comparing performance, windows and mac?

Hi!

I just purchased my first Mac(!) - I've googling in order to find something to test the performance on my new computer and compare it to my windows pc, but it's seems a little hard to find.

So is there a program for doing that? At least 3dMark seems to be only for Windows, so that wont work - are there any alternatives that would work on Mac also? I specifically would like a program that runs both on Snow Leopard and Vista.

Thanks!

You can try Geekbench. Primate Labs Geekbench

Well, if you bought the Mac, why would you even want to compare performance? You must already think it's better. Solely based upon boot-up time, I can tell you that I can boot up and shut down the MacBook 8 times in a row in the time it takes my PC to boot up once. I already know it's better.

Not really sure what you are trying to achieve here.

Is your Mac hardware and your PC hardware exactly the same ?
Without knowing your PC and Mac setup, I can tell you they are different.
On top of that the OS is different.

It is a totally useless exercise but it might give you confidence that you made the right choice ... or not depending on the outcome

You can only compare Apples with Apples

Don't worry so much and enjoy your Mac !

Cheers ... McBie

While we all know you can't judge a computers performance based on boot/start/shutdown time , I too am curious as to the reason for your post.
You haven't mentioned what "your Mac" is yet you want to run 3DMarc agianst what may be a bottom line MacBook to compare what a gtx9800 ? Really I don't believe you are looking to compare but prove a point.
If I am wrong then I appoligize and say welcome. I just don't think I am.

McBie said:

You can only compare Apples with Apples

Don't worry so much and enjoy your Mac !

Cheers ... McBie

Click to expand...

Hah! That's good one

I'm simply interested in seeing how my new Mac compares to my PC in terms of 3D performance, not trying to find out which one is "better".

I want to know this, because I do quite a bit of modeling work on my free time and while I didn't buy the Mac for that purpose, it would be nice to know how fast exactly it is compared to my desktop PC.

Thanks for S.SubZero for the link, I will try that out.

wannabeartist said:

Hah! That's good one

I'm simply interested in seeing how my new Mac compares to my PC in terms of 3D performance, not trying to find out which one is "better".

I want to know this, because I do quite a bit of modeling work on my free time and while I didn't buy the Mac for that purpose, it would be nice to know how fast exactly it is compared to my desktop PC.

Thanks for S.SubZero for the link, I will try that out.

Click to expand...

Use it for a while. You'll get a pretty good feeling for how the Mac's speed compares with the PC's speed. Especially for tasks you do every day.

wannabeartist said:

Hah! That's good one

I'm simply interested in seeing how my new Mac compares to my PC in terms of 3D performance, not trying to find out which one is "better".

Click to expand...

Of course you're trying to see which one is "better" or faster. What else would be the point of doing the comparison??

If your new Mac is faster...then you'll be pleased...and if it's not faster, you won't be pleased.

Otherwise there really is no point to the pursuit!

- Nick

I use similar applications on each machine doing real work. It shows me which system is the fastest at any given task. I really don't trust benchmarks to show me which system does my work the quickest.

@pigoo3

Alright, let me rephrase that: I'm not trying to find out which is "better" as a computer, because they are used for different purposes.

I don't think I would have bought the most modest of the macbooks, if I wanted to use it for serious animation/modeling - no laptop is generally used for that. It has nothing do with the fact that other is a PC and the other a Mac.

In fact, the reason why I got interested in the performance difference in the first place was the fact that my Mac seems surprisingly fast considering it's graphics card.

@mbohn, dtravis7

I guess you are right, using the applications will show the difference if there's any. I just wanted a quick overview of what kind of performance to expect, if I install something like ZBrush on my Mac.

wannabeartist said:

In fact, the reason why I got interested in the performance difference in the first place was the fact that my Mac seems surprisingly fast considering it's graphics card.

Click to expand...

I agree with you...the low end MacBooks are pretty good! In fact I have a low end MacBook as part of my collection!

But asking about performance is really relative. You're really not going to know what your MacBook can do until you ask it to do it. So speculating on what it "might" be able to do for some yet unknown task or tasks in the future is really kind of futile.

If you're truly interested in what your MacBook can do...identify a task then do it. Or if you have a piece of software you want to run on it, check out the system requirements. If your MacBook meets the requirements...most likely it will perform them.

- Nick

wannabeartist said:

Hah! That's good one

I'm simply interested in seeing how my new Mac compares to my PC in terms of 3D performance, not trying to find out which one is "better".

Click to expand...

If you are using Geekbench, it will not tell you graphic performance as it only tests processes and memory performance.

Let's start with what video card is in each of your machines. Knowing the specific models should help us get started in figuring out which graphics card is faster.