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Mac vs. PC Digital Photography Comparison Redux
Macmurph writes "Bibble Labs has released a lightning fast version of the RAW image convertor, MacBibble. According to MacBibble creator, Eric Hyman, "MacBibble 3.x is almost 10 times faster than the manufacturers software when converting RAW files under OSX.". Prelimenary tests indicate the Mac may be faster than PCs in RAW image conversion afterall. This calls into question the relevance of the the hotly debated article Rob Galbraith posted just 3 weeks ago and discussed here on Slashdot. Two thumbs up for the PowerPC G4's AltiVec vector processing engine, now being put to work in MacBibble."
...and didn't anyone think about that fact that it could just be that he's become more efficient in the conversion procedure? Hell, it could just be that the Mac version is just written better. I have serious doubts about it truly being faster on a Mac (and it sucks that there's really no way to compare fairly).
that a multi-threaded app that utilized Altivec would beat a single thread that relied solely on the FPU to do the work...
I mean this is not rocket science! You would get similar results on most any machine using SSE2/MMX and hyper threading (perhaps...).
argh... i absolutely loathe these mine's bigger and faster things... it's like a boy's pissing contest time-and-time again. this empty article blown up doesn't help! although i must add that it proves that decent programming skills _on_any_cpu_ helps build a fast program...
The reality is that these "benchmarks" are, in all actuality, never really objective. The benchmarks from a few weeks ago were likely done by somebody who is less than a fan of the PowerPC G4 chip. The results from this article were written by someone who writes software for Windows and has decided to write a clean program for the G4 chip with its Altivec engine. Kudos to him.
The reality remains that benchmarks prove little.
People who are in love with Macintosh have, throughout history, had the speed card in their deck. At this particular time, many would argue they don't. (Many would argue they do...)
People whoa re in love with other platforms, hardware and software, like their platforms for specific reasons, as well. Speed may be one of them.
But, I think, deep down, Mac users are attached to the platform for more than just speed. It's the efficiency of the operating system, the attention to detail, the clean interface, the simple plug-and-play, the good support, the Apple iLife products...
It's all in the eye of the beholder.
jrbd
So, PCs have 3DNow!, SSE and SSE2 depending on what processor you have. I have observed factor-of-ten speed-ups of certain code using hand-crafted 3DNow! vs. GCC floating-point. I wonder how fast his algorithm would be if implemented in 3Dnow! or SSE? I bet my rusty old K6-2/500 could put in a reasonable showing at his benchmark.
Stick Men
Of course, there is no saying what speed increase a PC would get with a similarily optimized dedicated app for the same task. This proves nothing either way.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
OK, I'm a techie and graphic designer (yes, rare).
When will people realise that raw speed, although useful to deisgners and artists, is NOT the be all and end all of which platform is preferable for this industry.
The main reason why macs are so dominant in publishing and art is becasue of the old (true) cliche - it just works. Designers are generally NOT a technical people, they think with the other side of their brain all day long, and technology confuses them, so even if a PC goes 20% faster at some filters, if they can't figure out problems with DLL's, conflicts, registry problems and having to reinstall Windows every 9 months then what is the better system for them?
How about usability and workflow (please comment on these only if you've used both machines (Win & OS X) in a demanding and very time specific industry to a large extent) - OS X hands down, allows me to ignore the fact that I am using very advanced technology that's incredibly advanced and *do my job*.
This allows me (and hundreds of thousands of others) to get a much bigger performance boost out of my work than a faster processor.
What are the productivity gains of perfect networking, great UI, better support for FireWire, BlueTooth, Wireless stuff etc etc etc.? It's not quantifiable but it is much more important than slightly faster processors, so lets just stop the whole thing there.
So in brief, processor speed important (and nice to see the Mac keeping up in one area) but not so important it outweighs the other thousand reasons design professionals use Macs.
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
Unless the people coding the software take advantage of it. That's what I got out of the whole thing.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I happen to own the Sager notebook that the previous article referenced (the alienware machine is a rebadged sager unit, at a higher cost.) I use it for a ton of RAW file conversions and it lays the smack down on my G4 mac, hands down.
:)
:)
I've completely stopped using the mac for all my conversion needs- maybe this app would be better, but really the speed difference is significant between the two platforms.
Maybe if I was willing to shell out $4k (USD) for a newer mac platform, just to get a few minutes faster at conversion, I could get some speed-up- but for that price I could buy two more of these laptops, with 2.8/3.06 Ghz procs and a gig of RAM. That's the typical Mac owner's conundrum.
Mind you, someone could write a SSE2 enabled RAW file converter, and it would perform the same way. hand crafted code that's optimized for speed using specialty CPU features is good for everyone, regardless of platform.
Now if only this guy could make CF cards transfer faster
EOM
same could be said of any /. post that doesn't match your specific interest set.
/.ers so that's why it's here, if you're not interested I suggest you read something else.
point is that it's tech related and of interest to plenty of
Could it be that there's also an element of laziness on the programmers' part? I expect it to be easier to write an application that expects to run on one processor (you don't need to worry about dividing tasks over multiple processors to optimize performance) than a multi-processing app.
And, who really tries to optimize performance today? IMO many programmers expect Moore's Law to take care of the performance increase (relative to the previous release of their program). I rarely see a version n+1 of an application that's faster than version n was on the same hardware.
"fairly - Photoshop on a Mac vs Photoshop on a PC"
The name's the same, but we're talking about assembly level optimizations which necessarily differ between the two platforms. It's a different program for a different machine.
The fair test would be to pit the fastest Mac app against the fastest PC app.
I'm really getting tired of the whole Mac vs. PC war being based on speed.
I'm not really sure how many times it has to be said, but a great number of Mac users don't use Macs because they're faster. In fact, let me say it again:
It's not about speed
I really can't believe that with the Slashdot community--being so "in tune" with corporate ploys and runaway marketing tactics--still fall for the MHz propaganda, and the speed benchmarks that accompany it.
Since when is the most important thing about a computer the speed? Granted, if you're playing BitchBlaster 2023 that requires a GeForce9000 Mx2+3.144 video card, maybe.
But I'm not sure if people noticed: Most Mac people aren't die-hard gamers. Macs aren't great gaming platforms anyway. They're for people that do work with their computers and rely on them.
These people care not about the absolute speed of their Mac, rather, they care that it works every time that it is booted and that the end-user experience is much more pleasant than someone using something like Windows XP.
So please, people of Slashdot--I know you have above average intelligence:
It's not about speed.
-brain
Essentially, the effect you're mentioning could be handled on a single CPU machine simply by running a scheduler that guarantee that no process will get any more than every second timeslice, or similar, penalizing single threded applications.
I honestly don't pay much attention to side-by-side comparisons, unless the systems themselves are significantly similar. To me, comparing an Apple to a PC is akin to doing a comparison between an Xbox and a PS2. Both systems will outperform the other when using certain tests, while in other cases they will be similar.
It all comes down to a combination of hardware and software, and it's relatively easy to skew the results either way using these factors. So getting an unbiased test is going to be very unlikely, even in the best of conditions.
My motto is, if it works for you, go with it.
Dr. Wu
I don't mean to rain on your enthusiasm and I sure don't intend to imply that I dislike Macs. I'm typing this up on my PowerBook.
Using RC5 as a benchmark is only relevant insofar as you want to compare RC5 processing speeds. There RC5 algorithm, as well as the specific implementation found in dnetc, contain many aspects which make the results you obtain insightful for general use. You simply cannot compare RC5 rates and hope to extrapolate or project them into general processor comparisons.
The RC5 algorithm relies heavily on bitwise rotates (left, if you're curious, ROTL) which is an operation that is not commonly found anywhere outside the world of RC5. This instruction is so underused, in fact, that many x86 architectures (AMD's K6 for instance) have taken to simply emulating the ROTL operation and eliminating true hardware support. This is why some conventionally powerful platforms (such as Sparc and Alpha based systems) do abysmally in RC5 as compared to x86 platforms containing a hardware ROTL implementation.
Then again, this level of detail is probably lost on someone trying to compare a 1GHz G4 against an "AMD motherboard". AMD has made quite a number of CPUs in the past few years and their range of performance on RC5 is very broad. At one time, the AMD K5 was, in fact, the best-performing architecture in RC5 with the most keys per clock. AMD doesn't make any motherboards as far as I know.
The core of dnetc is also small and lean, often fitting entirely in L2 cache on many architectures. This means that dnetc does not adequately (if at all) exercise memory bus bandwidth. The cores also tend to be hand-tuned assembly, so they aren't as likely to exercise a processor's speculative execution routines. RC5 uses absolutely zero floating point math, also an uncommon scenario and not representative of many apps you would traditionally think of when you think of apps which require strong CPUs to perform well.
Many people enjoy having machines which perform well at RC5 and generate impressive distributed.net stats. Consequently, RC5 shows up as a metric in a great number of reviews and analyses on architectures and CPUs. I'm tickled whenever I see it and I think it's a great addition to any CPU review. However, it's not valid to try to make the claim that RC5 performance rates mean anything more than RC5 performance rates.
Moo!
Will this never end?
I love Macs, I've used them exclusively for over 10 years now and don't see myself switching anytime soon. Given that...
To Mac zealots:
PC are faster than Macs. Get over it. Yes the PPC chip is more elegant and efficient but it runs slow (relative to Intel). Good Altivec applications are few and far between and don't really apply to the day-to-day home and business user. If the PPC 970 comes out this summer, then maybe Macs will again TEMPORARILY hold the speed crown but until then, PC are faster by using brute force. If sheer computing performance is your #1 requirement, then a PC should be your choice. If you're poor and only have $400 to make sure your child has a computer, then a PC is your only choice. Don't even start by saying with that money you could buy some 1997 era Mac either. Please.
To PC zealots:
The overall user experience on an OS X system outweighs the fact that Win XP may idle faster when running Word. In those applications that can take advantage of vector processing, Altivec is far superior to 3DNow and SSE. Plus, I see a lot of complaining about the program was written explicitly for the Mac so the comparison is unfair. Welcome to our world. Most software written to support hardware (scanners, cameras, etc.) is a blatant PC port of a hastily written "good enough" POS program. Plus, Mac laptops have better battery life AND get the full desktop chip, not some crippled "mobile" version designed to prevent penile burns and 20 minute battery life.
Personally, I'll take elegant and efficient any day. Quite frankly, I'm glad the PPC has temporarily lagged behind. It's forced Apple to really tighten up things to keep competitive and it shows. This might not have happened if the processor would make up for any code bloat and inefficiency. Look at Safari - 3MB download. Look at OS X speed from 10.0 to 10.2. Phenomenal. When the 970 comes around, OS X should theoretically run like a champ.
it DOES prove one thing - that Macs ARE competitive, and that there's more than just Wintel's game in town. This is great news for everyone even remotely interested in computers.
That was classic intercourse!
Could it be that there's also an element of laziness on the programmers' part?
It's not laziness, it's priorities. Optimization is low priority in programming; if there's other things that need to be done, they need to be done first. And hardware optimization comes even lower on the priority meter, especially hardware that only a few users have, and especially hardware that will at most give you a 2x speed-up.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Because speed of software is only a priority when your software is competing against similar software. Very few people buy Photoshop because its faster than CorelDraw, but a lot of people buy a 3Ghz PC because it's assumedly faster than a 2Ghz PC.
So long as software speed is perceived as "acceptable", that's generally where the optimization stops. This, of course, is not true for highly competitive software markets. Maybe we need a little more competition.
We shouldn't forget those two apps. By using AppleScript, I can automate my workflows throughout all of my applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). That alone lets me get my work done faster than any 3Ghz P4 Dell running the latest Windows operating system. And ColorSync is crucial to any graphics designer. If the work on my screen doesn't look like the proofs I hand to my clients, and the proofs don't look like the final print I deliver, I am screwed from not only losing a client but I'm out of a job as well. No other operating system offers anything close to the capabilities of both AppleScript and ColorSync
And I love the widescreens on the new PB's, but they're not actual widescreen aspect ratio. Widescreens are 1.78, this is 1.6. WTF?
"Widescreen" doesn't mean anything at all. My computer screen is 1.6:1. My TV screen is 1.78:1, though most of the content I watch on it is 1.85:1. When I go to the movies, the screen is usually 2.35:1. "Widescreen" can be applied with equal truthfulness to any or all of these.
And you wouldn't need the extra room for your apps if damn Apple would put back in the multiple terminals every other Unixy product in the world has. Damn Crippled Unix.
The only thing I can figure is that you're talking about virtual desktops. Either that, or you're an idiot. Maybe both.
You're getting shafted, paying for *way* more accessories than you need, but with a low powered CPU that will have you upgrading in a year, before you could even *find* a network that uses Gigabit ethernet.
My home network is 100% gigabit Ethernet. All you need to build a 100% gigabit Ethernet network is two Macs and a cable. It doesn't even have to be a crossover cable; all Macs are equipped with autosensing MDI-X ports.
That means a 3Ghz CISC still kills any G4 out there.
Except running Bibble, evidently. And BLAST. And all the other stuff that a G4 is faster at than a Pentium.
Apple is a speck on the PC world's radar.
I think you've got that backwards. The PC world is just a speck on Apple's radar. Apple is quite happy to go their own way and let the PC world go do... whatever it is that the PC world does. Every once in a while, the PC world takes a look at what Apple is doing and changes direction a bit, but that's about the limit of the interaction.
I write in my journal
Digital Photographers enjoy the RAW format over JPEG or TIFF for several reasons. A good analogy is to consider a RAW file as a digital negative, or a JPEG or TIFF as a color slide.
RAW images contain more information from the camera - they're unprocessed, like a digital negative. JPEG's will have much of the same information, and with a low compression ratio will often have similar 'quality'. When you bring these into Photoshop and try to modify or play with the pictures, a RAW file will give you more information to fiddle with.
Rob Galbraith explains this in greater detailI've included some relevant quotes below: (snip)