How good is the G4??

[thor4linux]

Hello all,

I'm looking to buy a laptop soon and thought about a power book G4 at 667Mhz. Of course i'll put linux on it. is it really worth the money? I looked on the net and is seems that G3/4s are not all they are ccracked up to be. I'm unbiased and would consider a Mac with no problems, i just don't want to lay out all that cash and be dispointed.

Thanks, Brian.

[Ashcrow]

[quote author=thor4linux link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39722 date=1025464092]
Hello all,

Of course i'll put linux on it. is it really worth the money?
[/quote]

Yes.

There are a lot of people who bash the Mac architecture and aoddly enough a lot of them are Win-zelots. G4's are 64bit, have more floating point computations per cycle than PC's and apple machines seem to have better hardware in general. In the PC community people had to wait years for SCSI and FireWire to be brought to us while the apple community used them for years.

[ursidae]

[quote author=Ashcrow link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39734 date=1025481855]
G4's are 64bit,
[/quote]

I'm pretty sure G4s are 32bit. I can't remember having read that the G4 is 64bit, I think I would remember it if I had.

And also AMD is raving about that hammer is the first 64bit cpu for the desktop, I don't think they would if the G4 is already 64bit.

As I understand it, 64bit isn't really that important if you don't have the need for huge amounts of ram.

[quote author=Ashcrow link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39734 date=1025481855]
have more floating point computations per cycle than PC's
[/quote]

Doesn't really matter when the G4 is stuck at 1GHz while the top P4 is at 2.5GHz and the top Athlon is at 1.8GHz.

PCs are faster than Macs at most things, it's just a fact of life.

[quote author=Ashcrow link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39734 date=1025481855]
In the PC community people had to wait years for SCSI and FireWire to be brought to us while the apple community used them for years.
[/quote]

And Macs still use SDRAM. PCs have used DDR SDRAM for several years now. DDR SDRAM > SDRAM any day. It's also nice to have more than one mouse button.

Speed isn't everything though, I use a duron 700 and it is fast enough for me. And I certainly wouldn't mind a TiBook, they look really cool, and so does OS X. But if you want the best bang for the buck, then a Mac is not for you. I think their laptops are a lot more competitive than their desktops though.

Dell laptops seem popular. I suggest you go to this forum ("Other Hardware" at Arstechnica). There are many "what laptop should I buy" threads there. If you don't find any on the first page, just check the older pages, there are many laptop related threads there.

[Ashcrow]

[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
I'm pretty sure G4s are 32bit. I can't remember having read that the G4 is 64bit, I think I would remember it if I had.
[/quote]

G3's are not 64bit but G4's are.
"Not all macppc are 64 bits. The G4 is, but < G3 are not."

[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
And also AMD is raving about that hammer is the first 64bit cpu for the desktop, I don't think they would if the G4 is already 64bit.
[/quote]

AMD says lots of things really. The use quantaspeed and XP arch and all kinds of things that let them have slower clock speeds but still 'out preform' pintel chips.

[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
As I understand it, 64bit isn't really that important if you don't have the need for huge amounts of ram.
[/quote]

64bit processors have little to do with RAM and much more to do with CPS, CPC and CPM. For instance, the amount of floating point computations on a 64bit processor per cycle are much higher than 32bit processors which over a few seconds adds up.

[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
Doesn't really matter when the G4 is stuck at 1GHz while the top P4 is at 2.5GHz and the top Athlon is at 1.8GHz.

PCs are faster than Macs at most things, it's just a fact of life.
[/quote]

Actually it matter a whole lot. It's one of the main reasons that companies use pretty much anything but PC's to do movie effects. Genereally speaking they use SGI, Alphas, or Macs (and now Itaniums).


[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
And Macs still use SDRAM. PCs have used DDR SDRAM for several years now. DDR SDRAM > SDRAM any day. It's also nice to have more than one mouse button.
[/quote]

That is very true . But on the other hand RAM isn't all that important when your processor can handle the data within one cycle instead of 3. It's a trade off os sorts.


[quote author=ursidae link=board=11;threadid=3986;start=0#39838 date=1025553004]
Speed isn't everything though, I use a duron 700 and it is fast enough for me. And I certainly wouldn't mind a TiBook, they look really cool, and so does OS X. But if you want the best bang for the buck, then a Mac is not for you. I think their laptops are a lot more competitive than their desktops though.
[/quote]

And you call yourself a geek?! :P

[Kernel_Killer]

G4's have their strong point just like an AthlonXP or P4. The AMD's do great Gaming, and high volumes of data. P4's have there expensive memory bandwidth, with somewhat high multimedia capability. The G4's on the other hand are a completely different arcitecture, and is excellent for multimedia instrustions. It really depends on what you plan to do with it, and what you expect out of it.