An Apple G4 Desktop dual 800mHz for sale... should I?

pisces7378

pisces7378

New member
Hey guys,

I have been so trying to get an Apple computer for about three years now, but could never afford the damn thing. For a new G5 Desktop or even an iMac G5 I am looking at $1,800 just for starters.

I need a Mac, not so much because I am a loyal Mac guy or give a shit about the whole PC vs. Mac blah blah... I just am into recording audio and editing digital video and the filmmaking school that I do to all use Final Cut Pro for editing and Logic for sound capture and editing. Both of these are Mac only softwares. And I do admit that I like a Mac for this kind of stuff. For the net, and daily business stuf I still like PC, but anyway.

I have a friend that will sell me a G4 PowerMac Desktop with dual 800 mHz CPU's and 1.5 Gigs of RAM, running OSX 10.4 Tiger for $700. It has been completely restored software wise to clean and new i.e. complete re-install of everything and cleaning out all his old files etc.

Right now, I have Logic Audio Platinum v. 5.5.1 on my Dell PC that has a 2.4 gHz Pent IV. with 512 MB RAM. I know about the Final Cut Pro aspect of everything and that this dual 800 mHz 1.5 GB RAM Mac will be more than enough. But for Logic, I am not sure at all.

How do you guys think this G4 Mac will compare running Logic with my Dell 2.4 gHz running Logic. Keep in mind that if I get the Mac I will upgrade to the newest Logic 7 from my Logic 5.

What do you guys think? Should I go for it? And please do not turn this into a Mac/PC thing. I don't want the Mac unless you guys think I will get similar if not better results than on this Dell. Please hurry, this guy will sell it to someone else soon!

Mike
 
Go for it. I don't know where you get your pricing info, but iMac G5 start at 1299. By the time you upgrade the processors on the G4 you'll be there.
Don't get me wrong the Dual G4 would be a great machine for your purposes. ;)
 
macmoondoggie said:
Go for it. I don't know where you get your pricing info, but iMac G5 start at 1299. By the time you upgrade the processors on the G4 you'll be there.
Don't get me wrong the Dual G4 would be a great machine for your purposes. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would take a second look at the imac G5. The 1.8 Ghz starts at $999 and the 2Ghz goes for $1,099. You will have to spend extra for RAM, but the base price is tempting.

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/families/newimac/

I don't know how Final Cut performs on the dual 800 MHz, but I might worry if you are using filters/effects that require long rendering times. The i-macs also come with a DVD Superdrive and i-DVD which is handy for authoring DVD's. It's not quite DVD Studio Pro but I think it uses the same software encoder. The Superdrive is also handy for archiving large amounts of audio.
 
I use a first generation 1.8 ghz G5 Power Mac with 2 gigs of Ram. I use Final Cut Express and Logic Express, and Photoshop CS and none of them have peaked it out yet (not saying it can't be done of course). :)
 
I've seen many reports that dual processor Macs perform much better than single processor Macs. ( 2 x 800Mhz > 1.2Ghz )

However, the new iMac is at a great price and might be well worth it.

In any case, I'm running FCP 5 and Logic Express 7 on my 1Ghz (upgraded) G4 just fine.
 
Alexbt said:
I've seen many reports that dual processor Macs perform much better than single processor Macs. ( 2 x 800Mhz > 1.2Ghz )

However, the new iMac is at a great price and might be well worth it.

In any case, I'm running FCP 5 and Logic Express 7 on my 1Ghz (upgraded) G4 just fine.
Click to expand...

I would agree that in general dual processor macs out perform many of the higher speed single processors. But I would be less confident when you start comparing dual G4's against the single processor G5. Barefeats has a lot of bench tests that are worth looking at but at least one gives an edge to the imac 1.8 GHz over a dual G4 1.4 GHz:

http://www.barefeats.com/imacg5.html

I'm assuming the dual G4 1.4 GHz is faster than the dual G4 800, so this test probably says a lot about how the imac's stack up against the older dual 800.

It's also worth remembering that the G5 chips offer a render preview not found on many of the old G4 machines. This means you can review (playback) a scene with a filter applied without having to render the clip first. Of course, the rendering preview feature does not apply to all filters. But where it does it's a real time saver.
 
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