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The End of an Era…

dburney

dburney

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2006
43
0
So long PowerPC - hello Intel. The transition is complete. I can finally get a G5 :D

We've had a hardware plan in place for a few months now and it includes upgrading/handing down our aging Quicksilver G4s. The two other artists at the bottom of the ladder will inherit the Quicksilvers (finally getting them off of the Graphite G4s). We currently have quite a performance gap and upgrading to the G5s is part of my plan to close that gap. We'll hopefully purchase a couple of MacPro's in about 12 months and move the G5s down. Closing the performance gap even more (at least from 4 years to about 2 years).

So, now the question is, when to pick up those two G5s. I'm fairly sure I'll be getting the 2.3Ghz. So far I've found sites offering $150 rebates (by mail). Bringing them to about $2350. What is the likelihood that demand for these final PowerPC boxes will be strong enough for them to sell out before a price cut? There are usually signs of declining stock, especially before a new product release. But the MacPro sort of took me by surprise - I was thinking they'd announce it but wouldn't ship it until Oct/Nov or something. But since it is shipping I need to put the plan together to get the G5s.

Another issue is that we have to buy new - my boss has a thing about used/refurbished equipment. So, we'll need to be very careful about keeping up with the status of the availability of these machines. I noticed today that Smalldog has no new G5s left in stock. So have to wonder how close the other places are to selling out.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions and donations appreciated.
 
If you have to buy new...why not buy the Mac Pro for the $150 more? The prices on Power Macs are the same coming from Apple right now. The only places you're seeing real price drops are on used and refurbed machines.
 
I agree with MovieCutter .

You're going to have to start your transitions at some point, and if you're in the market for new hardware get the Mac Pro!

You can even drop it down to the 2Ghz processors - still almost double the raw processing power of the 2.3 and a LOT more than you have currently.
 
Yes, why don't you just get Mac Pros:confused:

They are more future-proof, and there is not much of a price diference between the Mac Pros and new G5's
 
Mostly for software and performance reasons. We're a design studio and I'm not ready to migrate half the shop to Intel and leave the other half on PowerPC. Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign our are bread and butter.

There's currently a huge despairity in performance between the worksations our jr. designers work on vs. our sr. designers. I'm trying to close that gap in an economical manner. Buying two MacPros and handing down the Quicksilvers will only maintain the current performance gap. I'd like to at least get everyone on a more level playing field. Right now I'm using a G4 867 - my jr. designer is running a G4 400. Ideally, 18 months or so from now I'd like to have two 2.3Ghz G5s and two MacPros in-house, significanly closing our performance gaps and allowing for a fairly seemless Intel transition. By this time the MacPro will be in Rev 2, Adobe will have released CS3, Leopard will be out and we can upgrade all of our software at once.
 
I was recently in the same boat: needing to upgrade three computer work stations (400Mhz yikes, 450mhz sawtooth, 400mhz gigabit) alongside a dual 1ghz quicksilver (also old, but can only afford three right now) for Adobe CS2 work.

The macpros were too far down the pipeline to wait for, even a month and a half ago (who knew they'd be shipping immediately, it could have been months). As it is, I ended up getting a Dual 2.7ghz for really cheap refurbished ($1900), and a used 2.0ghz with a good amount of RAM for cheap.

Now, I figure I can either make the jump to MacPro and hope that we don't get screwed with Rosetta, or hope that they lower the costs on refurb quads (come on Apple $2799 for a refurb quad 2.5 vs. $2499 for a 2.66 intel quad?) and get one of those. By the time CS3 is out, maybe we can afford to move out that quicksilver and get an intel machine.
 
dburney said:
So long PowerPC - hello Intel. The transition is complete. I can finally get a G5 :D
Click to expand...
A G5 is based on the PowerPC chip. :p

For me, the transition to Intel isn't complete until all the software products that I use are Universal Binary or Intel-native. So that means Adobe Photoshop, After Effects and a host of other specialized programs. I wouldn't even consider purchasing an Intel Mac until everything is native.
 
Yeah. :D

But you have little posting history, it's hard to tell if you're really a "newbie".
 
pablodo said:
I was recently in the same boat….
Click to expand...

Since you have the G5s in-house, I'd just milk that Quicksilver. It will run CS2, albiet a bit slowly (that's what I'm running now - again, we hired a new designer who'b be running an older mac, we needed another license and CS1 isn't an option anymore). Or grab a G5 (check out PowerMax and Smalldog for their used and refurbished options) and hold out until you can make the Intel transition. I traded up my Quicksilver 867 @ home for an Intel iMac - while it is zippy, CS2 is slow under Rosetta (all apps). Granted the apps are probably a little quicker than on my old 867 - but still slow enough that I did not notice a significant speed increase when going from my Quicksilver to my iMac. So, on a professional working level, I'd definitely wait until CS3 before purchasing a MacPro for a production environment (with respect to needing Adobe apps - all video editors out there must be giddy with excitement).
 
I'd imagine Rosetta on a MacPro will result in pretty much the same performance as a G5. Don't forget the GHz myth!
 
dburney said:
Since you have the G5s in-house, I'd just milk that Quicksilver.
Click to expand...

I should clarify, I'm not planning on ditching the quicksilver for at least one year. I have one left to replace in the next month which is a 400MHZ gigabit. Though I may try to add SATA to the QS, since I'm already maxed on RAM. I'll never understand why those machines only came with three RAM slots.

Pablo
 
Killyp said:
I'd imagine Rosetta on a MacPro will result in pretty much the same performance as a G5. Don't forget the GHz myth!
Click to expand...

The Mhz/Ghz myth is exactly why I suspect that Rosetta on a MacPro will run Adobe apps closer to a high-end G4/low-end G5. While the Intel move was necessary, keep in mind how often Apple touted the PowerPC smoking any Intel processor. I don't think the introduction of the duo-core chips and a meer ten months can invalidate the fact that the G5 dual-core chips are still pretty powerful. I'm interested to see real world tests that compare a dual-core G5 with a duo-core MacPro. I don't think we'll see a huge increase in performance. For that reason, I doubt Rosetta on a MacPro will perform like a dual-core G5.


Edit: I noticed the MacPro is Quad Core - so the performance difference between the MacPro and PowerMac will likely be bigger than I thought. I still don't think we'll see Rosetta performance rivaling a Dual-Core G5 though.
 
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