Switcher needs advice

[bwatson]

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I appreciate that there are scores of different benchmarks, some favoring PPC, some favoring Intel and this is why I was a little confused about the relative performance.

I'm not going to be running benchmarks, or doing intensive photoshop etc - I'll just be doing a bit of everything your average joe uses their mac/pc for.

My concern is that I don't get blinded by the style/design/value(?) of the 17" iMac and then regret not paying a little extra for the extra speed of a PowerMac.

I know it can only be speculation, but assuming that we get a faster PowerMac range announced in the next week or two, how long before we get a bump in iMac specs to current PowerMac levels?

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

well the imacs will always be slower than the powermacs. this is because they are consumer machines--being slower and cheaper.

the differences between the powermacs and the imacs are many besides just expandability.

the bus speed on the powermacs is faster (and hopefully about to increase come monday). the powermac has L3 cache and a larger L2 chache. the powermac can have more RAM (again another thing likley to increase come monday). the powermacs can support dual/multiple monitors. the powermacs have gigabit ethernet.

since the imacs just had a revision (albeit a small one) it seems unlikely we will see an imac speed bump for a few months (though i wouldnt be surprised if it came early). i think the latest imac speed bump was small since apple has had a hard time selling them since they did their price hike.

although you can cut corners to save money on the powermac (but thirdparty ram, get the low end graphics card and upgrade later, ditch the modem) you will still spend soem more moeny. however by spending a extra 500$ to a grand now your computer will be much more powerful and will likely be useful for much longer than had you bought an imac (beautiful as they are). i bought my imac largely because i got a killer deal on it and i figured it would hold me over until new powermacs came out that worth worthy of me so i only expect it to be my main computer for one to two years.

if you have the money buying a new powermac will probably be the best thing to you. and one last thing. take a look at the benchmarks at barefeats.com there is a recent g4 vs x86 as well as some older ones. as you can see only the high end x86 machines can beat the g4s and in the end it is still a close match (p4 doesnt beat the g4 until around 2.4ghz so in these tests it is still losing, but the athlons do well). the new macs will be similiar to the xserve (though faster). and keep in mind they only used MP macs and pretend two ghz g4s=a 2ghz g4, in tests (also seen at barefeats.com) between the 933mhz g4 and dual ghz g4 they are actually very close to one another. (also note that the 1600+ athlon that wins most of the tests is OCed to 1900)

 

[Captnroger]

Watson,

I have a P4 1.8 and just picked up the new 17" imac Saturday. Having spent many hours with the new machine, I feel I can give you a 'here are my impressions' summary.

First of all, I'm not new to Macs..I've owned several, starting with a G3 many years ago, to a G4, to the Quicksilver G4, and did have a 15" imac FP. However, I haven't owned one since March.

Hardware:
First of all, yes, the screen on the imac is 'all that and a bag of chips'. For $2K, you really do get a lot for your money, especially when you consider the applications that apple provides (of course these are free to all mac owners). The new screen is just great, lots of room for everything, and crystal clear. Looks like they aren't having the same dead pixel problem as they did when they launched the 15", as I haven't heard of one complaint, and mine too is perfect according to a LCD test I ran. If there's a dead pixel I can't see it. The iMac has that 'cool factor', and really is a design marvel. Now if they'd just ditch the stupid promouse for a two button scroll wheel design...

Speed:
It's been mentioned here before. Internet surfing is noticably slower on the iMac under X than my P4 (both hooked to a router hooked up to a cable modem). It's not so slow that it bothers me, but it is noticable slower, especially using Omniweb. IE is quicker than Omniweb, but not as 'pretty'. Haven't tried any other browsers yet.

In general, OS X feels slower than my P4. Granted, the P4 has more than twice the mhz rating as the iMac, and to be honest, I think part of the problem is there isn't enough ram installed (if I pop open a terminal window, TOP shows that I only have around 60% idle resources with 4-5 applications open). I am going to buy at least another 256MB this week which should help. Jaguar should also help from what I saw of it at the Apple store. Very snappy.

Interface:
What can I say...OS X always has been and remains beautiful. I'm going to have a blast tweeking my desktop and getting everything the way I want it. Also bought Studio MX and Office X. While I had used Office X before, I'm glad to see Macromedia got on board and released X versions. Fireworks and Dreamweaver work very well. I haven't bought Photoshop 7 yet, but that is next on my list.

Overall:
I'm pleased with the new iMac...I intend to use it as my primary desktop machine and can see that happening quite easily.

 

[jefhatfield]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
so i only expect it to be my main computer for one to two years.

i hope the imac holds up better than that with you and i suspect, my hunch, that you will see that it has a lot of professional capabilities

my fellow engineers in the field somehow think that the imac is still "bad" because it still looks "nice"...no matter how many benchmarks i can show them, they toss their entire education in the trashcan and think, "if it looks nice, they must have cut corners on the inside"