Why PC World's 64-bit test was skewed, and why it wasn't

Hey,

I have to say, I just read the letters from the (presumed) rabid Apple fans (as I once was, but I did like the ads and switched... to AMD) and I noticed the following. The first letter seemed to be nit-picking the graphics card, the different apps used, and the OS. In response to that: I assume that PCWorld used what was available for testing, and from my time as an Apple fan (pre-AGP) there wasn't much worth anything for graphics cards. Secondly, they used what was available. If Premiere runs in classic mode then blame Apple for the big OS change, or blame Adobe for not releasing it for OS X. Word may be worlds apart on the two platforms, but it does the same function, so I'd accept it as a valid result. And as for waiting for Panther, it's not out yet, so it's moot to complain about that. Tell them to retest when Panther's out, but I doubt it will change much.

As for the second letter, this seems to be all complaining about something that doesn't really matter. 40FPS or so doesn't mean much when you're talking about numbers well about 200. I personally use VSYNC in Q3A otherwise I get lots of jitter and half frames, so I see no reason for FPS beyond 120, since most monitors seem to run around 85Hz for 1024x768.

I admit if I hadn't seen the light (which turned out to be a giant neon AMD sign), I would probably have made the same arguments, and I also admit that I have an AMD bias, but you can't test with what you don't have. If Premiere doesn't run natively in OS X, then you can't test it running native, that's what you have. If an OS isn't released yet then you can't (legally, Panther has been floating around BitTorrent for quite some time) test it using that OS. I can't wait for UT2k4 benchmarks to arise. 64-bit game with a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit chip. I wondering if the game will run 64-bit on the G5, maybe that's something you can find out for us. That would be quite a show down.

In closing: benchmarks suck, the loser always finds flaws (in reference to my complaints about the Apple G5 Spec benches), all I know is as soon as the Socket 939 FX's are out for me to buy I'm going through a complete system overhaul.

--Ryan Powers
(Ex-Rabid Apple Fan, Born Again Rabid AMD Fan, Either way, I hate Intel)

Subject: apple quake smp

Guys,

In regards to the Apple game "expert" and the following comments.

"The scores they point use a crippled version of Quake 3 for the Mac instead of the most current build that takes advantage of all sorts of things such as multiprocessor awareness -- which is pretty important when you are testing the multiprocessor G5."

SMP support in Quake Arena was broken after version 3.17. It was not fixed, and this is straight from Carmack's mouth at Quakecon. Wouldn't SMP also benefit the dual Opteron system? There were no gamers with Macs at Quakecon. Why not?

Thanks,

Chris Tom, AMDZone.com

Subject: Regarding the apple MAC compainer about the Athlon 64

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12140 Just to get the record straight, I really don't see what this poor old fellow is griping about.

I refer you to the Airline and toaster jokes, I may have missed some of the finer points/details of the jokes but essentially they are:
a)MS Windows Airlines:
The flight is very expensive, but the checkin desk is fabulous and glitzy, everyone makes you feel great, the baggage checkin is painless, there is no queueing, you get straight on the plane. The plane taxes down the run way and takes off, no problems at all, then suddenly 10 minutes into the flight the plane explodes with no warning and for no apparent reason and everyone is dead.

b)Unix/Linux Airlines:
Everyone turns up at the airport and brings piece an aeroplane with them, they all sit around on the tarmac and argue about what the plane should do and look like, eventually they manage to build 5 or six different planes, they call them all the same name, but they do fly and the customers all *believed* they got to their destinations.

c)MAC Airlines
The customers arrive at the airport, checkin desk is very funky and modern in its design, with wacky curves and great colour schemes - a designers dream. The customers get on the plane which simply taxes up and down for hours on the runway without actually going anywhere. Having never experienced a proper airline/aeroplane trip, the MAC users think this is all there is to air travel and remain blissfully happy and blissfully unaware of the fact they are going nowhere.

Or perhaps the toaster Joke:

a)Windows toaster:
The windows toaster looks great, but sometime it just won't make toast, it either comes out burnt or raw, you have to unplug the toaster and plug it back in again, each time you want to try and make some toast. For every loaf of bread you buy you are forced to buy a new toaster to go with it.

b)Linux toaster.
The linux toaster looks awful, it has wires crimped together hanging out of it, the first time you make toast with it it burns it, the next time its raw, you read the man pages and invoke the command line, toast -verbose -breadsize 50132 -eject -o z3321 > /dev/toast | more and it makes perfect toast ever after.

c)MAC toaster
The MAC toaster has no settings or controls, it looks very stylish, but will only accept proprietry size bread which can only be bought from Apple main dealers at 10 times the price of regular bread. The toast is fine except that the size of the bread is so odd, you can't actually eat the toast it produces, although it does look good.

Regards

Pete

Subject: Photoshop is a fair test with a G5?????

OMG, I just about fell over reading that! Photoshop is the most unfair app to bench a G5 - for goodness sake, it's compiled specifiically for the PowerPC chip! And even then, the G5 can't keep up. Holy Crap - if Photochop was redesigned to run properly on x86 then the G5 would be standing in a corner looking very sheepish indeed!

Kind regards,

Chris Davies

Subject: Did anybody note that the test was rigged?

1) The 3 fastest computers were running 256MB Video Cards, while the G5 Mac was running a 128MB Card. Comparing ANYTHING involving the Video card would be like comparing a Corolla to a BMW.

2) They do not say which version of Mac OS X they are using 10.2.7, 10.2.8, or Panther 10.3. PC Ragazines (spelling intentional) do this everytime Apple preps a new OS launch. They flooded their pages with XP vs 10.1 articles right before 10.2 (Jaguar) came out. This despite, or because of, reported major increases in responsiveness and speed.

3) Tested PCs had a completely different HD setup.

4) Which version of XP was being run, the 64-bit beta or 32-bit XP?

5) Show the PRICE of the configured systems.

6) Show us if these are actually units for sale, not for sale "someday". I can get in my car and buy a G5 TODAY at my local Apple Store.

7) Do you actually think that a rag called PC anything (PC Magazine) is going to run a "fair & balanced" test?

8) Sounds like a cooked-up steaming pile of FUD Bullsh*t, designed to give pre-determined results to sell magazines.

David Gregory

Subject: news alert to "Inquirer staff"

With regard to: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12130

You simply aped something here and that makes you look worse than you are.

A. Adobe Premeire has not been developed for the Mac since the Classic OS 9 was shipping over two years ago.

B. The G5 seems to beat the Athlon in the Photoshop tests.

C. What, Word doesn't run fast enough for you? Really? Auto-summarize?

D. Quake -- whatever. I have seen higher numbers posted by individual testers on various game boards.

This is a sham and as excited as I am for the Athlon64 you give nothing of value and in fact take some away.

Robert

SUBJECT: Seven New Vole Holes stuffed with string and sealing wax

So what's the running number for their patches this year? :)

OTOH it's kind of humorous as earlier this year they or their shills was making a todo about Linux having more patches than they. I had a feeling their "glory" was to be short lived.

I think it will be a long time before this slows to a trickle. Microsoft has either ignored or put on the back burner security far to long.

Registered Linux user 193414

Subject: Re: Seven New Vole Holes stuffed with string and sealing wax

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12149

Hey! How long has Windows 98 not been supported? Didn't I run Win Update on it last week?

Hmm. The date "October 15th" (2002) comes up on the product extinction road map*, so... if Win 98 support is really gone, then it's right before they announce the discovery of a stack of vulnerabilities. Did you guys notice that?

Robert Carnegie *

Subject: Bill Gates light baulb joke from MS

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12142

There was a joke at Microsoft for year about how many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb! The answer was 5. 1 to stand on the table and screw it in and 4 to sit around the table, drinking beer and cheer him on. Then the joke took some real turns over the years. It became none. Just ask Bill Gates he's been working in the dark for years. Then there was a power struggle inside the company. Some of the engineers asked him at a meeting if he was going to arm wrestle for the company. Then he quit as CEO. Now the jokes are getting into bigger and bigger number of beer drinkers and not too much light in the company now. You can see a picture of Gates that they took off his website when they found out what he was doing here.

http://www.geocities.com/redmondrose/Moonlighting.htm

Buffett know about this thing... I told Gates in an e-mail to buy his wife a monkey chain so he could dance around more appropriately at her bizarre social meeting and charitable endeavors. She is the typical nerd nut case mate. :-) I take shots at him all the time just to keep her off his back. So here is the real skinny on the longhorn project...

http://www.geocites.com/remondrose/longhorn1.htm

Microsoft is no longer a development company. They are a marketing monster and he knows that all too well. His most funny remark in reference to the light bulb joke was to comment about the 7,000 engineers working on the Windows development team. Very few are doing anything productive. The mostly play soccer and basket ball and drink expresso instead and have meetings about more meetings and get caught in the nightmare of Microsoft Office which Gates and Ballmer hate with a passion. The should both quit and let Jeffy Raikes handle this mess. He is the one who made it!

Love to all the children,

Redmond Rose~

Subject: Re: Microsoft Longhorn to cost as much as man on moon project, Gates says

Well, let me be the 137th to say there better be some kind of discount scheme, or I might have to wait out this upgrade.

That aside, I presume there's a list somewhere of Dollar Value of Major Civil Projects. BBC TV tonight has a sort of re-enactment of the Hoover Dam. Last week, the Panama Canal, which I hadn't appreciated to be a U.S. military project /and/ a lesson in disease control. The Statue of Liberty is on the Expensive List, although not on the BBC's. There's a price tag on the Second World War.

The other common factors in the NASA moon programme include it taking a very long time to deliver, not being terrifically popular after delivery once the initial hype and hoopla were all over, being commissioned by the most beautiful, universally loved, powerful, sex-addicted man in America, and sitting in the middle of a set of measures to drive back the encroachment of 'Communism'.

Robert Carnegie

Subject: Never mind the A.I., where's the I?

In response to the INQUIRER'S article "Never mind the A.I., where's the I?"

I play quite a lot of Americas' Army (AA) and I can kinda feel from the writers' point of view. With that in mind, I have to argue against with my own humble opinion.

The best guys I've played on AA are all around the 14 year old region, and bear in mind that most stereotype FPS gamers aren't particularly bright either. The scariest thing is that these guys will be our fighter pilots and tank gunners of tomorrow (if there are any).

I vaguely remember a lead developer from Lionheart software (Black & White) saying that the A.I will have to improve, because there are only so many polygons you can throw at a model before the graphics stop improving. If things stop improving what else is there to sell? We ran out of original storylines eons ago.

I myself have noticed a vast increase of donkeys on the web. Sadly though I believe that we Have Microsoft to thank for that. Bring a Pc into every home? Bring another muppet on the web more like. Instead of doing something so drastic as trying to make kids learn etiquette; why don't we just lock out the AOL network? Would we miss em? Huh ? huh?

If you've ever had the (miss)fortune to join mature chatrooms on AOL, you will understand that most of these slang slingers are over 30 and have the combined maturity on the web as their children.

THIS TRANSLA2R WIL TAEK WUT U WRIET IN IT AND TURN IT IN2 TEH MAN3R A 12 Y3AR OLD AOL3R WUD WRIET IT1!!!1111 WTF TYP3 IN WUT U WANT TRANSLAETD AND TH3N CLIK DA BUTON111!!!1 OMG WTF LOL KEP THIS UTIL HANDY FOR TOKNG 2 UR 14 Y3AR OLD L33T WHO IS COVERTLY PLANNG ON HAKNG PUNKBUSTERS CH3AT PROTECTION SO HA CAN TEM KIL WIT NADES WITHOUT LOSNG HONOR

http://ssshotaru.homestead.com/files/aolertranslator.html

Ahh well, it amused me. But then I'm a FPS person aren't I? No, not really. I play AA because my ping is pretty low even on dialup. Did I mention how great it is to stalk through smoke nades while your buddies are being sniped right left and centre over a 300ft drop? - m203 the east defence tower window soldier ! hooo ah!!

OTOH... what's so unreal about someone team-killing half your guys with a miss-positioned frag in the afore mentioned smoke? Nothing, isn't that what Americas' Army is all about?? *snicker*

Ian.

That's quite enough letters now, Ed. µ