06-18-2005, 12:30 AM

I currently own a pc and am interested in purchasing a Power Mac G5 2.7, I noticed that Apple (on line) only offers AGP cards and no PCI express graphics cards. Can someone be so kind to explain Apple's reasoning and will they eventually offer PCI Express graphics cards.

Last question, is there hardware and or software that allows work performed on an Apple to be read on a pc and vice a versa.
Thanks for any input.

06-18-2005, 12:45 AM

"It's new, but not better. Motherboards equiped with PCI Express sockets cost more. 16x PCI Express runs faster than 8X AGP only in theory. In the real world, AGP comes out faster almost every time. Graphic cards aren't nearly fast enough for AGP to become a bottleneck. PCI Express tends to be less efficient, and tasks the CPU more than AGP, especially when a big game is running, and the CPU is working at nearly 100%. Also, the last time I checked, the fastest graphics card aviliable is still AGP.

It's not a matter of paying a lot more for a little bit of speed increase. By buying PCI Express, you'll be paying a lot more for a slower machine." -cnet

06-18-2005, 02:12 AM

That review probably came just after Intel initially launched PCI-Express. The 915/925 chipsets were very disappointing. You'd be very hard pressed to find a recent PC review that claims AGP to be a better standard than PCI Express. While PCIe is a nice feature to have for upgrades, it is not a requirement. Apple systems tend stay with 'proven' technology more so than the 'latest & greatest.' The next couple revisions of graphics cards are going to have an AGP varient, so it's nothing to worry about.

06-18-2005, 06:36 AM

Originally Posted by Zane

Last question, is there hardware and or software that allows work performed on an Apple to be read on a pc and vice a versa.
Thanks for any input.

What "work" did you have in mind?

Both platforms use the same basic file formats and readers for those formats (such as RTF or PDF or DOC or JPG or MPG etc) are free for the most part.

The only format I can think of off the top of my head that may cause problems would be AAC for sound and iTunes will convert them to Mp3 if you ask it nicely.

Amen-Moses

06-18-2005, 09:31 AM

Any file you make on a PC can be read on a Mac. I thought the days of people thinking you cant read any files from a PC on a Mac were gone!

Now you canr run an application built for Windows on a Mac with OS X, some linuc apps for PC will work on a Mac, but most of the time have to be compiled again. Linux will do that for you if you know what your doing though.

Bottom line is this: If you write a report using Microsoft word 2004 on a Mac, take it to class and turn it in on disk or have professors like I did that want it mailed to them and he/she opens it on a Windows version of Word XP it will open just fine and look just the same there as on your machine.

06-18-2005, 11:18 AM

This is probably another reason Apple is going Intel. PCIe has better bandwidth than AGP, but few add-in cards really need this extra speed. PCIe will become a standard in the not-to-distant future, and my guess it that the first Mactel towers will include this technology. A quote from Intel's website regarding PCIe:

Video editing (especially high-definition) requires large amounts of data to be transferred. With PCI Express, this content can be created and modified in real-time with off-the-shelf hardware and software.

06-18-2005, 12:29 PM

You ever try and use a Pages file for anything other than pages? Nightmare...