expert_witness's Full Review: Apple Power Mac G5 (M9032LL/A) Mac Desktop
Yes, design. Yes, top of the heap. But my incentive for getting a G5 is entirely to save time on After Effects rendering. My time equals money, and that's how I'm hoping to pay for a G5. Results:
I have a G5 dual 2.0gig with two gig of RAM sitting next to my old G4 400 with half a gig of RAM. New machine running After Effects 6.0, old one's got 5.5. Rendering the same project(around 1,500 high res stills being converted into a movie). Render time with the old G4 -- 14 minutes. Render time with the new G5 -- 3 minutes 56 seconds.
Keep in mind that the speed leap between a single G5 and a dual G5 is supposed to be roughly double (based on the Apple website). So I'd assume a single 1.8 gig G5 would pump out the same file in around 8-9 minutes. Considering even a single G5 runs at over four times the processor speed of the G4, not to mention a quantum leap in architecture, shouldn't there have been an even greater leap in performance?
I sound like a cretin, I know, "It's not even four times faster than my old one!" But -- I find myself wondering if I could have stuck it out on the old machine for another project or two, and saved many thousands of dollars. Catch the next wave of 3 gig G5 machines instead, or perhaps an eventual quad G5? Because no matter what machine you buy, Apple always pulls this trick of making your top-of-the-line machine their bottom-of-the-line with each new product cycle, so no matter what you buy you feel like an idiot three months later. (Not good business policy, if you ask me.)
As is, I may swap the G5 for a bargain-priced dual G4, and still get a performance bump without spending the big bucks. Beautiful machine though, lovely design....
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 4200 Operating System: Macintosh Processor speed: over 1000 RAM: More than 256 Internal Storage: DVD Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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