Power Mac G5 or wait for Intel?

[THX1139]

The only thing a 5 year old 733Mhz G4 PowerMac is good for is installing Ubuntu and scrolling RSS feeds over the Phosphor xscreensaver.

I just finished a 20 minute video project using a G4 500 Powerbook. The footage had multiple layers of composting and filter effects. Some of it uncompressed. Sure, I had to wait for the renders and it wasn't very efficent...but it was doable. I also have no problem building web sites and creating flash animation. When I'm in a crunch, I can use my Powerbook for modeling in Lightwave. Again, not efficient but doable. I believe that anyone who buys a G5 Quad right now can get lot's of work done right now and continue to produce work for at least 5 years.

 

[tekmoe]

i love my dual-core 2.0ghz. it's more than enough for what i use it for. i will probably own it for a looooooooooong time.

 

[chameleon]

Jeeze, if your choice is a Quad G5 or wait for an Intel PowerMac, just buy the Quad. I don't belive that Intel has any "Quad" chips at the moment, so the Quad PowerPC should be a top of the line machine for the foreseeable future.

 

[THX1139]

Jeeze, if your choice is a Quad G5 or wait for an Intel PowerMac, just buy the Quad. I don't belive that Intel has any "Quad" chips at the moment, so the Quad PowerPC should be a top of the line machine for the foreseeable future.

I agree, except the Quad is two duals, not 4 processors on one board... Intel will be able to provide that. Anyhow, the major point is, what good is having a blazing fast top-of-the-line IntelMac desktop if your applications don't run EFFECIENTLY on it? If you are using iWhatever or Safari, then you don't need a Quad because you are a general user. Photoshop and most major pro apps won't run on MacTel until they are ported to xcode... and, no... they won't run efficently under Rosetta. Forget about 3d unless your willing to go with Modo or C4d. Most major apps need to rewritten in Xcode before they can even be ported out as UB apps and that's going to take a long time, even if you have deep pocket like Adobe. Applications such as Newtek Lightwave is a good example of an application that you're not going to be able to use until it's ported over, and as of this writing, Newtek has made no announcement. Sure, a lot of applications are coming out soon as UB, but for most Pro applications (non Apple) it's going to take a lot longer. Especially those with legacy code.. such as Lightwave, After Effects, Maya, Combustion etc. Hell, the release date for Shake hasn't been announced yet, and that's an Apple application! Then once the application begin to appear, there will be a period of unstablity to deal with to where you can't trust the software to use on paying jobs or risk putting into time sensitive pipelines. I'm thinking the soonest to migrate to professional level (Mac Pro?) is going to be AFTER next year... unless you want to be a public beta tester. In the meantime, those who own PPC will be cranking away not dealing with all the issues the early adopters will be having to deal with. And, remember that any software that happens to come out over the next few years will run on Power PC too. That's why it's called Universal Binary. Current users are not going to suddenly get left out in the cold. Shelf life for most professional systems is around 2 years if they want to stay on top of things.

If you buy PPC now, it will be perfect timing to move to Intel when it's more mature...in about two years, around the time the machine you buy (tomorrow) is starting to show it's age. I'm thinking if you bought a Quad and loaded it with current stable software, you'll have a machine that will kick butt for several years if not longer...unless you're the type of person who has to have the latest greatest.

 

[combatcolin]

I just finished a 20 minute video project using a G4 500 Powerbook. The footage had multiple layers of composting and filter effects. Some of it uncompressed. Sure, I had to wait for the renders and it wasn't very efficent...but it was doable. I also have no problem building web sites and creating flash animation. When I'm in a crunch, I can use my Powerbook for modeling in Lightwave. Again, not efficient but doable. I believe that anyone who buys a G5 Quad right now can get lot's of work done right now and continue to produce work for at least 5 years.

Intelligent post.

You don't need cutting edge tech to get the job done.

You just need lots of RAM.