Actually I would highly RECOMMEND you getting a Powermac G5. I have a Dual 1.8 G5 (2003 model with 4GB max RAM) with 3GB Ram, 2 320GB Hard drives, a Radeon 9600 w/dual DVI. I develop websites on it using CS4. I CHOSE the powermac G5 over an intel for budget reasons. MY G5 does EVERYTHING I need. I am free from the rat race of perpetual upgrading and replacing. Seriously you should get the G5. Stay away from the liquid-cooled variants and you should be fine. Make sure to fill it full of RAM and a video card better than the Geforce 5200 and you should be fine.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Buying a G5 to replace MBP
- Thread starter CWD
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I use CS4 on my PM as well, I use my PM G5 as my main machine because its for LEISURE activity (and yes, CS4 is a leisure app for me) where I dont need hundreds of apps open and don't have any real time penalty/pressure either, love using it in this environment. However.........there is no way I could replace my MBP with it for work, there i do have many many apps open and many processes running, time is money etc etc. and the PM would just plain not keep up (the MBP is extremely smooth and never misses a beat no matter what you throw at it).
Maybe it's psychological (MBP = Work, PM = Free time
) but I always love working on the G5 and so far it does it's job faultlessly and perfectly - the MBP never comes out of it's bag at weekends
Maybe it's psychological (MBP = Work, PM = Free time
) but I always love working on the G5 and so far it does it's job faultlessly and perfectly - the MBP never comes out of it's bag at weekends True, I agree.
What do you mean free from the rat race of upgrading and replacing? True, I agree.
I mean I don't have the feeling that my Apple computer is obsolete and need to upgrade every 6 months. Sure OSX 10.5.8 is old. Sure CS4 is old. Sure PowerPC is not "officially" supported but honestly I don't care anymore. I have a computer that works for me and I can EASILY replace cheaply if need be, upgrade a component cheaply. (I recently bought a Sony Dual Layer DVD Burner from Ebay for $20 shipped)
I understand that there are those who feel they need to keep riding the bus. Not me. I want to take care of my family first and if that means using a machine that is 9+ years old so be it.
I could have built a "hackintosh" but honestly I'd rather not go there. (I am a developer and understand the need to pay for software as it supports the hard work of fellow coders.)
CS4 Photoshop is still working for me and true, I know what you mean there. I wouldn't trade my Powermac G5 for a 10 core PC running Windows. The G5 is a special machine.
I mean I don't have the feeling that my Apple computer is obsolete and need to upgrade every 6 months. Sure OSX 10.5.8 is old. Sure CS4 is old. Sure PowerPC is not "officially" supported but honestly I don't care anymore. I have a computer that works for me and I can EASILY replace cheaply if need be, upgrade a component cheaply. (I recently bought a Sony Dual Layer DVD Burner from Ebay for $20 shipped)
I understand that there are those who feel they need to keep riding the bus. Not me. I want to take care of my family first and if that means using a machine that is 9+ years old so be it.
I could have built a "hackintosh" but honestly I'd rather not go there. (I am a developer and understand the need to pay for software as it supports the hard work of fellow coders.)
The graphics card won't give you one bit of performance there. OpenGL is just clunky on CS4 with any of those cards. Might as well simply turn it off. People concern themselves way too much with graphics cards there where they're the least important link in the chain on what you're doing. Ram is another issue. It depends on the OS. Some of them were a little buggy when maxed out on ram. Your gain from ram is mostly running more applications, as even though the system can cache to it, you'll see little advantage compared to modern hardware. It's easy to push the price up to the level of much newer hardware with upgrades, so you have to be careful there.
That thread necromancy is bad.
Using PPC in 2013 is fine, if it's not connected to the internet, or if you're running something other than OS X.
