PowerMac G4

PumpkinLand · Jul 25, 2006

When I get my Mac I'm not going to have the money for a new Mac Intel. So, I'm going to be on an older G4 system. I am going to get a G4 PowerMac, the one I may get has dual 867mhz processors, 1gb ram, and a 80gb hd. That or a PowerMac with theese specs: single 733mhz processor, 768mb ram, 40gb HD. Out of the two of them, do you think they both can run iMovie, or Final Cut and Photoshop?

I may just have to go with the lower end one. The guy who sells it lives IN the same county, and he says he'll hook me up with a 20" Mac monitor :batman:

jhelm007 · Jul 25, 2006

PumpkinLand said:
When I get my Mac I'm not going to have the money for a new Mac Intel. So, I'm going to be on an older G4 system. I am going to get a G4 PowerMac, the one I may get has dual 867mhz processors, 1gb ram, and a 80gb hd. That or a PowerMac with theese specs: single 733mhz processor, 768mb ram, 40gb HD. Out of the two of them, do you think they both can run iMovie, or Final Cut and Photoshop?

I may just have to go with the lower end one. The guy who sells it lives IN the same county, and he says he'll hook me up with a 20" Mac monitor :batman:

I've never used Final Cut, but either of those should work fine with iMovie and photoshop. The G4s are still nice machines.

Osiris22x · Jul 25, 2006

PumpkinLand said:
the one I may get has dual 867mhz processors, 1gb ram, and a 80gb hd. That or a PowerMac with theese specs: single 733mhz processor, 768mb ram, 40gb HD. Out of the two of them, do you think they both can run iMovie, or Final Cut and Photoshop?

Any G4 with at least 512 MB RAM can run iMovie and Photoshop without any problems. Final Cut might be a bit taxing, but it would run as well. The dual 867 system would be ideal for video, with the twin procs.

macEfan · Jul 25, 2006

I have a g4 733mhz, loaded with 768mb ram and 200gb of hard drive. It runs imovie HD as well as photoshop without any issues.

A while ago, I got a copy of final cut pro 4.5 and installed that. It worked, but it was rather slow for rendering movies, and don't even think of editing HD... frames are lost quite often...

If you run an older version of final cut, you should be fine. Just make sure your computer has plenty of hard disk space and sufficent ram. If you plan to do a lot of movie editing, I reccomend a second hard disk. I have a secondary 120gb just for movies, and this speeds up the process a lot...

If I were you, I'd save up my money and wait a little longer. When the intel powermacs come out, the price on g4's will drop even more. I'd wait and get a dual 1.25 ghz MDD powermac g4. That would really help your video editing power!

PumpkinLand · Jul 25, 2006

Thanks, I am getting the system with the 733mhz processor, 768mb ram, a nice 20" Apple Mac Display. :batman: macEfan do you know where I can get an older edition of Final Cut? I'll try it with some of the movies I make, if it lags to much I'll use iMovie in the mean time and max out the G4 PowerMac. Ah, it's 1.5. And also, macEfan, about the hard drive thing thats exactly what im going to do. Next month I'm going to buy a external.

macEfan · Jul 25, 2006

sounds good. I love the g4 powermacs because they are so upgradable. The 20" disply will be really helpful when editing movies. As for final cut pro, I suggest going with version 4.0... ebay is a good place to look for it.

If you want to use a newer version of FCP, then you could always max out your system even more by adding a processor acclelerator.

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

macEfan said:
sounds good. I love the g4 powermacs because they are so upgradable. The 20" disply will be really helpful when editing movies. As for final cut pro, I suggest going with version 4.0... ebay is a good place to look for it.

If you want to use a newer version of FCP, then you could always max out your system even more by adding a processor acclelerator.

Yeah, theres only one problem. It doesn't have a video card, so after I buy it I'm bringing it to the Apple Store. Do you think they'll have a PowerMac G4's video card?

macEfan · Jul 26, 2006

Yes, I'm sure they can order a video card. However, it may be a lot cheaper if you install one yourself.

here is a good inexpensive one, modified to fit a powermac g4.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/add/7292/APL630ATI96G4/

If your monitor is ADC, you might want a different card, because that graphics card is not ADC powered.
If you need a ADC powered card, you could always PM me, I think I have a spare somewhre...

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

macEfan said:
Yes, I'm sure they can order a video card. However, it may be a lot cheaper if you install one yourself.

here is a good inexpensive one, modified to fit a powermac g4.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/add/7292/APL630ATI96G4/

If your monitor is ADC, you might want a different card, because that graphics card is not ADC powered.
If you need a ADC powered card, you could always PM me, I think I have a spare somewhre...

Is there anywhere I can find it cheaper?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=84763&CatId=880

that work?

macEfan · Jul 26, 2006

nope, you need mac card, not a PC one. you vould always check on ebay, as there are sometimes good deals there..

If you REALLY wanted to, you could flash a PC graphics card to work with mac, but that is very hard to do, and I don't reccomend it if you don't feel comfortable working inside computers. If you mess up, your graphics card is shot..

I'd just spend the extra money and go for a known-good mac card.

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

macEfan said:
nope, you need mac card, not a PC one. you vould always check on ebay, as there are sometimes good deals there..

If you REALLY wanted to, you could flash a PC graphics card to work with mac, but that is very hard to do, and I don't reccomend it if you don't feel comfortable working inside computers. If you mess up, your graphics card is shot..

I'd just spend the extra money and go for a known-good mac card.

I am not going to get it, My dad said he'll just buy me a brand new Mac Mini Duo.

dtravis7 · Jul 26, 2006

Cool! That will work out quite well for you!

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

Yep! I tried convincing him on getting a Macbook, but it didn't work but a Mac Mini is still freaking amazing!!

macEfan · Jul 26, 2006

yes! with the mini, you'll be able to run photoshop and imovie nice and quickly. If you want to use FCP, you'll have to get the intel version of the software, as the PPC version doesn't support the intel systems.

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

Yeah I know, how fast will it run? I'm gunna upgrade sooner or later to 1gb. And maybe max it out.

macEfan · Jul 26, 2006

Well the 1gb of ram will really help with everyhing, OS X, imovie, etc.... the biggest performance increase is going from 512mb to 1gb. I'm not entirely sure how FCP will run on the intel mini because I don't have one. If you wanted to, Im sure you could go to an apple store and try it out. It seems like the stores have demo versions installed.

PumpkinLand · Jul 26, 2006

Yeah. We're going to go buy my Mini tomorrow at the Apple Store tomorrow.