The Logic Off Topic list

Colin Miller wrote:
>> Motorola makes only a fraction of its revenue from chips for Macs whereas
>> AMD and Intel are at it Hammer and tongs racing ahead with development on
>> X86 with Via, Transmeta and Nvidia in the equation somewhere too. That is
>> why the 680xO series had to be abandoned and the rate of development of
>> PowerPC has been embarassing over the last few years -- PowerPC kicked x86
>> butt for years in the mid 90s but that is all over now baby blue  -- the R
>> and D funding just isn't there for non x86 processors -- Sun, HP,IBM, DEC
>> -- all have/are falling by the wayside.
>
>I have an old 400Mhz Mac and a 1.5Ghz PC. While I am sure diagnostic software 
>would show the PC has greater speed advantages, usability wise, I can detect 
>no speed difference between the two. 

Not with one processor sitting in each palm anyway. ;-)

Try running instances of plugins (eg compressors -- I use a lot of them) or
synths/samplers in Logic. See which machine chokes first -- even die hard
Mac users have swapped platforms over this difference. 

BTW a 1.5 Ghz P4 (esp with SDRAM) is probably about the worst Intel machine
clock for clock in 10 years. 2Ghz+ Northwood P4s on RDRAM or DDR is a
different story.  G4 was stuck on 500 MHz for 18 months not to mention the
50Mhz downgrade after the announcements of the first machines. Motorola has
not been able to deliver adequately on performance scaling for the  G4 --
you can bet Jobs has a plan B.

Regards,
M