PC's faster than macs on FM8 network??

[T]

Hi all

I have just upgraded my entire network to work on FM8. It is now 10 pc's: Win XP, 1.8 GHz, 512 MB ram + 3 eMac's: OSX 700MHz processors,384 MB memory and a G4 server as the FM8 server.

the pc's are running much faster than the macs.. I thought it would be the other way round.. is it the ram? what is the most determining factor in the speed of a guest on FM8??

Edited April 20, 2006 by Guest

[Ender]

I don't know anything about PCs, but those eMacs are not very fast. I've had to work on some of our 700MHz eMacs lately, and was disappointed at how slow they are for just about anything. Our newer ones are much zippier.

[T]

what are the specs of your new ones?

[Ender]

1.42 GHz with 512MB RAM.

[Søren Dyhr]

Mac's are using a lot of processing power to look cute, for just some weeks ago did I download Ubunto's liveCD - just for the hell of it. What I noticed was that Firefox worked considerably faster in the linux version. Not that the Gnome interface Ubunto uses looks bad at all, but it's a little rougher.

I have some years ago trimmed the Win XP comming with Virtual PC and saw some clear improvements in the foot print it made in the processing power availiable for other stuff. But have never yet really felt myself suficiently clad for an endevour into OS X's darker corners.

The whole process is symptomatic for machinerys ageing, you only feel the desire to tune ...when you hardware is about to be worn out, by new tools unmodest demands for even more power than the previous versions required.

So the question is how thrifty or enviromental conscientious your organization allows you to be? You could start poking into these matters mentioned here:

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/performance.html

(make sure to investigate all the links from it!!)

But beware that similar thing can be done to pc's by following some of the perscriptions here:

http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm

The issue we all face when using an operating system default settings are aiming for as big a marked segment as possible, and by it making ...jack(s) of all trades, but master(s) of none ...lets say, consider settings optimized for games isn't hardly required for business use are they?? - although I've been hired to places where "Larry" had it's meaning for the staff's "wellfare".

--sd

[xochi]

Your PCs have nearly a 2.5 to 1 advantage in CPU speed, as well as 50% more RAM, so I'm not sure why you'd expect the Macs to be faster...

What version of OSX are you using? I think OSX is just barely usable with 512MB of RAM, so you might want to consider upgrading. 10.4 is way faster than 10.2 or 10.3. RAM is usually a good bang-for-the-buck if you are doing upgrades. However, a 700MHz G4 is never gonna be speedy.

I'd also recommend that you make sure your network is as fast as possible 100base-T or higher (not sure if the emacs can do 1000-baset), and that you have set ram caches on both server and clients high enough. Ram cache is your friend.

[mav]

I'm with xochi, you need to compare 'apples' with 'apples' . . .

Seriously, we are at the cross-roads for Apple Mac hardware, with the move to Intel. Tests have shown that the new MacTel boxes are faster then the same 'spec' hardware when running 'certain' tests (while running under Windows XP 'natively)

A true test would be to run the 'same' hardware, one with Windows XP, the other running Mac OS X with software running native on the Mac OS X platform, which won't be until FileMaker brings out a Universal bindary . . .

Until then, we are just comparing 'apples' with 'lemons' . . .

[xochi]

The Intel macs, when running native (universal binary) software, are blazingly fast.

If/when FileMaker releases UB versions of FM, I suspect the performance on these macs will be hard to beat, especially if you consider setting up an intel iMac with enough RAM and a fast drive.

[wjmartin]

What is the word on the street about FileMaker Universal Binary (ie: native INTEL version for the new INTEL Macs?) - have FM announced an intention or a target date?