[curtlivingston]

I have been comfortably using a G4/800 640mb ibook to run a 19" 1600x1200@85hz monitor. No performance issues for what i do (graphics, photoshop).

But now i have gone and bought one of those dell 24" lcds, in preparation for upgrading to a mac mini G4/1.42 1gb, and now photoshop is slow. very slow.

my ibook has the ati radeon 32mb 9200 mobility (AGP)
the mini will have the ati radeon 32mb 9200 (AGPx4)
and i won't have to run the ibook screen from it (although it is only at 640x480 256 colours)

so, do you think i can regain my former performance, or increase it slightly with the mini?

[ghporter]

RAM, RAM, RAM. Get the Mini with ALL THE RAM YOU CAN. It ain't the machine, it's what you're running that slows things down, so the more RAM you have the better. It maxes out at 1GB, and considering how deep in the innards of the Mini that RAM is, you'll probably want to have it equipped that way from the begining.

[osxrules]

I had my Mac Mini running at 1920x1440 and it seemed to run OK but you will likely get jitter on Dashboard and Expose. I run it on 1280x1024 @ 85Hz normally.

Ram is certainly the key to a good Mini experience and I got 1 GB from the start.

Be very wary that the Mini graphics card is low end and only 32MB. This makes a lot of things run slowly. I don't know if your ibook has a 2x AGP or 4x but my old ibook G3 had 2x and my Mini has 4x so that might help plus as you say not rendering the Mini display too.

32MB is not that good for high resolution displays so I would seriously think twice about getting a Mini to run the 24". The Mini is a great machine don't get me wrong but 32MB VRam is bad.

The only alternative on budget is really a G4 tower with a fast graphics card but as you use Photoshop, you'll need the processor speed.

[curtlivingston]

Thanks for the replies.
I bit the bullet and bought the mini, with 1gb ram.
There is no other mac option out there.
used g4 towers with half the processor speed cost as much,
and the g5 costs too much.
and i don't want a screen built in.

I am very pleased with the mini's performance.
It is so much faster and smoother than the ibook.
i am running it off an external fw drive (as i did the ibook).
video performance is much better.
the flurry screensaver finally works with maximum streams.
it is beautiful.


anyone in the market for a mac, and used to <1ghz performance
and has very little money should buy this thing.
performance is subjective, and dependant on your use.
don't let the mini bashers get you down.
use an external boot drive.
get 1gb ram.
happy.