Apple vs. PC in Adobe After Effects

An anonymous user wrote, "Digital Video Editing ran some tests to compare the Dual G4 with the Athlon MP in After Effects. They didn't use the fastest Athlons, but the results are pretty clear anyway. This is especially interesting after Apple announced that they would be killing Shake for x86 platforms. If Apple really wants to position the Mac as an alternative to x86 on the film / video effects market, they are going to need to improve their hardware, especially with AMD's 64-bit CPU just around the corner. From the article: 'Not one of the objective tests we conducted using After Effects bore out Apple's claim of Mac superiority. In fact, in most of the tests, the Mac was left lagging far behind.'"

Comments

Finally

[elliotj]

I really like the Mac. Honestly.

But I'm glad to see some independent testing on this front. I think those contrived Photoshop bakeoffs are an embarrasment.

I personally don't think Apples are as fast as PCs. I think most people agree. That's really not the point. There are many good reasons to buy a Mac. But a Mac running OS X is slow and everyone knows it.

Re:How is that exactly equal?

[tps12]

Nice defense. You basically argued that it isn't fair to compare the two because Apple's hardware can't compete, and I would agree.

All this trial does is throw some long-deserved doubt on Steve Jobs' repeated claims that hardware specs are meaningless and that performance must be intuited emotionally rather than objectively measured.

This strikes me as a predictable outcome after years of focussing more on pretty cases and bouncing icons than on what's inside. Being 2 years behind the cutting edge in hardware just isn't going to pass muster.

Shake for x86 is NOT being killed.

[Doktor Memory]

You can run Shake on x86 to your heart's content, as long as you run it on Linux. This being slashdot, you'd think the story editors would be clued up on this sort of thing...

Not surprised

[Aram Fingal]

Apple has always been careful to compare the G4 to the Pentium 4 and not Athlon. The tests I have seen comparing all three (even by MacAddict) tend to more than validate AMD's claim that the Athlon is faster Mhz for Mhz than the Pentium.

Apple has tended to fulfill Moore's Law in fits and starts rather than the smooth curve you see with the x86. They pulled well ahead about 3 years ago and then hardly moved until just recently. We'll see how far the current surge takes us.

Speaking of 64-bit processors, I suspect that the more portable UNIX core of Mac OS X will allow Apple to support a 64-bit machine at the consumer level before Windows can.

Where's the BIG picture ...

[ultraslide]

Sure enough, even the Mac lovers can agree that for the same cash a PC is gonna be faster than Mac. Intel and AMD have big incentives to keep those clock speeds as high as possible.
But ... where are the studies about the entire work flow? Just because the machine is faster at grinding thru certain processes, it doesnt mean that the same job will get done quicker. What's the time to import/export files? What about saving those big files off to another disk? What about the learning curve for new apps (or OSs for that matter?) What about downtime for repairs and upgrades? What about end user training? These all "cost" in the end. I'm not saying that Apple would win this kind of study but I know from personal experience I do "get more done" on my Mac than on my PC.