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Zatt · Oct 20, 2003, 06:58 PM

Hello,

I'm new to the list and haven't had the pleasure of owning my own Mac as of yet. (I'm envious of my father's Mac and also my friend's 17"PB with all the trimmings.) I'm going to buy a 15" PB and have worked with and tweeked the pricing as much as I'm able to for the best deal.

After all was said and done, I could have a 15"PB with a combo-drive, 60G hard drive, 512M RAM, backlit keyboard and either a 1GHz G4 or a 1.25GHz G4. The difference would be about $185.00 after local govt. discounts and small tweaks like buying extra RAM from another company for less money, etc.

Question: is a 1.25 GHz G4 $185.00 better than the 1GHz G4? What kind of performance increase will I see in the 1.25GHz over the other?

Thanks in advance,
Zatt

RGray02 · Oct 20, 2003, 07:33 PM

dude, this is a no brainer. get the 1.25.

I've got the 1Ghz, and I only wish I had enough to get the 1.25. for 185 more, you are getting a steal. The 1.25 performs about 20% faster on most things.

Do it, now. For me the price difference was 500.

newmanium · Oct 20, 2003, 07:34 PM

I've actually ordered my 15" PB recently and opted to go with the 1.25Ghz model. I was mainly thinking about paying the extra now for the extra processing power rather than regretting it later. I found this one linke from macworld detailing that the 1.25Ghz is just a hair faster than the 1Ghz model (in terms of seconds). But if I had the choice I would probably think about investing the money into the 80GB hard drive@5400rpm (a custom order from the Apple website) than deciding on an extra 250Mhz of speed. I figure the extra boost in HD will make things realistically faster (i.e. games, bootup, video editing/encoding). Anyways, congrats on your upcoming PB, can't wait for mine to ship

Zatt · Oct 20, 2003, 09:13 PM

Hmm... Looks like the votes are in. I'll spend the extra money. Thank you.

ae86_16v · Oct 21, 2003, 01:45 AM

Yeah Zatt, if I had a chance I think I would've opted for the faster HD like newmanium said.

Congratulations on the new Mac.

nagromme · Oct 21, 2003, 02:21 AM

I'd choose MHz, which will speed up just about evrything, over HD rpm, which will only speed up some things. Oversimplified, but that was my conclusion.

valdur · Oct 21, 2003, 04:02 AM

also...alot harder to upgrade cpu than hd...

Crusoe · Oct 21, 2003, 06:53 AM

I pondered the same thing and bought the 1Ghz, SD, AE, Lit KB. Between 3rd Party Ram (768MB total) and Tax I saved $235. I had to pinch every penny but you should always get the most power you can afford.

sodamnregistered2 · Oct 21, 2003, 07:15 AM

1GHz vs. 1.25GHz will only be faster in things where you render. Normal use, clicking around on the UI, none of that stuff will be all that much faster.

I had a dual450 and a dual800. The dual800 was only faster when I rendered things out of After Effects or C4d. Otherwise I could barely tell the difference, if at all.

Zatt · Oct 21, 2003, 07:53 AM

Thank you all for the speed of your responses! I didn't think that I would get so much so fast.

Sandbaggins · Oct 21, 2003, 08:04 AM

I got the 1.25 with the 80 5400 HD...smooooth. Do it, and get the SD while you're at it.