Whats the hype with the "dual" g4s?

[Tanner31593]

Hello Kids,

I own a graphite iMac 700, 768mb ram, 60gb hd,
and my father recently purchased a PowerMac g4 dual 800, 1.5gb ram,
and after doing some word processing, burning, and the typical average joe stuff, to be honest, with the word 'dual' involving processor, i was expecting it to be faster than it was. Don't get me wrong, its fast.
But what my questions are,
Why are the dual so expensive?
If I wanted to upgrade to a powermac g4, (i could never afford a dual 800 at $460) but if i bought, say, a single 500 or 400mhz g4 PowerMac,
would that be faster than my 700 iMac?
What about an eMac? If i were to upgrade at all, i would probably, at my budget, spring for an eMac or a 500mhz PowerMac g4 at the very minimum.
Im satisfied with my 700 iMac,
but satisfied isnt enough for me sometimes.


What processor speed of a g4 is equal than my 700 g3 iMac????????
Thanks,
Tanner.

 

[cwa107]

Hello Kids,

I own a graphite iMac 700, 768mb ram, 60gb hd,
and my father recently purchased a PowerMac g4 dual 800, 1.5gb ram,
and after doing some word processing, burning, and the typical average joe stuff, to be honest, with the word 'dual' involving processor, i was expecting it to be faster than it was. Don't get me wrong, its fast.
But what my questions are,
Why are the dual so expensive?

I think you might be confused. The term 'Dual' means that the machine has 2 800MHz processors in it. The CPU is one of the most expensive parts inside your machine, so two processors = double the cost.

If I wanted to upgrade to a powermac g4, (i could never afford a dual 800 at $460) but if i bought, say, a single 500 or 400mhz g4 PowerMac,
would that be faster than my 700 iMac?

Not necessarily. The advantage to having more than one processor is only evident with applications that can take advantage of two processors simultaneously (i.e. Photoshop and other heavy-hitters). Simple things like booting up the machine, running basic programs like a web browser or an email program may not seem all that much faster if they're not optimized for more than one processor.

What about an eMac? If i were to upgrade at all, i would probably, at my budget, spring for an eMac or a 500mhz PowerMac g4 at the very minimum.
Im satisfied with my 700 iMac,
but satisfied isnt enough for me sometimes.

I would say not to bother unless you're going to go 1GHz or better, otherwise you'll see no significant performance boost (in fact, it will likely be slower in general usage even though it's got more than one CPU).

What processor speed of a g4 is equal than my 700 g3 iMac????????
Thanks,
Tanner.

The G4 is a newer generation of processor, so just about any speed will be faster than a G3.

 

[coach_z]

nice answer cwa.
-chris

 

[narf1899]

well said cwa....so my suggestion would be, if you're short on cash, go for like a 1 Ghz eMac....the display's included, and the processor's much better than ur current one.

 

[dadsgravy]

Hello Kids,

I own a graphite iMac 700, 768mb ram, 60gb hd,
and my father recently purchased a PowerMac g4 dual 800, 1.5gb ram,
and after doing some word processing, burning, and the typical average joe stuff, to be honest, with the word 'dual' involving processor, i was expecting it to be faster than it was. Don't get me wrong, its fast.
But what my questions are,
Why are the dual so expensive?
If I wanted to upgrade to a powermac g4, (i could never afford a dual 800 at $460) but if i bought, say, a single 500 or 400mhz g4 PowerMac,
would that be faster than my 700 iMac?
What about an eMac? If i were to upgrade at all, i would probably, at my budget, spring for an eMac or a 500mhz PowerMac g4 at the very minimum.
Im satisfied with my 700 iMac,
but satisfied isnt enough for me sometimes.


What processor speed of a g4 is equal than my 700 g3 iMac????????
Thanks,
Tanner.

emac, 500mhz, graphite? Did you post this from 2002? I didn't know your people were capable of time travel yet!

 

[Tanner31593]

Ok thats a lot more clear now,
Thanks everyone!

 

[cwa107]

emac, 500mhz, graphite? Did you post this from 2002? I didn't know your people were capable of time travel yet!

Keep in mind that not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford a new machine. He's got the right idea, running Mac OS and wanting the best performance he can afford.

 

[Zoolook]

CWA - you kind of contradicted yourself in your answer.

1st you said a dual G4 would not be faster than a G3 and then said a 500mhz would not be faster than a 700mhz G3 and then said any G4 would be faster than any G3, which is not quite true.

He said

if i bought, say, a single 500 or 400mhz g4 PowerMac,
would that be faster than my 700 iMac?

You said

Not necessarily

And then went on to talk about dual CPUs.

Now here's the deal with a G4 vs a G3. The G4 is only a little bit more powerful on day to day tasks than the G3, in fact it's biggest improvments are in 3d graphics or floating point calculations. I have seen benchmarks showing a 1gz G4 being roughly 80% faster than a 500mhz G3 in most practical tests and around twice as fast in synthetic benchmarks designed to show off the processor. The move to the G4 was primrily to redesign the chip for mhz upgrades and to improve memory and subsystem speeds. If you simply slot in a G4 in place of a G3 and it;s slower to boot, you get no improvement.

It's reasonable to assume that your G3 700mhz processor would, in most cases, outperform a G4 running at only 60% of the speed. I would suggest an upgrade to at least 1ghz or 1.25 ghz to get a noticable speed increase. Of course, more RAM (say at least a gigabyte) will help things along.

The biggest jump Apple made in recent years was the G4 to the G5

In reality

 

[cwa107]

CWA - you kind of contradicted yourself in your answer.

1st you said a dual G4 would not be faster than a G3 and then said a 500mhz would not be faster than a 700mhz G3 and then said any G4 would be faster than any G3, which is not quite true.

I agree with your assessment, I did slip up in that statement. My main point is that a dual processor system is not necessarily faster than a single processor system - particularly if both processors run at a significantly slower speed and you're not using applications optimized for more than one processor.

When I said:

The G4 is a newer generation of processor, so just about any speed will be faster than a G3.

I shouldn't have said "just about any speed", it should have been "...at greater than or equal to speeds".

 

[dadsgravy]

Keep in mind that not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford a new machine. He's got the right idea, running Mac OS and wanting the best performance he can afford.

It was just a joke! I would never chastise a mac user!

 

[dtravis7]

Keep in mind that not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford a new machine. He's got the right idea, running Mac OS and wanting the best performance he can afford.

VERY well said CWA on all points.

Up to 1.5 years ago I was in the same boat and had to use the older G4 Macs as it was all I could afford at the time.

Also, I have a G3 350 B&W and G4 350 Yikes. The G4 is noticeably faster and even more so with applications that use AltiVec that only the G4 had. G3's did not have AltiVec. I am not talking benchmarks, I don't use conventional benchmarks at all. Talking real work. If the application does NOT use AltiVec, then they are close, but the G4 still is a bit faster.

 

[Zoolook]

I shouldn't have said "just about any speed", it should have been "...at greater than or equal to speeds".

Sure I think that's fair. It's actually quite rare for CPU generation changes to bring REAL performance gains without mhz boosts. Notible exceptions have been AMD64 (from the AMD XP range) and most recently the Core Duo (from Pentium 4).

I think the G4 was a great chip, it was relatively low powered and handles media really nicely - the OP should try and grab a 1ghz+ G4 machine. They're pretty inexpensive these days.