How Fast Is Your Mac? Why It’s Not Important

Tony L said:

I just spent a lot of money for a 2009 Octo Mac Pro. It’s ridiculously expensive compared to my last seven or so Macs, but it is SO well-worth it for my needs.  I keep Activity Monitor’s floating CPU window open, showing me all sixteen virtual cores blazing away at nearly full capacity, 24/7. I do a lot of video-conversion. Handbrake is the king of using multiple cores simultaneously, especially the new 64-bit edition.
Those benchmarks at Barefeats and xlr8yourmac are like the car magazines featuring Ferraris and Lamborghinis. If you can’t afford or really need one, they’re basically porn for the envious. I used to be one of the envious, until I finally broke down and bought this newest tower. Surprisingly, it cost me about $1,000 less than my new Mac IIci, and that’s before adjusting for inflation!

mushroom_daddy said:

Well I think it’s the proverbial ‘horses for courses’. Yes if you’re doing a lot of CPU intensive video work then you’re going to want the fastest Mac, as soon as you can. However as the article implies, most people are Emailing, word processing, internet browsing etc and rarely use their machines at full capacity. For most users, other factors are more likely to be limiting than the CPU speed;  internet connection, hard-drive read-write etc.
I have several Macs, the latest a MacBook, but I also have 3 ageing PowerMacs; on my desk a Dual 1.42 G4 (MDD), and at a home a couple of upgraded B&W G3’s (1 with G3 1100MHz, the other an G4-650). The PowerMacs have all been maxede out with RAM and have high-spec and high-capacity hard-drives installed. Yes, the Intel MacBook is a bit faster at some things ... But they all work, allowing me (and the family) to work and play.
Of course I am now stuck with Tiger on the older B&W’s, and sooner or later that will become a deal-breaker. Come that day, I will buy the highest spec Mac(s) I can afford, knowing that it will provide many years of reliable computing service

Dave S said:

Actually, for different purposes, i run a recent MacBook Pro, a MacBook and a - now approaching 9 years old - 500 MHz Pismo (my preference for lugging on my back while cycling). Amazingly, for most purposes, my OS X 10.4.11 Pismo does just as well as either of the MacBooks. For many, using any Mac from this decade will do just fine.

Jared B. said:

Maybe I should stay out of this one but I can’t help myself. First I work with Final Cut Express that takes allot of power, along with Final I have to import through Imovie first because I don’t have a high definition camcorder yet so there is two applications that have to be open. Then working in Final Cut Express seems to call for a bunch of other applications to be open at the same time so now I have about eight things open in spaces including Itunes, got to have something to listen to people while I am creating stuff on my Mac.

Anyway even though it’s 1st generation and only has 4 processors in it, I have the Quad Mac Pro running 3 gigahertz for each of it’s processors. Each core has L4 cache (4 megabytes processor memory per core) 2 750 gig internal hard drives, 1 500 gig internal hard drive, 1 250 gig internal hard drive. 512 megabyte video card, ten gigs of ram and I could go higher, and last but not least my 23 inch h.d. cinema display.

I am not knocking anyone who has Macintosh models that are of less power but mine rocks! I think of it has a Porsche 911 twin turbo sitting at the stop light on the red line and every time that light turns green I am gone with the wind.

I could only go with the quad core or eight core Desktop Pro, trust me there is a huge difference! There is no way any Imac will come close to touching this.

So yes to me if you can go faster then do it!
Don’t forget to put your seatbelt on.

Steve P said:

I think I essentially agree! (Though, not being a ‘geek’, I can’t speak from knowledge.
I - and I suspect many others - just want a ‘responsive’ computer. One where - when I click an action, or new app., will take the action or change the app. in a second or so. (“instantaneously”) (Yes, actually opening a new app might take a bit longer.) No ‘hangs’ in Safari etc.
I suspect that these things are really more of a function of the OS than raw processor speed, but the little devil on my shoulder keeps telling me that I just need a faster computer. I suspect many people feel the same.
So here’s hoping that a ‘cleaned up’ Snow Leopard and multi-processing/multi-threading and the added processing power of the graphics chip bring me/us the computers we really want, not the wish for ever faster CPUs.
(But I might be wrong!  )