'upgrading' from an iMac G5 to a Power Mac G5, s the best way to kit it out?

[MajorOwned]

Hi folks,

I'm buying a dual 2.5 June 2004 Power Mac for a bargainous £100 off my housemates work.🙂 I'm guessing it'll be a bit of a speed bump from my single core 1.9 iMac G5, even though the iMac's a year younger, would that be right?

It's been five years since I last had an expandable system, so any advice on the best way to kit it out would be welcome...

I fancy running a dual screen setup but googling around extra video cards seem horrendously expensive?

And I can't find much info PCI-X cards. It's got three slots is there anything useful they can be used for?

Thanks muchly

 

[thunng8]

Hi folks,

I'm buying a dual 2.5 June 2004 Power Mac for a bargainous £100 off my housemates work.🙂 I'm guessing it'll be a bit of a speed bump from my single core 1.9 iMac G5, even though the iMac's a year younger, would that be right?

Yes, it would be a lot faster - especially for multithreaded applications.

It's been five years since I last had an expandable system, so any advice on the best way to kit it out would be welcome...

I fancy running a dual screen setup but googling around extra video cards seem horrendously expensive?

The Dual 2.5Ghz comes by default with the ATI 9600XT video card which already has 2 video outputs. So it can have dual displays. Unfortunately, one of the outputs is ADC (other one is DVI) which will only work on some of the older Apple branded monitor. You can however, buy and ADC to DVI adaptor.

And I can't find much info PCI-X cards. It's got three slots is there anything useful they can be used for?

Thanks muchly

There are PCI cards for many types of expansions. Extra USB slots, firewire slots, eStata, video input/output, extra audio ports for input/output. Depends on what you need.

 

[alust2013]

The powermac should pretty well put your iMac to shame. higher clock and dual processors will definitely be a plus.

 

[Giuly]

Hi folks,

I'm buying a dual 2.5 June 2004 Power Mac for a bargainous £100 off my housemates work.🙂 I'm guessing it'll be a bit of a speed bump from my single core 1.9 iMac G5, even though the iMac's a year younger, would that be right?

It's been five years since I last had an expandable system, so any advice on the best way to kit it out would be welcome...

I fancy running a dual screen setup but googling around extra video cards seem horrendously expensive?

And I can't find much info PCI-X cards. It's got three slots is there anything useful they can be used for?

Thanks muchly

One small SSD boot drive, 1-3 2TB hard drives for storage and at least 4GB RAM.

As for the PCI-X, head over to Sonnet. You can get everyone of those cheaper from other vendors, most being identical in design to Sonnets.

 

[MajorOwned]

Thanks folks, I'm looking forward to being able to watch YouTube videos again, at the moment it's just painful.

Does anyone know how the ATI 9600 xt stacks up against the iMacs Radeon x600?

 

[666sheep]

Does anyone know how the ATI 9600 xt stacks up against the iMacs Radeon x600?

+/- on par. x600 could be a little faster, depending on app.