Seeking Power Mac Recommendations?

Pauly asks: "I'm going to do something I've never done: I'm buying a Mac. I'm a long-time UNIX developer and user for whom the prospect of trading a noisy, heat-spewing workstation or two in favor of a civilized Mac is irresistible. I'm quite used to making x86/*NIX hardware decisions. However, I'm finding myself stumped as I look at the G4/OS X options."

"As attractive as the (i|e)Macs are, I'm pretty certain I'll be getting a G4 tower to re-use my subtantial dual-monitor investment. Specifically, for my needs as a developer and power-user, I wonder:

• Are modern G4 towers quieter and/or cooler than comparable x86 workstations?
• Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?
• Is it best to buy everything directly from Apple, or just a minimum to be fleshed out with cheaper, after-market add-ons?
• What's the best video option for dual-head on Jaguar?
• Does OS X make SMP worth the investment?
• Is the SCSI performance gain great enough to be worth the investment over IDE?"

Comments

Get the cheapest one

[splattertrousers]

You won't be able to upgrade the CPU or motherboard on your Mac very easily, so I'd suggest buying the cheapest one so you can replace it sooner. When you replace it, you can swap RAM and HDs from the old one into the new one.

Anyway, the cheap ones have a better $ per MHz value: an 800MHz G4 goes for $1600 ($2/MHz). The 933MHz version goes for $2300 ($2.46/MHz).

RAM Craziness

[usr122122121]

Is it wiser to spend money on memory or megahertz?

RAM, RAM, RAM!!!. My home machine is a G3 300Mhz with a pile of ram. When I have had the opportunity to work on a G4 Dual-Ghz machines with a lot less ram, it felt sluggish. Go for the RAM, and you won't regret it.

Unless, of course, you get the RAM direct from Apple. No offense to them or anything, but they rip you off when it comes to RAM. Go to Crucial Technology and get yourself just as much ram for half as much money.
Good Luck with the new machine!

Some points

[Bwanazulia]

1) WAIT TILL MWNY is OVER! Prices will drop, deals will be had.

2) The G4 runs pretty cool.

3) Buy a dual system from Apple but skimp on the drive and ram. Add those from the many other places (http://www.dealmac.com) is a safe bet. A number of test have shown the Western Digital 120GB Special Edition drive to be way fast.

4) Max the Ram. It is cheap and worth it. Max it to 1.5 GB and never look back. My old 350Mhz G4 has 1.5 GB and still is pumping along.

5) Get a video card that suits your needs.

And most of all, welcome and enjoy the heck out of it.

BZ

Re:A couple answers of my own

[2nd Post!]

Another question then; will this be a 'one user at a time' machine?

Because it may make more sense to have a fairly hefty tower + some terminal like device (iBook, iMac, eMac, etc), rather an end-all-be-all tower.

Meaning you take the iBook and log in as necessary to the tower (wireless natch!) to do your C++ compute intensive stuff while she gets the tower to do her JBuilder stuff.

Every tower comes with a dual head video card. The base card is a Radeon 7500 I believe, upwards to the GeForce4MX up to the GF4Ti. I don't think the Radeon will do you poorly at all.

noise/heat and SCSI

[jcsehak]

just wanted to add:

My g4 tower runs cool enough so that i can keep it in the closet (with the door closed most of the time), which just about kills any noise. I'd say it's maybe a little quieter than a PC when it's out in the open.

In my last machine (g3), I had the IDE drive that came with it and a SCSI drive installed, and I didn't really notice a difference. Also, make sure you definitely need it before you go with the SCSI option. Some applications (Pro Tools, for instance) don't even support it.

Unless you run memory-intensive apps (like 3D ones) and you know you need it, I say get 256 RAM and spend the rest on processor speed. You can always buy more RAM later, and it'll just get cheaper. Not so with processor speed. I probably don't need to mention to get quality RAM. Newer (the company), for example.

Re:A couple answers of my own

[Large Green Mallard]

To explain my motives, I'm tired of incessantly admining/configuring/fighting the system at home. I have the money to pay Apple to do that for me now. I still advocate Linux on the desktop at work, but I don't get paid to tinker at home.

I'm paid to admin Win95/98/2k/NT/XP (and unix - sun/linux/irix) at work, and this is the exact reason I have a mac at home (and on my desk at work).

I spend enough time fixing other people's systems - I don't want to fix my own. I am provided with a Linux box at work.. but I bought my own iBook (soon to be powerbook G4 :D) and use that instead. It can do basically anything the Linux box can (that I would need), and it runs commercial apps.