Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iMac G4 800MHz -> iMac G5 1.8GHz?

R

ruutiveijari

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 11, 2005
149
0
Hellsinki
It's again time for an upgrade, maybe. The last one was about three years ago and my beautiful SunFlower is still working like a dream. It's an 17" 800MHz G4 with 768Mb RAM and 80Gt 5400RPM HDD.

So I got a great offer on a 20" iMac G5 (rev a.) with all the usual stuff + 1,25Gb of RAM.

Should I switch and pay a little extra? Is the change in perfomance noticeable? I'm using my computer on all the usual home stuff - internet, office-applications, photoshop, mail etc.

Is the 20" as beautiful as they say? Please convince me.
 
You'll notice a massive improvement. Performance-wise, my 800MHz G4 iBook is similar to your iMac and the difference in CPU-intensive tasks is ridiculous. Even Finder is snappier. :)

Plus, you'll love the bigger screen. :p
 
I'm going to have to go against what mad jew said. Yeah the G5 will be better, but with my experiences with the two computers you've mentioned, not very much at all. And all the problems with the the G5 rev A iMacs, in my mind just absolutely not worth it. I much prefer the form of the G4s too. But anyways, the G5s are better, but I wouldn't go with a rev A if my life depended on it.
 
ruutiveijari said:
Are there other known problems besides these: http://www.apple.com/support/imac/repairextensionprogram/ ?
Click to expand...
Well I'm not really sure what the "power problem" refers to on apple's page. One of ours the video card crapped out on, and the other had a different problem, not sure exactly what was wrong, but they replaced the HD and the video card. All this and 1.8 GHz was barely (20% at most, very scientific here) faster than our 800 MHz G4s. My PB kills both the G5 iMacs, which just shouldn't be...
My 2¢ - run
 
The iMac I'm thinking of has been running problem free for 7 months now. Are the problems the kind that usually appear at the early stages of using your iMac or is it possible that they will appear though it's been problem free for 7 months?

I'd probably be getting AppleCare because of these issues. But I don't want a time bomb, I want a reliable workhorse.
 
ruutiveijari said:
The iMac I'm thinking of has been running problem free for 7 months now. Are the problems the kind that usually appear at the early stages of using your iMac or is it possible that they will appear though it's been problem free for 7 months?

I'd probably be getting AppleCare because of these issues. But I don't want a time bomb, I want a reliable workhorse.
Click to expand...
Maybe we just got stuck with 2 crappy ones, but I just wouldn't trust them now. Ours went out at ~11 months, just under the warranty, (actually I think one was just after, but it was still covered). The thing that gets me the most is if you were just looking at clock speed and bus width the G5 should have easily been twice as fast as our G4s but they aren't even close. Like I said, it could be that we just got 2 bum systems, but if I was buying a 1.8 GHz processor, I would want it to perform like a 1.8 GHz processor. If you do decide to go for it, make sure you get the apple care.
I'm very much against the design of the G5 iMacs, think they're quite ugly, so take my negativity with some salt. The rev C have made me almost think that an iMac is okay to buy now, but I'd never get an A
 
True, the original G5 iMacs were plagued with issues but they should pretty much all have been ironed out now. Plus, the problems didn't affect all of them.

FWIW, my Rev B has been trouble free since May. :)
 
I owned a G4 ilamp 800 and got a G5 imac 1.8 as soon as they were announced. I'm very pleased with the performance differance, especially in games like Stonghold and C&C Generals. As far as problems, never had any during the 14 months or so that I've had it. My only complaint would be the skimpy 64MB graphics card, but since it runs my games better than my 32MB ilamp my complaint is a minor one. I also own two of the newer G5 iMacs with the 128 MB cards and they are only somewhat faster than the original rev.A in game play. Hope this helps in your decision, good luck.
 
the newer/better video card and processor should be a big improvement all on their own.

You mention the G5 imac has 1.25gb of ram, what size sticks are in it?
 
Here is my opinion and my similar iMac upgrade path:
15" iMac G4 800MHz (RevA)
17" iMac G4 1GHz (RevB)
17" iMac G5 1.8GHz (RevB)
17" iMac G5 1.9GHz (RevC)

My revision A G5 was replaced by a RevC b/c I had hard drive failure, logic board failure, and the disk drive broke 2X (started having problems around 10 months).

There was a huge speed difference in the more "intensive tasks" from the 1GHz iMac G4 to the 1.8GHz iMac G5. For most things it wasn't that much of an improvement, but for anything iMovie, FCP, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, Photoshop, disc encoding/burning related the difference is very noticeable.

I still prefer the design of the iMac G4's over the G5's. Not even a close contest to me. I would NOT trade an iMac G4 for a RevA iMac G5 if I had to make the decision. If you are going to upgrade go for the RevC with iSight (or at least a RevB) so that you can get an iMac revision with less problems and also that comes standard with a 128MB video card instead of the 64MB video cards in the RevA.

I enjoy using the iMac G5 a lot.....but I do not like it nearly as much as I did my 2 iMac G4's. Someday I will own an iMac G4 again, just for internet browsing or something.
 
Jovian9 said:
I still prefer the design of the iMac G4's over the G5's.
Click to expand...

I owned the 17 inch widescreen iMac G4 (800 mhz) and now own the G5 2.1 ghz (isight, 20") and while I agree with you that the G4 had some features that were superior (the screen was out of this world -- it seemed like it was floating in space), the G5 iMac is by far the best computer I've ever used. It's much, much faster, the graphics card is far superior, the screen resolution much higher. Plus it has USB/2, which is a necessity for new iPods. The old iMac limped through Virtual PC, the new one breezes along.

I miss the ability to super-fine-tune the screen angle of the display, otherwise the G5 iMac (Rev. C) is the clear champion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back