Single Processor vs. Double

Depends on what you want to do with your Mac. Email, Word, Safari, iTunes will all run perfectly well in a single 1.8 G5 PM. Where you're going to see a difference is in apps like Final Cut Pro 4, Photoshop, and other dual-proc aware apps, or if you like to watch DVDs while playing UT2003 and downloading bitTorrents as your iMovie renders, iDVD encodes, and Folding helps the world.

Seriously, though, you'll only notice a slight difference if using many apps at the same time. The big difference is in the pro apps rendering.

 

yes

 

jrv is right; it all depends on your uses. For many "consumer" level users, even a single G5 is overkill. But if you use "pro" apps or many apps at once, the duals are easily more bang for your buck.

 

dnt forget the cool factor of having a dual proc system.

but yeah only in multitasking and doing serious proc intensive apps will you see the diff. cuz the work load is spread across the two proc

 

Dual Opterons, Tyan motherboard, 16GB of RAM, Ultra SCSI 320, Radeon9800XT.

Drool

In all honesty for 99% of all office applications an LC575 apple mac would probabley be quite fine. It might struggle with some of the JAVA scrtipt on some web pages, and have zero current software support, but it would be great for e-mailing, typing documents, and doing the odd thing on Excel. Even playing A-10 Attack and F/A-18 Hornet.

However for your power user eg. me and many other members of this fourm DP or Twin CPU Systems have distinct advantages. I'm fed up waithing 6 or so hours for my old AMD K7 1GHGz to encode Div-X movies. That's why I want the system listed above.

If all you want is to bum arround on the net, and type the odd uni assignment up buy the cheapest current modle PC you can lay your hands on, It'll be faster than my computer and I wouldn't call mine slow by any means on day to day tasks. However it just likes to take its time rendering video and audio.

 

I went to the Apple store one day and compared a single 1.6 GHz to a dual 1.8 GHz. I had my brother open up all the applications on his dock and I opened all the applications on my dock on the single 1.6. (We had equalized the apps earlier) The dual 1.8 totally whooped the single 1.6 and took a about a third of the time to open all of the apps than the 1.6. We then pitted the single 1.6 G5 against a Dual 1.25 G4. The Dual 1.25 won. Just a little example of how fast the duals can go versus a single.