Aqua-Soft ForumsCan someone tell me how good a 400mhz G3 is compared to PC stuff? Is it like a P3 400mhz? or like a P2 266mhz? or like a P4 1.5ghz? how does it stack up to new macs? and could it run modern applications, games, and operating systems like OSX well?
How Fast Are Macs?
According to Apple :
800Mhz G4 = 2.2Ghz Pentium4
According to me 
:
800Mhz G4 = 1.7Ghz Pentium4
800Mhz G3 = 1.4 Ghz Pentium4
But you really only notice the speed difference between the G3/4 on Multimedia apps (video,music, photoshop,etc).
This is all opinion. Flame war coming. :evil:
Vejitarot, I do believe you've missed the point. It doesn't matter which computer system is faster. The true deciding factor in the endless war of "Mac>PC, PC>Mac" is that the windows operating system is far superior to OSX. I mean, c'mon - do you honestly know anyone running windows who would willingly try to make their computer look like a Mac?
Yeah, I thought not. 
The thing about Macs is that the hardware and the software is made by the same company. So although the G3/4 may be a little slower than their Pentium counterparts, Apple makes up for it by making a very sleek OS; by that I mean that OS X takes advantage of every bit of processing power that is offered. I have had an 800 mhz G3 iBook since March, and I could not be happier. Graphics are great, and the only real difference I've noticed is an extra 2-3 seconds loading Photoshop.
If you are going to buy a new Mac, I recommend a 900mhz 14" iBook (If you have the cash for it). It has gotten rave reviews as the most responsive iBook ever. Also, make sure you max out the RAM; this makes a huge difference in any Mac's performance. Just don't get the extra RAM from Apple, they rip you off. Hope this helped.
-godpunk
Well I'm thinking of buying an older mac, not too old though. Was thinking like a 300-500mhz G3/G4 ibook or something like that off of ebay, don't know yet though.
So that means that a 300mhz G3 would still be as fast as say...a Celeron 700mhz?
Originally posted by Vejitarot@Aug 4 2003, 05:52 AMSo that means that a 300mhz G3 would still be as fast as say...a Celeron 700mhz?
Erm...that's stretching it a bit. If I were you, I'd completely ignore the clamshell iBooks (the colored ones). They have very limited RAM expansion and are relatively slow. A 2001 iBook (the first white ones) start at 500 mhz G3. That's the oldest I recommend you get, much older, and you start limiting yourself. Good luck!
-godpunk
I have the 2001 Dual USB iBook (500Mhz G3, 8MB video and 10 GB HD), and it runs 10.2.6 just fine.
A bit slow at times, but I maxed out the memory (64 MB built in and 512 MB added), and that fixed a lot of issues.
I am thinking of selling it and using the cash to get a newer Mac.
The cool thing is, you can go on e-bay and look for someone parting out a new iBook that they trashed and upgrade the logic board to a G3 700-900 very easy.
I have found several logic boards out there, but they wanted more money than they were worth. Hell, I've seen one moron asking $900 for a G3 700 Mhz logic board.
The whole laptop only cost $999.
My point is, they can be upgraded very easy.
I agree with Godpunk... stay away from the clamshell iBooks, they suck at running OS X.
I would be slightly wary of the earlier white iBooks, myself. While a league ahead of the older toilet seat ones, the main problem with them is that they have a 66MHz bus and only 8MB of graphics. The low graphics memory means that it can't handle Quartz Extreme, which puts a lot of the graphical razzmatazz onto the CPU, as opposed to the graphics chip. As it only has a modest 500MHz or so chip in there in the first place, this can lead to severe performance difficulty.
I'd recommend one of two machines:
• One of the later G3 iMacs - with Firewire, Combo drive, and probably a 600/700MHz chip. By the time the G4 iMac came out, these were shipping brand new for only $699 (I think, maybe $799) so you may be able to pick one up for as little as $4-500).
• Powerbook G3, commonly known as the 'Pismo' - may come in a little expensive, but this has been described as the best laptop Apple have ever made, this includes the TiBook and the current AlBooks. It's a G3 processor again, don't know what speed you'd be looking at though. Faster than an earlier white iBook though.
If you do decide to look new though, get an eMac. Outstanding value for the machine you get. I'll back godpunk up too and say that I love my new iBook, I've got the 900MHz model with 640MB RAM - lovely machine.
OK, this has been annoying me:
APPLE MAKES NO HARDWARE! All of the parts in a mac are standard off the shelf. They are not even that high quality (SDram and Geforce2). BUT, the difference is that apple doesnt really give you a choice, so they know what you have.
In conclusion:
1. Apple hardware is not any better quality, and its probobly worse
2. Apple has control over the hardware, so they can better optimize for it, thats why its better .
Originally posted by contrasutra@Aug 4 2003, 11:40 AMOK, this has been annoying me:
APPLE MAKES NO HARDWARE! All of the parts in a mac are standard off the shelf. They are not even that high quality (SDram and Geforce2). BUT, the difference is that apple doesnt really give you a choice, so they know what you have.
In conclusion:
1. Apple hardware is not any better quality, and its probobly worse
2. Apple has control over the hardware, so they can better optimize for it, thats why its better .
Did someone say something? 
-godpunk
Ok I'll say this again.........I have no money to buy a mac.....$0 to buy a mac....I have very little money and lots of bills. The only way for me to get one is to find someone who has one and wants a PC really bad to trade with me. So I can't be too picky on them.
Besides I do things on my 677hz Celeron with 256megs of SDRAM that most people probably couldn't do on a 2.2ghz P4 with 1gig of RDRAM. It's all in how you run your machine and how you use it.
Most people I know have 50 shortcuts on their desktop that don't even link to anything, still have the original advertisements about trying aol from when they bought their computer, and have 27 apps running in the tasktray and wonder why their computers are so slow.
Mine is slower than most of theirs and I run 3dsmax and Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, and After Effects while editing huge amounts of digital video and my machine keeps up with it ok.
I think that people just say a computer is slow because they don't know how to use it right.
Vejitarot: You had to go and say something like "...people just say a computer is slow because they don't know how to use it right.", didn't you?
I promise you that 667mhz Celery you've got with it's tiny 66mhz FSB (resell value about $10) is slow compared to even the low end systems of today. Let's see, I can pick up an AthlonXP1700+ with a 200mhz FSB (3x times the pipe yours has at almost 3 times the frequency and four times the cache) for about $29.
How fast are Macs? The same speed as PC's. Thats like asking how fast is a car? What kind of car? Are you asking about a Porshe or a Pinto? For what you have to trade you will probably not find a Mac that can support OS9 or OSX. If you do, consider yourself lucky.
As for what you do with the machine: Don't take this wrong, but before you start slinging around insults towards the majority of PC users, step back and ask yourself why you cant afford a big bad 3.2Ghz P4 on an 800mhz FSB running a GeForceFX 5900Pro with a 42" Sony Plasma Display. Or a new G5 running on a 23" Studio Display.
I can afford it, because I knew what I was doing on my 667mhz celeron 3 years ago. Ive proven my software skills by using the PC to pull in a nice tasty paycheck every month. Now I'm typing this to you in front of a very fine system, in between shopping for a new 19" Viewsonic monitor. Or maybe another CPU upgrade. Although I really dont see anything that is too much better than what Im on. Nothing drastic at least.
I'm not trying to be an ass, Im just asking that you stop insulting PC users.
BTW, most MAcs are about as fast as I can throw them...probably between 20-30mph.
You WEREN'T trying to be an asshole? 
But you're right. Obviously a Celeron600 isnt very good by todays standards, But we are not saying that it cant do desktop work, hell I was doing Spreadsheets on a 300Mhz P2 for a real long time, and it worked just fine.
Nope, I was actually being nice. If I was going to be an assh.le about it you wouldn't have had to ask.
Celeron 667's are ok machines. They just aren't worth anything on todays market. A very useable computer...they can run Quake3Arena with nothing more than a TNT2 and a few sticks of dram. Hell, they can run CAD and PS5 just fine.
I'm just saying it's not nice to insult PC users, as some of us step up and produce the goods. If you're gonna play the game and talk smack down, then be ready for the big boys. :woot:
If you're looking a desktop go for a dual 733 G4 Graphite tower, a dual 533 or even a G3 Beige. Most of them will need to be upgraded but there's a huge amount of cheap parts on ebay. If you're buying a laptop go for the new 14.1" 900mhz G3 Ibook, the older ones are known to be slow, and use small HDs (10 gig) which are not generally enough for most of your stuff. Or go for the older g4 Tibooks like the 667mhz, or the 867mhz, even though they have no superdrive their combo drives are something that you wont find in the older Ibooks. Hope this advice helps, and good luck on your future purchase!!! (Y) (Y)
I'm just saying it's not nice to insult PC users, as some of us step up and produce the goods. If you're gonna play the game and talk smack down, then be ready for the big boys.
I though Goku said you were short?
Well lets see. I too can't afford a new Mac but I do know a few things about them.
Now this is what I did. I found a PowerMac 9500 for $19.99 (at one time $3900.00) at the local college auction. I already had a 350MHz G3 upgrade card from a Power-Tower Pro but it never worked right with the card. So I put the G3 card in the 9500. Added 320 MB RAM. Ram for these older Macs can be found rather inexpensively at Mac -Soluitions.com. 128meg DIMMs are going for as low as $ 19.95 each. A couple of roomier SCSI hard drives and a SCSI CD burner. I used the ATI video card that came with the unit. Now I used X-postfacto to install OS X 10.2. Now it may not be the fastest Mac around but it works better than my overclocked Rev.A iMac ever did. It may only have a 50MHz system bus but it is great for trying out new things on the Mac.
I personally will never buy a new Mac. I can't see playing into their pricing game. Apple has consistently raised the price of every new PowerMac by $200 every year for the last 3 years. There was a time you could get a nice G4 system for $1,495. Well those days are long gone. While the rest of the computer industry lowers there prices Apple raises there’s. Now I will be looking for a nice used G3 or G4 in the future but I just can't see putting out close to $2000 on computer from Apple when I can build a PC that can easily be just as fast for 1/3 the price. I know this opinion will not sit well with some of the Mac faithful but its how I feel and this is how I go about having a decent Mac without all the cost overhead. So in total let’s see how much I spent on building an ok Mac.
Power Computing Power-Tower Pro with 350MHz G3 card and 2 32mb DIMM $85.00
2 128mb DIMMS at $19.99 each $40.00
1 PowerMac 9500 $19.99
1 6x4x16 SCSI CDRW drive from my boss at the shop $5.00
2 9gb Barracuda SCSI drives from the shop $10.00 each $20.00
1 legal copy of Mac OS X 10.2 from local Mac dealer $99.00
So for under $300 dollars I was able to put a working Mac OS X machine together. As you can see the most expensive thing for the system was the operating system. Now I have the PowerTower as a parts machine and it does run with the 225MHz CPU card that came with the 9500. So actually I got 2 machines, one Mac OS X machine and Mac OS 9 machine for under $300. If everyone who wants to have a real Mac just looked around they might be able to build up something like this. It is a good way to learn the ins and outs of the Mac platform and to use as a starter system. And with a few software mods can even run the current Mac OS version. So you can have a Power Mac and not pay out a whole lot of cash. Just an idea for those that might want to try the Mac.
Originally posted by contrasutra@Aug 4 2003, 10:35 PM
I'm just saying it's not nice to insult PC users, as some of us step up and produce the goods. If you're gonna play the game and talk smack down, then be ready for the big boys.
I though Goku said you were short?
Im 5'10" and 205lbs.
Thats 177.8cm and 92.9864 Kilograms for all of you on the metric system.
Is that short?
And to get back on topic, Macs are as fast as PC's, and vise versa. Every 6 months you'll get a Mac that is slightly ahead of the PC world, then for 6 months the PC's will hold the speed title.
wow.. thats pretty impressive how you 'built' your own mac.
And Panther's gonna run better! (Y)
hmm....kinda short. Thats ok, after hearing what kind of shape your in, you could beat the crap out of me.
You're right, you can get a mac thats just about as fast as any PC, but it may cost you $3000 more.
But as Taha rants: You pay for the quality.
You're a little chunky there buddy Deadzombie, I'm 6'1" 154 lbs. BTW: I play level one national tennis. (Im 16 too, so I'll probably get taller, but not heavier!!)
Originally posted by nrzero@Aug 5 2003, 12:26 AMYou're a little chunky there buddy Deadzombie, I'm 6'1" 154 lbs. BTW: I play level one national tennis.
I have been chunky - at one time my waistline was literally at 38". Now I'm back down to a trim 32" waistline - which is ideal for a man my age and height. The weight comes from my massive amount of muscle. I'm serious about this - I've worked out for about 17 years because if I don't maintain muscle I get fat quickly. I decided when I was 16 there was no way in hell I was going to become overweight like my mother. God bless her, shes an amazing woman, but has alot of health problems because of her weight.
So I run every morning, work out every afternoon, and eat as healthy as possible. Muscle weighs more than fat, inch for inch. So Im either built or Im fat. Right now Im built.
Now what does this have to do with Macs, other than how fast I can throw one across an open field?
