Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

jhawk2

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2008
75
0
Hey Guys!
I am looking at buying either a G3 or G4. What is the difference between them?
What will a G4 do that a G3 wont? Should I save money and Buy a G3 or spend more and get a G4? My budget is very limited.
Thanks!
 

PlaceofDis

macrumors Core
Jan 6, 2004
19,241
6
by all means try and get a G4. while the G3s are certainly usable, you'll not want anything past Panther on there for smooth and easy enough use, but the G4 towers and most of the notebooks are and were workhorses that while might not have the zippiness of the current intel offerings, still run Tiger easily along with day to day stuff like email, web, etc.
 

MacBiscuit

macrumors member
Jun 27, 2007
62
0
I'm not sure I agree with the advice here re. Tiger. I upgraded our iBook G3 to Tiger recently, and it runs better than it did under Panther...

Having said that a G4 will be faster...

The biggest minus for us is not getting the advanced edit options in iPhoto.
 

PlaceofDis

macrumors Core
Jan 6, 2004
19,241
6
I'm not sure I agree with the advice here re. Tiger. I upgraded our iBook G3 to Tiger recently, and it runs better than it did under Panther...

Having said that a G4 will be faster...

The biggest minus for us is not getting the advanced edit options in iPhoto.

depends on the hardware configuration really. tiger can run well under some G3 stuff, but i've found panther to be more stable for the G3s at least. but if its supported by Tiger you can always give it a try.
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
Hey Guys!
I am looking at buying either a G3 or G4. What is the difference between them?
What will a G4 do that a G3 wont? Should I save money and Buy a G3 or spend more and get a G4? My budget is very limited.
Thanks!

G4s are a bit faster at same clock speed than G3s, and they have some features that help with videos, but for very limited money a G3 will still work. What you might want to watch out for: If you are buying a desktop machine where adding memory is quite simple, prices for older memory chips can be quite excessive. So if you are thinking about adding more memory (which is the most important thing if you want more speed), check http://www.crucial.com for prices for the model you intend to buy.
 

aquajet

macrumors 68020
Feb 12, 2005
2,386
9
VA
I've got a G3 900mhz iBook running Tiger and it's still quite usable for many things. But the G4 iBooks are far more capable at many tasks. iMovie is significantly faster, software instruments in Garageband are handled much better, all of iPhotos editing features are supported, and other things. Most iBook G4s will run Leopard, and all will run the latest versions of iLife and iWork. The G3s will not.

Definitely try to find a G4 iBook first, preferably 1.2 ghz or faster as those models have the larger L2 cache.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.