[Agent69]

I can't decide between the DP 1.25Ghz G4 and the 1.6Ghz G5. I get the following (with government employee discount) prices:

DP 1.25Ghz G4: $1414.00
SP 1.60Ghz G5: $1594.00

This is with both models having combo drives, 80GB HDD, and no modems. Which would you choose?

[jamesa]

are you trying to wind Scott up?

-- james

[Agent69]

Yes, but my question is a serious one.

[ponami]

Get the G5!

[SMacTech]

I would get the G5, as it will be supported more in the future with apps being optimized for them, as compared to the many apps already optimized for a G4.
Panther will also be optimized more for a G5 as well.

[ulmer]

You may want to check out these benchmarks before making a decision. I don't know which would be better a year down the road but it seems the dual 1.25 is going to be faster for most applications.

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

[AssassyN]

I'll go outta the way and suggest the Dual 1.25Ghz...I own one, and even after playing on my school's demo 1.8 G5, launching apps. and the typical web surfing, Word processing, etc. all seem JUST as "snappy" and quick to launch, *if not faster* on my Dualie. The more apps. you've got open, the better it is to have two processors handling the work. If you can only afford the low-end G5, I highly recommend getting the high-end G4, maxing the RAM at 2GB, and getting the GeForce 4 Ti (if you game)...it's an amazing machine.

[Agent69]

Thanks for the input. I can't decide what I want to do, so I will wait.

BTW, I want to mention that you can get the Duel 1.4Ghz G4 at Smalldog right now. They have a few of them but they will probably go fast. They also have some of the older Duel 1.25Ghz G4s as well (Mac OS X only/FW800).

[mitchell_pgh]

I would go with the G5. Down the road, I think you would have many more options.

[Agent69]

After considering everything, I decided to go for a brand new 1.42Ghz DP G4 from Smalldog. Part of the reason is that I have always wanted a DP machine, ever since the BeBox came out a long time ago.

Thanks again for the inputs!

[idyll]

Definitely the G5. I was in the same position as you and am glad that I went with the G5 over the G4. They're about just as fast right now, but in the near future the G5 will win hands-down.

[Eug]

G5 1.6, unless most of your apps are optimized for dual or if you need OS 9.

[hyteckit]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
I'll go outta the way and suggest the Dual 1.25Ghz...I own one, and even after playing on my school's demo 1.8 G5, launching apps. and the typical web surfing, Word processing, etc. all seem JUST as "snappy" and quick to launch, *if not faster* on my Dualie. The more apps. you've got open, the better it is to have two processors handling the work. If you can only afford the low-end G5, I highly recommend getting the high-end G4, maxing the RAM at 2GB, and getting the GeForce 4 Ti (if you game)...it's an amazing machine.

My impressions exactly. I just got my Dualie 1.25GHz less than one month ago. Boy it's snappy�. More so than the single processor G5's.

[superfula]

Dual 1.25 hands down. This is a no brainer people. There is NO reason to get a 1.6 or 1.8. They don't have that much more speed than the dual 1.25/1.42, they are less upgradeable than the G4...only room for one optical drive and two harddrives. Yeah yeah it has pci-x or whatever it's called, along with some other techs that aren't being used right now. If you HAVE to get a G5, there's no reason to get ANYTHING but the dual 2 now. They will be updated in Jan, most likely, and chances are good you won't be seeing many apps take advantage of the 64bit option before then. And then bring in the fact that the two single processor machines are WAAAAY over priced.

Unless you absolutely have to have the newest thing, and can't afford the dual 2, there's is no other sane reason to buy a 1.6 or 1.8.

If you want the best of both worlds, buy a slower G4 now, use it until the G5s are updated, sell the G4 and a small loss, and buy a revB dual G5. They'll have more updates, bug fixes and a lower price then.

[iCol]

I recently got a dual 1.25, and am very impressed with it, even with its stock 256MB of RAM...

Though, if I had the money I would have gone for a G5... I just couldn't afford the extra �300 as I wanted a studio display too...

But you will be more than happy with the dual 1.4...

Col

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by superfula:
Dual 1.25 hands down. This is a no brainer people. There is NO reason to get a 1.6 or 1.8. They don't have that much more speed than the dual 1.25/1.42, they are less upgradeable than the G4...only room for one optical drive and two harddrives. Yeah yeah it has pci-x or whatever it's called, along with some other techs that aren't being used right now. If you HAVE to get a G5, there's no reason to get ANYTHING but the dual 2 now. They will be updated in Jan, most likely, and chances are good you won't be seeing many apps take advantage of the 64bit option before then. And then bring in the fact that the two single processor machines are WAAAAY over priced.

Unless you absolutely have to have the newest thing, and can't afford the dual 2, there's is no other sane reason to buy a 1.6 or 1.8.

If you want the best of both worlds, buy a slower G4 now, use it until the G5s are updated, sell the G4 and a small loss, and buy a revB dual G5. They'll have more updates, bug fixes and a lower price then.

http://www.macworld.com/2003/09/revi...g5testresults/

[Rickag]

Count me in on this dillema. My most important need is home video editing - iMovie, FC Express, iDVD, etc.

With the Educational Discount my options appear to be:

G5 1.6GHz...............................Dual G4 1.25GHz
800MHz bus.............................167MHz bus
256MB DDR333........................256MB DDR333
80GB Serial ATA Harddrive........80GB UltraATA HardDrive
L2 cache 512............................L2 cache 256
L3 cache 0................................L3 cache 2MB/processor
ATA 9600 w/64MB DDRram.......NividiaTitanium w/128MB DDRram
Superdrive................................Superdri ve
$1844.00..................................$1829.00

Are iMovie, iDVD, FC Express multiprocessor aware?
When OS X is optimized for the G5 what affect, if any, will it have on the G4's?
When introduced will all PCI-X cards be backwards compatible with PCI??
Is there any remote possibility that the single G5's will be upgradable to duals in the future(re: the developer notes do say the processors are on a daughter card)??

I have $2250 cash saved up, but need to buy a monitor(CRT), printer(photo), analog to digital converter(Canopus seems the best at $199), firewire harddrive and digital camera.

I know the best bang for the buck in the Dual G5 2.0GHz, but there isn't any way to afford it

I'm leaning toward the G5, but the dual 1.25GHz is very appealing. My other option is to keep hording cash and wait until January, but I really need/want to start converting my VHS tapes to DVD.

[rhogue islander]

I'd say consider one of these Dual 1.42's. The standard config is priced at $1889

http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x...g101/wag10001/

[Eug]

iMovie will be much faster on a G5 1.6 than a dual 1.25. FCE might be faster on the dual 1.25 but I'm not sure.

I dunno about iDVD but my guess is that the G5 1.6 will be faster.

PCI-X slots are backwards compatible with PCI cards.

PCI slots are NOT forwards compatible with PCI-X cards, but that usually doesn't matter, since only very high end speciality cards are PCI-X.

The G5 1.6 has an 800 MHz bus, but the memory is 667 MHz. So essentially it has a 667 MHz bus (which is still pretty damn fast though).

If you just want to convert personal VHS tapes to DVD, the easiest thing to do though is simply to buy a Panasonic DMR-E50. It does it all in one step, in real time. The machine costs less than $375. All you need is a VCR as the input. (Note, it won't work with commercial VHS tapes unless you have a Macrovision defeater).

[Rickag]

Eug

Thank you for the information, very helpful.

The Panasonic DMR-E50 sounds good, but the tapes are Hi8 and on top of that the sequence on the tapes is out of order, so I need to import the video and reassemble them in chronological order, plus clean up all the blunders made in taping.

Now leaning further toward the G5 1.6GHz.

rhogue islander

The 1.42 Dual G4's sound good, but from what I saw @ Smalldog, the prices, w/ the superdrives, are out of my range.

[Eug]

Yeah, the DMR-E50 is good mainly for 1:1 transfers or very simple editing.

If you want more complex editing there are higher-end versions of these DVD recorders which have hard drives, but obviously it's not anywhere near as flexible has using real editing software on a computer.

By the way, Hi-8 is not a problem for the DMR-E50. You just plug in the Hi-8 camcorder or whatever into the DVD recorder.

In your shoes, I'd probably consider saving for a G5 1.8 if possible. You're gonna need a LOT of hard drive space, and probably a second hard drive.

And you'll probably want another 1 GB of memory.

Or if you can find a cheap dual 1.42, that's also an option, but they're pretty hard to find these days.

[clarkgoble]

Are you sure the 1.6 G5 is faster than a dual 1.25 G4 in iMovie? I know iMovie isn't that heavily multithreaded, but I'd be surprised in the 1.6 were faster.

Overall I think that a dual 1.42 is the best buy, especially if you find them discounted at CompUSA. Right now the only G5 I find a great deal is the dual 2.0. The rest seemed cool until I started researching more.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Are you sure the 1.6 G5 is faster than a dual 1.25 G4 in iMovie? I know iMovie isn't that heavily multithreaded, but I'd be surprised in the 1.6 were faster.

Overall I think that a dual 1.42 is the best buy, especially if you find them discounted at CompUSA. Right now the only G5 I find a great deal is the dual 2.0. The rest seemed cool until I started researching more.

From the benches I've seen, a single runs at pretty much the same speed as a dual in iMovie encodes.

[zigzag]

Personally, I'd go with the G5. Even if the dual G4 is faster on some tasks, the 1.6 is faster on others, and I'd give up a bit of raw power anyway for the faster bus and other advantages of the G5. The G5 will also get relatively more speed from Panther optimization (or so they say). In other words, is it worth it to go with yesterday's architecture for a modest (and only occasional) speed boost?

If I was making a living with legacy software and equipment (like awcopus), I might get the dual G4. But if you're just doing home video editing (as I do a lot of), I'd get the G5.

There's also the strategy of getting the dual G4 now and upgrading to a dual G5 later when the prices come down (that is, if you even need to). Of course, you could do the same thing with the 1.6.

Just my personal preference, of course - everyone has their own reasons.

[windwaves]

if this makes sense for you: get a D1.25 now and wait for the next revision(s) of the G5's macs. By then not only the G5 hardware will be much improved and more reliable but also much more software will be optimed. Buying these G5's now is basically paying Apple to be a tester and you'll be forever waiting for software revisions.

[triplezoom]

I just voted with my wallet.

I was facing a similar dilemma and was considering either a G4 1.25, a dual G4 1.25, or a G5 1.6. I put my order in for the G5 about an hour ago - sans Superdrive but with Bluetooth and the ATI 9600 card.

I really stretched my budget, but the G5 offers so much more than the G4 1.25s do:

• FireWire 800
• AirPort Extreme
• Bluetooth built in
• better video card
• digital audio I/O

No, I won't be taking advantage of all of these technologies immediatly, but they provide more expandability. I realize I will have less internal expansion options but that does not concern me. If I need more disk space, well, 500 GB should last me a while if I decide to upgrade the standard hard drive.

[Rickag]

Originally posted by Eug:
...
In your shoes, I'd probably consider saving for a G5 1.8 if possible. You're gonna need a LOT of hard drive space, and probably a second hard drive....

This is an option I'm considering strongly now. At first, the 1.8GHz was the machine I was going to buy as soon as they hit the stores, but was informed by my better half that the money I saved must also be used to buy a new printer, monitor, analog to digital converter, external firewire hard drive and digital camera. Which brought me to my current predicament.

By the way, any one have an opinion on which is the better video card the ATA 9600 w/64MB DDRram(w/ the G5) or the NividiaTitanium w/128MB DDRram(w/ the dual G4 1.25GHz)

Congragulations triplezoom on your purchase