PowerMac G4 V.S. MacMini

picar said:

Because of the limited budget, I plan to buy a second-hand Mac machine for digital photo editing with Photoshop CS3 and Canon DPP.
It is surprising that the pricing of PowerMac G4 (MDD, dual CPU 1.25 GHz) is about 350$ and the Mac mini (Core 2 duo 1.86 GHz) is about $400 or so in our country.
Is PowerMac G4 still worth buying compared to Intel based CPU machine MacMini in terms of 2D graphics application?
I am wondering if anyone or studio still using PowerMac G4 or having experience of using both machine? Would you please share your experience? Thank you!

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In short, the PowerMac G4 will be utterly eaten alive by the core 2 duo in the Mini

the Powermac _might_ have faster 3d graphics hardware, but it's hamstrung by the G4's,for a still photography workflow the Mini will be vastly superior on CPU horsepower alone.

agreed, get the mini, it will run rings around a G4 and it's still a current machine, so software will be up to date and parts will be cheaper for upgrading

The Gx technology is outdated. Period.
If you can, get the Mac mini.

Look at it this way. The G4 is no longer a viable option because most software is going to require newer and newer versions of OS X.

The mini though, can run the latest software and OS X and lets you continue to grow.

If you do get the mini, immediately upgrade the RAM. There are DIY threads on how to pop the top and do the memory upgrade yourself. OWC sells good memory for Apple systems.

Take care,

It depends

picar said:

Because of the limited budget, I plan to buy a second-hand Mac machine for digital photo editing with Photoshop CS3 and Canon DPP.
It is surprising that the pricing of PowerMac G4 (MDD, dual CPU 1.25 GHz) is about 350$ and the Mac mini (Core 2 duo 1.86 GHz) is about $400 or so in our country.
Is PowerMac G4 still worth buying compared to Intel based CPU machine MacMini in terms of 2D graphics application?
I am wondering if anyone or studio still using PowerMac G4 or having experience of using both machine? Would you please share your experience? Thank you!

Click to expand...

I would say, it depends. A couple months ago I bought another G4 for my dad because of the extreme reliability and the pricing. To get a perfect computer for 100 bucks that runs Leopard fast, - how can you beat that?
Now, on your case it might be different. If you are not a computer geek or a collector of vintage mac machines- or you don't have fun upgrading the hell out of it - go for the mac mini.

However, in Europe you pay up to 1100 Euros for a new upgraded mac mini with mouse and keyboard. For my part I would rather spend 1000 bucks for vacation and 100 for the computer then the other way arround.

In case you still think about the G4, go always for either a G4 MDD Dual 1,42 or an upgraded Sawtooth Quicksilver machine with a Sonnet Dual 1,8.
There are still excellent machines out there if you can wait till they hit the market once at a time. In fact I would only buy a machine for 20 and spend the money on a used CPU Sonnet upgrade..



Good Luck..

I would take the Intel mini against the G4. But I would love to found a cheap used G5 !!