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Desktops (Apple) Businesses Apple Hardware

Gutted Apple Tower Powered By Athlon XP 2400+ 122

Posted by pudge from the yeah-well-you're-just-a-bunch-of-degenerates-anyway dept.
Ill Mitch writes "You have to see what the guys at the [H]ardOCP have done this time. Not only is it incredible to look it, it is a powerhouse as well. This is sure to upset the Mac-addicts. 2.25GHz of AMD Athlon XP power tucked very neatly inside a customized Apple G4 case. They call it the 'Rotten Apple'."
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Gutted Apple Tower Powered By Athlon XP 2400+ More

Gutted Apple Tower Powered By Athlon XP 2400+

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  • retrosystem [retrosystem.com] has a few cool PC cases from other computers.
    Also here [man.ac.uk] is my attempt at it with an Atari ST.
    I'm gonna try the Apple II next.

  • the audacity of them! (Score:5, Funny)

    by realgone ( 147744 ) on Saturday September 14, 2002 @08:29AM (#4256457)
    This is sure to upset the Mac-addicts.

    Ah..... no.

    Hate to be the one to break it to you, but as upsetting events in my life go, this one ranks just below Sandy Duncan replacing Valerie Harper on The Hogan Family.

    Which is to say, not at all.

  • Oh yeah, that's manly... [snort] (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dbrutus ( 71639 ) on Saturday September 14, 2002 @08:29AM (#4256458) Homepage
    I took one look at the color scheme and immediately thought flamenco dancer (and not the male half of the traditional duo). It doesn't look bad but really, what's with the sexual insecurity bit? After all, traditional beige isn't really a very manly color while silver or other metallics are not normally considered feminine. It strikes me as pretty desperate.

    The only thing these guys want is an easy to open case with integrated handles and small interior lights that go on when you open it up. And with all the case manufacturers out there making cases to the ATX standard the closest they could find was a non-ATX case. What a damning indictment for the whole sector.

  • Apache (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Finally a quicksilver that will run apache at a reasonable rate....

  • They got an empty case, right? (Score:4, Troll)

    by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Saturday September 14, 2002 @09:54AM (#4256678) Homepage

    IT sounded like they got an empty case to put this motherboard in, right? They didn't buy a G4 and then downgrade it with that really slow processor, did they?

    Well, if you have a slow processor and a spare empty case, why not put them together. I really don't see what the big deal is.

    If you can't afford the whole computer, sure, why not cobble something together from parts. There's not reason to feel "rotten" just cause you don't have G4 running inside-- hell if you didn't go and tell the whole world, only the people who saw your machine running would know its slow.

    • Downgraded? Even apples own blast test show that the amd chip is faster then the G4 with any usefull data(That is string length=11)

      Martin Tilsted

      • Re:They got an empty case, right? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I don't case if it alters the fabric of space-time itself. If I have to use Windows (or worse, Linux), I'm not gonna touch the cråp thing. I'd rather carve 1's and 0's into stone tablets than get another dåmn PC to see my network.

      • While Macs are faster than PCs, I was really joking. I don't wish to seriously debate the issue-- there are people who would rather get paid $100 every week than $1,200 every 60 days... and those people buy PCs and think they are twice as fast. No matter how much I tell them the latter is a better deal, they go "but I get paid 8 times more often!" They confuse frequency with bandwidth.

        But since you said Apple says this is so, could you provide a link to Apple's test results showing AMD's much faster?

        Thanks.
        • I'd much rather get paid $100 every week than $1200 every 60 days, because I'll make $1257 every 60 days. That's enough for a another PS2 game every two months!

          Cheers!
        • Ok, so clock frequency != performance. We know that. However, by any reasonable performance metric (no, Photoshop tests don't count because Photoshop is highly AltiVec optimized but not very well SSE/MMX/SSE2 optimized), the Athlon/P4 creams the PowerPC. Look up the benchmarks for yourself. Artificial benchmarks, real world benchmarks. It doesn't matter. The G4 always pulls ahead in one or two benchmarks but loses in most of them.
          • Ok, so clock frequency != performance. We know that. However, by any reasonable performance metric (no, Photoshop tests don't count because Photoshop is highly AltiVec optimized but not very well SSE/MMX/SSE2 optimized), the Athlon/P4 creams the PowerPC. Look up the benchmarks for yourself. Artificial benchmarks, real world benchmarks. It doesn't matter. The G4 always pulls ahead in one or two benchmarks but loses in most of them.

            Compare here [blanos.com] or here [blanos.com] (or here! [blanos.com] to here [blanos.com] ..and no, there's simply no single-CPU Config for the big Workhorses anymore! ;-)

          • Oh, that's really funny!

            So you want to do a "reasonable comparison" by turning off floating point path processing and compare two floating point math chips?

            You just admitted macs are faster-- photoshop, which is optimized for BOTH platforms, runs much faster on a mac.

            Could it be because of the Altivec accelleration? You say yes, and you're right! The G4 IS much faster!

            Sheesh.

            Tell you what... if you want that to be your standard, then I will insist we run both processors at the same clock speed. Just to be fair, after all, right!

        • They confuse frequency with bandwidth.

          *cough* Too bad Apple slapped in higher frequency memory into the new G4s (DDR) without increasing the bandwith to the CPUs.

          The x86 platform is faster period. Sure, the PowerPC chips will outpreform the x86 chips when they are evenly clocked. But good old Motorola just can't advance the PowerPC platform, so Apple is reduced to doubling up the CPUs again to try to keep people buying. Hopefully this stall in CPU speed won't last as long as the 500mHz G4 stall did.

          As much as I love OS X, it will never gain the market accpetance it needs unless Apple does something drastic soon.
        • While Macs are faster than PCs,

          If Macs are "faster than PCs" then why does OS X go so much slower than Windows 2000? Seriously, I want to know how you can make that claim with a straight face.

          Even with Jaguar, the "speedhole" G4 towers at dual 900+ mhz still "feel" slow, especially when running web browsers.

          • Internet explorer feels slow no matter what system you use.

            And 2k was no speed demon either (not for me anyways)
          • a) can you specify in how far they're slower? GUI, network performance, Application launching?

            b) If you're referring to the GUI (likely!), well, that's because the Quartz GUI is actually a whole new approach [arstechnica.com] that's simply more demanding than Win2k's old-generation GUI! They did, however accelerate it alot in 10.2's OGL-accelerated Quartz Extreme, you should really check that out! I can run the iTunes Vizualizer and 2 transparent browserwindows and a transparent terminal on top of it with no fps-drops whatsoever.. on a 700MHz G3 iBook with a measly 16MB Radeon M6! Windows still need to be rendered by the CPU initially, but all the compositing is offloaded onto the 3D-Hardware! That's something that's due for Longhorn somewhen after 2005 [theregister.co.uk]!

            c) If you really wanna compare, be fair and compare to WinXP, which has GDI+ (non-accelerated yet!), which is a classic blatant M$-steal (again!) of Apple's Quartz concept! And XP's GUI sure is just as slow as Aqua was before 10.2, just be fair and don't compare G4-400s with 1.8GHz Athlons or 2.8GHz P4s!
            • If you're referring to the GUI (likely!), well, that's because the Quartz GUI is actually a whole new approach [arstechnica.com] that's simply more demanding than Win2k's old-generation GUI!

              As the end user, I don't particularly care WHY it's slow. I only care that it IS slow.

              I understand the technical reasons why the GUI is slower. That doesn't make it okay.

              • As the end user, I don't particularly care WHY it's slow. I only care that it IS slow.

                I understand the technical reasons why the GUI is slower. That doesn't make it okay.

                a) Have you seen 10.2's Quartz Extreme? If you haven't, don't judge unless you know the current state!

                b) If you compare Quartz, then compare it to the way slower XP GUI! Be fair, that's all i'm asking for!
                • Yes, I've seen 10.2. It's still slow.

                  I don't care about XP. It may be slow, also. Fine. If so, I'm glad I haven't used it.

                  And sorry, just because XP is slow, doesn't make it ok for OS X to be slow.

                  There are currently modern GUIs available to me (KDE, Gnome, Windows 2000) that don't lag. OS X is too annoyingly slow to be on that list.

                  • Yes, I've seen 10.2. It's still slow.

                    Weird.. What Machine? Runs just fine here on a 3 year old G4-400 with gf2mx if you ask me, but i guess tastes differ! ;-)

                    I don't care about XP. It may be slow, also. Fine. If so, I'm glad I haven't used it.

                    That's okay.. It just seems that loads of people don't have a problem with XPs GUI even though it's just as slow!.. Usually people are comparing top PCs to Macs that are about 3 years old, which is simply an unfair comparison! Don't forget that Quartz Extreme already has 3D-Hardware-Acceleration, something Windows will be lacking for another.. urm.. 3 years atleast? :-)
                    • Weird.. What Machine?

                      Oh, come off it already. The speed problems of OS X have been well publicized, so stop acting like I'm the first person to mention it to you.

                      For comparison purposes, I'm typing this on an HP Omnibook 500. I paid $800 for it on eBay. It was new (old stock). I'd guess it's about 2 years old.

                      Windows 2000, even on this 'old' machine is far faster than OS X on anything Apple sells at any price, including the desktops. And I'm not talking about SETI@home units, I'm talking about things that directly affect the user - scroll speed, text input, manipulating files and windows, working the menus.

                      Somewhere around 1999, computers finally got fast enough that my computers starting waiting on me for input, rather than me on them to finish computing something. Using a Mac is like stepping into the twilight zone, where I have to wait for every menu and mouseclick to respond.

                      P.S. I'm no Mac hater. OS X is really nice. I had an iBook until about 2 months ago. Unbearably slow, even with 640 MB of RAM. I just couldn't take it, so I sold it.

                      The web browsers on that system felt like Mozilla on a 486.

                    • Oh, come off it already. The speed problems of OS X have been well publicized, so stop acting like I'm the first person to mention it to you.

                      Ofcourse there were complaints, but 10.1 brought quite some improvements and 10.2 brings even more now! That's a fact and you can read pretty much any 10.2 review you want and will find many people that say it feels like they have a new computer!
                      No CPU-Load with the GUI compositing anymore! Hugely improved Application launching (just compare Omniweb bounces on 10.1.5 to 10.2!)..

                      Neglecting all these improvements and still blowing the "OS X is slow as hell!"-horn is just plain ignorant!

                      Could you just please stop comparing OS X to Win2k? Apples and Oranges!.. If you want to compare, compare the respective current offerings! Which means WinXP! M$ doesn't even sell Win2k anymore to regular customers, so there! ..Just imagine how fast the GEOS-GUI would run on your machine compared to Win2k!.. Wow!... Get my point?
                    • The web browsers on that system felt like Mozilla on a 486.

                      Out of curiosity, which browsers did you try?

                      I use Win2K on a 1.something GHz Pentium in the office, and OS/X on a G4/450 at home. For a long time, I was inclined to think that OS/X was much slower than Win2k. I mainly felt this way because IE for Windows was so blazing fast compared to any of the browsers I'd tried on the Mac, and, well, I spend a lot of time in a browser.

                      However, I've just started using Chimera as my browser on the Mac, and it's really sharply improved my general impression of the system's speed; Chimera, while probably still marginally slower than IE on Win2k, is much, much faster and more responsive than any other OS/X browser I've tried.

                      I still think that OS/X is slower than Win2k, but the gap seems much, much narrower, now. Certainly I don't feel like I'm in that 'twilight zone' you describe, any more.

                  • just to fill ya in, the new XP GUI is about 10% slower then the older 2k one. so aprox 500x faster then a top of the line OSX box.
    • Insightful? That is an absolute Troll.

      How much dry elitist apple crap do we have to put up with?

      This is a cool mod. Why does BitGeek feel the need to break it down?

      He says "slow processor" when the 1800 mhz Athlon has benchmarked on many independent tests as being faster than the fastest dual G4 system Apple has. Bitgeek talks about superior architecture and bandwidth when the most recent macs use DDR just as a marketing ploy. Their performance is actually 3-5% slower than identicly clocked G4s using SDRAM. They cobble fast memory onto their low bandwith processor with a memory translator hub similar to Intel's failed MTH design... All for marketing.

      He says "If you can't afford" showing extreme class distain and prejudice.

      Absolute crap post.

      So, bitgeek, tell us, where are you coming from on this? Why the need to criticize other people's art? Did you gain anything? Does it make you feel good? Are you really that insecure? How invested are you in Apple?

      Disclaimer: I sold my Apple shares in July of 2000.

      Perhaps he should have too.
      • The P4 2.8GHz and the Xeon 2.4GHz are the ONLY 2 chips on CPU Scorecard [cpuscorecard.com] which are ranked above the G4 1.25GHz.

        Heeyyy...Imagine that! Now imagine if Motorola got off their ass and upped the G4's clock speed to 2.8GHz. You'd be blown away. Man I can't wait until the mythical^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H G5 comes out and wipes that smug little x86 grin off your faces.

        If a G4 at less than half the clock speed of a P4 can still keep that close in the grand scheme of things, then you, sir, are talking out your ass with a megaphone.
        • Funny that there is no hard data as to how they actually rate these chips.

          From the little I've seen, cpuscorecard.com is pure marketing bullshit.

          Unfortunately I cannot find any comprehensive benchmarks comparing a G4 to any x86. I find that odd considering there are comparisons between x86 and virtually everything else out there.

          If the cpuscorecard crap were true, there wouldn't be all this talk about the need for a G5, or move to POWER4 or other architecture...

          I mean seriously - if you had TWO of these "3rd fastest CPU"s available in a system (2 x 1.25 Ghz), there wouldn't be any discussion about any of this. Hell - you don't hear people with >1.6Ghz procs in the x86 realm crying about lack of processing power. If the PPC were really as fast as you say, there wouldn't be any crying from the Mac users either.

        • Scorecard uses "iComp"

          "The iCOMP value is the weighted geometric mean of four benhcmarks;

          ZD(Ziff-Davis) Bench - 68% 16-bit Whetstone - 2% SPECint92 - 25% SPECfp92 - 5%"

          "Scorecard" shows the G4 and Athlon 2600 dead even at 89% of the fastest processor, The P4 2.8. That is sort of funny, considering ZD bench which represents 68% of the weighted mean of iComp is not available on the Mac.

          Here are some additional resources using more modern benchmarks:

          Benchmarks [heise.de] using Spec2000 instead of the woefully obsolete Spec92.

          Comparison [digitalvideoediting.com] of The Dual G4 to other platforms in after effects rendering

          Here [macmissioncontrol.com] is some raw data from the obsolete 16-bit Whetstone which shows the G4 not even able to match a Pentium II clock for clock.

          This comparison [barefeats.com] shows how the G4 compares to a variety of rivals.

          This [barefeats.com] shows that under most conditions, the SDR equiped Dual G4 is faster than than the DDR version. Meaning the 1.25 GHz G4 is crippled with DDR. Which means the numbers from the other benchmark links will not scale linearly. The Dual 1.25 G4 is actualy slower clock for clock than the G4 with SDR.

          Also refrence Ars Technica's Seti benchmark showing that a Dual G4 1 Ghz produces work units at the same speed that a Dual PIII 1 Ghz.

          Has anyone found any other Benchmark comparisons of the G4 (besides the single photoshop benchmark on Apple's website) that might shed some light on the debate?

          So, choose whatever platform you like, but be informed about what you are paying for.

          You buy a mac, you buy it because you like OS X, which is far and away the nicest OS out there right now. You do not buy a mac because of performance, as anyone who follows the links can very plainly see.
          • Has anyone found any other Benchmark comparisons of the G4 (besides the single photoshop benchmark on Apple's website) that might shed some light on the debate?

            while I KNOW that the fastest x86 chips are currently ahead of the Moto G4, the G4 certainly can lay down the law when it's running the right kind of code. Look here:-

            http://n0cgi.distributed.net/speed/query.cgi?cpu type=all&arch=all&contest=all&multi=1

            • CPU Name MHz Contest Speed StdDev StdErr% Count

              Power PC 7450/7455 G4 1000 rc5 10,525,403 50841 0.4 3

              AMD Athlon XP (Palomino) 2100 rc5 6,128,961 42741 0.6 3

              Intel Pentium 4 2800 rc5 5,522,975 0 0.0 1

              rc5 has definitely been optimized for altivec. It is a credit to the Mac community that when source code is available, they do an excellent job with optomized ports.

              Power PC 7450/7455 G4 1000 ogr 10,579,931 338 0.0 2

              AMD Athlon XP (Palomino) 2100 ogr 13,476,744 298544 2.2 2

              Intel Pentium 4 2200 ogr 7,684,803 0 0.0 1

              Knowing that the Mac community goes out of their way to create altivec optimized ports, the G4's performance in ogr is also quite telling.

              While it is unfortunate that the Pentium 4 2.8 has not been benchmarked in ogr, the best it could hope for is about 9.7 million, showing off it's crippled integer instruction prosessor.

              While these are not the fastest processors from Apple or AMD, if the numbers scale linearly, as they seem to in refrence to older processors, both processor types should see a 25% performance improvement with current clock speeds.

              This is a sticky point. At $3,299.00 for a dual G4 1.25 compared to just over $1000 for a complete dual Athlon MP system, the keys processed at a given cost look like this:

              26449827 running two rc5 clients on a dual 1.25 G4.
              36773766 running six rc5 clients on 3 dual 2100MPs.

              The Athlons are 40% faster at a given price in rc5.

              26449827 running two ogr clients on a dual 1.25 G4.
              80860464 running two ogr clients on 3 dual 2100MPs.

              The Athlons are 305% faster at a given price in ogr.

              So, there is a case where the G4 does not get crushed in absolute performance. But like other closed/proprietary hardware manufacturers such as sun and sgi, they pose absolutely no competition to open platforms on price/performance.
              • it's a real shame that you introduced the bogus notion of price intothis equation. Sure, Powermacs are RELATIVELY expensive, but not neccesarily ABSOLUTELY expensive. The dnetc results certainly indicate that the Motorola MPC 74xx is a competitiive product at least, with certain outstanding features. Vive la difference, I say, choice is a wonderful thing.
                • I don't understand how price would be a bogus factor.

                  On an application with performance that scales linearly with more machines, such as the distributed client or webserving, the limit to performance is total cost and price/performance.

                  How fast do you want to spend.

                  There is no point introducing price/performance into a comparison of photoshop filters because the application will not scale across multiple machines.

                  In that case you simply compare the two machines performance and question whether you are willing to spend an extra $2000 for inferior performance just because you like the look and feel of one machine over another.

                  There are other factors. If you are limited by rackspace, then you need to know how much performance you can stuff into 1u reguardless of cost. In Apple's case, they can place a dual processor X Serve in 1u. In competition to X Serve, there are companies putting two dual processor Athlons into a single 1u rack.

                  Another factor would be performance per watt. If you needed to perform ogr calculations drawing the minimum amount of power, the obvious power difference between running two Macs or a single Athlon become clear.

                  So, you are right, it is good to have choice. It is good to be able to choose something besides proprietary software on proprietary hardware. Viva la x86, Viva la Linux.
                  • "So, you are right, it is good to have choice. It is good to be able to choose something besides proprietary software on proprietary hardware. Viva la x86, Viva la Linux."

                    since when is "x86" non-proprietary? I'll grant you Linux, but intense, margin slashing competition and economies of scale != freedom. If you take the positio that they DO, then the logical conclusion is that one design fits all, and that Linux developers would be better off working for Microsoft.
                    • choice = freedom.

                      open platform = freedom.

                      Why did Apple kill the clones?

                      Why didn't Intel kill AMD,Cyrix,Via etc..

                      Because Apple owns their platform.

                      And while Intel dominates x86, they do not own it.

                      x86 is free.

                      PPC is proprietary.

                      Could it be any simpler?

                      If Apple had competition on their platform, do you think you would be paying over a thousand dollars for their bottom end product?

                      The bottom end in x86 land is just shy of $150 for a complete system. That is competition, sir. That is computing for the masses. That is crossing the "digital divide"

                      "Switch" to apple to make computing more accessable. Accessible to whom? Accessible to the middle 90% or the Top 5%?

                      Might as well buy sgi or sun.
                    • maybe you haven't heard of Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, HP and Gateway. If you think that Macs are a minority pastime, try Linux or self-build PCs. x86 FREE, don't make me laugh.
                    • PPC is proprietary.

                      you were fine until then. After saying that, your point kind of flopped around uselessly and died.

                      PPC [openppc.org] is an open standard.

                      Apple killed the clones two ways. First of all, they stopped selling them motherboards. Yes, thats right, many clones used genuine Apple motherboard. At a lower cost to the consumer. Apple decided this was probably a bad idea, since they were doing the R&D, doing the producion and ads, but were getting shafted wrt profits.
                      Second of all, Apple declined to renew the Mac OS licensing program for the clone makers. This effectively meant that the clone makers could build PPC macs, but they wouldn't get the ROM needed to boot, and wouldn't be allowed to sell Mac OS whatever installed on the machines.

                      Of course, now that we have open firmware, [openfirmware.org] there is no rom, and, effectively nothing at all keeping clone makers from existing. But it is just not cost feasible for anyone to design their own motherboards. So Apple is the only mac hardware company.
                    • What you say seems right, but it seems to me that Apple has closed firmware covering the G3 and G4, basicly there can be no competition on the Mac platform from the flavored mac era forward.

                      As I understand it, OS X will not boot on Open Firmware, meaning the platform is efectivly closed. Additionaly, even if we got OS X to boot off of non Apple branded hardware, their eula specificly prevents doing so.

                      I know of plenty PPC embeded and clustering solutions. Browsing the top 500 supercomputer list will reveal many, as well as embedded controllers for IBM and soon to be released Newisys Sledgehammer servers. Additionally, the Game cube uses a 485 mhz IBM 750fx, which is basicly a G3 with partial altivec instructions added.

                      What I cannot find is a modern G4 based platform not maufactured by apple that is capable of Booting OS X natively. I have seen short lived attempts made, the best example being a hardware development platform for PPC that was put on "indefinite hold" shortly after this years Linuxworld Expo. I was there when an Apple lawyer handed them a court order informing them to pull the display or face an infringement lawsuit.

                      Reguardless of the outcome, the motherboard was going to be priced far, far out of consumer's range. On the order of $6,000 a copy.

                      So, unless Microsoft reverse engineers the current firmware as they did for Compaq with IBM's bios, Mac hardware is a completely closed platform.

                      Modern PPC is effectively closed.
                    • What I cannot find is a modern G4 based platform not maufactured by apple that is capable of Booting OS X natively. I have seen short lived attempts made, the best example being a hardware development platform for PPC that was put on "indefinite hold" shortly after this years Linuxworld Expo.

          • Look up the Lightwave-Results I posted in the other Thread and see that a Dual-GHz G4 can very well keep up in CPU-crushing Raytracing even with a top notch (single, granted!) P4! And Dual Xeons aren't buyable in Shops just like that and they're definately not the cheapass PCs you guys say trounces any Mac easily! And yes, Newtek optimized for both for Altivec and SSE2! Ah yes, concerning optimizing: You do know that every CPU-consuming program is optimized for some CPU? Some are for both, others are just optimized for one (=usually the one they're made on!) There's no such thing as a simple compile! Intel's Compilers do auto-vectorizing for SSE2 because the P4s single CPU is so bad (see: First Benchmark-results when the P4 was released and the new compilers weren't used!) sparing the programmer of quite some work f.ex., that's compilers Apple doen't have yet!
            Stuff that's just optimized for x86 is e.g. Unreal, stuff that's optimized for both is Lightwave, Quake3 and Photoshop, and oh my, that's exactly the Applications where Macs perform pretty good if not superior in some cases!
            See f.ex. the Quake3 [barefeats.com] comparison in 640x480 on the very same barefeats page you quoted! It's still doing pretty well in 1024x768, but isn't it ironic that the G4 excels especially in resolutions that are more CPU- than bandwidth-bound?
            • PowerPC G4 1000 2 1500 256 Mac OSX 7.5 [572] Textures 4 8 Markus Groeteke Jun 11, 2002

              (8 seconds)

              AthlonMP 1667 2 1024 256 Win XP 7.0 [b / 543] Textures 8 3 Luca [effector] Feb 11, 2002

              (3 seconds)

              "yes, Newtek optimized for both for Altivec and SSE2!"

              Those are your words. Those are the benchmarks pulled off your site. That is not even half as fast rendering the same frame.

              Again the farm economy rules that benchmark. More macines mean better performance. Frame rendering scales linearly with machine count. Which means price performance counts. Which means you can buy 3 dual athlon machines instead of a single G4 tower and not just double the G4s performance, but render frames 6 times as fast for a given cost.

              Have fun with quake at 640 x 480... I guess... [comcast.net]
              • [Textures Benchmark]

                Oh my, everyone chooses the benchmarks that suit his point best, right?
                Please tick what you consider more CPU-intensive:
                [ ] Raytrace
                [ ] Textures

                Point is: the Macs Performance is not nearly as bad as professional Mac-Flamers like yourself want to make people believe all the time!
                Thanks btw for the selective quoting, totally neglecting the point that one can (normally) not buy Dual Athlons or Xeons in the shops anywhere!

                Those are your words.

                No, actually not [newtek.com] (Notice the gains with both and then go on claiming SSE2 is 'superior'!). But go on believing that the Mac is totally inferior if that makes your penis seem bigger! ;-)

                Which means you can buy 3 dual athlon machines instead of a single G4 tower and not just double the G4s performance, but render frames 6 times as fast for a given cost.

                Taking the Dual GHz above as a Basis, please do tell where i would find a Dual Athlon for $833, which is a third of that Macs cost!
                Oh, and make sure it has GBit-Ethernet, 64bit-PCI, a DVD-burner, Indesign, a DVD-authoring software, DV-Videoediting-Software, an Office-package and loads of other goodies, too!.. Oh, damn, i forgot: Software doesn't count cause 1337oes like you get that for free anyway from the FTPs and the donkey!...
                Too bad that Software needs to be developed and the costs of that are a significant part of a Macs price, and too bad ignorants like you always fail to get the big picture and look at the machine as a whole!..

                btw: here's [apple.com] one of your ex-soulmates!.. Age should be roughly the same!
                • Well, if you're buying machines for a render farm (which is what he said they were for), they don't need a DVD-burner, Indesign, DVD-authoring software, video editing software, an office package, and loads of other goodies.

                  You need a system with a barebones install of your chosen OS + whatever you need for networking, and the rendering software you're using.

                  Every machine in a renderfarm will be headless (i.e. no keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached), except for maybe the machine in charge of queing render jobs and the like. Maybe.

                  As for finding a dual-athlon system for cheap, remember that machines to be used in renderfarms don't need expensive 3D accelerators, expensive sound cards, massive hard disks (or any, depending on the speed of your ethernet), expensive sound cards. All you need is 1)one or two fast processors, 2)as much RAM as you can afford to put in each box, and 3)a fast ethernet card (gigabit, whatever). And you most certainly do not need 64-bit PCI, or any PCI, since the computers making up your renderfarm will most likely be rackmount, and therefore have the network card integrated into the motherboard.
      • Amen. When you are right, you're right.
    • slow processor

      Come back here when your X86 can run Mac OS X at a decent speed. Oops, not enough registers...

      If you can't afford the whole computer, sure, why not cobble something together from parts.

      Sad really. Would you do the same thing to a Porsche?

      Hell if you didn't go and tell the whole world... [*snip*]

      I feel the exact same way towards Linux :)

      Hell, if I weren't for that darn desktop...

      Now reformat this into a nice PDF document, send it to me as a PowerPoint presentation, but first let's fire up a desktop publishing app... Oh.. umm.. erm. Quark, anyone?

  • It's hard to believe his aim of making a manly computer when he has a matching potpourri candle next to the computer.
  • Yo, Pudge: Keep an eye out for us for ANY benchmark numbers for serious PhotoShop, BLAST, Maya rendering jobs or the like on the gameboys' Rotten Apple. The Rotten paint job doesn't QUITE have me itching to pop an Alpha Screamer into my old Packard Bell TV console for a clock-speed shredding showdown....
    ("Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, at Irwindale Raceway, a Nitro-snorting funny box showdown between....)

    (Wonder what I can put those old ZX-81s in? Gotta dune buggy shell out back with a flamin' paint job)

    Oh, I got it: Strip 8 TiBooks and mount the boards in an ATX case, paint it Blue and....

    ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  • WTF? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Lurkingrue ( 521019 )
    So, someone gutted a nice ole' tower, and put an intel-like system inside...And this is news?

    Aside from the fact that its been seen here before [slashdot.org], I (a "mac fanatic" am much more likely to get upset by folks making their beautiful old Mac Pluses into aquariums.

    Can't worry about all the idiots let lose in the world...and anyway, this just means that Apple designed a very functional and beautiful case. As if we didn't know already.
  • So... like why is this important news? I don't think this would upset any mac user... it might make them laugh a bit that someone would throw away the expensive Mac innards for cheap PC stuff.

    :)
    Of course most newer PC's will outrun a Mac easily but I really dig the Mac experience... especially with OS X :).

    I don't even turn my dual MP 1600 system on anymore... it went two weeks before I decided to buy another mouse for it so I could run windows. UT2003 is out though so I may turn it on again today :)

  • sound of crackling plastic. (Score:4, Funny)

    by lateral ( 523650 ) <mark@compoundeye.co.PARISuk minus city> on Saturday September 14, 2002 @10:38AM (#4256839)
    Er... a 2.25GHz electric barbeque in a big plastic case, does anyone else smell flame grilled plastic?


    L

  • Does anyone know if they utilized the built-in airport antennas in the G4's handles?

    I always thought of the Quicksilver case as the first case to become a peripheral device as well - until it was released, a case was (speaking of Macs anyway), just a good looking dust cover to me.

    Read some C.S. Lewis. You'll thank yourself for it.
    • it's not a "Quicksilver" case. The case was introduced with the Yosemite PowerMac G3 in '98 and is known as "El Capitan". The cheapest way to get one would be with a 350Mhz Yosemite G3. The latest Apple towers have a superficially similar but heavily revised case.
      • The yosemite case does not have an airport antenna in the handles.

        I think the yikes case does, though I am not sure. Anyways, his point is valid in the he was referring to the G4 case in general.
  • This just reinforces my opinion that that case is the best case on earth. I cant understand why everyone's shouting for apple to change it, in my opinion if it aint broke dont fix it.

  • Looks like Apple Red to me. Red like the fruit, not like any computer Apple ever put out.

    Still, anyone who'd disembowel a G4 tower for Windows gaming ought to save themselves some time and money and get a console instead, since that's where the 'latest, greatest' games seem to be going to nowadays. If they have some patience, keep it as a Mac.

  • the only person cool enough to have a box like that is the guy that won quake con. he could own it just to piss people off... "i kicked yer ass on a girlie box, now what about that !!!! "
  • Why should we be upset? This is just another example of Windoze users being "Mac Wannabes." They never get the point - the good looks of Mac products are just icing on the cake. It's the OS that counts. No matter how good looking a PC may be, even if it's stuffed into a Mac case, it will still suck because it runs Windoze.
  • The funny thing is that no serious mac-user would ever stick his mobo in a boring beige box.

    That's the difference: PC-Users are desperate for some class, mac-users just have it.

    Dirk

  • if some mental f*ker did that to my performa 588 with its 33mhz LC040 and 40mb of S-L-O-W ram, i would cry. my eyes are watering already :(

  • At least make something useful! (Score:3, Funny)

    by bsartist ( 550317 ) on Saturday September 14, 2002 @07:33PM (#4258843) Homepage
    Man, if you absolutely must trash a perfectly good Mac, at least make something useful [wired.com] out of it.
  • Call me again when they power it with a Tesla coil.
  • You'd wreck a Mac, too, if your adolescence consisted of stuffing computer cases with neon lights, writing earnest odes to each passing mhz bump from Intel, and listing the names of who manufactured your case fans and hard drive in your sig. Eventually, they'll discover real sex.

  • If I compare my quicksilver G4 with this x86-casemod, the latter looks to me like a transvestite with a goatee and a low voice.

    Sorry guys, it just ain't "the real thing"

  • These guys need one of those awesome dual 1.25 Ghz G4's. Now that is speed. Why ruin a good Mac?
  • but they are onto something. Doubts about their own masculinity aside Apple's cases could be a lot more interesting. Apple already has the case design and ergonomics down pat, as someone who has worked with pretty much every UNIX system in existence and who has forgotten how many white box PCs he has built I have to say that the only box that even remotely approaches the Apple in terms of ease of maintenance is the HP LT6000R server, which is unfortunately a real piece of crap.

    But it would be cool if Apple would do some other colors. I like my silver Mac and I used to tote a clamshell iBook around but imagine how many boxes Apple could sell if they could come up with a means of allowing users to easily customize the case color. I'd love a black Mac with a bright red (or even neon-backlit) Apple logo on it. Or silver and navy blue, or black and green.

  • I've seen a similar mod before, and it was posted on /.

    Some kid decided that the handles on the G4 case would make a great LAN party box, easy to carry and such. Basically the G4 is just a funky ATX bx, as seen both in modding the G4 and building your own from shelf parts.
    • That "kid" would be me. :) ...Formerly of SLCentral.com, which is where the article is (currently) hosted. I'm going to be migrating it to private hosting shortly, though.

      Oh...and naturally, Kyle and Duckman offered no credit to those who had tread the path before.

      I wasn't the first, but I honestly thought I was at the time, and I credited the places where I got info from to help with the conversion. Kyle's seen my system before, as he linked to our article.

      Here's the URL if you're interested in reading it again. http://www.slcentral.com/articles/01/8/g4pc [slcentral.com]
  • "Now if it just did not look like a chick's box..."

    Man, it's one thing to associate your car with your masculinity, but your computer? It's dorky no matter which color your paint it. No chick is ever going to be impressed. She may make a comment like, "Wow, it's red! That's so cool!" but really she's thinking "Wow. Lots of time on his hands AND a strong sense of asthetics. Conclusion: gay dork." Why did they change it from grey to red? More color = more swishy, I say.
  • Is how does one get one of these cases cheaply? Its not really feasible to buy a mac just to gut it for the cute case..
    • To answer your quesition, I have no idea where you can get one *cheaply*. However, you should be able to order one at any Apple Authorized Service Center (AASC). Well, not any, but if you can find one that is cool, they'll order you a chassis/case assembly. Their cost will range from $117 for an early PCI Graphics G4 all the way up to $285.30 for a QuickSilver. (The chassis of the currently available G4s is $247.50). However, AASC markup will often drive that price much higher. Otherwise, you can just try eBay; they come up for auction there quite often.

      Mr. Spleen
      • cool. thanks for the info.. im thinking ebay is the way to go.. or possibly some mac shop that has converted theirs to racks, but most places that have the space just rack the original case on the side..
        • Yeah, eBay is probably the easiest way to go. I really doubt you'll find one from a mac shop that has converted to rack mounts. Another place you might try is a swap meet or yard sale. I once bought a supposedly dead iMac for $10 at a swap meet, and the only problem it had was a fried hard drive. A G4 that has some fatal problem but an undamaged case could probably be gotten for not too much in a similar situation.

          Mr. Spleen
  • Honey, junior is out of paper for his art class project, can you yank our signed monet off the wall and take off the frame, I'm sure the canvas will work fine for his project.

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