I re read your post several times, so I was not really insulted, but I still had to put my 2 cents in.
The cluster example is really a cheap trick as it really has no effect anymore, but years ago it did. Small cluster sizes were more efficient, but if your image had 30 megs stored in small clusters on your hard drive, your hard drive had to work that much harder to upload the image since the hardrive had to read so many clusters to upload your image. This made the macs more efficient. Also as macs (used to) use scsi cards and disk, the information again was transferred from one component to another much faster.
Ron,
I'm not too sure this is entirely correct. You are right, small cluster sizes can result in decreased performance due to fragmentation, but it was
older PC operating systems that could end up with larger cluster sizes due to the limitations of the FAT16 system. A 16Bit FAT table can only address 65,536 clusters, so the larger the Hard Disk, the larger the cluster size. It isn't a "cheap trick", it's a fact. I don't know what you mean by it not having an effect anymore because the only thing that has changed since then (as far as clusters) is an increase in the number that can be addressed by a FAT32 operating system.
For as long as I can remember, PC processor clock speeds have always run faster than MAC processors. Processing 64bits at 8Mhz isn't going to be much faster than processing 16Bits at 33 or 66Mhz. I can't give exact performance in MIPS/FLOPS.
I am now convinced that your original assertion (which was what prompted me to reply) -"Macs are made for video and audio and music editing", is wrong. I built my first desktop-editing machine almost 10 years ago. It was a Pentium 2/266Mhz with 33Mhz FSB running Windows 95. The standard EIDE Drives (which were a significant improvement over the old IDE's) were PIO Mode 4 and had a Sustained Data Transfer Rate of 16.7 MB/s. I could capture video with about a 5:1 compression which is 7MB/s and I didn't get any dropped frames. The new Ultra DMA drives are much faster, comparable to SCSI.
Below are excerpts from different articles on the web (if you are interested). I'm sure after reading them you will agree that cluster sizes have little (if anything) to do with what a machine is made to do. As I said earlier, it's all about 0's and 1's and how fast a computer can process them irrespective of what they constitute.
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Everything in the digital world is measured in bits and bytes. Bits are a measurement of different components and functions depending on what is being referenced. Following are the most common. See binary values.
CPUThe size of the computer's internal registers. This is the computer's "word" size, which is the amount of data the CPU can compute at the same time. Theoretically, if the clock rates were the same (800MHz, 1GHz, 2GHz, etc.) and the basic architectures were equal, a 32-bit computer would work twice as fast internally as a 16-bit computer. In practice, 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit architectures are rarely identical to each other even from the same manufacturer. Thus, a 64-bit computer may be (internally) less than twice as fast or more than twice as fast as a 32-bit computer.
In order to take advantage of a CPU with larger words, operating systems and applications must be recompiled with a compiler that supports the larger word size. If not, the older software may actually run slower in the bigger CPU, but this is totally dependent on the mix of instructions used in the program.
Most important, this measurement does not result in twice as much actual work being done for the user, as the computer's cache size and bus and disk speeds are all part of the performance equation.
Capable of addressing an astronomical 18 billion GB, or 18 exabytes, of memory, 64-bit integers also accelerate complex mathematical calculations through their ability to perform calculations directly on 64-bit numbers, as well as performing multiple operations on smaller numbers within a single CPU cycle (see Resources for the definition of exabyte). The impact of 64-bit processing is substantial: the time it takes to render a 3D model can be reduced dramatically, freeing up computing resources, compressing diagnostic timeframes, and enabling you to work more efficiently.
This processing power, which used to be available only on high-end servers for complex enterprise applications like real-time business intelligence, is now available on the desktop. Small businesses and home PC users can perform video editing and rendering tasks that were the stuff of dreams a decade ago. Just as 32-bit processing became commonplace in desktops and entry-level servers, so 64-bit processing is poised to become more and more ubiquitous over the next few years. From a theoretical feature bragged up in trade magazines, to a reasonably cost-effective choice for high-end embedded systems, 64-bit processing has come a long way.
System BusThe size of the computer's system bus (frontside bus), which is the pathway over which data are transferred between memory and the CPU and between memory and the peripheral devices. If the bus clock rates are equal, a 32-bit bus transfers data twice as fast as a 16-bit bus.
Address BusThe size of the address bus, which determines how much memory the CPU can address directly. Each bit doubles the number, for example, 20 bits addresses 1 megabyte (MB); 24 bits addresses 16 megabytes (MB); 32 bits addresses 4 gigabytes (GB). See binary values.
Color DepthThe number of colors that can be displayed at one time. This is called "bit depth," "color depth" and "pixel depth." Unless some of the memory is used for cursor or sprite movement, an 8-bit display adapter generates 256 colors; 16-bit, 64K colors; 24-bit, 16.8 million colors. See alpha channel and bit depth.
Bit specifications, such as 64-bit and 128-bit, refer to the display adapter's architecture, which affects speed, not the number of colors. See 64-bit graphics accelerator and 128-bit graphics accelerator.
Sound SampleThe quality of sound based on the number of bits in the samples taken. A 16-bit sample yields a number with 65,536 increments compared to 256 in an 8-bit sample. See 8-bit sample and 16-bit sample.
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In personal computer storage technology, a cluster is the logical unit of file storage on a hard disk; it's managed by the computer's operating system. Any file stored on a hard disk takes up one or more clusters of storage. A file's clusters can be scattered among different locations on the hard disk. The clusters associated with a file are kept track of in the hard disk's file allocation table (FAT). When you read a file, the entire file is obtained for you and you aren't aware of the clusters it is stored in.
Since a cluster is a logical rather than a physical unit (it's not built into the hard disk itself), the size of a cluster can be varied. The maximum number of clusters on a hard disk depends on the size of a FAT table entry. Beginning with DOS 4.0, the FAT entries were 16 bits in length, allowing for a maximum of 65,536 clusters. Beginnning with the Windows 95 OSR2 service release, a 32-bit FAT entry is supported, allowing an entry to address enough clusters to support up to two terabytes of data (assuming the hard disk is that large!).
The tradeoff in cluster size is that even the smallest file (and even a directory itself) takes up the entire cluster. Thus, a 10-byte file will take up 2,048 bytes if that's the cluster size. In fact, many operating systems set the cluster size default at 4,096 or 8,192 bytes. Until the file allocation table support in Windows 95 OSR2, the largest size hard disk that could be supported in a single partition was 512 megabytes. Larger hard disks could be divided into up to four partitions, each with a FAT capable of supporting 512 megabytes of clusters.
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Until Windows 95 OSR2 (OEM Release 2), DOS and Windows file allocation table entries were 16 bits in length, limiting hard disk size to 128 megabytes, assuming a 2,048 size cluster. Up to 512 megabyte support is possible assuming a cluster size of 8,192 but at the cost of using clusters inefficiently. DOS 5.0 and later versions provide for support of hard disks up to two gigabytes with the 16-bit FAT entry limit by supporting separate FATs for up to four partitions.
With 32-bit FAT entry (FAT32) support in Windows 95 OSR2, the largest size hard disk that can be supported is two terabytes! However, personal computer users are more likely to take advantage of FAT32 with 5 or 10 gigabyte drives.
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