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Powerbook G4 1.67ghz honest opinions please

MacTruck

MacTruck

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 27, 2005
1,241
0
One Endless Loop
I have a Titanium G4 1ghz now. If I upgrade to the New G4 Powerbook 1.67ghz will I see a signifigant increase in speed or will it be hardly noticible? They will both use the same hard drive a 60gb 7200 rpm drive as I will transfer my existing drive into the new computer and they will both have 1gb ram. I can get $1500 for my tibook so is the $800 upgrade price worth the 670mhgz speed increase? Bluetooth and Wireless G mean nothing to me. Thanks.
 
The question is, does you current system feel sluggish or slow to you? Only you can answer that. I went from an 800MHz to a 1.5GHz and have noticed a lot of difference. It depends on what you run. Only paying a $800 increment is a good deal.

As for moving your hard disk, make sure you have it upgraded to 10.3.8 if you want it to work with the current PowerBook models. And hopefully it won't have missed something. You would be better off moving your data to the new drive, that way you have a warranty on your drive. And remember the drives in the current PowerBooks are 5400 RPM, so if your drive is only 4200 RPM that would make a difference as well in speed.
 
Bear said:
The question is, does you current system feel sluggish or slow to you? Only you can answer that.
Click to expand...

I can't really answer that until I get the new computer and do a side by side comparison and I don't want to do that and spend the money just to realize its not that much faster.. My tibook doesn't feel slugish but it could use more pep. As far as the hard drive, its going to have the same drive I have in my powerbook now the 60gb hitachi 7200rpm drive with 8mb cache.

I would just wait for the dual core powerbooks but I head they will use faster ram than the 2700 ram in the current powerbooks and I just happen to have 2 1gb sticks of 2700 ram that I can put into it and they cost $700 so actually the new powerbook will have 2gb ram as apposed to the tibooks 1gb.

All that aside I am just wondering if a 670mhz speed bump and lack of 1mb cache is going to make me see a big increase in speed you know?
 
MacTruck said:
I can't really answer that until I get the new computer and do a side by side comparison and I don't want to do that and spend the money just to realize its not that much faster.. My tibook doesn't feel slugish but it could use more pep. As far as the hard drive, its going to have the same drive I have in my powerbook now the 60gb hitachi 7200rpm drive with 8mb cache.

I would just wait for the dual core powerbooks but I head they will use faster ram than the 2700 ram in the current powerbooks and I just happen to have 2 1gb sticks of 2700 ram that I can put into it and they cost $700 so actually the new powerbook will have 2gb ram as apposed to the tibooks 1gb.

All that aside I am just wondering if a 670mhz speed bump and lack of 1mb cache is going to make me see a big increase in speed you know?
Click to expand...
The difference in cache isn't an issue for most applications. going from a 256K L2/1MB L3 cache setup to a 512KB L2 cache is actually better in most cases.

Doubling the memory can help a lot depending on what you do.

As for processor power, have you thought about going in to an Apple Store and play with a machine there? They have a decent selection of software loaded and you could probably bring a CD-R or DVD-R loaded with test flles.
 
I went from Ti-867 to a 1.5 17" and yes

.....i see a fairly large difference in power, remember you get a little more system bus and 512kL2 cache, you will def. feel the difference.
 
capone2 said:
.....i see a fairly large difference in power, remember you get a little more system bus and 512kL2 cache, you will def. feel the difference.
Click to expand...
I've hedged my answers since so much depends on what the user is doing and that users perception.

In general I agree, that type of jump does help a lot, however some people just won't notice much difference depending on what they use the system for.
 
I do not know if you will feel a big difference? When I purchase I usually go by Benchmarks to determine where I am at. According to the Benchmarks I have seen of your Ti and the new PowerBook, there is a 32% difference in the Benchmarks on average, will you notice the 32%, cannot be answered until you try the new one. It was not enough for me to give up my old Ti so I purchased a 1.42 GHz Mini. (The PowerBook was not enough Power in my opinion.) The Benchmarks for the new Mini are 122. Your Ti is between 90 and 95, the new PowerBook is around 142 according to an article in MacWorld. You will just have to try one out before purchase, Good Luck.

Brian
 
Yeah, it depends on what you do.

If you're going to surf the net, use iTunes, iPhoto, MS Word, Powerpoint, MSN Messenger, a bit of iMovie, and some light Adobe Photoshop or something, then I really wouldn't bother with this upgrade, as I don't even see it as being worth $800 Canadian or Aussie dollars (equivalent right now), let alone $800 US dollars, which is much more.

I have a 12" 1GHz PB, and was thinking about the upgrade myself, but decided not to bother until the speed of a Powerbook doubles. That probably means getting a dual core G4 Powerbook (or maybe the G5-mobile PB) when it comes out.

The only issue is the cost of a future RAM upgrade. Maybe you'd save so much on the cost of RAM by purchasing a system NOW instead of later that it is worth the upgrade right now.

I still wouldn't bother upgrading, but hey, money is money.
 
I have a 12" 1GHz with 1.25 GB of ram and I was using my friend new 1.67 15" with 768mb and it screams compared to mine. She also have the upgraded video ram, so that makes a big difference as well. But she does have the faster hard drive, while mine is the 4200 rpm version, so that also plays a big role.
 
Honestly if you don't need an new book wait. I sold my 17in last week and went to the apple store (london) to try the new ones. I need to get a replacement but after trying then have to admit to be very unimpressed. Don't get me wrong I am an absolute mac head and this is the first time I have ever been put off buying a new one.
Every 15in model I saw had some kind of fault be it warped panels or dodgy hinges, granted this is a busy store and they will get abused but they haven't been out that long and if apple (at a flagship store) cannot be bothered to keep then in good condiition then it doesn't say much. The only model I would have bought was a new 17in but having spent a good few hours in there with some test files I brought with me I have to admit I was underwhelmed by the performance. With the 67% increase in CPU power and the better GPU I was expecting things to feel a lot faster yet despite restarting the machine and getting there first thing before they were all played around with I couldn't get Motion to display at the full 25fps with even a single particle generator this was after trying a RAM preview as well. If the latest Powerbook's cannot manage even reasonable performance with a 1 year old program then it doesn't say a lot for there professional attributes.
I did have a 1.6GHz G5 with a lowly ATI 9600 and that ran Motion quite happily at least under similar circumstances. There will be people who say that the G5 architecture is much faster and you cannot compare but if you look at the various benschmarks clock for clock a G4 is as fast as a G5 for CPU based tasks. The card in the Powerbook maybe a mobile chipset but it has plenty of RAM and very reasonable performance. I don't think I was expecting too much after all I wanted to buy a new machine and still need to. At the end of the day if you have a reliable machine that does its job hang on to it. If I hadn't have got such a great price for mine (65% of the original retail price) I would never have sold. I just feel that for almost £2000 (when you factor in RAM and cases etc) you should get a machine that should reasonably run apple's own software for the pro tasks they are labelled as being able to handle.
The advice is always the same as other learned people have said already, if you need then buy if not wait. Just don't expect a night and day difference over what you have already.
 
I love mine. It arrived from Apple last Wednesday and I've loved every minute of use. It is WAY faster than my 400 MHz G3 PowerBook that I upgraded from. My only convern is that the trackpad can be a little screwy sometimes. After about a minute, the trackpad stops being weird. I'm very happy with my purchase.
 
I'd wait for something new if I were you.

I have had both a 1.25Ghz PB and a 933Mhz iBook and I ended up selling the PB because it wasn't that much of a difference in speed. I would say that you should wait until the next major update(dual core or G5) for the Powerbooks because then you're going to be stuck in the same dilemma of "should I upgrade or live with what I have". That's a lot of money for very little difference. I was only noticing seconds worth of difference between the PB and the iB. If you are getting along with what you have now then hold out for what's going to be the coolest thing since sliced bread!

Cheers!
 
Ok, I've decided. I am going to wait. My powerbook is PERFECT right now. No hiccups or freezes, no bad hinges or paint or anything... it is solid. I don't want to sell that just to buy a headache. I will wait for the dual core powerbooks at WWDC hopefully. Thanks all.
 
I've used a 1Ghz Al Powerbook w/1GB of ram, 1.33Ghz Al Powerbook w/512mb of ram, and i'm currently using a 1.67Ghz w/2GB of ram and 128mb of vram.

The difference isn't all that much.. depending on what you do.
I've ran Photochop on the current machine and it loads a bit faster (3 - 5sec) compared to the two older machines..

Keep in mind what the main purpose of the machine will be used for... If you don't really the mobility, why not save the money and get a Mac Mini?

The Xbench results for my current 1.67Ghz machine follows... feel free to compare your results. If you would like me to post the result from my 1Ghz... i'll dig them up..

Results 131.75

System Info

Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.8 (7U16)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model PowerBook5,6
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.67 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.67 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV360M11
Drive Type Hitachi HTS541080G9AT00

CPU Test 188.07
GCD Loop 175.95 6.87 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 194.58 703.65 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 199.39 5.79 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 187.91 2.92 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 184.28 7.38 Mops/sec

Thread Test 132.00
Computation 95.59 1.29 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 213.21 2.68 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 122.67

System 131.53
Allocate 971.37 633.62 Kalloc/sec
Fill 160.62 1278.51 MB/sec
Copy 64.30 321.49 MB/sec

Stream 114.93
Copy 106.79 780.62 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 109.55 808.47 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 122.29 782.64 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 122.94 751.19 MB/sec [altivec]

Quartz Graphics Test 176.80
Line 143.77 3.66 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 157.18 11.06 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 169.08 3.90 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 171.11 1.86 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 312.03 5.09 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 126.39
Spinning Squares 126.39 88.44 frames/sec

User Interface Test 203.30
Elements 203.30 65.39 refresh/sec

Disk Test 73.53

Sequential 83.28
Uncached Write 88.71 36.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 66.53 27.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 112.37 17.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 77.95 31.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 65.82
Uncached Write 56.88 0.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 64.74 14.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 68.93 0.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 75.55 15.55 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Here's my 1Ghz Xbench results just to compare

Xbench results
Results 104.19

System Info
Xbench Version 1.1.3
System Version 10.3.8 (7U16)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model PowerBook5,2
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 512K @ 1.00 GHz
Bus Frequency 167 MHz
Video Card ATY,RV350M10
Drive Type TOSHIBA MK6025GAS

CPU Test 121.36
GCD Loop 117.89 4.60 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 122.76 443.93 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 122.76 3.57 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 123.86 1.92 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 119.73 4.79 Mops/sec

Thread Test 88.24
Computation 64.07 864.98 Kops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 141.68 1.78 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 130.94
System 139.31
Allocate 633.36 413.14 Kalloc/sec
Fill 139.12 1107.43 MB/sec
Copy 78.32 391.60 MB/sec
Stream 123.52
Copy 125.43 916.91 MB/sec [altivec]
Scale 127.45 940.57 MB/sec [altivec]
Add 123.38 789.62 MB/sec [altivec]
Triad 118.20 722.23 MB/sec [altivec]

Quartz Graphics Test 144.33
Line 114.36 2.91 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 137.41 9.67 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 138.80 3.20 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 129.23 1.40 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 271.93 4.43 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 90.74
Spinning Squares 90.74 63.50 frames/sec
User Interface Test 190.44
Elements 190.44 61.25 refresh/sec

Disk Test 59.60
Sequential 69.14
Uncached Write 70.05 29.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 52.43 21.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 151.17 23.93 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 55.90 22.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 52.38
Uncached Write 44.89 0.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 52.03 11.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 56.32 0.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 58.41 12.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Yeah, went to apples store today to buy one but just hate that lcd hinge. Butt ugly. I am waiting for the new dual cores in 3 months. Good decision on my part. Didn't feel like the 1.67 was all that much faster anyways.
 
Bear said:
I've hedged my answers since so much depends on what the user is doing and that users perception.

In general I agree, that type of jump does help a lot, however some people just won't notice much difference depending on what they use the system for.
Click to expand...


good point Bear, Plus i understand that the tibook 1ghz was always such a great machine.
 
You can always wait...

Look, you can always wait. Wait for the next new car model. Wait for the next new camera offering X megapixels. Wait for the next new CPU or computer...you get the idea.

Whatever you wait for, and purchase, it will shortly be outmoded or 'old news' for those wanting the 'latest and greatest' that can be offered to mankind.

Get what you need now for what must have to do your work. Worry about what is the latest next best thing when you need to upgrade when your needs change.
 
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