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Recomendation needed

the_insider

the_insider

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hey guys, i need help on choosing which powermac i want to buy. The things i do frequently on my computer are:

Trading music
Listening to music
Downloading movies/music etc...
Word Processing
A little video editing
Web Surfing
Lots of photoshop

I want a computer that can handle more than this rather than less. I will go crazy if i get any lag. What powermac model would your reccomend and how much ram? also, what video card would you reccomend? A few pointers would be nice.

Cheers
 
Any of the Power Macs will handle all of those tasks easily so long as you have 1GB of RAM or more. It fully depends on your budget but I think the 2.3GHz machines with 2GB of RAM would be the best buy at the moment. Remember that buying RAM through Apple is the most expensive way of doing so. Buy it from any of the five stores at the top of each page in MacRumors.

By the way, I'm assuming you have a monitor already, otherwise you might want to give the iMacs a look. They're quite nice machines IMO.
 
Willy - ??? OP wants a PowerMac G5 for lots of Photoshop, and you reply

eMac is probably the way to go
Click to expand...

Is that left field or what?

the_insider - Your requirements are driven by Photoshop. Any Mac will do the rest quite well. For Photoshop 1 - 2 Gb RAM is desirable, and as big a monitor as you can afford. The video card is really not an issue for 2-D graphics work, go with the base card and put your money into the monitor.

The new rev B 1Mac G5 20" would be a contender, if you have limited funds, otherwise I would agree with mad and say the 2.3 duallie is sweet.


One newbie tip: Please make your thread titles descriptive of the question you are asking -- you'll get faster and better quality advice.
 
It depends on how much Photoshop'ing is to be done -- how complex will your work be? A used dual G4 PowerMac can handle the work but yeah you'll get a performance boost on seriously complex projects by going to the dual G5. On that note, even the single processor iMac G5 or single processor PowerMac G5 will work pretty darned well.
 
I'd say pretty much any new iMac can do the job, but if you'd seriously go nuts from any lag, then a DP 2GHz G5 PowerMac with 2GB of RAM would "suffice." 🙂
 
CanadaRAM said:
Willy - ??? OP wants a PowerMac G5 for lots of Photoshop, and you reply



Is that left field or what?

the_insider - Your requirements are driven by Photoshop. Any Mac will do the rest quite well. For Photoshop 1 - 2 Gb RAM is desirable, and as big a monitor as you can afford. The video card is really not an issue for 2-D graphics work, go with the base card and put your money into the monitor.

The new rev B 1Mac G5 20" would be a contender, if you have limited funds, otherwise I would agree with mad and say the 2.3 duallie is sweet.


One newbie tip: Please make your thread titles descriptive of the question you are asking -- you'll get faster and better quality advice.
Click to expand...

I´m sorry, I really missed the "Powermac" part. Must be some kind of a dislexia...

But really, it´s such an overkill and any PM or any Mac would be enough. It´s just a question of ram and monitor IMHO.
 
freiheit said:
It depends on how much Photoshop'ing is to be done -- how complex will your work be? A used dual G4 PowerMac can handle the work but yeah you'll get a performance boost on seriously complex projects by going to the dual G5. On that note, even the single processor iMac G5 or single processor PowerMac G5 will work pretty darned well.
Click to expand...

i agree.

i work with 1.5 gig psd files all the time on a dual g4 with no real speed issues. It really is all about the memory.

keep in mind that cs2 breaks the mem barrier and can now adress some rediculous amount of memory, so go crazy on memory at the expense of processor speed. unless you are doing all that filter crap, but I know you aren't, so... 😉

for your other tasks (other than final cut renders) the proc won't limit you either, so my recommendation stands.

good luck.
 
FYI, if you aren't using cs2 yet:

photoshop cs can only adress up to 2 gig so anything more goes to waste.

info on cs2 from www.forum4designers.com :

"On OS X with the supported system versions, Photoshop CS2 can go to 3+ gigs. The actual amount could be 3.5 gigs or so, but due to certain reporting issues, it’s tough to say precisely. Tiger (10.4) will not expand beyond this limit since at the root, OS
X is still really only a 32 bit OS with certain 64 bit optimizations and Photoshop CS2 is still a 32 bit application for both Mac & Win."
 
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