Quad core G5 upgrades

[zen.state]

I can totally see your point that most people buy computers that have way more power than they would need in the near future. However, considering constant software changes (especially in terms of web development), this isn't the dumbest thing to do as those machines will last for many years.
10 years ago anyone would have agreed that the internet (browsing) doesn't require more than 500MHz. Try running current websites/apps (and I'm not talking Flash here) on those machines. You can do as much optimisation as you want, which btw isn't cost effective (bad practice from a software engineering POV, though), the machines just won't be able to run it in a way modern machines do. HTML5, which finally steps up to replace Flash in every single point, although rumoured to be less demanding, still kicks those old systems in the groin. Your 1.8GHz G4 should be able to run bespoken features in a satisfying way, but go 3 years back, those machines won't be able to do so. Quick sample, try me.com.

It is, however, not merely an issue of computing power, rather than platforms being abandoned, which is why current software won't run on them any more although their processing power would still allow them to run.
To sum up, we've got two factors here. The sheer inability to keep up with current software from a processing power POV, and the inability to run current software because people decided to move to another, (in case of PPC vs. Intel) better platform.


Anyhow, where exactly is your problem with admitting that the Intel core architecture is faster clock per clock than the PowerPC 5? That's everything I said two posts before. How can you possibly go off on that (100% true) statement and accusing me in a way I can't even re-iterate. Do you know my demands? Clearly not.
As well as stopping with your senseless insults, you should stop generalising other people's computer usage and reflecting your usage to theirs.

That is honestly one of the most well reasoned posts I have ever read.

You make many good points and are also right about me viewing things more through my own mindset. Both you and chris are still at least able to see my side of the argument to a certain point so I should do the same.

I guess after years of working with all sorts of different hardware (over 18 now) I am just jaded the most by x86 and have embraced RISC the most. A great PowerPC system just gives me a warm feeling inside because I respect how it was designed, made and functions. I guess sometimes our hearts can fog our minds a little. Foggy mind and all though I will be using PowerPC systems in any way I can for as long as I can.

When it comes to myself or a client though I would never let my stance mess with real results that are needed. I have recommended hardware upgrades to many clients. Upgrades from PowerPC to Intel Macs even. If the power is truly needed then it's needed.

Sorry for my crazy rants. I can be a little too passionate at times.

 

[chrismacguy]

chris:
We can't base it on raw mathematic ability. Your machine would obviously trounce mine. What I was thinking is more a real world productivity type of test.

I did mention productivity from the beginning:
"I would happily take part in a productivity competition with any typical intel Mac user with my G4 1.8GHz."

If I needed to crunch all that math like you and many of the clusters I setup do then I would have a Mac Pro. The stuff I do on my own Mac is much more R&D and database oriented. That is why I have 3.5TB on a 10 year old Mac.

This is my problem - to me productivity is said maths/supercrazy video/audio stuff - sometimes being a Prosumer Student causes you to need stupidly high-end hardware (Post-DegreeandDoctorate I want to go do Computer Audio, so the A/V stuff is semi-justified to me) - I believe in PowerPC as much as most people, but not as a main machine now for more than "I need to type letters" (If the OP hadnt mentioned Video/Photo editing Idve told him to go get a MDD/G5/"AmazingLookingCrazyUpgradedSawtooth" - if only Apple would support it for another 3-5 years). For office productivity I agree with you - heck I still do my databases in FileMaker Pro 4 and 50% of my writing in ClarisWorks on my 1400c and once my 7500 returns from the friend I loaned it too Ill be back to doing 80% of my writing, spreadsheets and email in OS 9 - the only thing I regularly do under "office" in OS X is Keynote, as I do it on my MBA as thats what I present off of - older machines do it a lot better than Bento / MSAccess / Office and has a nicer keyboard for long stretches than any Mac since. (I also have SQL on my Sawtooth and Mac Pro, but I use FileMaker for enough stuff as Ive had it about a decade, and well, stuff builds up). The only reason people should have Mac Pros is for what me and transporteur use them for - heavy rendering/compression or heavy number cruching or really needing the expansion (A lot of professionals do, as so much stuff needs a port apple doesnt ship - be it USB3/eSATA/SCSI/weirdproprietarything - everyone else could survive on G4s.. certainly G5/Intel Minis (Different architecture, roughly similar in terms of "OMG I HAVE xxx CPU" and Geekbench). As far as R&D goes - Im doing CompSci units as well as Maths ones (Joint Honours stuff) - and for Coding Ill take anything with a large screen (Seriously, most of my code could happilly be done on a 30" equipped 603e based Mac,possibly not the threading stuff, but the rest probably could be), which is why i do it on my Mac Pro - I rely on the larger screen to fit code, documentation and a terminal window or 3 all up at once. (Since I was getting it for the math anyway I might as well use it some more and get as much out of it as possible) - So in many ways I agree with you, not entirely, but in many ways I do (PS Im an IT Consultant on the side working my way thru college - and your points about most users are 100% on target - few know what they need and just get whatever looks pretty that day...>.<)

The real productivity test will be when I get home for the summer and try and find enough machines to try the "Can I survive on 68K" challenge.

 

[Yotsuba]

Damn, I've never seen a thread turn into nothing more than two people throwing feces at each other. Joris, if you can make due with older software and aren't going to be playing a bunch of games, then go for the G5 Quad. For a six-year-old computer, it's still pretty impressive. For the record, I have a dual 1.8GHz G5 and for what I do, which is usually light photo editing, it does just fine.

 

[MacHamster68]

so the main problem is not intel is faster then PPC or PPc is better then intel
its just a plain simple capitalistic outcome , if you can afford to wait for a task to end and you are good enough that your customers are willing to wait too , because they value quality more then speed ,then you are fine with PPC , if your customers , are just some ignorant who dont care about quality as long as its cheap and fast delivered then you need intel
finally sorted now

 

[Cox Orange]

...if you can afford to wait for a task to end ...

I converted DV files with a 2x2,3GHz PM G5 and it did not take that long or show the beach ball... (i do not have the experience on a new Intel-Mac, I do not know whether it gets it done in a blink of an eye

I am a big PPC fan, too, but would recommend joris to go one of the two ways.

1. this cheap Quad (not another more expensive one) only as a shorttime solution or if his video-demands are covered.
OR
2. buy a used Intel-Mac.

If the prices on Ebay are the same in the US as here (germany), than:

1. take the Quad for 300USD as a short-time solution, and do not upgrade the HDD, because 7200rpm SATA and Tiger is fast enough. The only thing I would recommend to upgrade is RAM. Try 4GB first. 1GB costs 10eur here on Ebay (do not choose ECC-RAM, because they are slower on G5s). If it has only 512MB (that is 2x 256MB), I would consider, if it is worth spending 40eur (that is 54USD), for additional RAM. But you might even want to have more RAM for video editing!
Be aware, that some modern video-tasks (professional HD things) demand better graphics cards than the GeForce 6600. If you have to replace this, you have to consider again, if it is still worth it. a 7800GT 256MB, costs 35,-EUR as windows version, if you find someone who flashes it for you, you can better your position, but a 7800GTX 512MB or quadro FX 4500 is expensive as windows version, too and not worth it contra a new Intel-Mac.
If you have to spend 100USD in upgrades (54 RAM + 47 for graphics card), then everything is quiet different. If you have to buy additional PPC-software (that is, if you do not have enough with iMovie and need final cut Pro) or video-capture-cards (EyeTV, ADVC-300, Blackmagic Design decklink), then I won't invest in it, because, then I would spend the money in an Intel capture-card and software (though some older PPC cards work with Intels, too), because you can use it with the next Intel-Mac.

Then:
If the liquid cooling leaks one time, you can put out the RAM and sell it seperately and sell the rest (leave the HDD in it) in one auction as defective on EBay. This gives you back 200EUR (I do not know how much they pay on US-EBay). You can reinvest the 200eur (i.e. 270USD) in your next computer. If you are lucky, you have lost 30USD, but saved more money on your bank account in the meantime. (remember you have put the 500USD, you planned to invest in the upgrades first, on your bank and got a plus on that. (is the american word for the money you get, when you put money on your account really "interests"?). The "intersts" will perhaps be eaten up by the electricity bill for the Quad

If it last long enough you had a cheap computer in the meantime and you have time to save money for the Intel-Mac you like. If it does stop its work early, you did not loose much.

BUT instead of all this headache-causing thing you could go used-Intel directly, actually. If you think about it. And if you have more money, you can sell this one as well (though I do not know how big the loss in worth is with Intel Macs, PPCs are quiet predictable.

2. possibility: buy a used Intel-Mac, if you do not want to gamble with the LCS and money calculation (or pure guessing) which can change in the cause of the financial crisis (or you argument, that your money is save in material property, in an inflation, but an Intel would be a better investment then

personally, I am waiting for the next iMac to buy it new (I keep my computers 5-6 years and longer), because I find the mini too expensive and can't/ do not want to afford the Mac Pro. If I need something more powerful in the meantime I would shortly buy a Quad and sell it the moment I can get the new Intel-iMac or see, how long I can suspend the Quads life, without spending money in upgrades, till an Intel-iMac comes along that I like.

I would ask someone who is really into video-editing and can tell you what you can do with a Quad and what you can't do with it.
--> buying a used PPC or Intel comes out nearly the same in terms of money saving in the long run, but not software-wise.

One last mindgame: when there was only the 9400M in the Intels I went saying "well the mobile version of the 9400 is as fast as the desktop 7800GT in the PPC G5", though this is actually only true by pure numbers in the bandwidth, but ask someone who can tell you about the minimum graphics card demands for video-editing.

Is there any sense in what I just elaborated??? sorry... buy an Intel-Mac

 

[chrismacguy]

I would ask someone who is really into video-editing and can tell you what you can do with a Quad and what you can't do with it.

In my experience using the compressor cluster tricks (ie get it to use all the cores it can) - I get about 10x the thoroughput of video than I did out of my (now ex-) colleges G5 Dual 2.7 (Being an IT Tech meant I got to play with it and run the speedtests below), and about 4x-5x times that of a G5 Quad - I mean movies compress in 2 minutes instead of 20/9-10. And saw slightly larger increases in audio (12-13x faster if my calcs are right) - It used to take me about 8-9 minutes to export a 4 minute track to a compressed MP 3 and spit out a few other variants (Master, 256kbps AAC, and I believe a few others), now this takes just under 40 seconds when I timed it with a test setup (G5 with an identical suite of software (Final Cut Pro 7 ,Logic Pro 8 and Soundtrack Pro 3) - G5 under 10.5.8, Mac Pro under 10.6.4, both with 8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD with just the system on it). However as long as the G5 is Dual 2.0 or higher, it can run Final Cut Studio 3 and possibly Logic Pro 9 (Not tried it so dont know), the only stuff that wont work is AVCHD, and HD rendering might be a little slow, but certainly useable (Aforementioned college is still using Dual 800 Quicksilvers for Editing with SD Cameras and has a Single Mac Pro for the HD one).

 

[Cox Orange]

Thanks Chris,

this was very interesting for me (though I am not into video editing in anything more like a consumer type of manner (some say one gets better results on a Quad with Tiger instead of Leopard, but I guess the difference is less than marginal. On Logic 9, the Logic-User Forum reports, that it runs on PPC, but there are just two functions that are not available, fortunately it was something less important.)

btw, did you have had the chance for a side by side comparison of the Quad and the late 2005 2x2,3GHz one? I would be interested, if you remember how they compared noise-wise doing bigger tasks and idle.