[dividend]

Hi all, I am abougt to replace my baby, A Wall Street 233 mhz with a Ti Book, the question is which one?

I can buy a 550 mhz or the old 400 mhz. the pricedifference is about 400 dollars. That difference gives you:

150 mhz more, different chip with faster but smaller L2 cache
20 GB harddrive instead of 10 GB
16 mb vram instead of 8, and a faster card
256 mb ram instead of 128

The things is, I don't really care about speed, 233 mhz is fine by me, and the only reason why I am not buying an iBook is because of the screan, otherwise I would have bought the top-end model. I have no use of a Gbit networking.

To the specific questions:

Is the 550 mhz really 37% faster, or is it just a lot of empty mhz?
Does the 550 mhz require the fan much more often than the 400?
Games that I might play are starcraft, warcraft and myth, does 16 mb vram and better chip really matter?

taken together, is 400 dollars worth 10 GB more HD, 128 mb ram and 150 mhz more? ram and a drive i guess i will upgrade anyway, but 150 mhz more and 8 mb vram more, is it worth it?

I would be very thankful if you could share your thoughts and help me (and others?) buy the best thing for the money

zoool

[absmiths]

At the very least, the $400 buys you a 10 month newer design - including components like the HD, video, etc. I considered the same thing but I think that I will be long term more satisfied with the 550.

[fulmer]

that 5400 RPM drive (the 48G model) will make a difference in performance, too.

And the 550/667 is worth the speed increase from a 233 WallStreet.

I bought a 667/48G/512 RAM/DVD not long ago and sold my WallStreet 292. Even using FireWire PowerBook models showed a big increase in performance over my former WallStreet.

You'll be happy with a new PowerBook as opposed to the 400 MHz model. Go for it if it's not going to put you in the poor house.

[coke::Ti]

I read somewhere that the G4 chip inside the latest powerbook is 7440 which is slower than the G4 chip (7410) in the original powerbook G4. So its not simply a 150Mhz jump in speed. Lets not forget the Mhz Myth is not just for comparing PCs and Macs, but also Macs and Macs.

The video card in the original powerbook is more than fast enough for 2D games such as StarCraft. The new faster video card will however be useful for 3D games.

The 550Mhz model offers some improvements over the previous model, but the 667Mhz model offers heaps more.

[coke::Ti]

Here is a question I asked myself after the last post:
How much is the old 500Mhz? It used to be over $400 more expensive than the 400Mhz. Is it still $400 more expensive? If so, it will actually be more expensive than the new 550Mhz (?!).

Maybe the old 500Mhz is another option you could consider.

[ToasterQuanta]

The old 500MHz machine can be had new for $2050 from ClubMac. It is also available for $1950 from SmallDog if you don't mind a factory refurb (with full 1 year warantee). Both machines have 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.

I honestly think this is a better deal than the 550 if you don't need the new RADEON video chip. The 500 should be at least the same speed as the 550, if not faster, because of the larger L2 cache. And you save $150-250!

[John123]

Originally posted by ToasterQuanta:
<STRONG>The old 500MHz machine can be had new for $2050 from ClubMac. It is also available for $1950 from SmallDog if you don't mind a factory refurb (with full 1 year warantee). Both machines have 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.

I honestly think this is a better deal than the 550 if you don't need the new RADEON video chip. The 500 should be at least the same speed as the 550, if not faster, because of the larger L2 cache. And you save $150-250!</STRONG>

Frankly, I'm still waiting to see some benchmarks comparing the 550 to the 500. I don't think any of us really know HOW the reduction in size but increase in speed will "turn out" for the various ways in which you can use your computer.

[barefeets]

Get the new 550 model. Why?

The Radeon Mobility graphics chip with 16MB of DDR is far superior to the Rage Mobility with 8MB. The old machine could not play Quake 3 in 1024 high texture mode. If you do 3D games or 3D modeling of any kind, you'll want the Radeon.

If you only do 2D, the 500Mhz closeout looks like the best bet with its 1MB of level 2 cache.

The jury is still out on the FireWire speed problem. The "rev 1" was limited to 16MB/sec sustained write speed. The iBook 2001 and iMac DV were faster with 30+MB/sec sustained write speed. Hopefully, this has been addressed with "rev 2."

[Scotttheking]

Get the 550.
There are issues with the rev 1s.
And the video card is very much worth it.
I'm thinking of selling my 500 and getting a 667, there is enough of a difference.

[dividend]

HI, thanx all!

ok, a resume: we'll perhaps have to wait for some serious benchmarking before we can decide on how much mhz-air there is in the new chips, but the option should of course be between the 500 old and the 550 new, depending on the speed-difference. Remember, I was actually going to buy an iBook but because of the screan I have chosen not to. (I use office, filemaker, framemaker, indesign and statview - these don't need G4s really and don't need excessive speed, anything above 300 should be redundant) 400 dollars is still 400 dollars for a student, but that 400 dollars (the diff. for the old 400 mhz) gets down to like 250 dollars given a larger HD and more ram. 250 dollars for more vram and better chip seems worthwhile in the Longer term. I also just realised that most new games will be 3D like warcraft III and myth... these might findsome use of the new chip and more vram!

I am just worried about one thing: that the new chip is hotter and thus requries the fan so much more often. I want a silent computer! Does anyone know?

Is there anywhere to find benchmarking on the new books?

for those that already have ansered - thanx a lot, i am sure a lot of otehr people have taken you adivce....

/zool

[flyhigher]

Keep an eye on the following sites:

xlr8yourmac
macspeedzone
bare feats

Bare Feats has indicated that they'll do a performance review as soon as they get one.

I am concerned about the 550's performance. Both of these models will suffer from the tiny L2 cache on certain operations, even if the cache does run at full clock rate.

Would you believe that on certain tasks, the 733Mhz Quicksilver is bested by a lowly G3 350 tower? Check out this link and scroll down to the "Appleworks Search and Replace Test":
Macspeedzone benchmarks

The 667 powerbook will be somewhat slower than the Quicksilver, and the 550 will be triply hampered by the speed difference, small cache, as well as the 100Mhz bus. This will be the first G4 product that Apple has ever released that suffers on both counts -- no 1MB L2 or L3 cache, and only a 100Mhz bus.

To add insult to injury, the 7440 (and 7450) have longer pipelines than the previous G4s... which means that Mhz for Mhz, they will be slower -- cache notwithstanding.

Eagerly awaiting benchmarks...

Originally posted by ToasterQuanta:
<STRONG>The old 500MHz machine can be had new for $2050 from ClubMac. It is also available for $1950 from SmallDog if you don't mind a factory refurb (with full 1 year warantee). Both machines have 256MB RAM and a 20GB drive.

I honestly think this is a better deal than the 550 if you don't need the new RADEON video chip. The 500 should be at least the same speed as the 550, if not faster, because of the larger L2 cache. And you save $150-250!</STRONG>

While back I remember someone pointing me to a ebate.com like site for clubmac.com I think the "ebate.com like site" gave 3% discount on all purchase from clubmac.com

Does anyone know the sites URL? TIA!