mac v PC laptops... speed? at DVinfo.net

April 11th, 2004, 10:00 PM

hey guys, i had hoped to not bother yall with another mac question until i bought my powerbook but i stumbled across an internet review of PC speeds and i thought i would share it with you all and tell me if those numbers feel accurate to you?
thanks alot guys, i had lpanned to get a 1ghz PB with a gig of ram but it looks like for the money i could get a way sicker pc laptop.

thanks again!

Joe Lloyd · April 11th, 2004, 10:12 PM

For the price, yes you could. But No PC laptops run FCP4 or shake, or Soundtrack.... etc...

Also I got myself a 1ghz 17" powerbook and it costed a bit more than my wife's Toshiba notebook, but everything I'd ever need is included in mine, where her's has all sorts off add-on cards and adapters laying around. At the end of the day IMHO Apple notebooks are built to last. Also worth note this laptop has travelled to 14 countries, been dropped 4 times, been rained on, constantly spilling pop on it. So there ya go =)

April 11th, 2004, 10:18 PM

thank you joe. that is a good point.
as for add ons - do you mean having to buy other stuff than fcp and afx and photoshop (cause they dont come standard right?)

Joe Lloyd · April 12th, 2004, 02:01 AM

for instance, the toshiba laptop im thinking of I think she paid like 2200 cdn for it (was about 1000 cheaper than mine) but now its got a pcmcia firewire card, a pcmcia 802.11b card, an extra hard drive because it only came with 40gb etc etc. altho those addons wont add up to a 1000 dollars, its still a pain. My powerbook has everything built in. Its also the nicest screen I've worked on.... Big plus there I forgot about.

Joe Cirino · April 17th, 2004, 12:09 AM

OSX is why you buy a mac.

Andre De Clercq · April 17th, 2004, 03:07 AM

An OT question. Jerry, why do you need 1Gig of ram? I have a Dell Lattitude (with b.t.w. 2x60GB HDD and integrated firewire..) and the peak memory charge never exceeds 350 MB with NLE applications.

Joe Cirino · April 17th, 2004, 07:43 AM

Ram can always be utilized. More ram equals less the processor has to work and the less your hard drive will have to access virtual memory or temp writing to disk. At least this is the case for Apples. Modern day OS's need a minimum of 256 just to be functional for mail/internet. I cant see running any pro app without a minimum of at least a half of gig. In my box I have 2 gigs. I never have any writing to disk. You will see a tremendous improvement in rendering speeds if you max out the ram in your box. Its the cheapest upgrade you can do.

Josh Brusin · April 17th, 2004, 09:59 AM

I helped a a friend of mine purchase a toshiba 17" and even at the 15" you have to do only one thing. Lift it. He uses it as a nightstand computer. Not something he lugs around (lugs) it is heavy. The macs are not. There are a couple of petite 15-17" widescreen laps out there I've seen pix at least. I've been considering a 17" mac myself. But I never pay retail. I'd look to pay $1800-2000 for a 17" and if that means waiting a month or two so be it. Look at the apple special deals on their website. $3K is not worth it. here's a link for $2499

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL.../2.0.7.1.0.5.3

prices are a'droppin

Josh Brusin · April 17th, 2004, 10:01 AM

toshiba $2799 at best buy...
mac can be cheaper.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....5&type=product

Andre De Clercq · April 17th, 2004, 10:09 AM

Yes Joe, that's what many people think...But strange enough in all video rendering and speed comparison tests RAM isn't even mentioned. Only chipset and processor power seems relevant. See e.g. http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/mspro65test.htm. Of course it's understand that there is no paging (esy to veryfy), but like I already mentioned .5MB RAM is all you need for DV video (SD) rendering in whatever pro NLE.

Joe Cirino · April 17th, 2004, 10:53 AM

I suppose if all your running is one program, then so be it. Not sure where this idea started from, but RAM is ALWAYS used up first when doing any intensive computer computation.

I am usually running 3 programs at the same time when I do any type of video editing, so the more ram the better. Livetype, FCP4, and iTunes. Livetype will render titles as I edit video. itunes and Quick time is converting to AVI audio and such. Iphoto is loaded as I get stills and brng them into Photoshop.

Are you using a Mac? Macs make use of every bit of RAM, unlike x86 OS's where extra ram can actually inhibit speed. If we are talking about 2 different species than I can understand your comment.

Andre De Clercq · April 17th, 2004, 01:18 PM

Every OS uses "every bit of RAM" available if there is a need for to be available at "the same time". My point is that only for processing (very) large graphic image files (GB files) you need the gig RAMs. Not for the low res DV video stuff...even in multiprogram runs. I don't use Mac but I think the basics for the RAM needs are not architecture dependent as long as we talk about "Von Neuman" structures

Joe Cirino · April 17th, 2004, 02:05 PM

I guess we can agree that more RAM would not hurt other processes. ;-) Yes, you are correct in saying that there is a max needed for video, but for myself, I also use the computer for other RAM intensive programs such as Photoshop. Though reder times can increase with RAM, most of the rendering is done by the processesor. Yes, you are correct in all you say, but my agrument is more RAM cannot hurt if you are doing video and other programs running in the Background. The bigest advantage would be Hard Drives...

Cheers,

Glenn Chan · April 17th, 2004, 03:16 PM

Jerry, I think you want to look at what you want to do, and which platform/software combination meets your need the best.

If you don't do very intense editing then both platforms should have enough power to do what you want. A powerbook should be able to do at least real-time color correction and cross dissolves, and I think it should do real-time titles.

A PC laptop should be able to do much more, but when both are overkill it shouldn't make a difference to you. A PC would be faster at DVD encoding though if you need that.

Depending on what you edit you also want to look at which NLEs you are considering. It's probably Final Cut versus Avid, Premiere Pro, Vegas Video, Edition, etc. etc. Lots of folks here like Vegas because it's really powerful (more so than Avid and FCP in many areas) and for you it'll run very decently on a moderately powerful computer with 512MB of RAM.

For editing a big screen at a high resolution is good, so that would be something to consider. If you have a docking station then you probably just want to hook up a second monitor, in which case you'd want to check dual monitor support.

Also look at how much battery life you need, if size or weight is important, storage needs (need firewire?), etc. etc.

More RAM also drains your battery slightly faster. I doubt you need more than 1GB but that depends entirely on the programs you run. For example, Photoshop can definitely be a memory hog if you are working with really large files (i.e. 300MB).

Joe Cirino · April 17th, 2004, 03:42 PM

The most important issue pretaining to any system is how solid the OS is. Look, Apple has this covered hands down. I dont care what any PC owners says, I have owned and built several PC's all with Microsoft OS's on them, and I would not trust a project with hours of editing to an OS that is sub par for professional work. Its that simple! I have spent many hours when owning a Microsoft based OS computer just to get Firewire to work with bus/this/controller/that.

Futhermore, unless you have used an Apple, dont even bother to try to defend your M$OS system. Speed is not all that goes into a video system. This is what manufacturers would like for you to believe.
I have never had to restart a computer due to software/os hang ups on my apple. I repeat. I remembered restarting my PC like every other day, just to get USB crap to work. I suppose there may be the occasional few that use a micorsoft based computer and have little or no problems. I say, that IS NOT the norm. I also suppose you can go to the apple discussions and see people having problems with OSX, but that is ALSO, not the norm.

I have a friend who just bought a new PC, which was custom built just for video. In fact, he had spent over 3k in the box with 10k 37 gig SATA drives and quick memory and the works. He uses Edition (nice program BTW).

I went over to check out his new system and he loaded up Edition. (this system had ONLY video software on it and NO INTERNET CONNECTION. He updated everything software through downloads from his work place. Anyways, he loads up Edition and hooks his camera to it. GL2. Or vice verse. What do you know... a .DLL error comes up. He restarts. 5 minutes later everything is ready to try again. Camera hooked up and loads up Edition. Captures and goes fine for about 5 minutes. During this time, he tells me he had been having problems with his camera not being able to be recognized by Edition. Anyways, as he was capturing, what do you know? Blue screen comes up. Something with an error. At this point, who cares. You have to restat anyways.

This is what I expirienced in 30 minutes visiting my friends house and his new 3k computer. I felt real bad for him. I really did. He is a nice guy and does not deserve this crap. In fact, he is trying to support his family on this new life endevor of video editing. Although, after I explained to him the reasons for going to a Mac video station, he said that he will stick with what he knew.

Sad.

April 11th, 2004, 10:00 PM	#1
Guest Posts: n/a	mac v PC laptops... speed? hey guys, i had hoped to not bother yall with another mac question until i bought my powerbook but i stumbled across an internet review of PC speeds and i thought i would share it with you all and tell me if those numbers feel accurate to you? thanks alot guys, i had lpanned to get a 1ghz PB with a gig of ram but it looks like for the money i could get a way sicker pc laptop. thanks again!

April 11th, 2004, 10:12 PM	#2
Joe Lloyd Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Auckland, NZ Posts: 202	For the price, yes you could. But No PC laptops run FCP4 or shake, or Soundtrack.... etc... Also I got myself a 1ghz 17" powerbook and it costed a bit more than my wife's Toshiba notebook, but everything I'd ever need is included in mine, where her's has all sorts off add-on cards and adapters laying around. At the end of the day IMHO Apple notebooks are built to last. Also worth note this laptop has travelled to 14 countries, been dropped 4 times, been rained on, constantly spilling pop on it. So there ya go =) __________________ Catalina Productions http://www.catalina.co.nz

April 12th, 2004, 02:01 AM	#4
Joe Lloyd Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Auckland, NZ Posts: 202	for instance, the toshiba laptop im thinking of I think she paid like 2200 cdn for it (was about 1000 cheaper than mine) but now its got a pcmcia firewire card, a pcmcia 802.11b card, an extra hard drive because it only came with 40gb etc etc. altho those addons wont add up to a 1000 dollars, its still a pain. My powerbook has everything built in. Its also the nicest screen I've worked on.... Big plus there I forgot about. __________________ Catalina Productions http://www.catalina.co.nz

April 17th, 2004, 12:09 AM	#5
Joe Cirino Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: United States Posts: 101	simple OSX is why you buy a mac.

April 11th, 2004, 10:18 PM	#3
Guest Posts: n/a	thank you joe. that is a good point. as for add ons - do you mean having to buy other stuff than fcp and afx and photoshop (cause they dont come standard right?)

April 17th, 2004, 03:07 AM	#6
Andre De Clercq Major Player Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Belgium Posts: 804	An OT question. Jerry, why do you need 1Gig of ram? I have a Dell Lattitude (with b.t.w. 2x60GB HDD and integrated firewire..) and the peak memory charge never exceeds 350 MB with NLE applications.

April 17th, 2004, 07:43 AM	#7
Joe Cirino Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: United States Posts: 101	Ram can always be utilized. More ram equals less the processor has to work and the less your hard drive will have to access virtual memory or temp writing to disk. At least this is the case for Apples. Modern day OS's need a minimum of 256 just to be functional for mail/internet. I cant see running any pro app without a minimum of at least a half of gig. In my box I have 2 gigs. I never have any writing to disk. You will see a tremendous improvement in rendering speeds if you max out the ram in your box. Its the cheapest upgrade you can do.

April 17th, 2004, 09:59 AM	#8
Josh Brusin Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 439	I helped a a friend of mine purchase a toshiba 17" and even at the 15" you have to do only one thing. Lift it. He uses it as a nightstand computer. Not something he lugs around (lugs) it is heavy. The macs are not. There are a couple of petite 15-17" widescreen laps out there I've seen pix at least. I've been considering a 17" mac myself. But I never pay retail. I'd look to pay $1800-2000 for a 17" and if that means waiting a month or two so be it. Look at the apple special deals on their website. $3K is not worth it. here's a link for $2499 http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL.../2.0.7.1.0.5.3 prices are a'droppin

April 17th, 2004, 10:01 AM	#9
Josh Brusin Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 439	toshiba $2799 at best buy... mac can be cheaper. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....5&type=product

April 17th, 2004, 10:09 AM	#10
Andre De Clercq Major Player Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Belgium Posts: 804	Yes Joe, that's what many people think...But strange enough in all video rendering and speed comparison tests RAM isn't even mentioned. Only chipset and processor power seems relevant. See e.g. http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/mspro65test.htm. Of course it's understand that there is no paging (esy to veryfy), but like I already mentioned .5MB RAM is all you need for DV video (SD) rendering in whatever pro NLE.

April 17th, 2004, 10:53 AM	#11
Joe Cirino Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: United States Posts: 101	I suppose if all your running is one program, then so be it. Not sure where this idea started from, but RAM is ALWAYS used up first when doing any intensive computer computation. I am usually running 3 programs at the same time when I do any type of video editing, so the more ram the better. Livetype, FCP4, and iTunes. Livetype will render titles as I edit video. itunes and Quick time is converting to AVI audio and such. Iphoto is loaded as I get stills and brng them into Photoshop. Are you using a Mac? Macs make use of every bit of RAM, unlike x86 OS's where extra ram can actually inhibit speed. If we are talking about 2 different species than I can understand your comment.

April 17th, 2004, 01:18 PM	#12
Andre De Clercq Major Player Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Belgium Posts: 804	Every OS uses "every bit of RAM" available if there is a need for to be available at "the same time". My point is that only for processing (very) large graphic image files (GB files) you need the gig RAMs. Not for the low res DV video stuff...even in multiprogram runs. I don't use Mac but I think the basics for the RAM needs are not architecture dependent as long as we talk about "Von Neuman" structures

April 17th, 2004, 02:05 PM	#13
Joe Cirino Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: United States Posts: 101	I guess we can agree that more RAM would not hurt other processes. ;-) Yes, you are correct in saying that there is a max needed for video, but for myself, I also use the computer for other RAM intensive programs such as Photoshop. Though reder times can increase with RAM, most of the rendering is done by the processesor. Yes, you are correct in all you say, but my agrument is more RAM cannot hurt if you are doing video and other programs running in the Background. The bigest advantage would be Hard Drives... Cheers,

April 17th, 2004, 03:16 PM	#14
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Jerry, I think you want to look at what you want to do, and which platform/software combination meets your need the best. If you don't do very intense editing then both platforms should have enough power to do what you want. A powerbook should be able to do at least real-time color correction and cross dissolves, and I think it should do real-time titles. A PC laptop should be able to do much more, but when both are overkill it shouldn't make a difference to you. A PC would be faster at DVD encoding though if you need that. Depending on what you edit you also want to look at which NLEs you are considering. It's probably Final Cut versus Avid, Premiere Pro, Vegas Video, Edition, etc. etc. Lots of folks here like Vegas because it's really powerful (more so than Avid and FCP in many areas) and for you it'll run very decently on a moderately powerful computer with 512MB of RAM. For editing a big screen at a high resolution is good, so that would be something to consider. If you have a docking station then you probably just want to hook up a second monitor, in which case you'd want to check dual monitor support. Also look at how much battery life you need, if size or weight is important, storage needs (need firewire?), etc. etc. More RAM also drains your battery slightly faster. I doubt you need more than 1GB but that depends entirely on the programs you run. For example, Photoshop can definitely be a memory hog if you are working with really large files (i.e. 300MB).

April 17th, 2004, 03:42 PM	#15
Joe Cirino Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: United States Posts: 101	The most important issue pretaining to any system is how solid the OS is. Look, Apple has this covered hands down. I dont care what any PC owners says, I have owned and built several PC's all with Microsoft OS's on them, and I would not trust a project with hours of editing to an OS that is sub par for professional work. Its that simple! I have spent many hours when owning a Microsoft based OS computer just to get Firewire to work with bus/this/controller/that. Futhermore, unless you have used an Apple, dont even bother to try to defend your M$OS system. Speed is not all that goes into a video system. This is what manufacturers would like for you to believe. I have never had to restart a computer due to software/os hang ups on my apple. I repeat. I remembered restarting my PC like every other day, just to get USB crap to work. I suppose there may be the occasional few that use a micorsoft based computer and have little or no problems. I say, that IS NOT the norm. I also suppose you can go to the apple discussions and see people having problems with OSX, but that is ALSO, not the norm. I have a friend who just bought a new PC, which was custom built just for video. In fact, he had spent over 3k in the box with 10k 37 gig SATA drives and quick memory and the works. He uses Edition (nice program BTW). I went over to check out his new system and he loaded up Edition. (this system had ONLY video software on it and NO INTERNET CONNECTION. He updated everything software through downloads from his work place. Anyways, he loads up Edition and hooks his camera to it. GL2. Or vice verse. What do you know... a .DLL error comes up. He restarts. 5 minutes later everything is ready to try again. Camera hooked up and loads up Edition. Captures and goes fine for about 5 minutes. During this time, he tells me he had been having problems with his camera not being able to be recognized by Edition. Anyways, as he was capturing, what do you know? Blue screen comes up. Something with an error. At this point, who cares. You have to restat anyways. This is what I expirienced in 30 minutes visiting my friends house and his new 3k computer. I felt real bad for him. I really did. He is a nice guy and does not deserve this crap. In fact, he is trying to support his family on this new life endevor of video editing. Although, after I explained to him the reasons for going to a Mac video station, he said that he will stick with what he knew. Sad.