Dual 1.8G5 vs Dual 2.0G5

UWF404 said:

I'd buy it with the 9600 Radeon and 1 gig of memory. I will be using the machine mostly for print production, office apps and gaming. However in the future we may want to do video editing. Is it worth the expense to get the dual 2.0 machine over the dual 1.8?? I know the 2.0 machine has some other extras but I'm not sure how important they are??

Thanks

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Your question will be met with the typical comments... Namely, "Get the 2.0... Heck why not the dual 2.5s!" Honestly, no matter the system you are buying, purchase the fastest system you can afford. If you can afford the 2.0 machine, get it. If you can afford the 2.5, get it. Just making the decision to purchase, you have decided to spend a large amount of money. Why not get the machine that will last the longest? Of course if you can only afford the 1.8, get that one. Since you are asking, you can obviously afford the 2.0.

hcuar said:

Your question will be met with the typical comments... Namely, "Get the 2.0... Heck why not the dual 2.5s!" Honestly, no matter the system you are buying, purchase the fastest system you can afford. If you can afford the 2.0 machine, get it. If you can afford the 2.5, get it. Just making the decision to purchase, you have decided to spend a large amount of money. Why not get the machine that will last the longest? Of course if you can only afford the 1.8, get that one. Since you are asking, you can obviously afford the 2.0.

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Certainly, the dual 1.8 will be more than sufficient for print production needs. We have a slew of 1.25GHz G4's in the prepress department I run (got 7 of 'em for cheap when the G5 1st came out). The rest of our Mac's are sub-1GHz G4's, along with one or two G3 boxes.
All that being said, I'll use the line I saw in another post (wish I remembered whom to give credit to), which is to buy the best computer you can "almost" afford. Stretch a little now, and go for the gusto. You're most likely keeping this one for a few years, and you'll never ever ever even one time regret not getting the slower computer.

Oops...I almost forgot! Welcome to The Other Side. You'll never look back.

If you can, get the Dual 2.0. Its a little bit more expandable than the 1.8, not to mention that you should always attempt to buy the fastest processor you can (especially since it hasn't been determined whether the G5 can accept upgraded CPUs).

I was in your same situation about 5 months ago. I went with the dual 1.8, but at the time, it was offered along with the single 1.6, hence, it's got the 8 memory slots etc. My friend has a dual 2.0 G5, and mine is actually faster than his as of the week before last(...only in most instances). I was thinking about getting another 160gb hard drive, and striping the drive w/RAID 0, but then i started reading up and decided that I'd just buy 2x250GB western digital hard drives. Needless to say, my striped drives allow my dual 1.8 to smoke my friends 2.0 when ever it comes to dealing with hard drive data. Loading games, booting up, you name it. The only thing that's different is that mine doesn't fold quite as fast as his. He's got a 9800 pro in his 2.0, so he plays games faster, but my games always load alot faster, etc.

I did alot of research on this at the time, and the 2.0 isn't all that much faster... really. But what it came down to was that I didn't have the extra cash to go with the 2.0. And now it's the same price as the dual 1.8 that I bought! So if i were you, i'd get the 2.0 if you can afford it... just know that there's ways to soup up a dual 1.8 to where it smokes a dual 2.0. When my 6800 shows up (i know, probably Christmas), my rig will totally smoke his in every aspect of gaming!

I'd go for the Dual 2.0, like <b>eddie</b> said, for the expandability. Not only that, but it'd be nice to break the 2GHz line.

crazzyeddie said:

If you can, get the Dual 2.0. Its a little bit more expandable than the 1.8, not to mention that you should always attempt to buy the fastest processor you can (especially since it hasn't been determined whether the G5 can accept upgraded CPUs).

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sonnet is working on it, the only problem is the thermal calibration.

Hector said:

sonnet is working on it, the only problem is the thermal calibration.

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...riiight. we believe you.

there was an interview with some woman from sonnet on xlr8yourmac a while ago, she said they are working on the cards and are trying to work around the thermal calibration.

Just did another Xbench w/o Disk test this morning. 249.30! Get the Dual 2.0G and pump up the RAM.

Get the dual 2.0. You might not see the point now. Later, you'll be happy that you did

Dual 1.8

If you get a dual 1.8 see if you can find a rev A model (older one)..... The first version of the dual 1.8 were much better than the current new ones as the hard drive was larger and it had more memory slots. The older 1.8 has all the same features that the new 2.0 has.