iM 4,1-14,4 Are Intel Macs faster than pure Intel PCs?

[exploradorgt]

Hi, this has probably been asked before, and I'm pretty sure of seeing this statement on several forums and youtube videos.

What do you think?

My experience with Macs goes as far to the years of the Classic and Performa, the question on what's best has been asked before. We have a few Macs at home.

Anyway: I use my 27" Corei5 (first gen Corei5) 2009 imac for graphic work and editing, I won't change it because it's fast and reliable (now running Windows for obvious compatibility reasons). The thing is, this machine is really fast. I noticed this effect on my wife's old MacbookPro, and that's a Core2duo coming back to life after a RAM upgrade.

I'm going back to the same question because I just bought laptop being Corei3 7th gen, and my wife has a new Corei5 7th gen, out of curiosity I put to the test the same Adobe InDesign export on the 3 machines, and guess who won? the 2009 iMac first gen Corei5. All the machines have new SSD's, enough (or same amounts of) RAM, and running the same Windows 10. Yes, I know desktop processors are often faster than trimmed mobile ones. What's your opinion?

 

[MBAir2010]

I only use my macbook Pro starting this month as my "go to" computer and the experince is impressive!
last week i replaced my broken mac mini 2012 that ceased n 2023 and even a bare-nomed macbook air from 2010 because these intel with even Mountain Lion osx with "garage built" programs like SeaLion and VCL.
works much better for me!

as far as these outperforming a PC from that era, i would say yes.

 

[Nermal]

If you're talking about the hardware itself, I'd say no. Apple machines are somewhat infamous for "form over function", and in particular skimping on cooling. When you push them, they slow down. I suspect that if I were to mount my Mac's logic board inside a regular PC-style case then it'd run at 100% performance for a lot longer than it does now.

If you mean the "whole widget", with the OS and everything, then things become more murky and depending on the apps you run, you might very well get better performance out of a Mac.

 

[B S Magnet]

Hi, this has probably been asked before, and I'm pretty sure of seeing this statement on several forums and youtube videos.

What do you think?

@Nermal already mentioned the throttling issue, which at least for an iMac like yours, can be alleviated somewhat by the Macs Fan Control utility.

For my mid-2013 iMac (third-gen Haswell quad Core i5), I have the fan set to run at full. It’s a thinner case than the 2009 version you have, so heat tends to be liable to accumulate quicker given the reduced air volume within. Even when I’m working in front of it, I don’t really hear the fan, so noise is not a factor.

But an Intel Mac is still “pure Intel”. It runs an Intel CPU, an Intel memory controller chip set (unless it’s NVIDIA, as was the case for some 2008 and 2009 MacBook Pros), and the same basic EFI firmware on modern Intel systems. GPU performance, however, is another matter, as the iMac is fixed with what Apple configured for it, the Radeon HD 4850, whereas one may have been able to configure which GPU the Windows-based laptops would be built. (Those GPUs will also be generations newer: performance evolution from generation to generation of GPU in recent years tends to be more pronounced than with CPU evolution.)

Comparing along GPU performance, not really something InDesign tends to push to the limits, would be better handled by benchmarking utilities, such as Cinebench.

My experience with Macs goes as far to the years of the Classic and Performa, the question on what's best has been asked before. We have a few Macs at home.

Anyway: I use my 27" Corei5 (first gen Corei5) 2009 imac for graphic work and editing, I won't change it because it's fast and reliable (now running Windows for obvious compatibility reasons). The thing is, this machine is really fast. I noticed this effect on my wife's old MacbookPro, and that's a Core2duo coming back to life after a RAM upgrade.

RAM always — always — helps. So does an SSD, if it’s replacing an HDD.

I'm going back to the same question because I just bought laptop being Corei3 7th gen, and my wife has a new Corei5 7th gen, out of curiosity I put to the test the same Adobe InDesign export on the 3 machines, and guess who won? the 2009 iMac first gen Corei5. All the machines have new SSD's, enough (or same amounts of) RAM, and running the same Windows 10. Yes, I know desktop processors are often faster than trimmed mobile ones. What's your opinion?

What you’re probably witnessing, insofar as applications performance, is the performance of the OS and its APIs upon which a third-party application suite, like Adobe Creative Suite, relies for optimizing its capabilities.

But setting aside the same InDesign export, there are questions in need of clarity if one wants to run a truly — pardon this pun — apples-to-apples comparison on work benchmarks.

For example, are you using the exact same major version of InDesign across the 2009 iMac and the 7th gen Skylake Core iX Intel PC boxes to perform the work and export? More than anything, running the same version of software across different systems can serve as a constant, rather than a moving variable. InDesign CS6 on a 2009 iMac Core Lynnfield i5/i7 is not an apples-to-apples example if the Skylake Windows box is running something like InDesign CC 2015 or 2017.

So to know whether that InDesign export is faster on the 2009 iMac, you’ll need to have the systems running comparable versions of InDesign. I imagine CS6 or one of the earlier CC versions would be your best bet to run across all three systems.

Also, what version of OS X/macOS is the iMac running, and what version of (I guess) Windows is running on y’all’s two 7th gen Core iX systems? This is a little trickier, but try to find a version of OS X/macOS comparable to around when a major version of Windows was current, or vice-versa.

Here, it’ll be easier to bring the iMac’s macOS build to the same version as, at least, what shipped in or after 2015 on the Windows Skylake units. Probably the best analogue between the two platforms is the year 2017–18: run High Sierra on the iMac (as High Sierra was the last macOS build Apple supported for that iMac) and Windows 10 on the Skylake boxes.

* * *

In short, get all three systems running the same version of Creative Cloud/Creative Suite, and running comparable generations of the OS. Then run those InDesign benchmarks, and maybe also other workflow benchmarks you might rely on. It won’t quite be apples-to-apples (maybe more apples-to-pears), but it ought to answer some of your questions about “what’s faster?”.

 

[TheShortTimer]

RAM always — always — helps. So does an SSD, if it’s replacing an HDD.

This, is a really crucial factor that needs to be recognised if you want to achieve the maximum potential from your Mac. Due to Apple's penny pinching, Macs are largely supplied with insufficient RAM and in the past, HDDs with a perplexingly slow RPM. 90% of my used Macs had never been upgraded by their previous owners and the stock memory/HDDs hindered their performance - which ironically contributed to their sale.

Often when I look through the descriptions of used Macs, the seller will mention that the computer runs slowly but when I check the hardware spec, they're always bare bones unexpanded machines which usually explains the issue. Updating/upgrading the GPU wherever possible also helps and Macs which have a Thunderbolt port can use an eGPU which opens up many possibilities.

 

[exploradorgt]

But setting aside the same InDesign export, there are questions in need of clarity if one wants to run a truly — pardon this pun — apples-to-apples comparison on work benchmarks.

Excellent in depth post. I'll share some more related details, and something I should have said before too.

Our old Macbook Pro had 6G of ram running an old Core 2 Duo processor, due to OS limitations and specific software needs I removed MacOSX and put Windows on it, the performance honestly shocked me positively. I had an all in one HP with A8-7410 processor, faster, and somehow, the Macbook Pro seemed faster on some tasks, like browsing the web and Canva (online editor), we even tried editing the same document on both, the difference was quite visible. Despite it's old wireless card with speed limitations, it worked great. It previously had only 4G of ram worked quite well, yet, the new 6G difference made me wonder "why didn't I upgraded this before?", and yes, it has an SSD. The thing is, both machines had the same Windows 10 version, same build. Same goes to the same Adobe InDesign version. The computer works so well... it's a bit difficult to accept that we must sell it (due to having newer computers).

Same thing happens with my 27" first gen Corei5, it's faster. Here there is a difference, it came with the original GPU, but I replaced it with a Quadro 1000, it's also running Windows 10 due to specific personal needs. I read the specs, and the machine has "slower" wireless card and slower SATA speed, yet... it worked amazingly well (faster) than my old laptop with a core i5 and better SATA bandwidth, I noticed this after just placing the same SSD with the same OS inside. Supposedly, the SSD wouldn't run that fast, but it did. Regarding the speed comparisons, yes... the corei5 and corei7 both 7th gen also had the same brand and specs SSD along with the same Windows version and build, even the same set of Adobe InDesign versions, yet, the 27" still wins, I guess the GPU helps, along with better heat dissipation. Despite it's age, I don't see myself getting rid of this Mac anytime soon.

In short, get all three systems running the same version of Creative Cloud/Creative Suite, and running comparable generations of the OS. Then run those InDesign benchmarks, and maybe also other workflow benchmarks you might rely on. It won’t quite be apples-to-apples (maybe more apples-to-pears), but it ought to answer some of your questions about “what’s faster?”.

Yes, that's exactly what happened. Same SSD brand and specs, same Windows 10 version and build, same Adobe InDesign, all the computers with their respective drivers installed. Quite an interesting experience.

I've had positive experiences with PC upgrades but the Macs seem to be more grateful, I still don't understand the details behind this, but sure, these are great machines (except for the throttling, this limitation seems worse on non desktops in the Apple ecosystem).

90% of my used Macs had never been upgraded by their previous owners and the stock memory/HDDs hindered their performance - which ironically contributed to their sale.

Yes, this has been my experience. Macs are getting increasingly difficult to open and upgrade, I guess this is something keeping people from seeing their true potential.