hey everyone, i'm a pc user looking to switch with the macbook, but when i started fiddling around with one at the apple store, it did the spinning beachball thing more times than i can count doing simple apps and i was wondering if, even though the the macbook is "so much faster" than previous macs, how this speed compared with that of pcs.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
how fast is your macbook vs. pc
- Thread starter olivia
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You don't compare to PCs like that, period.
You just take a look at its specifications and see if you like it or not. I can build you a $5000 computer with quad Opteron processors and Raid 10 arrays but with 256mb of memory you WILL still see hour glasses whole day long.
You just take a look at its specifications and see if you like it or not. I can build you a $5000 computer with quad Opteron processors and Raid 10 arrays but with 256mb of memory you WILL still see hour glasses whole day long.
"Fast" is quite relative. "Productive" is a better word to use. I have a near-identical spec Windows laptop to my MBP. The actual machine speed difference is very small... both have about the same relative performance. The difference in productivity due to OS X is however rather large. OS X requires lots of RAM (1Gb min to be good I think) and that is the major difference in terms of out of the box speed. If you have a base-model Mac then yes it can be slower because you'll be seeing beachballs more frequently as you run multiple apps (it's also worth bearing in mind that you can close app windows but they're still running and taking up memory until you Command-Q it). The 2Gb on my MBP means that I never see beachballs. The Macbook which I also have is not very diferent to the MBP speedwise. It's only if I run complex and memory-hungry apps (e.g. Parallels) that I start to see beachballs (my Macbook has 1Gb RAM).
My PC > my MacBook. I didn't bother voting though as you can't just compare like that. There may only be 10 different combinations of Mac hardware, but there is hundreds..if not thousands of different possible setups for a PC.
Sure the 1.83ghz core duo in my MacBook is probably better then my single core Opteron 146. But chances are my 2gb DDR (1) 2-2-2-5 ram in my PC is better than my 2gb DDR2 in the macbook, and my PC's RAID 0 array of WD Raptors certainly own my MacBooks Seagate momentus 7200 100gb.
... we won't even compare the GMA950 to the geforce 7900 GT.
Sure the 1.83ghz core duo in my MacBook is probably better then my single core Opteron 146. But chances are my 2gb DDR (1) 2-2-2-5 ram in my PC is better than my 2gb DDR2 in the macbook, and my PC's RAID 0 array of WD Raptors certainly own my MacBooks Seagate momentus 7200 100gb.
... we won't even compare the GMA950 to the geforce 7900 GT.
Rovman said:
I agree, if you had a desktop with RAID 0 running OS X it would probably smoke the Macbook. I have a desktop Athlon XP 3200+(Socket 754) system with 1.5GB RAM, two SATA drives in RAID 0 and its pretty damn fast. What isn't fast is my boot times and initial launch of some applications, for example firefox loads up quicker on the mac than on the pc. But switching between apps and other performance seems to be very similar. I haven't really compared processor intensive tasks such as encode times. Also its going to depend heavily on whether you are comparing the core duo versus something like the X2 or a single core chip and whether or not the app you are using can truly take advantage of both cores simultaneously.
The beachball issue is quickly resolved once you bump the memory to 1GB or more. My stock 512MB system used to get beachballs if I had a few apps open at a time. Since upgrading to 1GB, I rarely see beachballs.
DevilsRejection said:
"waiting" aka not yet, and probably wont, theirs been a heck of allot of calls for threads to be locked recently, which i blame on an influx of pc users which are previous forum dwellers, pc type forums are generally filled with overclockers and gamers and they get so heated that whenever anyone dares disagree with anyone the thread gets locked. it is not like that here and hopefully never will be.
It would be impossible for me to even compare anything recent to my PC. It's 5 years old and subsequentially doesn't run fast anymore, like it did in its hayday. My mbp rarely beachballs and it only has stock ram 
I have an AMD Dual Proc 4400+ 1mb cache / 2gig of Ram / 7800GTX 512MB Video Card / 2 Raptors running at 10,000 RPM in Raid O. My friends new Macbook can't keep up with my PC but then again we are talking about 2 different animals here. (Tests include FPS Game tests / Compression / and Macromedia Flash 8)
His Macbook can kill my Toshiba Laptop. Now thats somewhat of a better comparison. Whatever...I have a Powerbook as well, and like both my PC Workstation and my Mac for different things. Yes, my computers get along great, at least when I'm around.
His Macbook can kill my Toshiba Laptop. Now thats somewhat of a better comparison. Whatever...I have a Powerbook as well, and like both my PC Workstation and my Mac for different things. Yes, my computers get along great, at least when I'm around.
That's precisely the point. there is no "A PC" like there is "A MacBook". Theres too many different combinations of regular PC hardware and it's pretty simple to make a PC that is far superior to a MacBook or any mac for that matter (in terms of Hardware) so at the end of the day, we are left with a Windows vs OS X argument again.
The MacBook doesn't come with anything better than a GMA950 whilst "A PC" could come with a pair of SLI'd 7950 GX2's. The MacBook is limited by a single internal harddrive, whilst "A PC" could have any number of Western digital Raptors in a RAID, or SCSI drives for that matter.
Now if we are comparing an identically speced Windows Laptop to a MacBook then again performance will be the same (totally dependant on software). Mac hardware now is the same as regular PC hardware. The only difference is the software.
It's only half the point really, isn't it? As I pointed out fast is relative and so is productive. It depends on what you're doing and how you do it. The difference in OS X even on inferior-performance hardware can be more productive in many situations. It's a major part of my reason for switching.
where is the option "This is a dumb poll"
this is a terrible comparison. If you were to compare hardware, PC and Mac are the same because Macs now use what PCs have.
If you were to compare software, you arent able to compare because it would be like comparing a grape and an melon.
this is a terrible comparison. If you were to compare hardware, PC and Mac are the same because Macs now use what PCs have.
If you were to compare software, you arent able to compare because it would be like comparing a grape and an melon.
Why do you ask this. This depends on what PC people have. If they have a monster with Dual 3.0 Ghz Xeon 2, 8 GB DDR2 RAM, 15.000 rpm. HDD's, Ati Radeon X1900 w. 512 MB GDDR3 and so on... Of course the MB is slow compared to that, yet if you as I, had a laptop with 2.4 GHz Celeron D, 256 MB DDR RAM, 4.200 rpm. drive and a 16 MB GMA/852, the MB is gonna own the PeeCee. Don't try to compare this. It's lika asking how fast a G4 is compared to a Pentium 4..
PC is just too vague to compare to a MacBook. There are too many PC's out there to make a accurate comparison. You could compare to a Dell laptop maybe that is sorta equally equipped? Mac users aren't all about SPEED. The only reason I have a Mac now is because it's productive and it doesn't slow down my editing by making me defragment the machine, and run all these pointless tasks...don't even get me started with the spyware and all that...
Did I forget to mention how pointless this thread is?
Did I forget to mention how pointless this thread is?
see below for the specs i have for both computers. my macbook starts up, shuts down a lot faster (2 min faster) than my PC but once things get going my macbook is only a little faster.
i dont think my PC hardware is slower though, its just all the programs and crap and junk that i have running. im sure if i did a re-install the slowdown would clear up.
i dont think my PC hardware is slower though, its just all the programs and crap and junk that i have running. im sure if i did a re-install the slowdown would clear up.