Which G4/G5 Tower would you recommend?

[Mac Hammer Fan]

For some video-editing, but basically for conversion of VHS tapes to DVD.
1) G4 Dual 1.25 (OS9 bootable)
2) G5 Dual 1.80 (with PCI slots)
3) G5 Dual 2.00 (with PCI-X slots)
4) G5 Dual 2.50 (with PCI-X slots)
It has to be fast for mp3 and mp4 conversion.
I know a Dual G4 beats the Dual G5 1.80 for ripping from CD using ITunes, but it is slower with video conversion.
Which Mac has the best price/quality ratio?
I am planning to use a Miglia DVR PCI card.
Will I have the same quality as with the firewire version?
If the quality of the firewire version is better, I won't need those PCI-X slots in the future and I doubt the cards for these slots will be cheap.
TIA

 

[musicpyrite]

I'd say get the dual 2 GHz, because:

- it has PCI-X slots
- it has 8 RAM slots
- it is the best price/power ratio


And if your worrying about CD ripping speed, just get a 56x external drive, they're not very expensive...

www.newegg.com

 

[kaltsasa]

All of them will be plenty fast for sure. Get as much as you feel comfortable spending or can afford. In all honesty if your not going for the dual 2.5 might as well go with the dual 1.8 since the dual 2.0 isn't that much of a speed boost for the money, but when Tiger comes out you may be happy you have the 64 bit G5 in your machine.

 

[Horrortaxi]

My basic advice is to buy the biggest baddest thing you can afford.

But, for what you want to do you don't even need as much power as the dual G4. Anything in the Apple lineup will be fine as long as it has a superdrive. An eMac will suffice. You may want to go with a PowerMac just so you can stuff it with hard drives.

It just depends is this is primarily a video editing machine or an email/web machine that will occasionally be used for editing.

 

[yamabushi]

Most newer PCI cards will work fine in PCI-X slots. You probably do not need to buy a new card for them unless you have a card that only runs at 5.0V instead of the newer 3.3V. Universal PCI cards in particular can use either voltage.

I recommend the dual 2.0 G5 or better for your needs as an ideal solution. I also suggest lots of RAM from a 3rd party vendor (at least 1GB) and a Radeon 9600 or better graphics card.

 

[Mord]

see if you can get an old dual 1.8 rev.a and stuff it with ram and get yourself a pair of 20" panels and then upgrade to a 6800 when they start to ship

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I will buy my Mac at the AppleStore in the Benelux. There the Dual 1.8 rev A is out of stock. I doubt that I will need PCI_X cards in the future. But the 4 memory slots are a bigger problem.
I assume that the new Dual G5 is as fast as the old one, except for these PCI-X slots. Or is the rest of the logic board also slower?`
And will all the older PCI cards work in the PCI slots of this Dual, or do they also have to be 3.3 volts?

 

[yamabushi]

I'm not sure of the voltage requirements of the PCI model but in the Rev. A there were a few reports of incompatibilities with some cards and this might be due to voltage limitations but I can't say for sure.

There also has been some debate about the supporting chipset in the dual 1.8 but it appears to be closer to the old single 1.6 than to the old dual 1.8 model. This would suggest that the new dual 1.8 might have a slightly slower chipset than the old 1.8 but is still far more powerful than the original single 1.6 model. Usually the middle models provide the best bang for the buck which is why I suggested the dual 2.0. Any one of the new models should serve you well if you can avoid any old PCI card issues.

Also keep in mind that ripping speeds are dependent on the read speed of the optical drive. Since the combo drives are slightly faster than the superdrive this can affect the ripping speed but either drive should be very fast.

 

[osprey76]

I'd say get the dual 2 GHz, because:

- it has PCI-X slots
- it has 8 RAM slots
- it is the best price/power ratio


And if your worrying about CD ripping speed, just get a 56x external drive, they're not very expensive...

www.newegg.com

If you compare total chip speed to price you get:
(Total MHz/$)

Dual 1.8 = 1.8
Dual 2.0 = 1.6
Dual 2.5 = 1.67

That doesn't take into account the feature differences. But, it shows the 2.5 is a "better deal" compared to the 2.0. The 2.5 comes with a 9600 GPU, which BareFeats showed to run just fine at "normal" resolutions (1024 or less).

It really comes down to what you're going to do. BareFeats said it well. If you're into CPU intensive tasks all day, a faster machine means more production and should pay the difference rather quickly. If you're a more casual user (like me) then the small difference between the two shouldn't matter. Or the 1.8 would be just fine, too, since you wouldn't need 8 GB of RAM.

 

[musicpyrite]

If you compare total chip speed to price you get:
(Total MHz/$)

Dual 1.8 = 1.8
Dual 2.0 = 1.6
Dual 2.5 = 1.67

That doesn't take into account the feature differences. But, it shows the 2.5 is a "better deal" compared to the 2.0. The 2.5 comes with a 9600 GPU, which BareFeats showed to run just fine at "normal" resolutions (1024 or less).

It really comes down to what you're going to do. BareFeats said it well. If you're into CPU intensive tasks all day, a faster machine means more production and should pay the difference rather quickly. If you're a more casual user (like me) then the small difference between the two shouldn't matter. Or the 1.8 would be just fine, too, since you wouldn't need 8 GB of RAM.

Well if the 1.8 and 2.0 are rev a, and the 2.5 is rev b, I'd still say that the rev a 2.0 is the best choice, because the 1.8 does not have 8 RAM slots, only 4, and does not have PCI-Express. and the 0.07% increase MHz/$ does not justify spending hundreds of extra dollars that he could spend on RAM, video card, PCI cards, ect...

 

[Sun Baked]

I will buy my Mac at the AppleStore in the Benelux. There the Dual 1.8 rev A is out of stock. I doubt that I will need PCI_X cards in the future. But the 4 memory slots are a bigger problem.
I assume that the new Dual G5 is as fast as the old one, except for these PCI-X slots. Or is the rest of the logic board also slower?

The new DP1.8PM drops the HT PCI-X Tunnel, and uses the external PCI bus on the KeyLargo2 -- so all I/O (except video/memory) shares a lower bandwidth connection.

This differs from the SP1.6PM which just software/hardware limited the HT PCI-X Tunnel to PCI speeds (33/66 MHz) -- if it used the AMD-8131 HT PCI-X Tunnel, it looks like a couple resistors are removed/added to bump the controller back to PCI-X (if Apple didn't software cripple it also). Can't do this with the new DP1.8PM, the KeyLargo2 is PCI.

And will all the older PCI cards work in the PCI slots of this Dual, or do they also have to be 3.3 volts?

The G5 only take 3.3V cards, any G5...

The PCI-X configuration conforms to the PCI-X Specification 10B. The PCI configuration conforms to the PCI Specification 2.3.

Revision 2.3 is an evolutionary change to the PCI Local Bus Specification. Revision 2.3 makes a significant step in migrating the PCI bus from the original 5.0 volt signaling to a 3.3 volt signaling bus. Revision 2.3 supports the 5V and 3.3V keyed system board connectors (as did revision 2.2) but revision 2.3 supports only the 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards. The 5V keyed add-in card is not supported in revision 2.3. PCI 66, PCI-X, Mini PCI, and Low Profile PCI support only 3.3 volt signaling on 3.3V keyed system board connectors and 3.3V and Universal keyed add-in cards.