Ok...
So, here's the deal. My Mom currently has a Dual G4 Apple tower (the silvery colored one) It's running at 1.8 ghz after upgrades, i'm pretty sure it has max ram of ... 1.5 or 2.0?
Anyway, she's had it for a while and we have finally reached the end of it's life (what is that, something like 6 or so years? not bad i think) after many upgrades etc. It still works fine, but for her needs she really could use more.
Her uses are a LOT of photoshop (large images, multiples, tons of layers and filters and random stuff) painter, canvas, soon to be illustrator and basically the CS3 suite.
And of course a lot of basic webbrowsing, email, typing, so on and so forth.
Now... we've been doing some comparisons but I would love to hear actual experience in what you think the minimum intel processor we would see a good jump in speed is. I've heard anywhere from barely anything to twice as fast just jumping to 2.0 C2D.
Would she get any speed increase at all going to say a 1.83 or 2.0 mini? Can those take 4gb of ram yet? I recall reading that they are not SR so no. But just for the sake of argument, would she see anything?
We are thinking our best bet would be going to a Dual 2.0 Mac Pro. Would we see a good jump in performance? From what i've read it seems like we would. Probably put in 4gb of ram to start (obviously 3rd party, we are looking for a cheap but good upgrade solution)
We were interested in the imacs, but she does a lot of print work and is really picky with her screens.. a glossy lcd isn't gonna cut it, it's gonna be hard enough to get her to switch from her current CRT. Not to mention upgradabilitiy is the key, we hope to not have to switch again for a few years.
_________
Soooo long story short: anyone who had a G4 tower and switched to ANY intel system from that (mini, macbook, pro, imac... ofcourse mac pro anything), if you could post your real world experience in speed and such, that would be GREAT.
Will a 2.0 dual mac pro be reason enough to upgrade or should we try looking for a cheap 2.66 for any sort of worthwhile difference? We are trying to upgrade as cheap as possible, so while I know faster is better in the long run, I'd like to know the lowest we can go that would still show a good jump in speed... but to something worthwhile.
Thanks for your time in advance!
So, here's the deal. My Mom currently has a Dual G4 Apple tower (the silvery colored one) It's running at 1.8 ghz after upgrades, i'm pretty sure it has max ram of ... 1.5 or 2.0?
Anyway, she's had it for a while and we have finally reached the end of it's life (what is that, something like 6 or so years? not bad i think) after many upgrades etc. It still works fine, but for her needs she really could use more.
Her uses are a LOT of photoshop (large images, multiples, tons of layers and filters and random stuff) painter, canvas, soon to be illustrator and basically the CS3 suite.
And of course a lot of basic webbrowsing, email, typing, so on and so forth.
Now... we've been doing some comparisons but I would love to hear actual experience in what you think the minimum intel processor we would see a good jump in speed is. I've heard anywhere from barely anything to twice as fast just jumping to 2.0 C2D.
Would she get any speed increase at all going to say a 1.83 or 2.0 mini? Can those take 4gb of ram yet? I recall reading that they are not SR so no. But just for the sake of argument, would she see anything?
We are thinking our best bet would be going to a Dual 2.0 Mac Pro. Would we see a good jump in performance? From what i've read it seems like we would. Probably put in 4gb of ram to start (obviously 3rd party, we are looking for a cheap but good upgrade solution)
We were interested in the imacs, but she does a lot of print work and is really picky with her screens.. a glossy lcd isn't gonna cut it, it's gonna be hard enough to get her to switch from her current CRT. Not to mention upgradabilitiy is the key, we hope to not have to switch again for a few years.
_________
Soooo long story short: anyone who had a G4 tower and switched to ANY intel system from that (mini, macbook, pro, imac... ofcourse mac pro anything), if you could post your real world experience in speed and such, that would be GREAT.
Will a 2.0 dual mac pro be reason enough to upgrade or should we try looking for a cheap 2.66 for any sort of worthwhile difference?
We are trying to upgrade as cheap as possible, so while I know faster is better in the long run, I'd like to know the lowest we can go that would still show a good jump in speed... but to something worthwhile.Thanks for your time in advance!
