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Contemplating Mac Mini or Processor Upgrade

thechris69

thechris69

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 11, 2005
377
0
I currently have a power mac g4 tower, 2001 quicksilver, something like that. It has a 466 mhz processor, 896 mb of ram, a external lacie 160gb hard drive, and thats about it. I was wondering if i should buy a mac mini which is about 600 dollars, or get a processor upgrade from a third party place for about 400 dollars. It upgrades it the processor to a 1.8ghz, which is a lot. Plus a video card which is around 200, so im spending about the same price on my g4 as a new mac mini. However i already have enough ram and hard drive in my g4, so what should i do? Get a processor upgrade and video card, or get a mac mini?
 
I would get a mini and build a firewire network and use remote desktop with your old computer as a server for space and stuff.

Its a nice looking little computer, just got mine and it runs the 23" cinema fine in 2d app. Just dont expect to be playing games made after quake 3 with it.

I think its a nice computer to have while waiting for the next powermacs.
 
thechris69 said:
I currently have a power mac g4 tower, 2001 quicksilver, something like that. It has a 466 mhz processor, 896 mb of ram, a external lacie 160gb hard drive, and thats about it. I was wondering if i should buy a mac mini which is about 600 dollars, or get a processor upgrade from a third party place for about 400 dollars. It upgrades it the processor to a 1.8ghz, which is a lot. Plus a video card which is around 200, so im spending about the same price on my g4 as a new mac mini. However i already have enough ram and hard drive in my g4, so what should i do? Get a processor upgrade and video card, or get a mac mini?
Click to expand...
Quicksilvers started life at 733, there was never a 466 quicksilver. But if you do have a quicksilver and like to game the quicksilver/newer video is more machine then MacMini. I have/had both. If gaming isnt your bag a Mini is ideal, if you like gaming a upgraded Quicksilver is the way,just so many ways to make that thing faster.
 
An upgraded quicksilver will easily be faster than a mac mini, you can put a dual 1.8ghz in it and a newer video card.
 
If you put the money into upgrading your G4, you will end up with a better machine than the Mac Mini. So I would upgrade that tower.

BTW, if your tower is a 466MHz G4 than you have a Digital Audio G4. Make sure you buy a CPU upgrade that is compatible with a Digital Audio. Most cards that are compatible with the Quicksilver are also compatible with the Digital Audio, since they have the same bus speed.
 
If you need internal expandability and have investment in other tower components, do the 1.8 upgrade and be happy :D

mini is a sweet machine no doubt, but if you are used to being able to tinker inside your machine, a mini will frustrate you.......
 
pionata said:
I would get a mini and build a firewire network and use remote desktop with your old computer as a server for space and stuff.
Click to expand...

Please don't do that.

IMO An expanded G4 tower will give you a better overall computer than the Mini...plus you'll have more room for expandability in the future (more hard drive space, front drive bays, more room for memory) and you won't have to worry about managing two computers.
 
thechris69 said:
I currently have a power mac g4 tower, 2001 quicksilver, something like that. It has a 466 mhz processor, 896 mb of ram, a external lacie 160gb hard drive, and thats about it. I was wondering if i should buy a mac mini which is about 600 dollars, or get a processor upgrade from a third party place for about 400 dollars. It upgrades it the processor to a 1.8ghz, which is a lot. Plus a video card which is around 200, so im spending about the same price on my g4 as a new mac mini. However i already have enough ram and hard drive in my g4, so what should i do? Get a processor upgrade and video card, or get a mac mini?
Click to expand...

I have a AGP 867 G4 that I upgraded to 1.8. It is in many respect better than the mini if u don't mind the G4 noisy fan. Note that the upgrade (Sonnet) requires u have OS 9.2 installed. I have a Froggy version that doesn't want to co-exist well with my qwerty keyboard and U.S. OS X.3 so I might now have to buy U.S version of 9.2...Taking about wasted $$$ :(
 
I recommend getting the 1.4GHz G4 upgrade from OWC, or the PowerLogix 2.0GHz upgrade if you are willing to spend the cash. The OWC upgrades have L3 cache, which makes up for the lower speeds versus the faster (but cacheless) PowerLogix upgrades.

While you're at that site you might as well pick up a Radeon 9600 or 9800 video card; with those two items you're PowerMac will feel like a new computer.
 
i'm going to agree with the sentiment that you should upgrade your G4. it might cost just as much, but you'll get a far more capable machine, especially if you go for a fast hard drive, a good video card and one of the high-clock G4 upgrade cards. Barefeats shows a 2.0GHz G4 being competitive with a 2.0GHz G5 (if they were single processor), so even a 1.8 will seem like a very speedy machine
 
Thanks for the great opinions, ye it is a digital audio, my mistake. I was going to use it for games, so a new graphics card and a good 1.8 ghz processor upgrade will make my old slow cpu into a fast gaming machine?
 
Yes, better than a mac mini certainly. You can choose form a single 2ghz G4 or a Dual 1.8ghz G4 upgrade. Btw Lord Blackadder I seriously doubt an L3 cache is going to make up for a 600mhz difference. Although I dunno, I guess the SDRAM is mor eof a bottleneck on these units. Even so 600mhz is a huge difference.
 
Morn said:
Yes, better than a mac mini certainly. You can choose form a single 2ghz G4 or a Dual 1.8ghz G4 upgrade. Btw Lord Blackadder I seriously doubt an L3 cache is going to make up for a 600mhz difference. Although I dunno, I guess the SDRAM is mor eof a bottleneck on these units. Even so 600mhz is a huge difference.
Click to expand...

When I was shopping for a CPU upgrade all the benchmarks on xlr8yourmac.com showed the OWC 1.4GHz neck-and-neck with the cache-less Powerlogix 1.8GHz. The 2.0GHZ is a bit faster but it was too expensive at the time.

Now, a dual 1.8 is a different story, of course.

thechris69 said:
Thanks for the great opinions, ye it is a digital audio, my mistake. I was going to use it for games, so a new graphics card and a good 1.8 ghz processor upgrade will make my old slow cpu into a fast gaming machine?
Click to expand...

Check my sig to see the upgrades I did on my former dual 533 Digital Audio. Now it can play the Call of Duty series and Halo very smoothly. DVD ripping/encoding is much much faster, and GarageBand is no longer slow. I've ran demo's of some other games like UT2004 and they ran well also. I also ran the Doom3 demo and got suprisingly good framerates (only barely playable, but still), considering how far under spec the machine is. With a dual 1.8 and a Radeon 9800 you might just be able to play Doom3 with decent framerates on low settings. Just about every game other than Doom3 should run well though.
 
Personally I think the Powerlogix single 2.0GHz or the OWC single 1.467GHz are the best bang for your buck. The dual 1.8 would be faster in some situations but is a lot more money.
 
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