It's funny, but I really have no clue why people constantly argue
about the differences between the Mac and PC platforms and their
speeds!
I have a home network currently consisting of five computers:
I have a Power Mac
G4/450 w/384 MB RAM, an IBM 300PL PII/400 w/288 MB RAM, a Dell
Dimension Celeron 800 MHz w/192 MB RAM, a Power Mac 6500 w/G3 accelerator @
300 MHz w/128 MB RAM, and a Dell Inspiron 4100 PIII/866 w/192 MB
RAM.
All five computers are networked and have access to the Internet via
Verizon DSL; all five five computers share documents, music, and games.
I recently installed SETI@home and decided to
install the program on all five computers. It did not begin as a
benchmark, but I could not help but notice that the PCs were lagging in
number crunching performance.
I initially installed SETI@home on my Dell PIII/866 laptop and began
running the program. I then decided to do it to the rest. I installed
and ran the program on my IBM PC about 25 minutes after starting it on
my laptop. 5 minutes after that I installed it on my Power Mac G4, 15
minutes after that I installed and ran the program on my Dell
Dimension, then 5 minutes later installed and ran the program on the
Power Mac 6500.
To my surprise when making the rounds and checking on all 5
computers, I found that the 450 MHz Power Mac G4 crunched data more
quickly than the 866 MHz Pentium III laptop - and that was after
starting the PowerMac G4 30 minutes after starting the laptop!
I continued to check on all the computers and found that the
Macintosh computers were crunching data much more quickly than their PC
counterparts. The Power Mac G4 was leading all other computer even
though it was started 30 minutes after the fastest (by MHz) computer I
have! Even the slowest Mac I have, the Power Mac 6500/G3-300 was
creaming the heck out of my 400 MHz IBM PC and was just slightly behind
the 800 MHz Dell Dimension!
I don't know a lot about benchmarking, but this seems like a real
world benchmark. All the computers were running the same program with
no other programs running, all had 128 MB of RAM or more, and yet even
though I started the Macs 30 minutes or more after the PCs, they were
winning the number crunching.
If the PC is so much faster in performance than the Mac, why was my
three year old Power Mac G4/450 able to surpass a three month old PIII
866 MHz laptop?
After witnessing this, I know for certain that there is a Megahertz
Myth!
Further Reading
- SETI@home
platform comparison. Pentium/Windows currently averages 21:06:49.6
per work unit vs. 17:41:29.8 for the Macintosh.
- SETI@home
club teams. Team MacAddict #3 among clubs, averaging 15:38:07.7 per
work unit. Faster teams tend to be running Linux, not Windows.
- Team
Mac Observer stats. "Low End Dan" has contributed 1,817 units
averaging 14:59:51.2 using various Macs and the classic Mac OS, "Low
End Mac" has contributed 46 units @ 24:20:36.1 per unit under
OS X, and Team 6100 keeps
plugging away - 533 units at 108 hours, 52 minutes, 57.4 seconds per
unit, every single one done on a 60 or 66 MHz Power Mac 6100.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
