How do Mac CPU's compare to Intel/AMD CPU's?

[timswim78]

I am thinking about getting a Mac for the purpose of learning OSX, and I would like something that can comfortably run the software included with OS-X such as the music, photo, browsing, emailing, and vide software. I have my eye on a G4 with a 450Mhz sawtooth and 1GB of RAM. Is this enough power for doing the basic stuff? I know that I wouldn't consider running XP on an Intel/AMD machine with similar specs.

 

[bjc112]

That will be just fine..

Some of the video related tasks might be a little slower, but a great starter system.

 

[CraigRT]

Just FYI, I have XP on slower machines than that (x86 PC) and it runs just fine.

and yeah, that is plenty of power in a Mac to run things adequately.

 

[Eug]

A G4 450 is pretty slow, even with 1 GB RAM. It will be enough for basic stuff, but not much more.

Imagine running XP on a PIII 500 or something. It works fine, but don't expect it to feel speedy.

 

[Blain]

Here are some fun Mac vs. PC benchmarks...
G5 - Dual 2GHz - 3GB PC3200
Xeon - Dual 3.06GHz - 2GB PC2700
Opteron - Dual 248 (2.21GHz) - 2GB PC2700
Xeon - Dual 3.4GHz - 2GB PC3200
Xeon - Dual 3.6GHz - 2GB DDR2
G5 - Dual 2.5GHz - 4GB PC3200

 

[ribbon13]

I don't know why they didn't show a Dual 252 with 2GB of DDR400... oh wait, yeah I do.

 

[Jigglelicious]

How much are you willing to spend? I'm betting that a Mac Mini wouldn't end up being all that much more than the 450mhz Powermac, and would be loads faster.

 

[biostud]

I use a 700Mhz G4 OSX with 640Mb ram at my university, and it feels a bit sluggish IMO.

 

[ghidu]

Originally posted by: timswim78
I am thinking about getting a Mac for the purpose of learning OSX.

Did you think about a virtual MAC? I think it's called Pear. You'll need some 3G of free disk for the Mac OSX image and that's it. It's good for browsing and playing with it, I don't know about photo editing and video, but it's free and you get a chance to see what's like working with a MAC.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Pear PC is ungodly slow at running OSX, imagine running it on a 286 with 1mb ram...

A 450 mhz will be more than enough to learn the OS, especially with that amount of ram, however if you want to do anything productive such as video, sound or image editing you will definately want something with some more horsepower.

And yes, I own a mac, but no I am not a zealot

 

[edmundoab]

my friend has an Imac G4 700Mhz with 786MB of PC100 Ram.
feels kinda slow with multiple task

but its speed on boot up is fine though.
I still feel its an eye candy more then anything,
Perhaps performance lean towards the powerMac which isn't that cheap either.