[chrisnelis]

Hi.

I currently own a imac G4 700 but its feeling a bit slow now,

I've used a 867mhz Quicksilver and found this fast.

I'm looking to replace the imac with a G4 1.25 machine (single) and have a few questions:

1) Is the noise acceptable on the latest model I found the quicksilver a bit noisy.
2) Can the system take 2 DVI TFT panels out of the Box they both can accept VGA or DVI.
3) How fast does virtual PC run on this machine?

Thanks

Chris

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by chrisnelis:
Hi.

I currently own a imac G4 700 but its feeling a bit slow now,

I've used a 867mhz Quicksilver and found this fast.

I'm looking to replace the imac with a G4 1.25 machine (single) and have a few questions:

Speed is a subjective thing... Before you do change machine, try these:

Have you run your iMac with a totaly clean install of Panther? OS X does slow down over time, and often a clean install will render some real speed gains.

How much RAM do you have? It can't be overstated too much, how much difference filling a machine with RAM can make...

Originally posted by chrisnelis:
1) Is the noise acceptable on the latest model I found the quicksilver a bit noisy.

Well you have to take into account that the 1.25ghz is the daughter/son of the 'Wind Tunnel' Mirror Drive Doors machines!

Yes they have a quiter PSU fan and 80mm fan than the worst of the MDD, but they will still be pretty noisy. *Much* louder I suspect than an iMac, and also louder than a Quicksilver.

(I had a dual 800 Quicksilver which made a ridiculous noise. My Dual 867 MDD machine made more even with the modifications.)

Originally posted by chrisnelis:
2) Can the system take 2 DVI TFT panels out of the Box they both can accept VGA or DVI.

Nope, the GFx cards in the 1.25 machines are not 'twin view'.

Even if they were, you would still need to buy an ADC-->DVI/VGA if you are using Apple, or a DVI-->VGA connector for one of the screens to make them both work.

Your only option on the 1.25 would be to get a PCI graphics card to run the second display.

Originally posted by chrisnelis:
3) How fast does virtual PC run on this machine?

Not overly. VPC is as slow as anything on any G4 machine I have ever tried, seemingly mostly down to the fact that it won't use graphics acceleraton. It is all done on the processor. VPC will run fine, but just not ultra speedy.

I found that Windows 2000 with the minimum of eye candy provides for the best VPC experience. XP is hopeless.

Hope this helped,

Marc

[chrisnelis]

I've relooked over the specs of the G4 and Apple states it has a ATI Radeon 9000 Pro this seems to support 2 screens.

I can get the basic G5 with no superdrive for just over £200 more.

With regards to the speed thing, I've experienced large lags when typing in dreamweaver & application launchs are a bit slow I think this is mainly down to the slow hard disk in it.

Its got 348mb of ram, I don't want to add any more as each £ I spend on it it gets closer to a new machine, also I only have 40gb drive in the imac and could do with something larger.

[iCol]

The video card in the 1.25 has an ADC and a DVI port. It cannot support 2 x DVI's out of the box, you would have to get an ADC > DVI adapter

[The Placid Casual]

"Advanced options include 128 MB DDR SDRAM frame buffers. All feature both ADC and DVI ports with dual display support and include a DVI to VGA adapter."

My bad! Sorry!