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jukepiss · Jan 24, 2003, 02:45 PM

I have a Gigabit Ethernet G4 with dual 450's and I wanted to upgrade. I was wondering what people think would be a better upgrade, Dual 800's or a Single 1.2 G4. They cost about the same, $800. I use my Mac for mostly web/graphics/3D work. Thanks for any input.

TimmyDee51 · Jan 24, 2003, 03:23 PM

I have a dual 867 right now and I have to say I love it. If you were a gamer, I'd say go for the single 1.2, but since you are doing graphics work, I might lean towards the dual 800. Photoshop is certainly MP aware, so that will help the speed of a lot of filters and other processes. Also, I think dual processors might help system responsiveness if you have something cranking away in the background. Just my 2�.

Mac Zealot · Jan 24, 2003, 03:57 PM

Dual 800.
Single 1.2 is the same speed, lacks the bandwidth advantage.

Most games do support MP

D'Espice · Jan 24, 2003, 04:45 PM

Single 1.2 because Dual 800 with a 100 MHz bus is like a Porsche with wooden wheels.

a2daj · Jan 25, 2003, 12:34 AM

Once you go dual, you'll never go back, so go for the dual 800, or save a few more clams and go for the dual 1.2s. Maybe the price will drop once new Power Macs are announced.

BurpetheadX · Jan 25, 2003, 12:10 PM

Hey, I'll trade ya your Dual 450 for some cash, I need to upgrade my single 533. lemme know.

CubieDubbie · Jan 25, 2003, 02:34 PM

I say also go for the Dual. OSX and everything in OSX is Dual aware. Though you have a 100 mhz. bus I believe you still should see a big difference in your various programs using the Dual. I have a Dual 867 and love it. Let us know what you decide.

jukepiss · Jan 25, 2003, 02:51 PM

I think for now, I'm going to wait a bit to see if new Powermacs are going to be released. If so, hopefully the prices for the upgrades will go down and if the dual 1 gigs drop below $1000 I might consider those instead. Running dual 450's isn't too bad. I guess I've just been stuck at this speed for 2 years now and I'm hungry for more speed.

joe · Jan 25, 2003, 09:08 PM

Originally posted by jukepiss:
I was wondering what people think would be a better upgrade, Dual 800's or a Single 1.2 G4. They cost about the same, $800. I use my Mac for mostly web/graphics/3D work. Thanks for any input.

Chances are good that your graphics and 3D programs can get a major boost from dual processors. Check the documentation or read me files for your programs and look for SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing) or Dual processor support. If so, the dual 800 would be a much better choice than the 1GHz.

2 corrections:
1 - Most games do NOT support dual processors (SMP). Those that do are usually limited to Multi-Player mode (MP). Quake3 and Giants are notable exceptions.
2 - Dual processors are a major boost for SMP apps even on a 100Mhz bus. At least they were for me. In fact, Quake3 ran faster on my previous dual 500 than it does now on my single 1GHz (103fps vs 83fps). SMP rulz! Now if only we could get more SMP support for consumer apps (professional apps have excellent SMP support)........joe

CheesePuff · Jan 25, 2003, 09:55 PM

Originally posted by BurpetheadX:
Hey, I'll trade ya your Dual 450 for some cash, I need to upgrade my single 533. lemme know.

Don't sell your 533 MHz! It has a faster system bus speed and faster PC133 RAM.

This way if you purchase the top of the line PowerLogix Dual 1.2 GHz... it will be near the speed of the real Dual 1.25 GHz machine. (167 MHz bus and DDR RAM don't do much for it).

Also if you want to just speed it up a little, get a Quartz Extreme compatible video card. If you play games and want something real nice, MacWarehouse has the ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64 MB DDR video RAM for about $155.

Also make sure you have at least 512 MB RAM or more. RAM is cheap... max it out at 1.5 GB.

tgrundke · Jan 25, 2003, 11:13 PM

Unless you absolutely *positively* need a new Macintosh today to handle your work, I say **wait**.

Apple's current PowerMac offerings are some of the worst price/performance machines that the company has ever released.

If you really need the speed and other improvements now, get the hardware you need. But if you can hold off for another 3-6 months, I strongly recommend doing so.

As a consultant, I have most of my Apple clients in a holding pattern until the desktop offerings improve significantly.

Originally posted by jukepiss:
I have a Gigabit Ethernet G4 with dual 450's and I wanted to upgrade. I was wondering what people think would be a better upgrade, Dual 800's or a Single 1.2 G4. They cost about the same, $800. I use my Mac for mostly web/graphics/3D work. Thanks for any input.

sworthy · Jan 25, 2003, 11:26 PM

Originally posted by tgrundke:
As a consultant, I have most of my Apple clients in a holding pattern until the desktop offerings improve significantly.

How do you get one of those jobs?

a2daj · Jan 26, 2003, 12:48 AM

Even if a game doesn't explicitly support SMP, the sound processing can usually be offloaded to another processor if available, which can, in some cases, help a bunch with game performance.

galarneau · Jan 26, 2003, 02:19 AM

It also depends on your work habits. If you tend to use one app at a time, maybe a faster single processor machine would be more appropriate.

For me, I'm always multitasking. I usually have multiple apps running, and I'm swtiching back and forth between them. So, for a multitasker like me, a dual would make the user experience smoother.

kulverse · Jan 26, 2003, 08:03 AM

Originally posted by jukepiss:
I have a Gigabit Ethernet G4 with dual 450's and I wanted to upgrade. I was wondering what people think would be a better upgrade, Dual 800's or a Single 1.2 G4. They cost about the same, $800. I use my Mac for mostly web/graphics/3D work. Thanks for any input.

I have the same computer as you. I opted for the dual 800 upgrade from PowerLogix in October and have not looked back. Its incredible!

I'm a poweruser. I do freelance graphic design at home and regularly have large PhotoShop files, Illustrator and Quark files(in classic) open and working at the same time. Switching between them often. After upgrading to the dual 800, my production increased big time! the Rainbow curser is truely rare now. I also slapped a Radeon 8500 in there for good measure. It's a nice machine now (again).

I's suggest the Dual 800 PowerLogix 100%. On your computer you don't need the L3 cache software. Your Mac automaticly detects it. Also Wake on Sleep has not been an issue with our model either. To be honest...I have not had a single problem with the upgrade.

kulverse · Jan 26, 2003, 08:04 AM

Originally posted by BurpetheadX:
Hey, I'll trade ya your Dual 450 for some cash, I need to upgrade my single 533. lemme know.

I still have my Dual 450 card sitting here. lemme know.

Aim: kulverse

joe · Jan 27, 2003, 07:19 AM

Originally posted by a2daj:
Even if a game doesn't explicitly support SMP, the sound processing can usually be offloaded to another processor if available, which can, in some cases, help a bunch with game performance.

I hadn't noticed that before, but maybe I don't own games with that feature (yet)? Could you mention which games do this (IE process sound on the 2nd cpu without SMP support)? That sounds like software I'd very much like to purchase. thanx.....joe

kevinkwasnicki · Jan 27, 2003, 08:31 PM

I had the 1Ghz from powerlogix and it ran good, there was a sleep problem though, I upgrade to the dual 800 MHz and OSX runs better, it feels fast and no hesitations as I did see with the 1GHz. And no sleep problem.

You can't put a dual 450 MHz in a 533MHz system they have different bus system