Dual Core 2.0 - or Quad 2.5

[budugu]

A refurb dual 2.0?

Planning to buy one of the new PMs.

I would likely buy the Quad right now, but it is not available yet, and not sure if I want to wait. I'd like to make some movies for the family for Christmas, so time is getting short ... .... Will the dual core 2.0 satisfy my requirements for making home movies, using Final Cut Pro, and the likes, or will the Quad be the thing to wait for.

Thanks in advance,

I my opinion they are going to go all QUADS like a year from now. How they made their line all dual after 6 months (after introducing G5). I my opinion Dual core/ Dual Proc. is more than sufficient. It costs 1000$ or more less. I would even suggest getting a refurb dual for 1450-1550 (i guess diff gens of dual 2.0s) thus saving about $1800. In case a year or year and half later if you want to go all QUAD (intel/ppc). you can get it by spending no more than 500$ ( i am sure the prices will fall once they go all QUAD). Use the money you save for a nice compact JVC / Sony HD camera ... that will get you better movies ;-)

 

[Mechcozmo]

Just as an example remember the last DP G4, acording to barefeats they still give G5's a run for their money! And how long have they been out of production?

~2.5 years about.

But I'd get the 2.0GHz. Why? You need a lot of HD space for video. As in, dual 500GB hard drives. 50 miniDV videos, at 1 hours each, and at ~15 GB per hour of DV video, that is 750GB of video. Yikes, eh? Plus at least 1.5 GB of RAM, but the more video work the more RAM, the better. If you can afford it, then I'd look at 2.5 GB of RAM. (Just add 2x1GB sticks)

Video is an expensive hobby. The Quad makes it even more so, but may make you less productive if you cannot afford the other parts of the system. Don't forget an external FW800 disk to store the backup DVD images onto. (You make the video, burn it to a DISK IMAGE, copy it to hard drive, then burn disk image. Safer.) And with DL-DVDs at ~$10 a disk, it may just be cheaper to leave them on the external drive for a while, eh?

 

[themedium]

so the quad will give me the better resale compared to original price than the dual core 2.3 or 2.0?

 

[Hyernel]

I bought a duel-core 2.3 the same day they were announced

And I couldn't be happier with it.

But bear in mind that my old machine is a G3 300mHz Beige tower running OS9.1 So as you might guess, I've been giggling like a little boy on Christmas morning since getting this muther set up. Imagine advancing 7 years in Apple Technology in 1 day!!

Now I'm just waiting on UPS for some sorely needed updates to AdobeCS2, Lightwave and a few utilities (plus more ram once the legacy apps are installed and running well). I figure it will pay for itself in 2 or 3 months.

What's more remarkable is that I've been doing work on such an old, outdated machine in the first place.

I wish I could have waited for a Quad, but I had waited long enough already.

Hyernel (First post)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PowerMac Duel Core 2.3
23" ACD

Old G3 will be turned into a fileserver

 

[slooksterPSV]

If I were you, I'd get the Quad. The Quad will cut your time in half if not more than the dual. Think about it. You're making movies, with the Dual you could sit there for 20, 30+ minutes. With the Quad you could sit there for 5, 10 minutes. Besides you won't need to upgrade the Quad to a new one for 5 or 6 years IMO

EDIT: GET APPLECARE, YOU NEED TO GET APPLECARE FOR A MACHINE LIKE THAT. I DON'T CARE IF ITS ANOTHER $1000 YOU GET APPLECARE WITH THAT BABY!

 

[chaos86]

so the quad will give me the better resale compared to original price than the dual core 2.3 or 2.0?

i would think so. hopefully, the quad powermac will become like the cube, a nostalgic collector machine. cubes routinely sell for $600 on ebay, thats more than a mini thats half the size and three times as powerful. and it has all those problems of old logic boards and out-dated video interfaces etc. anyway, I think if this is the last PPC PM it might become one of those collector machines.

 

[jayb2000]

Less than 20%

I went to the apple store and configured two PowerMac systems.
One a dual 2.0 and one a quad 2.5.
Then I gave them both the following:
# 2GB 533 DDR2 Non ECC SDRAM- 2x1GB
# 2x500GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
# QUADRO FX 4500 512MB SDRAM
# 16x SuperDrive DL (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse - U.S English
# Mac OS X - U.S. English
# Accessory kit

Dual 2.0 was $5,048 and quad 2.5 was $6,124.

So, once you start adding in extra hard drive space, ram, etc. the price difference is around 17.5%. So for 17.5% higher price you would get over double the speed!

I would get the quad if you can afford either.

 

[GreenDice]

I went to the apple store and configured two PowerMac systems.
One a dual 2.0 and one a quad 2.5.
Then I gave them both the following:
# 2GB 533 DDR2 Non ECC SDRAM- 2x1GB
# 2x500GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
# QUADRO FX 4500 512MB SDRAM
# 16x SuperDrive DL (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# Apple Keyboard & Mighty Mouse - U.S English
# Mac OS X - U.S. English
# Accessory kit

Dual 2.0 was $5,048 and quad 2.5 was $6,124.

So, once you start adding in extra hard drive space, ram, etc. the price difference is around 17.5%. So for 17.5% higher price you would get over double the speed!

I would get the quad if you can afford either.

It is not fair by just adding stuff to lower the percentage difference between the 2.0 dual and 2.5 quad. You might as well as add two more 30" monitors, 16 GB of RAM. Why stop with one graphics card.

 

[slooksterPSV]

Let us know when you make your decision. I really want to know what you choose. So far everyone is saying Quad (from the most I've read).

 

[Monyx]

Can't possibly utilize? How many times have you bought a machine that just barely excedes your needs because you dont want one that you cant possibly utilize then a year later reminisced about that decision and thought wow I can think of lots of things I could be using that power for. The difference wont be noticed now, but the better machine will last an extra year or two at it's dying end in 2010-12.

PRECISELY! I sprung for a my current G4 DP500 4+ yrs ago...if I didn't pay the premium for the DP back then there's no way I could've stayed editing on FCP and producing client DVDs to this day on the same machine, albeit with a few upgrades.

I'm thinking the same again (Quad), but the move to Intel is throwing a spanner into my justifications.

 

[Bear]

...
I'm thinking the same again (Quad), but the move to Intel is throwing a spanner into my justifications.

Remember, the QUAD PowerMac will still be usuable after the Intel machines are released. And it'll probably be over a year before we see Intel based PowerMacs.

Add to that - how long will the Pro apps take before they have Universal Binaries available? And most Pro apps will run badly under Rosetta if they run at all. (No Altivec emulation.)

 

[dmw007]

Remember, the QUAD PowerMac will still be usuable after the Intel machines are released. And it'll probably be over a year before we see Intel based PowerMacs.

Add to that - how long will the Pro apps take before they have Universal Binaries available? And most Pro apps will run badly under Rosetta if they run at all. (No Altivec emulation.)

Very true.

Besides, who wants intel chips when you can have Q-U-A-D PowerPC G5s?????!!!!!!!

 

[chaos86]

Remember, the QUAD PowerMac will still be usuable after the Intel machines are released. And it'll probably be over a year before we see Intel based PowerMacs.

Add to that - how long will the Pro apps take before they have Universal Binaries available? And most Pro apps will run badly under Rosetta if they run at all. (No Altivec emulation.)

i know apple tends to cut off old users pretty quickly in general, but i cant imagine they'd stop supporting PPC any time on any project in the next 5 years. i mean, they've internally supported intel for the last 6 years before the switch, why cant they externally support ppc for 6 years after the switch? my only wonder is whether there will be support from other companies (adobe) for that long, or whether apple will ship OSX86 with a reverse of rosetta (or new classic... neoclassic?). that would work fine for the small utilities 3rd parties make.

 

[Bear]

i know apple tends to cut off old users pretty quickly in general, but i cant imagine they'd stop supporting PPC any time on any project in the next 5 years. i mean, they've internally supported intel for the last 6 years before the switch, why cant they externally support ppc for 6 years after the switch? my only wonder is whether there will be support from other companies (adobe) for that long, or whether apple will ship OSX86 with a reverse of rosetta (or new classic... neoclassic?). that would work fine for the small utilities 3rd parties make.

Cut them off quickly? What is the oldest Machine that Apple currently supports under Tiger?

• PowerMac G3 - over 6 years old.
• PowerBook G3 - over 5.5 years old.
• iMac (Slot loading) - over 6 years old.
• iBook (FireWire) - Over 5 years old.

I expect at least 3 years of support after Apple stops selling new PowerPC machines. I also expect them to sell probably a laptop and a desktop G4 (one modl of each) for at least 6 months after the last product has Intel versions available. The way I see it, it'll be at least 2010 before Apple starts dropping support for old machines. Although some Applications will need newer machines just for speed.

 

[bigandy]

go for the quad. with what it looks like in improved speed over the dual 2.0, you'll wait longer to recieve the unit but they'll both finish rendering at the same time

 

[slooksterPSV]

go for the quad. with what it looks like in improved speed over the dual 2.0, you'll wait longer to recieve the unit but they'll both finish rendering at the same time

I've got to mention something here. You need more RAM if you want to do heavy heavy processing. I'm going to upgrade my RAM to 1.5GB as soon as I can.

 

[jayb2000]

It is not fair by just adding stuff to lower the percentage difference between the 2.0 dual and 2.5 quad. You might as well as add two more 30" monitors, 16 GB of RAM. Why stop with one graphics card.

I was not adding stuff to lower the percentage, I was adding stuff like a normal system. My point was once you DO add the stuff you will need, especially if themedium wants to work with video. I did the faster video card, but the NVidia GT 7800 was not on the list when I did the shopping.
Either way, even if the price difference approached %50, it would still be a far better deal for performance to get the Quad. Does that mean everyone can afford that? No, but $/flops, the Quad is better.