Power Mac G5 Performance?

I was looking around on macofalltrades.com and found that a Power Mac G5 was available to buy. Its specs are: Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 processors, 2GB Ram, NVIDIA Geforce FX5200 (64MB), and a 160GB hard drive; all for $400. Does it fare well in most areas that we all use today? If I get it, I would put Leopard on it immediately since I greatly prefer its desktop appearance over Tiger, along with all of the added features. I would get this as my main computer apart from my laptop, a Dell (Latitude D620, 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 160GB HDD). In my school, we have some older Macs, the newest being a 800MHz iMac G4, which unfortunately does not play flash videos well, and neither does my 700MHz eMac. Does the Dual G5 processor configuration on this Power Mac play flash videos better? Obviously the speed is a huge jump, and there are two processors on the logic board instead of just one. I watch youtube and a lot of CNETTV. I would be heavy on iTunes (music and a ton of purchased videos), iWork, and do some light Photoshop (CS3 or CS4??). Thanks for any advice

What's your computer budget?

Where are you located (US or outside of US)?

If in the US, $400 for this computer is a bit on the high side. I've seen many of them sell for around $250 on e-Bay.

HTH,

- Nick

That Dual G5 Power Mac will walk all over the 800Mhz G4 for sure. I use You Tube here on a single CPU 2.1Ghz G5 and it's pretty smooth, way better than any G4 in the house.

The price is a tad high for the dual 1.8Ghz model though like Pigoo said.

If you must go for a G5, see if you can get a 2GHz DP, or even faster, and one with a beefier graphics card as 64MB is pretty much bottom of the market. The $400.00 you mention is absolutely top price and if you go for the machine, you must get the system install discs and manuals etc.

The best buy of course would be an Intel Mac Pro but they are still very dear and likely to remain that way for some time.

Agreed with Harry. Again, where do you live? USA? I could check around for one like Harry mentioned but need to know your basic location.

Yes, I live in the U.S. Specifically New Jersey in pretty close proximity to New York City. My friend knows someone who gets Macs from wholesale, but he wants like $800 for a G5, that is why I thought that this was a pretty good bargain. I cannot use eBay since I am 16 and just use a Visa debit card. And I really don't want to use my dad's ebay account because my mom will freak out about the price on her credit card statement. I figured the graphics card would be ok since I don't really use graphics intensive programs. Just some Java programming, iTunes, Safari for my online Cisco Networking Academy, and iWork would be the main uses of the Power Mac.

If I were you I would seriously consider getting an Intel Mac Mini, which would be close to that price. The PowerPC is obsolete, and you would be in much better shape with the Intel processor so far as running modern software, including OS X. For the uses you listed, a Mini would be more than enough.

so like this would be a better choice: Used Mac mini Intel Core Duo/1.83 GHz | PowerMax ? i just thought that since the g5 had a much better graphics card and is supposed to be much more powerful computer, that it would be better than the mini.

Edit: I found a better deal on eBay for a Mac mini so I would most likely consider this before the one on PowerMax: Fully Loaded Mac Mini Core 2 Duo 1.83Ghz Parallels5 XP - eBay (item 140372717644 end time Jan-14-10 19:22:33 PST)