Personal experiences with a Dual G5 VS dualcore iMac

So ive had my dual G5 quite awhile, andmy brother just got a dual core iMac for christmas.

Current SPecs on mine: dual 1.8ghz, 1GB ram stock Nvidia 5200, 80gb sata+120GB ide

Specs on the iMac: Dualcore 1.83ghz, 1gb ram, 128mb Nvidia, 160gb sata

Seems like an even match no? both runnin OSX4.8, all up to date software.

So my bro calls me in to help install stuff...

First off i notice the iMac lags and freezes when installing software, just like a real PC..joy..

We installed the new version, cinema4DR10 on both machines. I was impressed at how fast his rendered, especially hair and global illumination.

Til i got to the G5 and rendered the same frames faster..not incredibly faster, but noticably.

So then we get to after effects pro..is this even UB? It took 23 minutes to install, just hung on the adobe help information script

FCP 5.1 renders, seem to be beat by the G5.

Normal usage of the iMac seems more responsive than the G5, going through finder, opening apps, etc..until you get to the pro apps, then it just gets all windows-like...you can tell by the fact when you open the pro app it bounces on the doc for a good minute, and your not even greeted with a splash screen, just thrown right to the UI

I was really impressed with this machine, its flatscreen monitor, how responsive it is (in general), the boot time, but when we start to make it crunch frames, not impressed at all.

I dont know where apple gets their numbers, but im not beleiving them. Ill stick with my G5 as long as i can. Not saying i recall a chart where the dualcore iMac smoked a dual G5, but the way they make it seem is as if the powerPC CPUs are inferior..thus far ive seen the PC in my bros iMac far more than ive seen the MAC in it.

thats my .02

After Effects Pro is definitely not Universal, which is why it's running slow. I went to the CINEMA 4D website and it says their app is Universal.

In my experience, the only programs that take a long time to launch (icon bouncing on the dock for more than a second or two) are non-Universal apps because the OS has more work to do to get them running.

ToddG makes a good point. I have to wait a while on my mini for things that aren't uni, but the things that are, or native Intel coded, I don't have any problems - they pop right up, and that's with only 512MB RAM to keep everything in. Given more RAM and I don't think that I'd see as much of a delay with the non-uni apps.

im seeing a delay though with FCP 5.1 (UB) and C4D though..

Gotta love student discounts

Beleive it or not, our version of toast works fine, and thats PPC only