Well folks, I did a side to side PC/MAC comparison....

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
wiggy

Post by wiggy » Tue Apr 08, 2003 7:44 pm

xp crashing once a month??? muhaha someone hasn't a clue what they are doing...

latency is cured on a laptop pc either with the drivers mentioned above or by buying an echo indigo for 99$, which then flushes the mac down the toilet in every way imaginable

gest

Post by gest » Sat Apr 12, 2003 8:23 pm

That's just your guess. You don't know that. The 970's will start out at 1.8-2 GHz and will be 64 bit. Further, expect to see Quad processor boxes, which will utterly rock. I'd pit a quad 970 against a dual Xeon any day, then let's talk about Deltas. Server-wise, the 970 can scale 16 ways.
It's not a guess. It's an estimation based on public information on the 970, current performance of the Power4 and deep analysis and understanding of the CPU's in question. The fact that it starts out at 1.8Ghz and that it will be 64 bit means nothing. If you wan't to convince me otherwise, let's here some technical arguments.
Quad 970 outperforming a dual Xeon? Maybe, but if it takes twice the number of CPU's to do it it's not that impressive. Besides, quad Xeon boxes are available today and so far no vendor has any plans for quad 970 boxes.
And yeah, 970 can scale to 16 CPU's but good luck finding any software that does.
Plus, being UNIX, expect to see clustering APIs built into OS X itself. The benefit of this will greater than you might imagine. Put your machine on a decent network, and you've got a supercomputer. Literally.
You need to read up on how clustering works. Clustering API's are available on Windows, Linux and probably OS X but it won't help apps that aren't written specifically to use them. And that's far more difficult than supporting e.g. Altivec.
There are NO clustering solutions available today that is suitable for audio becuase of latency restrictions. This is mostly due to hardware limitations (ethernet doesn't work well in realtime conditions) but the underlying OS or its eventual UNIX heritage has nothing to do with it.
I've got a dual G4/800 w/ 1.5GB RAM and it handles a serious, serious audio workload without breaking a sweat. Don't believe the hype. Don't sweat the processors (unless you're buying something old) - it's the OS/apps that can make your life hell. Or heaven.
Agreed. But it still doesn't make the 970 faster than Prescott.

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