What you you think, was this a good deal or what?

[MacManiac1701A]

OK, I put the 2.3GHZ on ebay... I don't have enough space on the desk, I put it up for 550.00 and within 2 hrs it was gone.. buy it now.

I had immediate payment option, so I looked for a mac mini auction and found one, a mac mini 2009 (the newest with the nvidia graphics) BNIB with 2GB ram and I got it for 575.00 + 10.00 shipping.

BUT I'm keeping my G5 2.0 with the 16GB ram....it flies now with the ATI radeon X1900 in it...

 

[Christopher]

OK, I put the 2.3GHZ on ebay... I don't have enough space on the desk, I put it up for 550.00 and within 2 hrs it was gone.. buy it now.
I had immediate payment option, so I looked for a mac mini auction and found one, a mac mini 2009 (the newest with the nvidia graphics) BNIB with 2GB ram and I got it for 575.00 + 10.00 shipping.

BUT I'm keeping my G5 2.0 with the 16GB ram....it flies now with the ATI radeon X1900 in it...

Curious, why did you sell the faster one instead of just transfering all your parts from the 2.0 to the 2.3?

 

[MacManiac1701A]

My 2.0 is a dual core, the 2.3 was a dual processor.

mine has 16GB ram, the 2.3's max was 8GB.

The ram is not interchangable.

the 2.3 was pciX, my 2.0 is pciE, I just bought a ATI x1900 radeon...

 

[Hrududu]

OK, I put the 2.3GHZ on ebay... I don't have enough space on the desk, I put it up for 550.00 and within 2 hrs it was gone.. buy it now.
I had immediate payment option, so I looked for a mac mini auction and found one, a mac mini 2009 (the newest with the nvidia graphics) BNIB with 2GB ram and I got it for 575.00 + 10.00 shipping.

BUT I'm keeping my G5 2.0 with the 16GB ram....it flies now with the ATI radeon X1900 in it...

Nice work! I'd probably have kept the dual core model too. Even with the faster system bus and CPU, I bet having PCIe, faster RAM, and larger cache all have advantages over the older one. Just curious though, did you ever Xbench the two against each other just to see?

 

[MacManiac1701A]

No, I tried to run xbench but when it was time to upload the results it said the server was not available, I thought it was little snitch but it wasn't

 

[MacManiac1701A]

I recieved the Mini yesterday it is nice for a second Mac.

It seems like my G5 is faster...or on par with the mini

I installed 10.6 on the mini.

the mini is the 2009 model... with 2 GB ram...

I thought mini's were supposed to be faster?

 

[coius]

I thought mini's were supposed to be faster?

If it's graphics, then no. a 2.3Ghz G5 will win out over a mini. Actually, a 2.3Ghz SHOULD win out over the mini. at that speed, there's more horse power in the G5 than the mini

 

[Cory5412]

Not really. 1.6GHz Core1 chips and 1.6GHz Core2 chips (the original mac mini and the original macbook air) outgun the G5s in memory and processor performance. Like, all G5s except for the dual 2.7 and dual-dual 2.5. It's only when you can install a discrete graphics chip that's got like a gig of memory, and/or when you can install like sixteen gigs of ram that it's actually a better idea to get a G5, especially now that snow leopard and any/all 64-bit apps (Adobe's apps specifically) will be Intel/SL only.

AdobeCS5 will be intel-only, as an example.

The mini will act faster if you were able to put a 3.5-inch 7200rpm or 10,000rpm hard disks and a bunch of ram into it, but at 2.0GHz it definitely outguns any/all G5s in terms of CPU calculations, and with 1067MHz or 1333MHz ram, it definitely outguns a G5 in raw ram performance.

 

[MacManiac1701A]

I don't know.. I've got 16GB Ram, ATI Raedon X1900 Vid card... it seems like my G5 is faster....

 

[Cory5412]

Yeah, because of fast disks and having 16gb of ram. If your G5 had a 2.5-inch 5400rpm disk and only 2gb of ram, the Mini would likely be faster.

There's also the whole "real world" where not everything is 100% bound to the CPU.

Also if you're using a lot of PPC apps (CS2, Office'04, Poser 6, just as examples) than even a G4 might be faster.

As far as video cards go, the X1900 and the GeForce 6800/7800 are all ancient by now. Unless they're rockin' like a gig of their own memory I wouldn't be surprised if more modern graphics/games would benefit from the fact that a geforce 9400m is just newer and faster on their own, although for the most hardcore of things, shared memory is never the best thing.

Although it's worth noting that things like photoshop CS4 benefit more (although in somewhat silly ways) from a 9400m and purely being faster at framebuffer and some awesome new GPU things photoshop can do, than they ever would from GPUs that don't support some of the awesomest new things, like 6800/7800 and similarly aged ATi GPUs.

 

[MacManiac1701A]

I still think the G5 is a bit faster... but that is my opinion..

The unit and all of the parts might be out of date but I works for me....

I still love the PPC platform...

And to pluck down 3K for a Mac Pro makes no economical sense to me, My G5 is a VERY capable machine...

So now I have the best of both worlds, PPC (I have over 500GB programs and files) and I have the newer Mac Mini 2009 version.

Remember, some people are cranking out programs, documents on Mac's that are 15 years old... MAC's are not PC's, you buy a PC and hope you get 4 years out of it... Buy a Mac and the total cost of ownership is lower and it's still productive over 8 years and more, depends what you want or do with it...

 

[Cory5412]

I did not say that your G5 was not useful, or even that a new Mini is inherently more useful, I just said that benchmarks indicate that unless you need 16gb of ram (and can accept slower ram at that) that the Mini is computationally far faster than that machine. It happens all the time. I have machines of various types that would've cost not just $3,000, but $30,000 (albeit in 1998, not 2005) and they're still as useful as they were the day they were new.

As far as PCs and Macs go. x86/Windows based PCs can be just as useful for just as long as a Mac. (if not longer, see below) I've got a machine that was new (and admittedly, slow computationally) in 2003 as my main server, and if I wanted to load Windows onto it, it'd technically be able to do everything my newest machine does, it would just take longer.

It just happens that my newer machines do it all faster and use less energy doing it.

My particular example is a bit less extreme. Another PC I have was new in late '05 and similarly to the G5, is useful and would be able to stand in as my main machine, so there's no questioning that for right now, a G5 would be able to be a main machine.

(below)

The question is how long. Mac OS X has an extremely bad history of longevity in terms of new software. 2003's 10.3 can't run but firefox 2, which admittedly runs on Windows NT4, whereas 1999's Windows 2000 will run the latest firefox.

 

[~Coxy]

The 9400, while good for a integrated GPU, is definitely not faster than a card like a X1900. It's roughly the same speed as a dedicated X1600, maybe a little slower than a 7800.

That being said, some games might well run better on the mini.

 

[MacManiac1701A]

My games work well under the mac mini, as I sold the G5 on ebay for 750.00 + 35.00 shipping.

Given the fact that the G5 was a good computer it was also huge and no-a-days I'd like the smallest computer.

The mini is 2lbs the G5 48lbs.

480 watts for the G5; 100 watts for the mini...

I also scored a Powerbook 17" not the hi rez model 1.67Ghz on ebay for 465.00, it's in perfect condition. it came with 1 gb ram but I bumped it to 2GB, the 100 gb hdd is fine for me B/C when I sold the G5 I kept the 1tb HDD and sold it with the 400GB hdd.

I bought a mini stack v3 from owc and installed the 1tb in that so I use it for the powerbook and the mini, I boot off the 1tb as that was my main drive on the G5 where I had everything.

I pretty much got rid of all my computers, what I had 2 months ago to now.

2 months ago I had PMG5, Powermac AIO, Powerbook 15" hi rez (but that was in ok shape, there were dents and such it was from craigslist) and a Compaq presairo 15.4" screen with an AMD processor (wasn't that fast at all)

Sold them bought the mini (that can do windows) and the 17" powerbook.

That was a cleanout as to what I needed as opposed to what I wanted..and the mini has applecare on it and when I bought the PB on ebay the squaretrade warrantee was 47.00 for a year so I got it... don't kick in until 12/14/2009 to 12/14/2010.

The extra money I made on all of that I put into my savings...

 

[MacManiac1701A]

So I can honestly say the Mac Mini IS faster than the G5, it runs m games faster and smoother, Adobe runs alot faster...

I don't use the internal hdd I use the FW800 connected to the mini with my 1TB hdd.