How does a 2.3 Ghz Dual Core PPC G5 compare to a current Mac mini?

[thecypher]

In terms of performance how do these compare? I know the PPC G5 doesn't run Snow Leopard and therefore is out of date but just wondering in terms of performance how they compare. Lets say running Aperture 2 on a 2.3 Ghz Dual Core PPC G5 vs a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Mini.

 

[bizzle]

In terms of performance how do these compare? I know the PPC G5 doesn't run Snow Leopard and therefore is out of date but just wondering in terms of performance how they compare. Lets say running Aperture 2 on a 2.3 Ghz Dual Core PPC G5 vs a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Mini.

The Mini will be faster. By a large margin.

 

[mabaker]

I would dare to say if you’re doing video encoding go for the Mac Mini but overall speed will be greater with the Powermac.

Especially handling the RAM - Snow Leopard has very irritating quirks with RAM causing slowdowns cuzz it doesn’t think much of freeing up the Inactive RAM when needed.

On the other hand we have excellent Leopard-running Powermac G5 which you can boost up with nice fast hard drives that will definitely help your Aperture library load fast and without any sign of slowdoown.

 

[MacHamster68]

go for the G5 you can upgrade the graphics card on a G5
i would go for a nvidia geforce 7800 GTX with 512mb gddr3 ram wich degrades the nvidia gefocrce 320m of the mini to something more suitable for a pocketcalculator , sorry netbook

 

[Giuly]

I would dare to say if you’re doing video encoding go for the Mac Mini but overall speed will be greater with the Powermac.

Especially handling the RAM - Snow Leopard has very irritating quirks with RAM causing slowdowns cuzz it doesn’t think much of freeing up the Inactive RAM when needed.

On the other hand we have excellent Leopard-running Powermac G5 which you can boost up with nice fast hard drives that will definitely help your Aperture library load fast and without any sign of slowdoown.

Inactive = Free.

 

[Detrius]

When it shipped, the very first Intel iMac was every bit as fast as the fastest quad-core G5 for compiling source code. That was several years ago. Try something as simple as playing YouTube videos. You'll see the difference VERY quickly. The G5 will stutter a little on the low quality, whereas the Mac mini hardware accelerates and therefore does fine with the 1080p.

The benefits of the G5 over the mini, though, are that it's expandable. Otherwise, the mini is a more powerful computer.

 

[Detrius]

Especially handling the RAM - Snow Leopard has very irritating quirks with RAM causing slowdowns cuzz it doesn’t think much of freeing up the Inactive RAM when needed.

Free = wasted money spent on extra RAM.
Inactive = disk cache speed boost that can be thrown out when something else is needed.

 

[DesmoPilot]

I would dare to say if you’re doing video encoding go for the Mac Mini but overall speed will be greater with the Powermac.

No, it really won't. Where do you get that overall speed will be greater on the G5? Current generation Mac Mini will run laps around the G5.

Especially handling the RAM - Snow Leopard has very irritating quirks with RAM causing slowdowns cuzz it doesn’t think much of freeing up the Inactive RAM when needed.

On the other hand we have excellent Leopard-running Powermac G5 which you can boost up with nice fast hard drives that will definitely help your Aperture library load fast and without any sign of slowdoown.

Proof? Snow Leopard handles RAM miles and miles better than Leopard did.

go for the G5 you can upgrade the graphics card on a G5
i would go for a nvidia geforce 7800 GTX with 512mb gddr3 ram wich degrades the nvidia gefocrce 320m of the mini to something more suitable for a pocketcalculator , sorry netbook

Doubtful, the 320M is probably on par with the 7800GTX, especially with OS Xs bad drivers.

 

[thunng8]

No, it really won't. Where do you get that overall speed will be greater on the G5? Current generation Mac Mini will run laps around the G5.

Yeah, CPU wise, the current mini should be at least 1.5x faster. Only G5 faster than a Mini (on apps that can use the 4 cores) is the G5 Quad.

You'll also have to consider that the G5 can take large fast 3.5" hard drives, so in case of drive access, the G5 is faster..unless of course you put an SSD on the mini

Doubtful, the 320M is probably on par with the 7800GTX, especially with OS Xs bad drivers.

Theoretically the 7800GTX is a lot faster. It has around double the pixel and texel fill rates and more than triple the memory bandwidth.

Given the theoretically differences, I would say the 7800gtx is faster, but I've never seen a comparison between the 2.

 

[MacHamster68]

here is a comparison 7800 GTX and if you scroll donwn there is somewhere near the bottom of the list the 320m
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?cpu=GeForce+7800+GTX

 

[QuantumLo0p]

As I have I posted in other thread at MacRumors, my experience has shown me overall the Mini is faster but can absolutely suck at some things in standard OEM form. The standard hdd is a steaming, dog turd and is much slower than the raid 0 setup in my old school PowerMac. A ssd or Momentus XT would be a tremendous improvement. While graphics benchmarks show the 320m to be much better than the 6800 in my PowerMac, real usage has shown otherwise. Overall they seem to perform a little better but once in a while my graphics will lag quite badly when gaming, specifically in WoW and that is with the settings turned waaaay down. Usually a few seconds is all it takes to recover but a few times it never did recover until I restarted the game, which is pretty bad IMO. Other apps seem to run fine.

Also, my Mini gets quite warm when gaming; I would go so far to say borderline 'hot'. Other apps seem fine but I have not used iMovie extensively yet.

In fairness to the 'tiniest Mac', I plan to upgrade the hdd to at least a Momentus XT, possibly a ssd, and also to up the ram to 4 or 8 GB, keeping dual channel intact by not going with 3, 5 or 6 GB. Overall I am satisfied with my Mini and I never expected too much of it. I love the design and how little power it uses and I had a 23" ACD left from my PowerMac dying so I thought, why not get a Mini? The Mini is NOT a workstation not a gaming computer so don't expect miracles, only expect what it should be capable of and you'll be fine.

I hope this helps in any way.

 

[VanneDC]

it all depends on what your going to use it for...
Ive owned a G4 mac mini and a Core2Duo one and its only the recent ones with the Nvida chipsets that can do 1080p. The initial Core line up was soo **** i wouldent even piss on it to put it out if it were on fire. (used to use it as a media center, but it even sucked at doing that with its GMA950)

The Mini G4 is actually a great little box (much better than the Core2duo 950 equiped minis as the Ati dedicated graphics of the G4 swam miles around the ****** GMA950) for using as a media center. Ran Youtube fine aswell,(just not 1080p but sd just fine)

The G5 powermac is a totally different box al together, and you cannot really says whats better, it all depends on what apps your going to be using. Dont be a tool, do some research and make your decision based upon information that is current and correct.

 

[leekohler]

When it shipped, the very first Intel iMac was every bit as fast as the fastest quad-core G5 for compiling source code. That was several years ago. Try something as simple as playing YouTube videos. You'll see the difference VERY quickly. The G5 will stutter a little on the low quality, whereas the Mac mini hardware accelerates and therefore does fine with the 1080p.

Quite simply false. I have a dual core 2.0 G5 with a Radeon x1900 and it handles 1080p flawlessly. It's my main machine for editing video. It plays YouTube videos every bit as well as my 2.4 black MacBook. There is no stuttering whatsoever. I would never use my MacBook to edit video though. I'd be afraid I'd kill it.