Comparing the performance of a Mac to the performance of a PC is difficult at best.

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This article has been revised with updated information since it originally ran. The original version featured a benchmark showdown between a 733MHz Macintosh G4 and a 1.8GHz Windows PC.

Benchmark testing of personal computers is an art form -- to us geeks anyway. To properly compare benchmark results between two competing systems, the rule of thumb is that both systems should have as much in common as possible. Of these common factors, the operating system is the most important. The OS is the soul of any computer and trying to compare systems that use different OSs is dubious at best.

With that disclaimer out of the way, TechTV Labs set out to benchmark the newest from Apple and Intel. We tested Apple's 867MHz Macintosh G4 against our lab's test box equipped with Intel's latest processor, the 2.0-GHz Pentium 4 paired with their new 850 chip set. Benchmarking a computer requires a stable application or suite of applications that return consistent and repeatable results. For PCs, many benchmarking applications are available to test the performance of specific components as well as the overall system under a variety of synthetic conditions and user simulations. In contrast, Apple users are having a difficult time finding updated benchmarking applications to compare their systems with one another.

Herein lies the main problem of benchmarking a Mac against a PC (aside from the differing OS issue): The platforms share almost no common applications, let alone one suitable for benchmark comparison. This limitation led us to pick Adobe's Photoshop 6 and id software's Quake III time demos as the common application tests considering the updates and plug-ins available for both Mac and PC platforms.

Our reasoning for choosing Adobe was that Apple remains one of the strongest content-creation platforms currently available to businesses and consumers. Ask video or graphics professionals what platform they run their software on, and the answer is usually Apple. Let the race begin.

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