Juiced up dual G4 or a G5

[markjones05]

I just talked my friend out of buying a 3 ghz PC into getting a G5. But he wants to know which is better a Dual 1.25ghz powermac G4 with 512 ram, 80 gig HD, combo drive, Nvidia ge force 4 ti, and a 20 inch studio display or a 1.6 G5 with 512 ram, 80 gig HD, combo drive, ati radeon 9800 with a 20 inch studio display? The G5 is only a few hundred dollars more. He want to be able to play all the best games including Doom3 when released. He wont be using it for any editing or anything else besides maybe some photoshop, music, internet, and papers. What should i tell him to get? I was under the assumption that the G5 was all around better for his purposes than the juiced up G4. What will perform better when it comes to games? What does a 1.6 ghz G5 equal in terms of ghz in the PC world?

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

1.6 for sure.

 

[baby duck monge]

g5, but no 20" apple monitor.

you could get a 20" formac monitor (www.formac.com) for $300 less (or you could find another, also cheaper, not-apple monitor).

you could use that money to almost cover the bump up to a 1.8 g5, or you could use it to buy more ram for the 1.6 (= happier, faster)

many people are extremely happy with non-apple monitors, and your friend could be, too

 

[yamabushi]

Tell him to get the 1.8 G5. It's a much better value and is clearly faster than the dual G4. The 1.6 is slightly slower than a dual G4 on some benchmarks. The ATI card will really help with games.

As far as comparing the 1.6 G5 to a PC, it is really not possible to make a direct comparison for several reasons. That said, you can get an overly simplistic rough approximation to a high end Pentium 4 gaming system by halving the clock rate of the Pentium 4. So a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 might be able to get close to the average performance of 1.6 G5.

The Mac will have much more stability than a Windows XP system in general. However, many game developers spend more time optimizing their code for the Pentium and Athlon under Windows than for the PowerPC under MacOSX so the PC has a slight advantage in this area. Blizzard is a notable exception - they do their Mac ports in house and thus can release dual boot disks with excellent performance on either platform. Most others farm out the work to a company that specialises in the Mac platform, which means there is often a delay in the release of a Mac version.

 

[Sun Baked]

If he has a computer right now, and the VGA/DVI monitor is satisfactory -- or is willing to get a CRT -- he might be happier putting the money that would go into the monitor into the machine, and getting a 1.8 G5 instead.

While the 1.6 G5 is a fine machine, the extra 4 DIMM slots and the PCI-X slots may make him happier in the long run (really it's the extra memory capacity that is worthwhile).

---

And if games are really important, he "may" be happier with the ATI 9800 Pro Retail Edition and selling his ATI 9600 Pro to some needy Mac user.

Yes it's a 4x card with DVI ports, but the extra features of ATIs control panel are only available with the retail card. (note - the retail is more expensive for Apple ADC monitor users, due to lack of an ADC port)

 

[MacsRgr8]

Originally posted by Sun Baked

Yes it's a 4x card with DVI ports, but the extra features of ATIs control panel are only available with the retail card. (note - the retail is more expensive for Apple ADC monitor users, due to lack of an ADC port)

Don't react, Don't Hurt Me

But I totally agree. I have a Dual 1.25 with Radeon 9800 Pro and really enjoy the 3D "override" feature....so beautiful!

 

[MacBandit]

Get a refurbished Dual/1.42 for $1999. Apple has them in stock on and off. You have the check the site through out the day because availability changes minute to minute. Right now they are available. In fact I just ordered one about an hour ago.

 

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by yamabushi
As far as comparing the 1.6 G5 to a PC, it is really not possible to make a direct comparison for several reasons. That said, you can get an overly simplistic rough approximation to a high end Pentium 4 gaming system by halving the clock rate of the Pentium 4. So a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 might be able to get close to the average performance of 1.6 G5.

I think that's not even rough. It's stupid. If a single 1.6 G5 is as good as a 3.2GHz P4, does that mean by your terms, a dual 2GHz is as good as dual 4GHz P4's, or even an 8GHz P4 in even rougher terms? The clock speed means nothing in this comparison.

 

[illumin8]

Re: Juiced up dual G4 or a G5

Originally posted by markjones05
What will perform better when it comes to games? What does a 1.6 ghz G5 equal in terms of ghz in the PC world?

I hate to say this, but the Mac, even the G5, will probably never have as many good games released for it as the PC. For that reason, I would recommend the following:

Buy the dual 1.25 G4 PowerMac for web browsing, music, Photoshop, basically everyday use.

Use the few hundred dollars you save to buy a <$500 Dell PC for games only. You'd be surprised how cheap you can get a Dell for with a Radeon 9800 video card. Check this site daily for a good deal on a Dell:

GotApex?

If you want to be able to play the good games like HalfLife 2 and Doom 3 when they come out, you better be on a PC. If you tell him to buy a G5 for this purpose, I think your friend might be mad at you later on. I would recommend getting at least a P4 2.4 with Radeon 9800 graphics (not 9800 Pro, just regular 9800... you can flash it to a 9800 pro with a new BIOS).