mac vs. pc BOTTOM LINE WHO'S FASTER for Live?

rossdet · Post by **rossdet** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:56 pm

I'm sure this has been posted before, but I need to know. If we're running Live and comparing a mac and pc of equal processing speeds, which will perform faster/smoother/etc? Is there a clearcut answer on this?
thanks

toneroll · Post by **toneroll** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:59 pm

why dont you search ?

check out adamjays performance test..

in fact i challenge the whole forum not even to rise to the bait.

further more , i think the performance test should become a sticky, or at least the graph.

sidownes · Post by **sidownes** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:11 pm

You mean you don't think this post is a wind up?

drush · Post by **drush** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:28 pm

i took a very well appointed PC laptop and a carefully optimized G4 powerbook, both with lots of RAM and fast internal drives, up to the edge of a cliff near my house last night.

i'll be damned if they didn't both hit the water at exactly the same time.

hacktheplanet · Post by **hacktheplanet** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:38 pm

You know, it really doesn't matter which system you are using. The OS is what really matters. OSX and XP are both not optimized to use Live. I will explain my choice of OS below:

I've been runnig Live on a machine built from old machines and spare microwave parts. It's pretty neat, actually. The microwave energy transfers into higher CPU cycles, thus making my plugins run quite smoothly. Also, I'm running a version of Free BSD tarballed from RedHat Lunix. The frontend is actually Windows 98 because it has the best implementation of runtime command center syntax.

Take from that what you will, but if you PM me I can show you how to get the most performance out of Live using your microwave.

Former Pharaoh · Post by **Former Pharaoh** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:06 am

the_planet wrote: Take from that what you will, but if you PM me I can show you how to get the most performance out of Live using your microwave.

I just use connect three potatos together with a copper wire and feed the electrical surge through a straw connected to an atari 2600 RAM plus cartridge. This gets sent into an old Bally's console which inverts the in coming signals with an infrared scanner copulated by 0.001 % minus 1/4 of a fraction of a sub atomic atom.
Seems to work for me.

dpel · Post by **dpel** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:19 am

drush wrote:i took a very well appointed PC laptop and a carefully optimized G4 powerbook, both with lots of RAM and fast internal drives, up to the edge of a cliff near my house last night.

i'll be damned if they didn't both hit the water at exactly the same time.

<spraying coffee out of my nose>

dude that's funny sheite

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:40 am

The difference between Mac and a PC is a PC burns faster.

...in a fire

sorry, I had to.

SpinFuzz · Post by **SpinFuzz** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:18 am

Doesn't matter how fast the computer is, as long as it's above about 800 mhz, you won't be able to keep up with actual USAGE anyway. And if it's rendering something you shouldn't be sitting at it...

I've never seen a difference in the speed between PC's and Macs...

I don't ever recall seeing one move now that I think about it....

ToLTeK · Post by **ToLTeK** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:16 am

Here we go again... WHO CARES!!! Personally I am a user of both - Windows Centrino based laptop and iMac G5. Yes, my iMac G5 is slower than my Centrino - both 1.8GHz processors with 1GB of RAM but, I get the "job" done on both of them without any issues at all. Both are stable and fully sufficient for my needs. Differences? Well, it takes 1 minute to optimize Mac for Audio, 1 hour for PC. Even with Firefox installed, I hardly ever use my laptop for internet - I use Mac instead - NO VIRUSES - one of the reasons I have bought Mac in the first place, but now even with the performance "hit", I found myself using Mac exclusively to compose my music... Maybe it is due to the glorious OSX interface or the fact that I can go to sleep leaving my my Mac ON all the time connected to Internet, or maybe because it have never crashed on me, I just LOVE IT, but than again I LOVE my Centrino as well... Go and figure...

Kind Regards

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 10:34 am

Just get a PC and leave us alone, will ya?

-Paws

Hypomixolydian · Post by **Hypomixolydian** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:57 am

C'mon. Show some understanding for the guy! It is his first post and he asked a valid question. People ask questions because they want an answer and they shouldn't be made to feel like a twat for asking it. Ok many of you are sick of seeing the same question being asked time and time again, but so what! Just ignore it if it bothers you so much. Unfortunately there is a growing number of cynical and unhelpful responses. Most of the time this forum is very helpful and I hope it remains that way!
Doing a search can be a bit of a pain most of the time. You often have to trawl through hundreds if not thousands of posts and it is extremely time consuming. INFORMATION MELTDOWN!!!!! Sometimes it is best to ask the question again and have the answer directly to you/the person who asked the question.

To answer your question Rossdet. From all the tests done it appears that PC is more powerful than Mac. I would disagree with what SpinFuzz said that you won't be able to keep up with usage. Whack in a few VST instruments and you will soon run out of CPU.

Moonburnt · Post by **Moonburnt** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 1:10 pm

drush wrote:i took a very well appointed PC laptop and a carefully optimized G4 powerbook, both with lots of RAM and fast internal drives, up to the edge of a cliff near my house last night.

i'll be damned if they didn't both hit the water at exactly the same time.

LOLOL

Perhaps this should be added to adamjay's performance testing criteria just to be sure?

drush · Post by **drush** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:31 pm

Astral Fridge Magnet wrote:C'mon. Show some understanding for the guy...

fine, i feel you here a little bit. i do normally try to answer newb questions within reason... we've all been there. we're all still there, depending on the topic.

but

this particular subject has been beaten beyond recognition. yeah searching will yield you way too much info about it. but a little looking will also give you an excellent baseline before you start asking such sweeping questions.

there's excusable newbieness and then there's laziness.

drush · Post by **drush** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 6:39 pm

@ rossdet: no, there's no clear-cut answer.
it is clear that Live quantifiably performs better on x86 machines.
whether or not this will really matter to you (i.e. how much better is better?), whether or not you will ever run into a ceiling, how much real time work you really do, how much hardware vs. software you use, or whether or not you're naturally more comfortable on one platform vs. the other is, in my opinion, the real issue.

tho i still prefer my surf test.