Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Are these specs still acceptable?

D

dgsfan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2007
10
0
Hi, I'm a newbie member member to this site (I read it a lot though) and Macs in general. I just bought an iMac G4 off eBay with these specs:

G4 1 GHz CPU
768MB ram
SuperDrive
80gb Hard drive
17 inch wide screen
GeForce4 MX 64mb graphics card
3 X USB
2 X firewire
Modem
Ethernet

The cost was $600 all up, which was the cheapest I could find with a superdrive and 17'' screen. It says it's running Leopard and iLife '08, which was an extra bonus, but what sort of experience will I have? Money's was tight so that was my only option. I'm expecting it to be slow, but how slow? Im currently using a P4, 512MB, 80GB HDD with a graphics card capable of running aero fine. Now I know Macs aren't known for their graphics cards, but will stacks, coverflow and all the core animation run without annoyingly long lags? I'm sort of expecting Time Machine not to work. Am I right? Anyway, any replies owuld be greatly appreciated, and regardless, I'm happy to finally be a Mac user!
 
Whether it'll be fast or slow depends on what you want to do. It'll be fast enough for general usage, but slow for say video encoding. OSX tends to run pretty well on older machines - my mother runs it on a 400mhz imac without complaint. If you want to speed it up, memory is generally cheap + easy to add and makes things run more smoothly.

I think you won't get all of the core animation effects though as the video card doesn't support some of the necessary features. Leopard will just turn those features off I expect, but the rest should run at OK speed. And time machine should run fine, even if it turns off some of the background effects.
 
Thanks for the reply. Well I'm not really interested in heavy graphics or video editing, just light Photoshop here and there. It'll mainly be for uni next year, so just word, internet and music and photos for fun. I really like the design so I would have put up with it, just the type of person I am lol. But it starting to sound promising.
 
I think you'll be happy with it. It should be fine for running that, and like you say, it's a classic design.
 
Damn man, i'm selling my iMac G4 on ebay exactly like that, but its got 1.25GHz, Geforce 5200 Ultra 64mb video card, 1GB RAM. I was expecting to give it away to someone for around $600. You definitely bought a great machine though. Mine is still running great.
 
I bought a 17" 2ghz C2D for $575 a month ago... How the hell did you pay that much for a g4??
 
Wow, C2D for less than $600? I definitely know that's a great deal!
 
Not to pile on, but you also could have gotten a refurbished 1.83 CD mac mini w/Superdrive for $479. You'd have enough of your budget left to get an LCD of your choice. You'd also have 1 year warranty, and the option of Applecare.

That said, sounded like you wanted a G4 lampshade :) The monitor really is conveneint to adjust in various positions!
 
The only way I would pay $600 for a g4 is if it was a perfect condition 20" 1.25 with 1GB of RAM and that's a big MAYBE...
 
Ah, guys, you're making me feel bad. Well I do live in Australia, is craigslist in the US? If so I would have had to pay shipping, which would have been a lot. It was actually $580 + $20 shipping. If there was one for $700 that included shipping I'd grab it straight away, get a loan and re-sell the iMac G4 for around $300... a little loss but a big gain in performance.
 
So what would people compare this to in regards to a pc? How will it run in comparison to vista with my current specs which are in post 1?
 
Ah, the exchange rate hits another victim ^_^

I think you'd find it will be perfectly fine. I have a 1.5ghz g4 mini with 512 ram, and it performs as well as my Vista machine (e6700, 2 gig). As other users have said it will depend on what you want to do. I would suggest you look for some non-Apple apps to gain a little more speed out of it, and bump the memory (I think that model can support up to 2 gig). A fast hard disk couldn't hurt, but that's stretching the budget for limited returns.

If the worst comes to the worst, I believe there are a few tutorials around the web that will show you how to overclock your new iMac. I've actually been looking for a machine exactly like that. I'm hoping for the 20 inch, but they're really rare and expensive u_u
 
Ah, nice, I'll look into that. It's already got more RAM than my current PC, which is good. Thanks for all the links and info guys!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back