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dwd3885 · Dec 13, 2005, 01:08 PM

I've been looking to buy the Power Mac G5 the past few weeks. I haven't decided what I should do. The $1799 price with edu discount is on the expensive side, but I just might be able to swing it if you guys can justify that the extra $250 from the refurbished PM Dual 2GHZ at $1549 is a raw deal. It is the crippled version, with only 4 slots of RAM and PCI. I am a student. I love technology. I love being able to do things fast, etc. I'm not really a huge photo, video guy, but I do some of it. But by no means am I a professional. So that's the question really. Is the $250 price difference worth it? Dual core, more RAM, pci-express, pci-x, better GPU, faster RAM, quieter, more efficient, less power requirements!! Is all that worth the $250 for a guy like me in your opinion? I do upgrade computers a lot, but I am just switching to the Mac, so I don't think I'll have the same habits of that since I can't really upgrade logic boards, cpu's, etc. So I want to have this computer for a long time. Then if I got a Dual Core, I could just switch over the DDR2 RAM if I felt like it when I upgrade to the Intel Mac (which I don't plan on doing anytime soon) Like I said, I'd like to have this PC for at least 2-3 years. I am going to be going into Educational Technology field and I am a junior in college right now. I got the rest of this year, my senior year and a year of grad school to look forward to. I do Advanced Audio production as well. I know this is a long, rambling, but any advice would help a lot. I am also waiting for my Apple Credit line card to come, which should be tomorrow, so I have a day or two to decide. Thanks for all your help!!

tooki · Dec 13, 2005, 01:47 PM

I'd spend the $250 just to not have it be a refurb. The improved performance of the PCIe version and the extra RAM slots are icing on the cake.

tooki

JCT · Dec 13, 2005, 01:53 PM

I agree with tooki.

The non-refurb machine should easily last you 4-5 years, so a $250 investment spread out over that time frame is not so bad. And having the most recent hardware when you are buying for the long term is a good deal.

Enjoy your machine,

JT

mduell · Dec 13, 2005, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by dwd3885

I've been looking to buy the Power Mac G5 the past few weeks. I haven't decided what I should do. The $1799 price with edu discount is on the expensive side, but I just might be able to swing it if you guys can justify that the extra $250 from the refurbished PM Dual 2GHZ at $1549 is a raw deal. It is the crippled version, with only 4 slots of RAM and PCI. I am a student. I love technology. I love being able to do things fast, etc. I'm not really a huge photo, video guy, but I do some of it. But by no means am I a professional. So that's the question really. Is the $250 price difference worth it? Dual core, more RAM, pci-express, pci-x, better GPU, faster RAM, quieter, more efficient, less power requirements!! Is all that worth the $250 for a guy like me in your opinion?

Two things: The new models do not have PCI-X, only PCIe. The GPU isn't really any better; "6600LE" is a fancy name for 6200, which slower than the 9600Pro in most benchmarks.

That said, I'll echo the first two posters and say go for the new one.

Footy · Dec 13, 2005, 10:56 PM

Not a huge fan of the refurb option myself. Get the new one bud, I'm loving mine!

MacOS-Fan · Dec 14, 2005, 12:32 AM

I agree. $250 is not that big of a price difference. I would go for the new one.

dwd3885 · Dec 14, 2005, 12:53 AM

Now what about the refurbed iMacs? I know I don't mention them, but they could save me a ton of money. I could sell my Dell 2005FPW monitor and get about $350 for it. Meaning the 20-inch iMac G5 2ghz with 512 RAM, 250 gb HD and ATI 9600 128MB with super drive would be about $1000 after selling my monitor on apple's refurb site. Seems like a great deal, a savings of nearly 900 dollars. But can I do what I want to do on it? Is it worth the huge performance hit? Or is there a huge performance hit between models? I had a dual 2ghz G5 in September, ran great for what I wanted to do, almost too much, since I don't render videos everyday, but i do multitask a lot.

brokenjago · Dec 14, 2005, 01:21 AM

Multitasking will take a hit from the cut in CPUs, definetly.

dwd3885 · Dec 14, 2005, 10:29 AM

So the ongoing sage has finally come to a conclusion. At 8:23 AM CT this morning, just a few minutes ago, I did it. I ordered my Power Mac. I ordered teh rev. B Dual 2ghz with 160gb hard drive, 512 RAM, Geforce 5200, super drive, pci-x, 8 ram slots for just $1449.

That should last me for a while. Maybe not as long as the dual cores, but this saves me more than $350! And with what I do, even thinking the iMac might suit me, I think this will last a while. It's $200 cheaper than when I first looked at them in september, and it's a way better deal than anything i can find on ebay. So when it comes, i'll try to find some more RAM if I need to and maybe up the graphics card, but it's all good from this end.