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NyMetsFan08

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
177
0
Hey everyone !!! I was just wondering a dual G4 will beat a single G5 in speed. I never had used a Powermac G4 or G5 before that's why I am uncertain. All help is appreciated thanks, bye.
 

NyMetsFan08

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
177
0
Dual 1.25GHz G4 versus single 1.6 G5?

Close, but the G5 will still be a bit faster, mainly due to bus speed.
any ideas which one I should get G4 or G5? for example should I get a powemac dual g4 or a powermac single g5 or a regular iMac G5 which one will be pretty fast.
 

63dot

macrumors 603
Jun 12, 2006
5,269
339
norcal
My dual G4 500 mhz Power Mac is so fast, it's stored in the garage. :)

It feels about 1/10th the speed of my current mini-mac with just a single 1.42 ghz G4 processor, which again feels about 1/2 the speed of my dad's core-duo 2.0 ghz iMac.

I have not used any of the newer Macs to see how fast they run, shut down, boot up, load Photoshop, etc but I bet it's very fast. I use 10.4 but I am sure 10.5 will slow down any Mac that can take it as opposed to 10.4 because it has so many more features on it. One salesperson at the Apple store said 10.5 is such a memory hog that you need at least 2 gigs of RAM to run that and any apps properly, but 2 gigs is more than adequate for 10.4 and apps.
 

velocityg4

macrumors 604
Dec 19, 2004
7,329
4,717
Georgia
Well it really comes down to your uses and the comparable specs.

If it is say a Dual 450Mhz G4 vs single 1.8 G5 then the G5 wins hands down.

However any Dual 1.25 and above G4 should give competition especially for the Single 1.6 G5. Though this would depend on your uses. If you have plenty of RAM and are multitasking or using multi-processor aware apps then I would go with the G4. While if you are mainly using one app at a time or non multi-processor aware apps I would go with the G5.

There are other benefits of the G5. More RAM capacity, cheaper RAM (DDR some G4's used DDR too), SATA (larger hard drives), AGP 8x.

Mind you, you could always save a little bit more and get a low end dual processor G5.
 

TDM21

macrumors 6502a
Jul 7, 2004
789
0
It all depends on the applications being used. The last generation G4 (MDD dual 1.42 GHz) will outperform a 1.6GHz G5 if the application had been designed to use multiple processors (Photoshop actions, Toast 7 movie encoding, etc). If the apps can only use one processor then the G5 will edge the G4 out.

I found an old comparison on barefeats.com, that gives you an idea of the difference. Of course you can also go back and compare the last top end G5s and Intel desktops and see how much of an improvement the Intel systems were.

G5 vs G5 vs G5 (and some G4s)
http://www.barefeats.com/g5.html
 

crontab

macrumors member
Mar 25, 2008
40
0
I was thinking about getting dual g4 1.42GHz in lieu of waiting for a mini update (I only want a headless Mac). The G4 generally runs between $300-$350 on eBay + the cost of Leopard and you're really close to the mini refurbs in cost but you get 1 year warranty and better performance.
 
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