My eMac Vs. Dual 867MHz MDD

This article doesn't have your exact comparison but it may be a good place to start.

http://www.lowendmac.com/macdan/03/0324dk.html

The Powermac should equal or beat the eMac in everything, especially if you have a GeForce3/4ti or Radeon 9000 or newer

This is really my first desktop mac (Aside from the 300mhz iMac i used for a few months last year to get the freel of OS X).

Its exactly the same spec as the one you plan on buying.

Specs when I bought it:

Dual 867Mhz G4 7455 Processors
1gb DDR Ram
Geforce 4 MX Graphics 32mb VRAM
80gb Diamondmax Plus 9 HDD
Combo Drive
17" ADC Apple Display

Now:

Dual 867Mhz G4 7455 Processors
1.5gb DDR Ram
ATi Radeon 9800Pro (Flahed)
80gb Diamondmax Plus 9 HDD
2x 40gb Maxtor Fireball slimline HDD's in RAID0
8x DVD DL Drive
Combo Drive
17" ADC Apple display with the converter box

The original kit cost me £480 including shipping, which I think was a very good price.

I've spent about another £250 upgrading it, although I had the extra ram, DVD DL drive and hard drives lying around from my old PC.

It does everything I want it to do, and it does it faster than my 1.33ghz iBook does

Oh yeah, I'm overclocking it next week.

If you plan to upgrade the video card, don't get an old style ADC Apple display, as most new video cards do NOT come with ADC ports. In order to get an ADC display working with a DVI card you need an expensive $100 converter. In other words, its not worth it.

well that dual will blow the emac out of the water
emac video really sucks

you could put an ati 9800 mac pro 128mb ed in the dual and have one pimp machine, not to mention all that extra room for pci cards and more hd's

expandabilty alone should allow you to keep the dual 867 tower around for awhile.

The ram upgrade should also make a noticable improvement in OSX

I would avoid the GeForce4ti unless you can get one very cheap - it isn't Core Image compatible and a Radeon 9800 is much faster in pretty much every way. The best two cards for the G4 user today are the Radeon 9600 Pro 64MB (available only from OWC and around $100) and the Radeon 9800 series cards (prices vary between ~$120 for do-it-yourself flashed cards all the way up to $250 for a brand new 256MB model).

Check the fan noise first. My 1.25 DP MDD is a wind tunnel and annoys the heck out of me. Hope your tower is quieter than mine.

FadeToBlack said:

how much faster would a Dual 867 be compared to my eMac (specs in sig)

Click to expand...

PM should beat your eMac in any MP-aware app. (not games, sadly). Be weary though, I heard MDDs are very noisy