Apple Power Mac

PowerPC Macs are a waste of money at this point. They will no longer be supported when OS X 10.6 is released next year.

Even a current, stock $799 2.0 Ghz Core2Duo Mac Mini with would be faster than the system you link to (and a hell of a lot quieter).
 
brzilian said:
Even a current, stock $799 2.0 Ghz Core2Duo Mac Mini with would be faster than the system you link to (and a hell of a lot quieter).
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Actually, that's not true. Well, the quieter part is probably true.... :D

The Mini will seem much snappier as an end user system because the integer performance is much better. For audio purposes, though, floating point performance is what matters, and Intel fares relatively poorly in that area. The 2 GHz Core 2 Duo in the Mini reportedly gets about 1050 on SpecFP. A dual 2.5 GHz G5 reportedly got 2076, or almost twice as fast.

Put another way, only the eight core Mac Pro beats the four core G5 from several years ago for audio purposes. If your goal is to pack the absolute largest possible track count with the most effects possible while spending the least amount of money, you're quite a bit better off with the G5 even at the same price.

That said, I would still recommend the Mini over the G5 simply because it is likely to be supported for a lot longer, is more expandable (the CPU is somewhat easily replaced with faster C2D chips, unlike the G5), is likely to be much quieter, and still has a warranty associated with it.... :D

I would not say a G5 is a waste of money by any stretch, however. I think they show their age remarkably well....
 
So . . . should I not get this one? Would a Mac mini be ok for recording? It will only be used in my bedroom, nothing major. If not could you please suggest some other computers that would be ok. They dont have to be Apple.

Thanks.
 
GUITAR08 said:
I`m not sure. It might be used because its very cheap.
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It is safe to say that there are no new G5s.... They haven't been new for a couple of years....

GUITAR08 said:
So . . . should I not get this one? Would a Mac mini be ok for recording? It will only be used in my bedroom, nothing major. If not could you please suggest some other computers that would be ok. They dont have to be Apple.
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Frankly, if the Mini isn't fast enough for you, neither is any other new computer in that price range. They don't get a lot faster than a Core 2 Duo short of moving up to a 4-core chip or a dual processor, both of which are a pretty big price jump up from there price-wise.
 
The G5's are very good computers the only downside is after one more update from osx Leopard you won't be able to update any more because they are ppc chips and not intel, so as long as you don't care about that feature I would say get it, but you could easily grab you a laptop for a couple more hundred and you will have all of the new features and chips and all of that good stuff. I use a macbook to record on and it's an "old" macbook compared to what is out now 1.83ghz core duo. but I hooked up a mouse and a vga monitor to it and run it like that.
 
dgatwood said:
Actually, that's not true. Well, the quieter part is probably true.... :D

The Mini will seem much snappier as an end user system because the integer performance is much better. For audio purposes, though, floating point performance is what matters, and Intel fares relatively poorly in that area. The 2 GHz Core 2 Duo in the Mini reportedly gets about 1050 on SpecFP. A dual 2.5 GHz G5 reportedly got 2076, or almost twice as fast.

Put another way, only the eight core Mac Pro beats the four core G5 from several years ago for audio purposes. If your goal is to pack the absolute largest possible track count with the most effects possible while spending the least amount of money, you're quite a bit better off with the G5 even at the same price.
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If it runs Logic/Live/Cubase/whatever with no issues, who cares?

I ran Logic Express 8 on a 1.66 Ghz CoreDuo Mini with no issues for a year and a half and am currently running LE 8 on a 2.2 Ghz Core2Duo MacBook (late 2007 model)...
 
brzilian said:
If it runs Logic/Live/Cubase/whatever with no issues, who cares?
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Like I said (twice), the Mini/MacBook/MacBook Pro C2D processors are plenty fast enough for any sane audio purposes. I was merely pointing out that the claim that they are faster than the G5 for audio purposes was incorrect.

For that matter, I even agreed with you that the Mini is a better choice, both for support reasons and for warranty reasons.

Sheesh....
 
GUITAR08 said:
So would this be ok?

http://looksmartpro.com/product_info.php/products_id/4077
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Considering that price is way, way below wholesale, it is safe to say that the Mini shown there is either stolen, fake, used, or refurbished.

Actually, on further searching, that seller is reported to be a scam outfit. Among other things, they only accept payments via Western Union. No reputable business works that way. This has all the earmarks of fraud.
 
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