Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Jerome · May 9, 2004, 03:27 PM

Hi all!

I currently have a PowerMac G4 Dual-1Ghz (MDD, the generation when it was the middle model, bought december 2002) and I have people wanting to buy it. OK. Now my question is what to replace it with?

The computer is to be used mostly at home but I do some Broadcast Design, Graphic Design (read After Effects, FCP, Photoshop, Illustrator and some other softwares) as a freelancer, and some music as a hobby (Reason mostly).

I'm hesitating going the G5 way and I'm leaning toward a 15" Powerbook 1.5GHz. I know the G5 will be much faster but as it's mostly used as my home computer, it doesn't have to be the fastest computer money can buy. My concern is more the speed increase or decrease between the Powerbook and my current machine, Dual vs. single processor.

Anybody have used both? Anybody doing some After Effects on a Powerbook? I know After Effects is very Ram hungry but with the same amount of ram, what difference can I expect between the two machines?

This kind of question might have been asked 1352 times before so feel free to link me somewhere else.

siflippant · May 9, 2004, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by Jerome:
This kind of question might have been asked 1352 times before so feel free to link me somewhere else.

Then do a search...

SnakeEyes · May 9, 2004, 11:52 PM

I just bought a 1.5 gig 15" PB w/the 128mb video, 5400 rpm hard drive, and i maxed the ram at 2 gigs. I also used to have a Dual 1ghz quicksilver model and used After Effects, Maya, and the other programs u listed. I'm also curious to know what kind of comparsion the two machines would have.

amazing · May 10, 2004, 12:35 AM

The places to consult for speed comparisons are barefeats.com and xlr8yourmac.com. Here's one test result that lists the FCP results for G4 1.0 MP, G5, and powerbooks

http://www.barefeats.com/fcp4.html

This one is about game performance, not that you're interested in that, but there's some good analysis

http://www.barefeats.com/pb11.html

here's one that compare AE, PS, on G5 and G4 (no powerbooks)

http://www.barefeats.com/g5.html

heresiarh · May 10, 2004, 01:33 PM

Ok, I have owned a dual G4 before and currently own a pbook 15' 1Ghz model with 1Gig of ram. I can't say anything about Maya but it runs After Effects, Final Cut Pro 4, Bryce and other print graphic applications just fine. If you can max it out to 2gig ram, I guess it will run even better. Pbooks are really good machines.

filmmaker2002 · May 10, 2004, 02:35 PM

If it makes any difference, I just picked up a 17" 1.5 Ghz with 128MB Graphic Card and 5400 RPM drive. I find it actually faster than my dual 1Ghz MDD with 1GB Ram. In fact, I'm going to run some FCP and Photoshop races with the two tonight and will let you know what I think is faster. My PB plays games MUCH better than the Power Mac does, in fact I'll probably end up selling the Power Mac and taking out the 200GB 7200RPM drive i have in there and put it into a FW800 case.

Maflynn · May 10, 2004, 04:31 PM

I've noticed that my 15" 1.24 PB was noticably slower then my Dual Gig was using normal business apps, and games. I did not opt for the faster hard drive and the PB's memory was 1/2 of what the dual gig's was (512mb vs 1gig) so those differences certainly effected the results.

Mike

DeeKat · May 10, 2004, 04:49 PM

filmmaker 2002: I'm a filmmaker myself working mostly in advertising and i'm planing to buy exactly the machine you just bought and sell my old MDD dp867. I've been told that Final Cut Pro does not handle well external firewire drives (drops frames on capture apparently). do you work on FCP with Ext. drives and if so do you have any problems with it??

filmmaker2002 · May 10, 2004, 06:23 PM

I've worked on FCP with my iPod even in extreme situations and it's worked fine. I work with FW400 and 800 drives all the time and with no problems. You'll be SO happy with this machine. It's very spacious for FCP and DVD Studio, it's AWESOME, and I'm coming up from a 15".

DeeKat · May 11, 2004, 11:38 AM

Great!! you use your iPod as a scratch dick!

I think i made my choice...

PB17 it will be

BJNY · May 11, 2004, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by filmmaker2002:
If it makes any difference, I just picked up a 17" 1.5 Ghz with 128MB Graphic Card and 5400 RPM drive. I find it actually faster than my dual 1Ghz MDD with 1GB Ram. In fact, I'm going to run some FCP and Photoshop races with the two tonight and will let you know what I think is faster.

Yes, please post the results of your races.
Thank you in advance.

funkboy · May 11, 2004, 03:29 PM

www.xbench.com

Search around and find some results that look good to you. Here's a comparison to the 1.5GHz 5400rpm 128MB VRAM PowerBook G4:

http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge....224&doc2=63824

Overall, PowerMacG4 scores 118.33, and the PowerBook scored a 131.90! Impressive.

filmmaker2002 · May 11, 2004, 06:08 PM

Well, I ran the tests, and gaming on the 17" PB certainly seems much smoother than on the Power Mac, not as choppy from my observations. Video rendering, export, and compression in Final Cut Pro on the Power Mac is SLIGHTLY faster (about 10% faster), but I just realized as I am typing this that I have FCP HD on the Power Mac and regular FCP4 on the Powerbook. I have heard that FCPHD renders slightly faster. So I will update FCP on the PB and get back to you guys. Everything else seems generally snappier on the PB though with half the RAM even.

BJNY · May 11, 2004, 10:43 PM

How about with Photoshop?

h00ligan · May 11, 2004, 10:48 PM

if you get the 5400 rpm drive, and the same amount of ram or more.. the faster single processor will help in non mp aware apps. I don't know which apps you use are mp aware.. but do a check on it.. the comparisons on xbench are going to be worthless if the main proggies you are using can support multiple processors.

That's my $1.92

riotge@r · May 11, 2004, 11:16 PM

Originally posted by DeeKat:
Great!! you use your iPod as a scratch dick!

I think i made my choice...

PB17 it will be

ROTFLMAO

dlefebvre · May 12, 2004, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by DeeKat:
filmmaker 2002: I'm a filmmaker myself working mostly in advertising and i'm planing to buy exactly the machine you just bought and sell my old MDD dp867. I've been told that Final Cut Pro does not handle well external firewire drives (drops frames on capture apparently). do you work on FCP with Ext. drives and if so do you have any problems with it??

I'm in a DV filmaker group. We go to many film festivals where we make films in 48 hours. The weapons of choice are Powerbooks running FCP with external FW drives. The only time I heard of frop frames is a friend of mine who had 2 external drives hooked to his Powerbook. Other than that I don't remember about any problems. As far as working, it does work. The last Festival I went to, I was editing a movie on a 1.25Ghz 17" Powerbook with 1Gb of Ram. There was an After Effects render in the background and I could still work in FCP (no capture at that time). FCP was not fully responsive with AE running in the background, but I could still get some work done at least. Other than that, when FCP was running alone, it was working well and the screen size is perfect for FCP. Sure I prefer my 2 monitors set-up at home but on the go, nothing beats the 17" Powerbook. Only once, I took my G4 tower an a monitor to a festival, never again...

BJNY · May 12, 2004, 10:19 AM

I just noticed this at www.barefeats.com
http://www.barefeats.com/pb11.html
where the latest Powerbooks don't compare well with the Dual G4 tower.

DeeKat · May 12, 2004, 01:51 PM

riotge@r: ROTFLMAO???????

can i get the whole sentence. I promise i'll never ask agan

dlefebvre: thanks! Great advise. confirmes my choice. sorry for all you guys who dont speak french but i have to say i few words. es-ce que t'es menbre du KINO? pcq je travialle pour une boite de prod en pub � Montr�al (6IXDEGR�S). je sais que c'est off du thread. mais parlais-tu du festival de la rel�ve du Saguenay?

OK back to english...

Jerome · May 12, 2004, 07:24 PM

Originally posted by DeeKat:
riotge@r: ROTFLMAO???????

can i get the whole sentence. I promise i'll never ask agan

dlefebvre: thanks! Great advise. confirmes my choice. sorry for all you guys who dont speak french but i have to say i few words. es-ce que t'es menbre du KINO? pcq je travialle pour une boite de prod en pub � Montr�al (6IXDEGR�S). je sais que c'est off du thread. mais parlais-tu du festival de la rel�ve du Saguenay?

OK back to english...

On est donc trois de Montr�al ici? Moi je fait surtout de la t�l�vision par contre...

dlefebvre · May 12, 2004, 08:26 PM

Originally posted by DeeKat:
es-ce que t'es menbre du KINO? pcq je travialle pour une boite de prod en pub � Montr�al (6IXDEGR�S). je sais que c'est off du thread. mais parlais-tu du festival de la rel�ve du Saguenay?

Je fais partie de Kino Montr�al depuis un bout. En temps normal, je suis en charge du d�partement de post-production d'Astral M�dia. Et oui le probl�me de capture dont je parle est arriv� au Festival de la rel�ve du Saguenay. C'est dans le dernier strech, des sc�nes avais �t� mont�es sur 2 Powerbook pour sauver du temps. Ensuite, j'ai finis le montage, le son et les effets, d'o� les deux disques FW branch�s au Powerbook. On a essay� de capturer et �a ne marchait pas, on a d�branch� un des disques et captur� sans probl�mes. Ensuite on a fait les rendus et l'output dans la voiture, en route vers la salle de projection.