A
.altan
Guest
I am moving to the US in a few months for college (hopefully in March).
For various reasons I am abandoning Windows XP. I have used FreeBSD and Linux for the past few years as well, but I find that GUI applications lack quality, consistency, and stability. OS X seems perfect, combining the power of a BSD core and a strictly optional terminal with good and consistent GUI applications.
Right now I have a 3GHz Hyperthreading Pentium 4, 1GB of PC3200 RAM, two 80GB SATA drives, and a GeForce 3. I want an Apple machine that will match (if not beat) the speed and responsiveness of my current PC.
My eye is on the 20" iMac and the Dual 1.8GHz PowerMac. I suspect that I don't really need the PowerMac, and it's prohibitively expensive when combined with a good and large LCD screen.
What I'll be doing:
- Word processing
- Web browsing
- Listening to MP3 music, watching DivX, XViD and DVD movies. No encoding.
- Light Photoshop usage, few layers and resolutions seldom higher than 1280x960
- 3D modeling at polycounts lower than 100,000 and textures at max 512x512. I use 3ds max now, but I guess I'll go with Maya on OS X.
- Software development with Python, possibly moving up to C/Objective C once I feel a little more comfortable with Python
- No games, except maybe Civilization 3 (and 4 when it's released) and UT2004 from time to time. (I know the FX5200 in the iMac isn't that great, but it's playable - I used to play with a 9200SE and ONS was fine with the right settings)
I also want the operating system to be fast and responsive. Like I said earlier, as fast as my current 3GHz Hyperthreading P4.
Is the video card in the iMac upgradable? I know I can't use whatever I have right now, but can I buy a new one to make up for the 5200FX? Again, I'm not much of a gamer so it's not so important, but it would be nice to be able to have full detail in UT2004.
You guys probably know all of this by now, but here are the specs for the 20" iMac G5 and the Dual 1.8GHz Power Mac. I will be transferring the 1GB of PC3200 RAM to whichever one I decide to get, so the amount of RAM they have isn't important:
iMac 20": 20-inch widescreen LCD, 1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512K L2 cache, 600MHz frontside bus, 256MB DDR400 SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64MB DDR video memory, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive, Slot-load SuperDrive.
That's $1,899 and a student discount of $100-$200, so ~$1650 is my guess.
The Dual 1.8GHz PowerMac has a 900MHz FSB, an 80GB SATA drive instead of 160GB, and an 8x Superdrive.
It has no monitor, and it retails for $1,999 (with a discount, around $1700 I guess). A 20" monitor costs $999 from Apple (if I'm getting a Mac I'd like to have aesthetic consistency), and I'll have to get speakers, so around $2500-$2700 is my guess. That is A LOT.
What do you guys think?
For various reasons I am abandoning Windows XP. I have used FreeBSD and Linux for the past few years as well, but I find that GUI applications lack quality, consistency, and stability. OS X seems perfect, combining the power of a BSD core and a strictly optional terminal with good and consistent GUI applications.
Right now I have a 3GHz Hyperthreading Pentium 4, 1GB of PC3200 RAM, two 80GB SATA drives, and a GeForce 3. I want an Apple machine that will match (if not beat) the speed and responsiveness of my current PC.
My eye is on the 20" iMac and the Dual 1.8GHz PowerMac. I suspect that I don't really need the PowerMac, and it's prohibitively expensive when combined with a good and large LCD screen.
What I'll be doing:
- Word processing
- Web browsing
- Listening to MP3 music, watching DivX, XViD and DVD movies. No encoding.
- Light Photoshop usage, few layers and resolutions seldom higher than 1280x960
- 3D modeling at polycounts lower than 100,000 and textures at max 512x512. I use 3ds max now, but I guess I'll go with Maya on OS X.
- Software development with Python, possibly moving up to C/Objective C once I feel a little more comfortable with Python
- No games, except maybe Civilization 3 (and 4 when it's released) and UT2004 from time to time. (I know the FX5200 in the iMac isn't that great, but it's playable - I used to play with a 9200SE and ONS was fine with the right settings)
I also want the operating system to be fast and responsive. Like I said earlier, as fast as my current 3GHz Hyperthreading P4.
Is the video card in the iMac upgradable? I know I can't use whatever I have right now, but can I buy a new one to make up for the 5200FX? Again, I'm not much of a gamer so it's not so important, but it would be nice to be able to have full detail in UT2004.
You guys probably know all of this by now, but here are the specs for the 20" iMac G5 and the Dual 1.8GHz Power Mac. I will be transferring the 1GB of PC3200 RAM to whichever one I decide to get, so the amount of RAM they have isn't important:
iMac 20": 20-inch widescreen LCD, 1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512K L2 cache, 600MHz frontside bus, 256MB DDR400 SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64MB DDR video memory, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive, Slot-load SuperDrive.
That's $1,899 and a student discount of $100-$200, so ~$1650 is my guess.
The Dual 1.8GHz PowerMac has a 900MHz FSB, an 80GB SATA drive instead of 160GB, and an 8x Superdrive.
It has no monitor, and it retails for $1,999 (with a discount, around $1700 I guess). A 20" monitor costs $999 from Apple (if I'm getting a Mac I'd like to have aesthetic consistency), and I'll have to get speakers, so around $2500-$2700 is my guess. That is A LOT.
What do you guys think?