Are Power Books THAT Much Slower than Power Macs?

[amammad]

I've been using a 15" G4 1.67GHZ Powerbook for awhile now but as I don't use it as a portable very often, I thought I'd probably want to upgrade to a Power Mac soon.

Recently my girlfriend left me with her G5 Dual 2.0 while she's on holiday and I was expecting it to rock my world but... it didn't.

I've timed stuff in Photoshop and yeah it's faster at complex blurs and stuff but in day to day tasks and the bit of imovie work I've done, it really didn't seem THAT much faster. In fact my Powerbook even seems to start up quicker!

I'm just wondering now if I should hang fire until Intels come along.

Help anyone??

 

[gwuMACaddict]

for most everyday mundane tasks there won't be a whole heck of a lot of difference. how much RAM is in each?

 

[amammad]

for most everyday mundane tasks there won't be a whole heck of a lot of difference. how much RAM is in each?

Powerbook has 1GB and the PM has 512MB I think... from memory.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

for most everyday mundane tasks there won't be a whole heck of a lot of difference.

More and more that is becoming the case for computers in general - just about every computer on the market gives satisfactory performance in most, if not all, everyday tasks.


To the OP:

The current Powerbooks are satisfyingly fast machines, despite all the angsty posts to the contrary here on MR.

Any pre-Intel Apple hardware updates are going to be pretty incremental - certainly not night and day. As regards your Powerbook, I'd say the grass won't get much greener for you until after the Intel transition. Keep it.

 

[AlBDamned]

Not going on the offensive here but 512MB is really a pitiful amount of RAM for a PM to be absolutely honest. If there isn't the need for more than that, then the machine itself is being wasted in its occupation.

For day to day tasks, there is little difference between the PB and PM but then, a dual G5 Power Mac isn't really meant for day to day tasks. It can do stuff like that with 75% of its processors fast asleep. Doing comparable, processor heavy tasks with an equivalent amount of RAM (i.e. a GB in each) will see the Powerbook – although it's not slow – get left in the Power Mac's dust.

If, in your average day's tasks you didn't notice much difference, then you needn't worry about spending the cash on a PM. I would get an iMac instead.

 

[Chef Medeski]

Powerbook has 1GB and the PM has 512MB I think... from memory.

The memory is crucial, pun intended. So, thats why. Take two machines with the same RAM an du'll be delightfully suprised especially the machines with max RAM because 2 GB of Ram is just!!!!!!

 

[AlBDamned]

The memory is crucial, pun intended. So, thats why. Take two machines with the same RAM an du'll be delightfully suprised especially the machines with max RAM because 2 GB of Ram is just!!!!!!

And the top end Power Macs can take up to 8GB of RAM which is enough to do pretty much anything.

 

[mwpeters8182]

My PB doesn't do too well watching Apple's HD video streams, as compared to my desktop. (Sempron 3100+). However, since I just use it for work, which does not include multimedia there aren't any problems. I do, however, wish that I had paid the $400 less and gotten an iBook, since I don't think I really needed the performance boost in the end.

Matt