[friendofjavis]

Which one is better for graphics? I am Graphic Designer for a couple of radio stations here in Cincinnati Ohio and we use pc, but in school it was always mac. Is there realy a difference?

[exo13]

I use a Mac. It's a revision D iMac (blueberry). I doubt that you're going to get a clear answer on this topic though. I'm a Mac user and you'll never get me to change for anything. I'm sure the same could be said for most of the PC users out there too. Essentially, if it runs the software that you need to use and has all the right hardware and a fast processor, it all comes to the stability of the OS. Macs, in my oppinion are way more stable and you get none of the whole "Fatal Error, Illegal Action, Now you go to hell!!" crap. I do a lot with my Mac and it's three years old. I have a 333mhz G3 processor, 96meg of RAM, 24X cdrom and a the old Ati rage pro video card that was standard of all macs at the time. Another difference is the default monitor brightness. Macs are 2.2, PCs are 1.8.

By the way... I feel a big debate brewing... I may just end up ducking out for this one.

[starfish]

Yo friendofjavis!

that depends on what hardware you are
comparing. you can use either if you
want to do decent graphics.
what many people get wrong is that the
architecture in pc's differ from mac's.
you will come across people who says that
'hey, that mac has only a 500MHz engine,
pc's are already up to 1GHz now!'
(ok, that was a year ago)
what I'm trying to say here is that the
500MHz motorola engine is faster than a
1GHz Intel/Athlon engines because it moves
data in diffrent ways.
so when you are going to decide what platform
to use for making graphic stuff, I suggest you
research what specs the software you want to
use need.
if you want to be able to run Photoshop or
Painter creating web gfx you will be well
off with 256-500meg ram.
if you want to serve ad agencys with gfx
for printed stuff you will likely need
500meg ram and above.
more ram=you can work with bigger resolutions without having to wait when scrolling
the speed of the engine is only good for
how fast the compositing is rendered when
editing it in a program like PS/Painter.

if you want to do 3d stuff it's almost the
same story. you can either use motorola
or intel/athlon based machines.
the more ram you have the bigger scenes you
can handle at once. what differs when it
comes to 3d stuff is that you really are
depending on a good gfx board to be able
to turn things around without getting too
many gray hairs.
the better boards come with it's own ram
so it'll be as fast as it can be.
yet, many new boards use both the onboard ram
as well as the machines ram to gain even
more strength.

hope this helps you somehow.
it'll be easier to give more precise
advice if you tell what you want to achieve.

best wishes =)

[ July 27, 2001: Message edited by: starfish ]

[mannyp]

Personally I prefer Mac, but that's my choice -- it's what I learned design on. What you need to do is to take into consideration what your haves and needs are.

If you: are fairly new to computers, don't have the skills to troubleshoot any hardware/software problems, be 99.9% virus safe, want kick-ass colour management, and want true ease of use, get a Mac.

Generally speaking, there are no differences between the platforms. Whatever you can do on a Mac, you can do on a PC -- and vice versa (although there are some very cool Mac only software titles that really show you the meaning of ease-of-use such as iMovie and Diskburner).

Having said that, Starfish is right when they say the MHZ difference stops at the #'s. A 500 mhz G4 is about the same (if not faster in some cases) than a 1 Ghz PC.

In the end, get what feels right to you because you're the one that's going to have to live with your purchase.

P.S. Don't let the iMac fool you... it is a very productive little piece of equipment and can serve you well.

[marky]

Well its been mac, mac, mac so far. And I'm going to add another vote for the mac!

I tried using a PC for Photoshop for a while - sure it works, but the colors were alll over the place, and I just hate the way a PC makes you store your files.

Its the operating system which really sets the mac apart! Its much more instinctive and "visual" than windows OS - and if your a visual person - then its the one for you. It is also much more customisable allowing you to use it in a lot of different ways. this is the reason that many creative people have prefered macs over the years

The issue with the new mac OS X makes it slightly more complicated .. most of the software developers are approaching this quite reluctantly - so its going to be OS9 for a while to come. But when OS X gets its act in gear - the race will really be on!

Also I go along with whats been said before - most imacs are well powerful enough for what you probably need (and they look cool). I have done agency work quite recently on a very old revision B imac!

[ July 27, 2001: Message edited by: marky ]

[exo13]

The thing is, that Mac OS X is WAYYY!!! ahead of it's time. They might as well still call it a beta even though it's around three years in the making. It's revolutionary as far as an OS goes, it's encredably stable being Unix based but not too many software developers are jumping when it comes to software compatability issue. I'm not sure, but I don't think it's very freindly with USB periferals yet either. Pretty much, Apple speant so much time creating this masterpiece of an operating system in secret, that developers didn't have much more than a late and insubstantial beta to work with and actually try to translate their products to. I'd maybe wait a year before upgrading past OS 9. I hear OS 9.2 is comming out soon too.

Another thing with Macs is that they're more expensive than your average PC of equal or better included hardware. But that's the price you're willing to pay for a machine that will never let you down. Seriously, my mac has only had ONE crash where it required that I do a clean install. As for normal crashes, I can't remember the last time my computer froze and I had to restart. Maybe Norton Utilities is to thank for that though... Also a good investment.

[Shadow-X-]

I used to HATE macs soo much. I think it was on the basis that it only had one mouse button.... wait a second.. IT STILL DOES!!! I also dont like the fact that you have to use a EJECT DISK command to make the disk eject..... no buttons.... I dunno.......
But I know macs are superrior to PCs in graphics.

[simplyDevine]

Linux!!!!!!!! Maya!!!!! =)
well it does help if you gots a duel 1.7ghz workstation and almost 2gb of ram dont it?
I know it would help =P

I prefer either, personally because of money issues i choose PC's because their so easy and cheap to build from ground up than macs (in my opinion)and can compete at the same level that macs can.

But its not really the platform as much as how well you know the software you're using and the pure talent you possess. But thats all my opinion =)

Robin

[RayKast]

Its used to be that macs were the ultimate platform for graphics creation. In both catagorys (performance and stability) macs ruled. However, now that pc's have motherboards that suport dual athlon thunderbirds, pc's now rule the perfomance catagory. I tell you, if you get a setup with dual athlon 1.2ghz thunderbirds and it will easily over power any mac configuration. Now mac's only reign in the stability department.

The good news is that i dont see windows makeing any large leaps toward stability any time soon.

[frostfyre]

Macs do have a clear advantage over PC's in color management. It's no mistake that there are pantone swatches built into the color picker at a system level. For color calibrated work, there simply is no better system. SGI had equivalent capabilities, but at a much higher cost.

I use a Mac at home, a PC at work, and run Linux for writing shaders and such, they are all strong at one thing or another. The machine on which I get the most art done is my Mac.

Good luck with your choice! I wish I was buying a new machine

[marky]

"now that pc's have motherboards that suport dual athlon thunderbirds, PC's now rule the perfomance catagory"

No they don't. A G4 Dual processor 500mhz runs faster than any PC. All the performance tests have proved this - these are usually done using PS actions, and filter operations. Even the single processor machines (now 700mgz) are beating PCs in the performance category. The megahertz figure is actually very misleading, and its used by the legions of Microsoft sales people to justify their performance claims.

As to the cost - you can pick up an Imac (a high performance machine) for a price well comparable with good PCs .

After having said all that, the most important point is that it really doesn't matter what you use, provided it gets the job done, I guess. And its true to say that no machine can make art.

[ July 28, 2001: Message edited by: marky ]

[cybertoker2001]

Everyone is taught on a Mac in school, so people just assume that's what to get as an artist. I use a PC and it's more powerfull than any mac talked about in this thread. In the end you'll just have to try both and deside which one works best for you.

That's my two cents.

Take it easy,
CT2001

[qboard kinkler]

TEST MESSAGE
i work on pc because i ever worked on pc,
the only prob i�ve with it is windows, but this is not the point we should talk about the operation systems (but it�s a really sup when windows makes a shut down while u work)
another cause is, a mac is really to expensive for a student like me
whatever....

[Pat]

I'm comfortable on both platforms, but Windows basically sucks. Buy a Mac and spend more time painting instead of reinstalling your OS.

-Pat

[AC]

If price is important then stick with the PC. I bought a wicked (over a year ago) PC for under �500. 700MHz, 320Mb RAM, 10Gb hard disk, 32Mb graphics card etc.... Runs photoshop and everything fine. If you also want stability, then WindowsME is fairly good actually, as long as you treat it right and don't try stuff which is obviously going to crash it.

-Andy-
www.coates11.freeserve.co.uk

[Ben Barker]

quote:

---

Originally posted by marky:
No they don't. A G4 Dual processor 500mhz runs faster than any PC. All the performance tests have proved this - these are usually done using PS actions, and filter operations. Even the single processor machines (now 700mgz) are beating PCs in the performance category. The megahertz figure is actually very misleading, and its used by the legions of Microsoft sales people to justify their performance claims.

As to the cost - you can pick up an Imac (a high performance machine) for a price well comparable with good PCs .

---

I'm sorry, that's just not true. http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?pc/benchmarking/xplat/ppc-x86

Even John Carmack, a proponent of Apple, says that they have never performed faster than the x86 architecture in any of his tests.
PS on the Mac is compiled with optimizations for the PPC architecture that are not there on the PC. This is not the fault of the processors, but rather the fault of the the software maker. Apple uses Photoshop tests to clock their processors against pentium 3s, and why not? It is completely biased to their advantage!
In these benchmarks, the P3 scores less than the PPC chips, and a lot less than the Athlon. Your first conclusion might be "HAH! The p3 sucks ass!" While sort of true, none of the programs run are compiled with Intel's compiler, which most programs will be compiled with in the future. Game makers are already starting to. The Athlon doesn't have this problem, and outperforms the PPC processors consistently, or gets very close.

Macs used to be a lot faster than PCs of a comparable speed, but not anymore. Motorola has really fucked up on this, I'm sorry. I would expect Macs to start using PC processors pretty soon.

[Pat]

Ben is right about Photoshop being somewhat optimized for the PPC architecture. But to be honest, that just chalks up another reason to buy a Mac for graphics.

In reality, the optimizations are slight. Several filters and a few functions which require intense number crunching are handed off to the Velocity Engine (aka the Altivec Processor) because it can process data at a higher rate. We're talking stuff like the blur filter here people... not exactly the mission critical performance deal-ender --but an advantage nonetheless.

It gets better. Newer model G4 processors now contain MULTIPLE Altivec processors, for 4 to 5 times their previous performance. The new Quicksilver Dual 800 mhz Mac can rip a DVD in faster than real time using the processor alone. Needless to say, it's Photoshop performance is peerless.

Now that we're talking about ut, since the MacOS natively supports multiple processors of the regular variety, Adobe has been able to easily integrate that into Photoshop. All this means is that even with slower clock cycle processors, they get the job done faster. In the PC world of underperforming mhz junkies who regularly sacrifice efficency for clock speed, there ought to be at least a begrudging nod to the faster performer. This is a real-life example of working smarter, not harder or faster.

Mac's won't be using PC processors anytime soon. In fact, your assertion that Motorola has "fucked up" pretty much shows you've bought the company line of "faster is always better". See above for how that's not true. It also shows a stunning ignorance of Apple's market and tech strategy. They're not necessarily interested in making MS Word (or for that matter any run-of-the-mill app) run 400X faster. They're interested in powering the calcualtion-intensive programs of the future like DVD authoring, Photoshop and MP3 stuff. They figure that's what people are interested in. If anything, as we near the physical limitations of chip size (read, you can't make those leads too much smaller or you get electon migration and a non-functioning chip) PC chip manufacturers will be looking for more elegant methods to pipeline their data. RISC processing and parallel processing both represent realistic approches to this common problem. The PPC architecture is an investment in the future.

As for John Carmack, he was specifically refering the older model G4's, and right after they'd integrated some optimizing tests to incorporate Altivec code into Quake. Big surprise that it didn't help much since most of the processing is offloaded to the graphics card on either platform. Although he didn't discuss it, that Mac test was also performed with the main CPU processing all the audio as well. It wasn't offloaded to a sound card as on a PC. Derrrr it went slower. I wonder how much a PC would crawl if had to do the same thing.

In all fairness this is a stupid thread. Both platforms work great for Photoshop --despite all the nerdness above. Who gives a shit if, after a day of Phostoshopping I get done 32 seconds faster? The rate-limiting factor in graphics apps isn't the chip, it's the artist. For people in pre-press the single most mitigating factor in platform choice should be "What does you printer use?" Other than that, use what you can afford or are comfortable with.

-Pat

[Lunatique]

Wow, Pat. Could always count on you for a well-informed, entertaining debate. You rawk.

[mannyp]

quote:

---

Originally posted by RayKast:
Well, lets just say that the mac's lead in the perfomance department is rapidly becomeing smaller then it used to be. I'm sure we can all agree on that.

---

Um... no. I don't, especially considering Apple's new G4's come in 3 mhz flavours: 733, 867 and dual 800 (taking into consideration, a 733 G4 is at the very least equivalent to a 1.4 Intel processor -- that's pretty damn good).

Mac OS 10.1 will be out soon which from what I've seen first-hand, it will give a much needed performance boost.

Cheers

[ July 28, 2001: Message edited by: mannyp ]

[Ben Barker]

Well, when it comes down to it, Macs have failed me when placed side by side with a PC. My $2500 PC laptop outperforms my friends' $3500 G4 laptops in Cinema 4D and in Photoshop. Yes, we raced them. Yes, we are dorks. So I don't know exactly what to say besides that. The proof is in the benchmarks, not the marketting.

Yes, the difference was just a few seconds. So why does it matter so much to me? Because I go to school in an Apple church. It's forced down my throat. I constantly have to defend my choice to use a PC against the same barrage of Apple advertising voodoo. So, I am biased. Not because of Apple, since every company lies in their commercials. But because of the people I go to school with, and how they buy every word.

It seems whenever I provide benchmarks to these ascetic Apple priests, I never get solid data to refute it. Just buzzwords and rehashes of Apple commercials. I always get the "well, that was then, in the future mysterious vapourware product X will be a lot faster! You just see!" I have yet to see.
In the future I plan to have money, as opposed to now, when I have no money. I will be able to buy a PC and a Mac, and use both to get the best result. As it stands, I have to make the best purchase for my money. And that solution is the PC.

[edit]
John Carmack made that comment about a month ago on Slashdot. He was referring to tests he had done for the Doom code. This isn't an old opinion. And I trust John Carmack when it comes to 3D rendering. We're talking about multiple tests over a large time period here on multiple hardware configurations. Not whatever test you have in mind.

[ July 28, 2001: Message edited by: Ben Barker ]

[Rinaldo]

Bah, Macs are way overrated. they crash all the time. the interface is just silly. I have heard of Mac OsX crashing as well.

they look nice and a lot of designers go for that. and they are talked up at a lot of art orientated schools, but I would never go near one. if I had enough cash to get a decent G4, I'd put it on a PC. you get what you want. more options. it will be evenly matched in performance at least. PS and a few other adobe products run faster, but even then. the athlon 1200 with Raid I scraped together on a budget is doing what I want it to do in terms of rez and file size in PS. I crash once a month. rarely while using PS. and then only when I'm trying some multitasking nightmare.
If you put together a dual athlon machine with a ton of ram and a fast HD. I doubt a mac could stand up to it in PS (idle boast, but still) and then everyting else runs a hell of a lot faster, and it won't crash.

I got suckered into the mac thing. it's pretty thin for the most part.

[simplyDevine]

I went to a class last week which covered 3d modeling, And every computer in there was a duel 400mhz mac, and the largest animation i rendered (well over 900+) frames with nearly 1gb of mem in use by cinema alone kept crashing. Then i get home and render the same animation on my single 800 mhz pc with 512mb of ram and it rendered in half the time it took the mac, and i even upped the resolution to 800x600. I guess its a preference, but everyone there praised macs for their graphics abilities, when all i saw was "Not enough memory" Hmmmm i guess 1gb in the end truely isnt enough memory!

Its all software in my opinion, if every 3d software package available was fully ported to linux by now id be sitting in linux but since its not i'll sit happily on my win98 machine and render my heart out over the network to the 2 other machines in the house. Microsoft is definatly not known for error proof OS's and software packages. But they are relaiable to fix the general errors that occur. And honestly the iMac is what killed it for me in the apple department. And MacOS-X doesnt sound like to big of a leap anyway, i'll just stick with my redhat and win98. Well those are my opinions. =)

Robin

[RayKast]

Well, lets just say that the mac's lead in the perfomance department is rapidly becomeing smaller then it used to be. I'm sure we can all agree on that.

[frostfyre]

The original post didn't ask about rraw performance, but rather use of the machines in graphics.

PC's have higher clock speeds, more toys, and more flexibility in 3D. They "support" more toys (burners, CD/DVD drives, etc).

Mac's have color calibration, tight integration with print graphics hardware, video hardware, and film output. There are fewer toys, but the support is better.

I must admit for work purposes I have a Mac bias, but at the end of the day, it depends upon what's important to you. PC's will give you a lot of choices, and games! You can get most of the same work done, and frankly, 3D is FAR better supported on PC hardware. This is changing, but slowly. If color correction, print graphics, film/video editing are your primary tasks, you might want to go with a Mac. If you have enough scratch, get both, so that you have the right tool for the right job.

I remember doing 3D graphics on an SGI with a 33mhz processor... and on an Amiga with a 7.5 mhz processor >heh< Times, they change as do platforms.

[Dan3d]

Where I work (www.intermediainc.com) all the artists have both a MAC and a PC on their desks. I have observed several things here. Some of the artists are die-hard MAC users (mainly my Art Director). Some are die-hard PC fans (mainly me and the other 3D guy ). The other people in our department use whatever is going to get the job done for them at the moment. From these "other guys" we have noted a shift in the office. They are using PCs more and more even though they were school trained on the MAC.

One of these people recently purchased home computer (he did not have a computer before - yes, I was amazed as well ). What did he buy? A dual processor PC of course! The other "MAC" trained person in our office is also on the virge of updating his outdated G3 (the older one). What do you think he is considering on purchasing? A PC!

We had also contracted out some freelance work to a terrific digital collage artist about 8 months ago. This artist had recently got involved in FLASH and wanted to expand her web site design. Since many of us here are professional web site designers, we did all we could to help her to expand her business (that's just the kind of guys we are). She happens to own 3 MACs. When we last talked to her (about 3 weeks ago) we found out that she added a high-end PC to her computer arsonal. We also found out she is relying more and more on the PC than the MAC. Why? Her claim was over all compatibility when developing for the web.

While I have a respect for the MAC, I would not consider purchasing one. I can easily build my own PC and can do so for next to nothing. I have kept up-to-date by updating the components of my PC as I need to. I don't feel I can do this as well on the MAC (yet) since the choice for components (that matter) just don't seem to be there.

The shear number of programs available (including plug-ins for them) are staggering! Since I do a lot of 3D modeling, the PC wins yet again. Most of the decent (and all of the great) 3D apps are available on the PC. Yes, I know that MAYA is coming out for the MAC, but I don't want to spend that kind of money . In any case, I can run MAX, MAYA, SI, and a ton of other 3D apps from expensive to free. Its all about choice, I suppose.

Up until OSX, the MAC OS was not truly multi-threaded. This meant that if you started another thread, your other thread would wait until the new thread completes. For instance, if you were rendering an image in a 3D app and opened Photoshop, the OS would suspend the rendering until PS completed opening. This is not the case on a PC using WinNT or Win2000. Of course, this all changes with OS X, but it is not really stable (someone here said it should still be considered beta and not a lot of apps have been specifically written for it.

My vote obviously goes for the PC.

[Ben Barker]

So did you go to school at the DAAP?

[Dan3d]

DAAP? Not sure what or where that is (possiblty I should be?). If you are asking about art training, I've not gone to school. I am self trained.

[MoleculeMan]

I am a PC user all the way. I don't find the Mac OS's to be intuitive at all. They just don't click with me at all. That and I tend to crash them a whole lot more than my PC. I don't know how i do it. I would say 99% of all my crashes are actually related to another POS software, also known as AOL. (The Short Story: I am stuck on it because of my dad. I have not bothered to try to get faster/better connection because in a month i am off to UIUC where i will have a much better connection. ) I am quite ashamed of it, and it always is unstable as fugg.

Also, one has to remember that a Wacom with USB works on Mac and PC, so its all good. And in the end, its the artist that determines the quality of the work.

[Ben Barker]

Heh, no I was asking if friendofjavis went to the DAAP. It's the design college at the University of Cincinnati.

[Mezoic]

I think it all depends on your level of computer knowledge.

If you are a novice, first time user, then a Mac is a good way to go, especially since you are doing mainly graphics stuff. Macs tend to have an easy to use interface and suffer less problems to people who wouldn't know what to do.

A PC is more compatible with just about everything out there for computers, more buttons to press, but more difficult to use overall.

A Mac will do the job for you, and so will a PC, but it depends on you as an individual.