Is This a Good Deal For a Powermac?

[cmvsm]

All depends on what you are using it for my man. You are actually the first one I've seen on any forum for that matter get so frustrated with the I/O controller. I could be wrong, as I'm no tech, but maybe you are weighting it a little too heavily in the grand scheme of things. I'd like to read what you have in terms of the I/O controller and how it is "hosing" the G5 system in terms of performance. Any additional knowledge is good knowledge... 😀

The mini is a fantastic machine for what it is made for, but in terms of professional use or gaming, it may fall short. Then again, its really not made for those applications nor is it targeted to that audience hence its entry level price tag.

The PowerMac on the other hand is made for those apps, and despite what you've heard about the I/O controller, the machine is perhaps one of the fastest in the market dollar for dollar. It is also upgradeable so that the value in the long run is excellent as it will be a while before you'll run out of space to keep up with the advances in software.

Again, it depends on what you are using it for. If the Mac mini suits your daily needs...then go for it and I'm sure you won't be disappointed. If you think that you're needs and expectations are going to increase over time, then maybe the PowerMac is the better choice.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Maybe, but now iDVD can burn to disk image, and Disk Burn can burn it to an external drive. It may not be the most convenient or easy way, but it does work.

Nice work around. Particularly in light of the cheaper dual layer DVDR drives out there.

 

[jaromski]

yeah i am probably just being a tight-wad about the pmac price, etc. for some reason i was really frustrated about it last night. i guess i was just venting about how much of it is marketing and how much more performance you truly get. especially if the IO controller is hosed. but again i read this 3rd party from a website using xbench against the different machines. but there was one benchmark that i thought was particularly relevant. it was the canonical file-copy throughput measure. this one makes sense to me because it is a straight-forward and useful benchmark. how long does it take to copy file a to location b. and so on. it was really bizarre to see the emac g4 beat some g5 machines outright. (except the raid0 pmac, which i think isn't a fair comparison) this really stinks especially since the g5 has a huge FSB advantage. but in any given marketing ploy, do they really push the IO controller? nobody cares about that cuz it is hidden in the system performance. boring. the focus is processors, ram, and hard drive. again i am probably being slightly pedantic....i do agree that you have more expandability options with a g5 pmac over the mini. but the idea with the mini is _SCREW EXPANDABILITY_. seriously, why bother? just buy a new mini every few years. it would still be way cheaper than a pmac. and your hardware may be a few years behind the trend, but for 99/100 people i don't think it would really matter. it only matters if you use processor-bound apps, which are few and far between these days...

but the question remains, is it form over function on the g5 machines? don't get me wrong i would love to have a g5 machine. love it. but after reading the marks i can't really justify it, hence the heartbreak.

jaromski

 

[cmvsm]

When they start making a large amount of apps that take full advantage of a dual processor setup, then you'll see a large gap in price versus performance. Sailfish from the G5 Users Group had UT2004 and another graphic intensive game playing in two different windows while watching a movie in another. All apps were playing without hesitation on his dual 2.0.

I'm sure that a single processor could not handle such a load without going into freaky mode. Why would someone want to play two games at once? Probably wouldn't, but the point is that most single applications have not touched the surface of dual processing capabilities. So in all fairness, maybe dual processors are a bit overkill now just as 64bit processors are the big hype, but its nice to know you have a V-12 under the hood, even though the speed limit says 55. Ya just never know when you'll want to cut loose out of the blue.. 😀

 

[Eldentistfuturo]

mayday,, mayday,, this thread has been hijacked!