Hello,
Since you're on XP and you can run Max4.6, Max5 and Pd, benchmark the 3 with some kind of identical code and make your decision... In general I found pd more efficient and more reliable than Max but I usually run it on Linux (and Max doesn't even run on Linux) but the last time I run such benchmark was about 8 years ago. FWIW, last year I was involved in a project for which Max was employed and it took a lot of jumping through various hoops to get a reliable timing. But on the other hand, I would be jumping through different set of hoops in order to achieve something else in another part of the code if I were doing it in pd.
That said, there are certain "features" of Max that make programming a little more pleasant and possibly a little higher-level but comparing Pd and Max based on "user experience" is highly subjective and possibly irrelevant.
My demo versions of Max have expired long ago so I cannot do any benchmark patching but if anyone cares to develop some benchmark I will gladly run it on Max5 runtime, Max4.6 runtime, Max 4.5.5 runtime (note that runtimes are usually slightly more efficient, in my experience) and pd in windows XP and pd in linux (ubuntu 8.10 or even pure:dyne). All this on the same machine: 1.8GHz Intel Core Duo.
However, all this boils down to the fact that essentially any project can be done with either. It's just that certain programming problems are easier or more difficult to deal with using one or the other. I do not think that you will find major differences in performance (and yes, Max GUI also eats up CPU if overused!) it is just a matter of preferring one set of quirks to the other in addition to matter such as price tags and philosophical and or social affiliation which are relevant to some people these days.
Cheers
./MiS
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Daniel Bennett pavementsands@googlemail.com wrote:
There's been a lot of talk here of late about PD not being terribly well optimised in lots of ways - GUI drawing, and potentially other areas. I'd always assumed (naively) that being less impressive to look at, PD was probably quicker (in equivalent circumstances) than MAX.
As such, (and not having much cash for high powered PCs or software) when I came to pick between MAX and PD, I picked PD. Was I wrong in assuming that PD runs more efficiently than MAX (specifically on XP)? I'm not sure I can afford MAX anyway, so the question is pretty much academic, but I'm interested to know peoples' thoughts on the matter. Especially as I've recently come up against PD's issues with Midi inputs on XP (screws my shutdown every time I try to use midi inputs). Ta Dan -- Geometer Magazine http://geometer.org.uk
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