G4 vs. Centrino

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kidicarus74

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I know this starts off like a mobile question, but I promise it's an apple one at its heart.

Currently, I'm a web developer and graphic designer for a small business (7 employees including myself). As such, there really isn't a budget for them to by me a spankin' new G5 to do my design work on. The computer they gave me is a Monarch Computer bottom-of-the-line 2.8 ghz Celeron D w/ 512 mb of ram and a 19" CRT monitor.

I currently have my own IBM T42 notebook (1.7 gHz centrino, 512mb ram, radeon 9600 mobile, 15" @ 1400x1050 screen) that I use as my primary development computer at the office and then i take it home at night and use it to surf the web from my couch. I also have an Athlon 64 3500+ self-built rig (with a gig of ram, a 6800gt, and a Dell 20" widescreen lcd).

My question is, would I be better suited to get a new powerbook g4 (or even a new ibook). I'd like to have a mac, as i think they're great systems, but don't want to buy a new laptop that ends up being slower than my current one for what i want to use it for.

Or, should i just bite the bullet and save up to get a powermac g5? Would the Dual 2ghz be ridiculously faster than the 1.5 or 1.67 ghz powerbook?
 
kidicarus74 said:
Would the Dual 2ghz be ridiculously faster than the 1.5 or 1.67 ghz powerbook?
Click to expand...

in photoshop? yes, ridiculously faster :) theres benchmarks on apple.com. im just in a rush and cant grab them atm.
 
If you have an apple store or compusa anywhere near you, I'd recommend going there to check both systems out. Yes, any of the dual G5s would blow away the current powerbooks in photoshop, but that's not to say that a 1.67ghz powerbook with 1gb or 2gb of memory wouldn't run photoshop very well.
 
yes, but how would the powerbook compare to the IBM T42 in things like photoshop, dreamweaver, fireworks, flash, etc...?
 
kidicarus74 said:
yes, but how would the powerbook compare to the IBM T42 in things like photoshop, dreamweaver, fireworks, flash, etc...?
Click to expand...

raw performance would be about the same, imho. you get experience with osx on the powerbook tho, and many find photoshop etc. easier to use on osx, as opposed to windows.
 
If you are going to render PS files with 75 layers in them with 13 GB file sizes, then yes you need a G5.

Typical PS stuff that might have 15 layers with an image of 5000x3200 at 72dpi, your fine on a powerbook.

Believe me, you can bog a G5 down just as quick as a Powerbook. I have a G4 550 that will still run FCP HD, and DVD studio pro 2 It just depends on how big the projects are.


I have been eyeballing those new 14 inch iBooks for light duty (DVD Authoring) and as a web machine. Those 1.42 iBooks ar enot slow. Anything can work better if you max out the memory.
 
how bout this: what difference would there be between a dual 1.8ghz powermac g5 and a dual 2.0ghz powermac g5?
 
given that all the hardware is the same (video, memory, hard drive(s), pci/pci-x), the difference between 1.8ghz and 2ghz is not a big one
 
That depends, I suppose. There are two versions of the 1.8GHz and the 2.0GHz models. Each exist as one with PCI-X and one without, basically. The ones without PCI-X also have only four RAM slots, the other ones have eight.
 
kidicarus74 said:
how bout this: what difference would there be between a dual 1.8ghz powermac g5 and a dual 2.0ghz powermac g5?
Click to expand...

In terms of CPU speed, not a whole lot. The main thing you'd need to worry about are all the things you'd want to upgrade. For example, most of the dual 1.8s out there now are from when they were base-model systems from last year, with 256 MB of RAM, 80 GB hard drives, and GeForce FX 5200 video. That's not such a problem if you were going to add your own memory or a second hard drive, or if you weren't especially dependent on video performance. But if you'd rather not run out and buy various upgrades, the dual 2.0 is probably better in the long-term - especially since it has a dual-layer DVD burner.
 
How much of what you are after is machine lust and how much is driven by delays in your work while images are rendered and whatnot? Whose money would be spend for the new laptop - yours or the company's?

If it is the company's money maybe pumping up the RAM and whatnot on the current system would be a good spend.

Now to deal with the machine lust issue. If you can hold out awhile longer the first Macs with the intel based backends will probably be in the laptop line. Go for getting your boss to commit to buying one of those when they are released so you get more power.
 
it's my money, like i said, the company doesn't really have the money to buy a brand new g5 for me seeing as before i started they were primarily software development and contractual IT support for other small businesses. I was hired on as an intern last november (while i was still in school) and this may when i graduated they asked me to come on full time as a graphic designer / web developer. My main problem is that even when i had a gig of ram in this laptop, running dreamweaver, photoshop cs2, outlook, and a browser (which is essentially what i have to have open from when i get to work to when i leave) is really a pain when switching between apps, and when dealing with large amount of data inside each app.
 
kidicarus74 said:
it's my money, like i said, the company doesn't really have the money to buy a brand new g5 for me seeing as before i started they were primarily software development and contractual IT support for other small businesses. I was hired on as an intern last november (while i was still in school) and this may when i graduated they asked me to come on full time as a graphic designer / web developer. My main problem is that even when i had a gig of ram in this laptop, running dreamweaver, photoshop cs2, outlook, and a browser (which is essentially what i have to have open from when i get to work to when i leave) is really a pain when switching between apps, and when dealing with large amount of data inside each app.
Click to expand...

You might like a PowerBook then, if just for the sake of OS X. It tends not to let apps monopolize the CPU to the exent that the OS becomes unresponsive. It may not may be the smoothest by that point, but still...
 
so, just to bring some closure to the thread, i ended up getting a dual core pentium with a gig of ddr2 667 ram... for less than half the cost of the cheapest apple... putting it together tonight, we'll see how it does in the morning
 
kidicarus74 said:
so, just to bring some closure to the thread, i ended up getting a dual core pentium with a gig of ddr2 667 ram... for less than half the cost of the cheapest apple... putting it together tonight, we'll see how it does in the morning
Click to expand...

Ehh, well isn't that always how the story goes. :(

I have never seen a PC do multitasking like my macs can, even with dual processors.
 
well, i installed osx x86 on it last night as a third os (right along side win xp and ubuntu linux, with grub handling the boot sequence) and it's FAST... our other designer here at the office even commented on how he'd never seen and osx machine run as well as this one did, and he's got a dual 2.5 ghz G5
 
Run some benchmarks. I wonder how well the raw mhz does for OSx rather than the muscle of the dual G5's.
 
Garage81 said:
raw performance would be about the same, imho. you get experience with osx on the powerbook tho, and many find photoshop etc. easier to use on osx, as opposed to windows.
Click to expand...


HAHA if you think a 1.33-1.5Ghz G4 is as fast as a 1.7Ghz Pentium-M you're plain wrong.
 
MrJohnson said:
HAHA if you think a 1.33-1.5Ghz G4 is as fast as a 1.7Ghz Pentium-M you're plain wrong.
Click to expand...
Doing what? Photoshop? Doom 3? RC5? :rolleyes: There is no real way to measure performance.
 
kidicarus74 said:
I know this starts off like a mobile question, but I promise it's an apple one at its heart.

Currently, I'm a web developer and graphic designer for a small business (7 employees including myself). As such, there really isn't a budget for them to by me a spankin' new G5 to do my design work on. The computer they gave me is a Monarch Computer bottom-of-the-line 2.8 ghz Celeron D w/ 512 mb of ram and a 19" CRT monitor.

I currently have my own IBM T42 notebook (1.7 gHz centrino, 512mb ram, radeon 9600 mobile, 15" @ 1400x1050 screen) that I use as my primary development computer at the office and then i take it home at night and use it to surf the web from my couch. I also have an Athlon 64 3500+ self-built rig (with a gig of ram, a 6800gt, and a Dell 20" widescreen lcd).

My question is, would I be better suited to get a new powerbook g4 (or even a new ibook). I'd like to have a mac, as i think they're great systems, but don't want to buy a new laptop that ends up being slower than my current one for what i want to use it for.

Or, should i just bite the bullet and save up to get a powermac g5? Would the Dual 2ghz be ridiculously faster than the 1.5 or 1.67 ghz powerbook?
Click to expand...
Wait for next year, Powerbook Centrino :D best of both worlds :p
 
i know you all are trying to help, and i appreciate it, i really do... but if you'd read my previous post or so, you'd know i already bought a computer, and it ain't a mac..

oh, and as far as waiting a year for an unproven technology goes... that's something that just doesn't happen in the business world.. sitting on old hardware waiting for something newer to come along wastes time, which costs money
 
I had a Gateway 200x - 1.4GHz PentiumM Centrino laptop, great little laptop. I also currently have a 1.2Ghz Rev. A AL Powerbook, an awsome laptop. But, I would honestly take a Centrino laptop over a PB in terms of performance. The Pentium M is a great little chip that always felt snappier then both my desktop Athlon 2Ghz I had at the time, and my current PB. Its memory managment put it in line with my current 3GHz P4E. It would run circles around this PB with both Photoshop and WoW. Now the new PBs, I have no comparison to, I haven't gotten to use one of them, but with Apple going Intel, Centrino Powerbooks might be in the cards. :D
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
Doing what? Photoshop? Doom 3? RC5? :rolleyes: There is no real way to measure performance.
Click to expand...


He said RAW PERFORMANCE.


To the OP: Don't get an apple laptop at the moment, they're too slow and you're better off with your thinkpad.
 
kidicarus74 said:
so, just to bring some closure to the thread, i ended up getting a dual core pentium with a gig of ddr2 667 ram... for less than half the cost of the cheapest apple... putting it together tonight, we'll see how it does in the morning
Click to expand...


And with that, I bid this thread farewell
 
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