nd) 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache™
4X DVD+RW/+R with Roxio® Easy CD Creator and DVD decode
nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor DVI or VGA capable
56K,v.92 data/fax modem,PCI
Dell UltraSharp™ 1702FP 17 inch Flat Panel Monitor (17.0 inch vis)
Enhanced Performance, USB (8 Hot Keys)
USB,Logitech,2 button OPTICAL w/ scroll
1394 Controller Card

120GB is the biggest option from Dell. Machine comes with
3 year warranty.

.... and an Apple quote:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
1GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x512
2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
Apple Studio Display (17" flat panel)
56k V.92 internal modem
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
APP for Power Mac (3 year extended warranty)

Throw away the lame mouse from the Mac, spend $30 on a real
rodent.

The two systems are roughly comparable -- the Mac has
FireWire800 (which may mean something someday) and
larger (and probably faster) hard drives.

Prices? [drumroll]

Dell: $4,749.00
Apple: $4,722.00 (plus real mouse)

Yeah, huge premium.

You can jigger the options around so one is a little cheaper
than the other for roughly equivalent systems, but they're
in the same ballpark. I doubt this is an accident -- Apple
marketing people are perfectly capable of doing quotes on
Dell's website.

-DrBoom

The Dell is a workstation... which if you start comparing workstations, the
G5 is no longer the first to 64bit nor is it the fastest "personal"
computer.

-S




"DrBoom" wrote in message
om...
"Neil Gould" wrote in message
...

[...]

I don't know how you get from $1400 to $3000 by adding a case, video
card,
RAM, HD and OS. Much less what the top-end G5 is likely to go for. Has
anyone seen prices yet?

Prices are posted on Apple's web site.

Here's a Dell quote:

Dell PrecisionT Workstation 450 Desktop

Dual Intel® XeonT Processor, 3.06GHz, 512K Cache
1GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC (2 DIMMS)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional with Media using NTFS
120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst CacheT
(2nd) 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst CacheT
4X DVD+RW/+R with Roxio® Easy CD Creator and DVD decode
nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor DVI or VGA capable
56K,v.92 data/fax modem,PCI
Dell UltraSharpT 1702FP 17 inch Flat Panel Monitor (17.0 inch vis)
Enhanced Performance, USB (8 Hot Keys)
USB,Logitech,2 button OPTICAL w/ scroll
1394 Controller Card

120GB is the biggest option from Dell. Machine comes with
3 year warranty.

... and an Apple quote:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
1GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 2x512
2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
Apple Studio Display (17" flat panel)
56k V.92 internal modem
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
APP for Power Mac (3 year extended warranty)

Throw away the lame mouse from the Mac, spend $30 on a real
rodent.

The two systems are roughly comparable -- the Mac has
FireWire800 (which may mean something someday) and
larger (and probably faster) hard drives.

Prices? [drumroll]

Dell: $4,749.00
Apple: $4,722.00 (plus real mouse)

Yeah, huge premium.

You can jigger the options around so one is a little cheaper
than the other for roughly equivalent systems, but they're
in the same ballpark. I doubt this is an accident -- Apple
marketing people are perfectly capable of doing quotes on
Dell's website.

-DrBoom

In article , Scott
Reams wrote:

The Dell is a workstation... which if you start comparing workstations, the
G5 is no longer the first to 64bit nor is it the fastest "personal"
computer.

-S
you know waht scott? your wintel can beat up my macintosh ok? You win.
you have the most powerful computer in all the world and for all we
know in all the universe. ok, you happy? chicks probbaly dig you
because of the power of that huge computer. now can we get back to
making some freakin music please?

The Dell is a workstation... which if you start comparing workstations,
the
G5 is no longer the first to 64bit nor is it the fastest "personal"
computer.

you know waht scott? your wintel can beat up my macintosh ok?

Don't take this the wrong way. This has nothing to do with one being better
than the other. The G5 could turn out to be the fastest system on the
planet... and that would be great. The issue here is Apple's marketing,
which comes off as deceptive to potential switchers in the PC world. There
are better ways to appeal to those not already using Apple computers. Being
straight up is one of those ways.

-S

Besides, what is the difference between "Workstation" and "Personal
Computer"
other than what the vendor decided to call it?

That is exactly my point. What is the difference? If there is no difference
besides the name... then Apple's claim to be first to 64bit is incorrect.
Their claim to the fastest personal computer is also suspect because there
are a number of personal computer/workstation CPUs missing from their tests.

Regardless of whether one can find a way to justify it... it leaves a bad
taste in the mouth of those who might have considered switching to Apple. My
point is only that Apple could have won over a whole lot more people with an
approach that at least appeared to be respectable.

-S

Scott Reams wrote:
Don't take this the wrong way. This has nothing to do with one being better
than the other. The G5 could turn out to be the fastest system on the
planet... and that would be great. The issue here is Apple's marketing,
which comes off as deceptive to potential switchers in the PC world. There
are better ways to appeal to those not already using Apple computers. Being
straight up is one of those ways.

Deceptive marketing through benchmarks has been the order of the day in
the computer industry since T.J. Watson's era. Why does Apple's latest
foray into doubtful benchmarks surprise you? The PC folks do the same
thing, as do most of the workstation vendors.

Who believes numbers from the manufacturer? Next thing you know, you will
be believing the response plots on microphone data sheets (which are almost
always artificially smoothed, and occasionally totally made up).
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Reams wrote:
Besides, what is the difference between "Workstation" and "Personal
Computer"
other than what the vendor decided to call it?

That is exactly my point. What is the difference? If there is no difference
besides the name... then Apple's claim to be first to 64bit is incorrect.
Their claim to the fastest personal computer is also suspect because there
are a number of personal computer/workstation CPUs missing from their tests.

I used to have a Cyber 830 that I didn't have to share with anyone. Does
that count as a 64-bit personal computer? That was, well, it was a long
time ago.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Just to be clear...

It's all about perception. PC users see it as an attempted deception. It
would have been wiser on Apple's part to find a bunch of benchmarks in which
the G5 clearly excels (hopefully benchmarks unlike SPEC where one can go
find much better scores than Apple's for P4 on the official SPEC site... and
no scores for G5)... and avoid other benchmarks. That's typically what the
"PC Folks" are up to when trying to make their stuff look good.

I had much less of a problem with Apple when they were showing the G4 to be
faster than other CPUs by using very specific Adobe Photoshop benchmarks.
That's just selective benchmarking. As long as you aren't a review site,
that method seems at least somewhat honest to me.

-S

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Scott Reams wrote:
Don't take this the wrong way. This has nothing to do with one being
better
than the other. The G5 could turn out to be the fastest system on the
planet... and that would be great. The issue here is Apple's marketing,
which comes off as deceptive to potential switchers in the PC world.
There
are better ways to appeal to those not already using Apple computers.
Being
straight up is one of those ways.

Deceptive marketing through benchmarks has been the order of the day in
the computer industry since T.J. Watson's era. Why does Apple's latest
foray into doubtful benchmarks surprise you? The PC folks do the same
thing, as do most of the workstation vendors.

Who believes numbers from the manufacturer? Next thing you know, you will
be believing the response plots on microphone data sheets (which are
almost
always artificially smoothed, and occasionally totally made up).
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
reddred wrote:

If you start splitting the head of hair, Linux isn't Unix, BSD isn't
Unix,
there's really only one Unix anyway... off and on, it seems that the
important thing is that it's not Windows.

Linux is Unix. Every single one of the kernal calls in the v7 manual is
in Linux (which the exception of two that got dropped after v7 and didn't
even appear in v/32).

BSD is so Unix that AT&T sued the Regents over distribution of their
source
code.

*Just to note that said code was removed a long time ago.

Oh yes, and every one of the kernal calls in the v7 manual is in Linux,
with those two exceptions.

Now it's true that the v7 kernal, the BSD kernal, and the SysV kernal are
radically different from one another, but they all have supersets of the
same interface to the applications code, which makes the all Unix.


I have trouble accepting that this issue boils down to interface
compatability, when the philosophies of all of the above are indeed
radically different. And there are obviously legal differences. If an OS
meets the proprietary spec, it doesn't mean they want to be called 'Unix'.

Mach and VMS don't have the same interfaces from the kernal at all, even
though they have compatibility libraries which allow you to make those
system calls to an intermediate layer and have them work.


Which is probably a good thing, I agree. But the main difference here,
technically is microkernal vs. monolithic. That's something that still has a
decent technological definition. Unix doesn't anymore.

I guess what I was getting at is, what are people supposed to call Unix-like
systems?
'Loose-collection-of-mostly-posix-compliant-bits-of-operating-systems-that-a
ct-like-unix-but-arent'?

Zdnet will never print an article called 'Apple - keeping Mach alive' but
they will call MacOS 'Unix' over and over. The integration at kernel-level
of Apple's Mach with BSD clouds the issue even further. I guess it's not
written in stone, but I'm not sure where the motivation would come from to
change it at this point, so for all practical purposes it remains
'Unix-like'.

I imagine the switch to the Unix filesystem was more of a compatability
decision than one based on desire for an elegant solution. They need to
establish that, and it was a good move from that point of view. It might
not
have been what I would have done either, but overall OSX turned out
pretty
well.

The problem is that you get compatibility with other 4.2ish filesystems,
but you get reduced compatibility with older Macs.

A problem for us, but not for Jobs & co...

And the wacky way of
implementing legacy fileystem interfaces with calls that make two files
appear as one is kind of ugly to say the least,

Probably not high on the list of Apple's priorities, because it's one of
those problems they want to go away as quickly and as profitably as
possible.

and reminiscent of some
of the nasty kludges used to make VMS and Unix machines talk.

Got any horror stories?

jb

I didn't miss a party, did I? I was tracking horns all day...
--
Dave Martin BRBR

Music, baaah.

-R

Sigh.

This particular issue in this particular thread has nothing to do with one
being better than the other.

When the G5 is available for testing, it may or may not turn out to be a
better performer audio-wise than other systems... and that is, indeed, one
important consideration. If it weren't... people wouldn't bother buying
multi-card PT HD systems. There's a reason you choose an HD3 over an HD2.

-S


"R Krizman" wrote in message
...
Scott wrote:

Don't take this the wrong way. This has nothing to do with one being
better
than the other. BRBR

Exactly my point.

Thank you.

-R

Scott Reams wrote:

It's all about perception. PC users see it as an attempted deception. It
would have been wiser on Apple's part to find a bunch of benchmarks in which
the G5 clearly excels (hopefully benchmarks unlike SPEC where one can go
find much better scores than Apple's for P4 on the official SPEC site... and
no scores for G5)... and avoid other benchmarks. That's typically what the
"PC Folks" are up to when trying to make their stuff look good.

And PC users don't see it as an attempted deception when PC manufacturer
A shows numbers twice as good as manufacturer B, and they buy the machine
from manufacturer A and runs their applications more slowly?

I think you are unfairly blaming Apple for something common to the whole
industry.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

reddred wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

Now it's true that the v7 kernal, the BSD kernal, and the SysV kernal are
radically different from one another, but they all have supersets of the
same interface to the applications code, which makes the all Unix.


I have trouble accepting that this issue boils down to interface
compatability, when the philosophies of all of the above are indeed
radically different. And there are obviously legal differences. If an OS
meets the proprietary spec, it doesn't mean they want to be called 'Unix'.

That has become the difference between "Unix" and other things. Unix supplies
a "POSIX-Compliant" (whatever that really means now) interface between the
kernal and the appliction level.

Mach and VMS don't have the same interfaces from the kernal at all, even
though they have compatibility libraries which allow you to make those
system calls to an intermediate layer and have them work.


Which is probably a good thing, I agree. But the main difference here,
technically is microkernal vs. monolithic. That's something that still has a
decent technological definition. Unix doesn't anymore.

No. VMS is a huge monolithic lump. It has an additional layer of junk
between the kernal and the application available in order to fake a POSIX
application interface. It's not a microkernal, but it's not Unix either.

I guess what I was getting at is, what are people supposed to call Unix-like
systems?
'Loose-collection-of-mostly-posix-compliant-bits-of-operating-systems-that-a
ct-like-unix-but-arent'?

Unix-like. Xinu is Unix-like. Minix is Unix-like.

Zdnet will never print an article called 'Apple - keeping Mach alive' but
they will call MacOS 'Unix' over and over. The integration at kernel-level
of Apple's Mach with BSD clouds the issue even further. I guess it's not
written in stone, but I'm not sure where the motivation would come from to
change it at this point, so for all practical purposes it remains
'Unix-like'.

Unix-like is okay. But saying it's Unix isn't to my mind.

and reminiscent of some
of the nasty kludges used to make VMS and Unix machines talk.

Got any horror stories?

Lots and lots. The thing is that VMS has a dual-fork filesystem as well
if you want to think about it that way. There is formatting information
stored in the directory along with each file. So you can have a text file
that is a STREAM_LF file, or is a variable-record-length file with 80 column
maximum length records, and they seem the same from the user perspective but
they are different.

This is because the operating system itself has a lot of database stuff
built into it, so you can just open up a file and say it's an ISAM or KSAM
database file and all of the database stuff gets done for you.

But now when you NFS mount that file from a Unix box, all of the information
is lost. You take that ISAM file and use ftp to copy it over to another
machine, and all of a sudden the OS thinks it's a STREAM_LF file and you
need to go in and tweak the format parameters by hand to make them match.

The VMS filesystem is really amazing for commercial database applications,
and it's really a shame to see it going away in favor of lowest common
denominator heirarchical filesystems like the 4.2 and NT filesystems.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Reams wrote:

What I'm saying is... the performance gap between G5 and G4 is pretty
substantial. How long will it be before the G5 CPU appears in the more
consumer-oriented eMacs and iMacs? The performance gap between eMac/iMac and
Power MAC will be much larger than the performance gap between a $3000 PC
and a sub-$1000 PC. At least for a while.

Absolutely. But remember, this product was only just announced and it
won't even be available til August. We have to know there's a team of
uber-geeks working round the clock on a G5 iMac shaped like a stalk of
wheat and a blazing new pocket-sized powerbook made of solid plutonium
with a 26" inflatable video screen as we speak. I bet there'll be a G5
iBook that's visually indistinguishable from an eyeshadow compact
that'll sell for $199. Maybe they won't be out til October. Who
knows.

ulysses


"Justin Ulysses Morse" wrote in message
...
Scott Reams wrote:

This is generally because PC users know they don't have to spend
anywhere
near workstation prices to get near-workstation performance. $1000 will
get
you something that is in high-end Athlon/P4/G5 territory. Apple users
expect
to pay a premium... and so they will. Apple has no direct competition to
keep prices down, and devoted Apple users are unlikely to switch.

You're comparing prices on Apples that aren't even out yet to prices on
P4 machines that are less than state of the art. Prices on both
platforms plummet in the first couple of months they're available.
Yes, the current flagship Apple is usually upwards of $3000 but if you
price out THE fastest P4 you can get, you'll find yourself in the same
ballpark. 3.2GHz P4 processors alone are over $700 right now.
Regardless of how a 2GHz G5 compares to a 3.2GHz P4, they're both at a
premium because they're new. Put two of those $700 P4 processors into
a case as badass as the G5, fill it up with a superdrive, OS, and all
the other finesse and you'll find yourself in the general neighborhood
of thirty benjamins. Likewise, when the dual 3GHz G5 is released, the
price of the dual-2G will drop.

ulysses

Being as objective as I know how, I really believe the Apple numbers are
simply more deceptive than anything I've seen from another PC
manufatcurer. Ever.

Seriously, the x86 PC world is (IMO) overly benchmark oriented. It's an
obsession. But as such, it's also highly scrutinized. If Dell, Compaq,
etc or even Nvidia, ATI, Intel, AMD had posted numbers that were so
obviously skewed *to that severity*, they would be laughed off of the PC
map at least as badly as Apple.

Believe me or not, as you choose, but Apple is getting no more grief
from the community than any other company would for this degree of
jivishness on the numbers, given such a milestone product introduction.
..

Regards,
Brian T

Scott Dorsey wrote:

And PC users don't see it as an attempted deception when PC manufacturer
A shows numbers twice as good as manufacturer B, and they buy the machine
from manufacturer A and runs their applications more slowly?

I think you are unfairly blaming Apple for something common to the whole
industry.
--scott

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
reddred wrote:

The thing is that VMS has a dual-fork filesystem as well
if you want to think about it that way. There is formatting information
stored in the directory along with each file. So you can have a text file
that is a STREAM_LF file, or is a variable-record-length file with 80
column
maximum length records, and they seem the same from the user perspective
but
they are different.

If I recall correctly (and it's been quite a number of years since I did
VMS programming), a VMS directory doesn't have much more than the name
and dates of a file. I believe the record format and other information is
stored
in the file header in INDEXF.SYS.

Hal Laurent
Baltimore, Maryland

In article ,
Hal Laurent wrote:

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
reddred wrote:

The thing is that VMS has a dual-fork filesystem as well
if you want to think about it that way. There is formatting information
stored in the directory along with each file. So you can have a text file
that is a STREAM_LF file, or is a variable-record-length file with 80
column
maximum length records, and they seem the same from the user perspective
but
they are different.

If I recall correctly (and it's been quite a number of years since I did
VMS programming), a VMS directory doesn't have much more than the name
and dates of a file. I believe the record format and other information is
stored
in the file header in INDEXF.SYS.

Yes, this is how it's done.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

reddred wrote:

Now it's true that the v7 kernal, the BSD kernal, and the SysV kernal are
radically different from one another, but they all have supersets of the
same interface to the applications code, which makes the all Unix.

I have trouble accepting that this issue boils down to interface
compatability, when the philosophies of all of the above are indeed
radically different. And there are obviously legal differences. If an OS
meets the proprietary spec, it doesn't mean they want to be called 'Unix'.
...
I guess what I was getting at is, what are people supposed to call Unix-like
systems?
'Loose-collection-of-mostly-posix-compliant-bits-of-operating-systems-that-a
ct-like-unix-but-arent'?

I usually refer to them as *nix or unices (small 'U')

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
reddred wrote:

Zdnet will never print an article called 'Apple - keeping Mach alive' but
they will call MacOS 'Unix' over and over. The integration at
kernel-level
of Apple's Mach with BSD clouds the issue even further. I guess it's not
written in stone, but I'm not sure where the motivation would come from
to
change it at this point, so for all practical purposes it remains
'Unix-like'.

Unix-like is okay. But saying it's Unix isn't to my mind.


The Open Group doesn't even want people to say 'Unix-like', but a lot of
people agree with you. To people outside of the field though, I think saying
'Unix' is becoming like saying 'Xerox'.

and reminiscent of some
of the nasty kludges used to make VMS and Unix machines talk.

But now when you NFS mount that file from a Unix box, all of the
information
is lost. You take that ISAM file and use ftp to copy it over to another
machine, and all of a sudden the OS thinks it's a STREAM_LF file and you
need to go in and tweak the format parameters by hand to make them match.


That's relevant to the problems with doing any file system involving some
kind of metadata at this point.

The VMS filesystem is really amazing for commercial database applications,
and it's really a shame to see it going away in favor of lowest common
denominator heirarchical filesystems like the 4.2 and NT filesystems.

Shame about DEC in general. But then, they had standards issues as well -
and standards are almost always the lcd. Hopefully it just gets better over
time.

jb

reddred wrote:
"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message

Unix-like is okay. But saying it's Unix isn't to my mind.

The Open Group doesn't even want people to say 'Unix-like', but a lot of
people agree with you. To people outside of the field though, I think saying
'Unix' is becoming like saying 'Xerox'.

That doesn't sound very open of them to me.

and reminiscent of some
of the nasty kludges used to make VMS and Unix machines talk.

But now when you NFS mount that file from a Unix box, all of the
information
is lost. You take that ISAM file and use ftp to copy it over to another
machine, and all of a sudden the OS thinks it's a STREAM_LF file and you
need to go in and tweak the format parameters by hand to make them match.

That's relevant to the problems with doing any file system involving some
kind of metadata at this point.

Right, unless everybody is using the same metadata and there is some way
of transferring it along with the file. In an all-DEC environment, you
can share files with the Vaxcluster software instead of NFS, and you can
copy files around through DECNET rather than FTP, and all of the out of
band information is preserved. The problme comes when you are using
filesystems with metadata in a world in which it's not preserved (which
was the big nightmare working with MacOS in a PC world too).

The VMS filesystem is really amazing for commercial database applications,
and it's really a shame to see it going away in favor of lowest common
denominator heirarchical filesystems like the 4.2 and NT filesystems.

Shame about DEC in general. But then, they had standards issues as well -
and standards are almost always the lcd. Hopefully it just gets better over
time.

Everybody did. In the case of DEC and IBM, they started using something
when there was no agreed-upon standard, and then when the standard arrived,
they had too much of an entrenched infrastructure to change over. IBM is
only now moving over en-mass to ASCII, in spite of the fact that they
started with the 360/44 which had ASCII manipulation instructions (which they
later dropped since nobody ever used them).
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

The VMS filesystem is really amazing for commercial database
applications, and it's really a shame to see it going away in favor of
lowest common denominator heirarchical filesystems like the 4.2 and NT
filesystems.

NTFS supports multiple datastreams in one file, so to store a VMS file on
NTFS you should be able to store that extra data in one of the non primary
data streams.

The problem when copying from a VMS system to NTF is of course still there
unless you find a transfer method that correctly does this in both
directions.

I do hope some good protocols will some day evolve that actually let's me
copy files containing as much as possible with the two file systems
invlolved (like putting the extended attributes from HPFS in a non primary
stream on NTFS). Today I can't even transfer files reliably between
computers using the same filesystem without sometimes loosing information.
:-/

Regards
/Jonas

Jonas Eckerman wrote:
The VMS filesystem is really amazing for commercial database
applications, and it's really a shame to see it going away in favor of
lowest common denominator heirarchical filesystems like the 4.2 and NT
filesystems.


NTFS supports multiple datastreams in one file, so to store a VMS file on
NTFS you should be able to store that extra data in one of the non primary
data streams.

Given the DEC/VMS origins of the original NT development team, one can
understand this.


For those who aren't familiar with it, I recommend Hans Reiser's
whitepapers. Interesting stuff, even if you don't intend to use
reiserfs http://www.namesys.com/

Rick wrote:

Music, baaah.


Dave said "horns". g


Chris



I see your point.

Okay, back to the bean counting.

-R

"R Krizman" wrote in message
...
Rick wrote:

Music, baaah.
Dave said "horns". g
Chris

I see your point.

Okay, back to the bean counting.

(As the Mad Hatter said to the March Hare, "But they were the very best
horns.... "

Unfortunately, with horn players attached...

--
Dave Martin
Java Jive Studio
Nashville, TN
www.javajivestudio.com

Hi,

In message , Scott
Reams writes
Deceptive marketing through benchmarks has been the order of the day in
the computer industry since T.J. Watson's era. Why does Apple's latest
foray into doubtful benchmarks surprise you? The PC folks do the same
thing, as do most of the workstation vendors.

Not to the same degree. I challenge you or anyone else to give a specific
example.

Take a look at

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/05/1...&tid=185&tid=1
37

I'm not trying to rise to your challenge, but I know for a fact that
benchmark cheating in the PC marketplace is rife. Check out the recent
battle between ATi and nVidia, documented on www.theregister.com, over
the 3DMark 2003 benchmark suite. I've been seeing this **** for years. I
even know one (now defunct) PC system builder that would swap out the
cache chips on hard drives before submitting systems for magazine
reviews, to screw a few extra benchmark points of out of them. Needless
to say, the customers would never see those bigger cache chips in their
systems.
--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

As the Mad Hatter said to the March Hare, "But they were the very best
horns.... "

Unfortunately, with horn players attached...

--
Dave Martin BRBR

That's true, it's really unfair to blame the horns.

-R

Honestly, it's well past the time that your professional practice be
announced in a .sig file so that readers can keep your comments in
contect, much as they do with Fletcher, Jay F., Jay K., etc.

You build and vend DAW's based on non-Apple hardware. Your bread and
butter bias is understandable and would serve you better if placed right
up front.

The DAW "business" is certainly not my bread and butter. There really isn't
much money in it. That said... by bias favors the most capable machine
available, whether it be PC, Mac, or Sun workstation. The only reason the
systems I build at this particular moment have Athlon CPUs is because my
research has found them to perform best at this particular moment.

-S

That's true. It actually hurt Nvidia's cred in the gaming community.
Apple is getting no more flak than anybody else would for taking the
same, extreme "liberties" in their benchmarks. Like I said before, the
PC community is benchmark obsessed. Therefore, the scrutiny is extreme.
I don't think Apple has had to play by the same rules in the Apple
community, so this level of reaction seems like a shocker to them. It's
not. It's completely normal in the PC community. And that atmosphere
does make for generally more credible benchmarks,

Brian T

Scott Reams wrote:

An interesting example... but really one that just proves the point. NVidia
was hammered by the industry for this by everyone

That's true. It actually hurt Nvidia's cred in the gaming community.

Is the Nvidia and Radion (sp) video cards pretty much equal?



---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

R Krizman wrote:

As the Mad Hatter said to the March Hare, "But they were the very best
horns.... "

Unfortunately, with horn players attached...

--
Dave Martin BRBR

That's true, it's really unfair to blame the horns.

Right, it's the rhinoceros that's dangerous, nevermind his horn.

--
ha

Nahh, Apple's most likely completely used to the situation. It spans back to
the days of the SE30, then the MacII-FX, the first generation PowerPC systems,
the first G3, the intro of Altivec. All of these systems were top performers in
their day, compared to anything in the x86 world.

The reality is you can't list a benchmark without someone saying, "yeah but..."


With the complexity of today's computers, it's really difficult to answer the
question, "How fast is it?" The answer will always start, "depends on what you
do with it."

So when it is your stage, you show it the way you see it. Doesn't really matter
what you say or do, someone will **** and moan about it.

But the test methods are all completely disclosed, it's not like they ran in
and laid claim to baseless figures. You can argue it until the cows come home,
but the only thing you can come away with is that the G5 is pretty darn fast.

Apple is getting no more flak than anybody else would for taking the
same, extreme "liberties" in their benchmarks. Like I said before, the
PC community is benchmark obsessed. Therefore, the scrutiny is extreme.
I don't think Apple has had to play by the same rules in the Apple
community, so this level of reaction seems like a shocker to them. It's
not. It's completely normal in the PC community. BRBR

--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

Hi,

In message , EggHd
writes
That's true. It actually hurt Nvidia's cred in the gaming community.

Is the Nvidia and Radion (sp) video cards pretty much equal?

My take is frankly, if you're main interest is audio, then any
difference doesn't matter one iota. The 'fight' was over 3D performance,
which is where a very vocal small minority makes a very loud noise over
performance, because they can't stand to have a friend with a 'faster'
system than they have.

It matters only for games. In 'real' apps (the ones people earn money
with in the audio world) most of us should pay far more attention to
driver stability and compatibility than 3D benchmark performance.

If you run 3D Studio Max, Lightwave or Maya for a living, then ignore
the above comment, and read the feedback on their respective forums
about performance, then choose. If you want to run Quake, then does the
difference between 140 and 150 frames per second really matter?

FWIW, the new Radeon 9800 and the newest nVidia top spec chips are both
killers in 3D, but you can dry your hair with the fans on those boards,
so IMO, they don't make a great choice for a DAW. Too damned noisy, and
bus greedy. Better to go for a card with good 2D performance, good
compatibility, well behaved drivers and good image quality, preferably
with passive cooling. Then put a killer 3D card in your gaming rig, or
buy an X-box. Caveat: I work for Matrox. We don't really do gaming
cards, but I might just be biased anyway ;-)

"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

I'm gonna steal this sig one day :-)

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

Nahh, Apple's most likely completely used to the situation. It spans back
to
the days of the SE30, then the MacII-FX, the first generation PowerPC
systems,
the first G3, the intro of Altivec. All of these systems were top
performers in
their day, compared to anything in the x86 world.

The reality is you can't list a benchmark without someone saying, "yeah
but..."

Of course... but you will see certain situations where the response is much
louder than it is in other situations... and it is usually because the
methods are more than just a little questionable. Intel, AMD, and everybody
else have been posting benchmark results for some time and getting responses
here and there... but it all pales in comparison to the responses you get
when you go as far as Apple and NVidia did (even if NVidia did what they did
in response to a benchmark that was questionable in the first place). If
Intel, AMD, Dell, Sun, or anyone else had posted benchmarks in a similar
fashion as Apple did, they would have been torn apart. It doesn't matter who
it is.

-S

Hi,

In message , Scott Reams
writes
Nahh, Apple's most likely completely used to the situation. It spans back
to
the days of the SE30, then the MacII-FX, the first generation PowerPC
systems,
the first G3, the intro of Altivec. All of these systems were top
performers in
their day, compared to anything in the x86 world.

The reality is you can't list a benchmark without someone saying, "yeah
but..."

Of course... but you will see certain situations where the response is much
louder than it is in other situations... and it is usually because the
methods are more than just a little questionable. Intel, AMD, and everybody
else have been posting benchmark results for some time and getting responses
here and there... but it all pales in comparison to the responses you get
when you go as far as Apple and NVidia did (even if NVidia did what they did
in response to a benchmark that was questionable in the first place). If
Intel, AMD, Dell, Sun, or anyone else had posted benchmarks in a similar
fashion as Apple did, they would have been torn apart. It doesn't matter who
it is.

You're right...it doesn't matter who it is, and it shouldn't. If the
vendors would get the engineers to concentrate on running real
application software well, rather than concentrating resources on
running benchmark software 'A' faster than competitor 'X' runs it, we
(the customers) might be better off.

Unfortunately, the marketing department is probably holding the pay
checks for those very engineers, and reviews based on benchmarks make
for cheap exposure, so the whole strategy depends on having to be seen
to be winning. The reviewer wins too. (S)he clicks on the 'run' command
for the publishing house's favourite benchmark suite, and in 20 minutes
(or so) bang, there's a half page of pretty graphs for next month's
magazine or web page. Much easier than firing up a bunch of complicated
applications and making subjective comments about how they run. You can
look deeper, and learn more, but many reviewers don't, and quite a lot
of them can't.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

nuke wrote:

Nahh, Apple's most likely completely used to the situation. It spans back to
the days of the SE30, then the MacII-FX, the first generation PowerPC systems,
the first G3, the intro of Altivec. All of these systems were top performers in
their day, compared to anything in the x86 world.

I have clear memories of those first PPC 601-based Macs and they were
hardly "top performers in their day" even in the Mac world.

In article , Scott
Reams wrote:

Honestly, it's well past the time that your professional practice be
announced in a .sig file so that readers can keep your comments in
contect, much as they do with Fletcher, Jay F., Jay K., etc.

You build and vend DAW's based on non-Apple hardware. Your bread and
butter bias is understandable and would serve you better if placed right
up front.

The DAW "business" is certainly not my bread and butter. There really isn't
much money in it. That said... by bias favors the most capable machine
available, whether it be PC, Mac, or Sun workstation. The only reason the
systems I build at this particular moment have Athlon CPUs is because my
research has found them to perform best at this particular moment.

-S

Scott, you just keep on digging the hole deeper and deeper.

I have clear memories of those first PPC 601-based Macs and they were
hardly "top performers in their day" even in the Mac world.

They were indeed, for some things.

At the time, I was grinding numbers and the PPC-601 soundly smoked the crap out
of any of the available pentii of the day.

Then the P-Pro came out, and it was best of the heap.

Then the G3 came out and it was better for a lot of stuff then Pent-pro, II and
III. By then I was grinding numbers for chromosome analysis and we tried both.
The G3 could just toast the Pentia by a severe margin in that particular
application. We would have gladly switched platforms at the time, since it was
all $100K a seat vertical market stuff anyway.

Then the clock speeds began to go up as AMD and Intel fought each other and the
G4 lagged behind except on stuff you could put into vector format for SIMD
processing and it still smoked P3/P4 at twice the clockspeed.

Now we get the G5, which I think at least closes the gap. Likely, it's probably
going to run ahead on some stuff and a bit behind on other stuff. But it looks
like it is all in the same ballpark. So what does it matter?

FWIW, I'm still using a much slower Mac because me, the human, is faster using
it.



--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.

Then the clock speeds began to go up as AMD and Intel fought each other
and the
G4 lagged behind except on stuff you could put into vector format for SIMD
processing and it still smoked P3/P4 at twice the clockspeed.

How did it compare when the scales were evened out and the code also
supported the SSE and SSE2 SIMD sets?

Now we get the G5, which I think at least closes the gap.

That does look likely.

Likely, it's probably
going to run ahead on some stuff and a bit behind on other stuff. But it
looks
like it is all in the same ballpark.

Yep.

-S

nuke wrote:

I have clear memories of those first PPC 601-based Macs and they were
hardly "top performers in their day" even in the Mac world.

They were indeed, for some things.

At the time, I was grinding numbers and the PPC-601 soundly smoked the crap out
of any of the available pentii of the day.


Mighta been the early OS ports or some sort of internal bandwidth issue
then, because they (6100s as I recall) were dog slow at database and
office stuff we were integrating to.


About two years later, we started using the DEC PC's with Alpha 233
cards in them and they smoked the crap out of all sorts of things...

How did it compare when the scales were evened out and the code also
supported the SSE and SSE2 SIMD sets?

SSE was a complete ****ing joke compared to the vector engine in the G4. No
kidding. It resoundingly smoked the intel family on best-case optimized code
that applied well to this kind of processing.

Like BLAST and the other protein folding number cruncher applications out
there, they run killer on alti-vec. The only challenge is feeding them with
data.


--
Dr. Nuketopia
Sorry, no e-Mail.
Spam forgeries have resulted in thousands of faked bounces to my address.