Ok, In 2003 the G5's were tauted as the fastest computers out. The quad g5 and the dual core ones were good - but how the heck did anyone ever work with the single 1.6, 1.8, and even the slower dual processors back then? They seem to struggle and go so slowly with most things that require some power.
Just seems like such a Long but short time ago!
The computer world was a lot different than what it is.
Until the G5's came out, the only systems that Dual Processors and more than 4gb of Ram, were Super High end work stations and servers. They were typically Intel Itaniums ( Spellcheck that? ), or AMD Optrons. The G5's were the first computers of their performance level that the average person could go out and buy off the shelf. They weren't cheap tho. The Tower alone for a Dual 1.8 would run you 3500 dollars.
You also gotta remeber, really cheap computers that were useable didn't exist yet, even a super low end Dell at that time period would still run you 600-700 dollars for a full setup. Hell, not long before that my father paid 1,200 dollars for a HP Tower with a 633mzh Celeron Processor, 256mb of ram and Windows ME. Oh how far we've come.
So at the time, the G5's were by far the fastest computers the average person could go out and buy. Sure there Itanium and Optron workstations that were as fast, but those would run you 6000 to 10000 dollars. And if you wanted windows, you were stuck on windows server edition.
Typical 2003 Computer:
Pentium 4 or a Athlon, single cores baby. ( I still have my old Athlon 64 box )
Gig of ram typically
Video Card: Something like a Geforce 4 or a Geforce FX, the 6 series was just starting to exist.
hard drive? 500gb MAX unless you really wanted to start spending a ton of money.
Compare something like that, that came in a Green or Grey case. to a mid range G5, the G5 looked amazing, and performed amazing.
G5s were super high end for their day. And what a day it was, I remember those days, hell I'm not that old, but I remember when Windows ME came out....holy **** I'm getting old ( Im only 24 lol )
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I have to agree tayloralmond.
They 1.6 G5 is just as fast as it ever was. It's the programs that have gotten bloated and the users (myself included) have gotten impatient.
For a moment, pause and consider what you're suggesting: that a computer capable of performing 1,600,000,000 operations per second is slow.
Files are getting bigger, the number of pixels is increasing, the number of programs running at the same time is increasing (the original Macintosh could only run 1 program at a time).
The old computers were very fast at doing the things we asked them to do. We're just asking for more today than we did yesterday.
This.
It's not that its a " slow " computer. But by modern standards, they are slow. But not slow. If that makes sense lol.
Doesn't seem like it was that long ago that I was wide eyed at a G5 on the cover of PC Magazine, now you can pick up a decent for 200 bucks, and it gets destoryed by a generic 800 dollar dell box
