eMac/iBook performance debate

rustedborg

I was thinking about buying a new eMac to add a new cheap Mac to my collection of Macs at home (old iMac G3 and old PowerBook G3 at home now).



That said, after taking a close look at the new iBook G4 I'm not sure what's better for my needs.



Fifty percent of the time I just use my computers for Web, e-mail and word processing. The other 50 percent of the time I use Photoshop. That's the issue.



Right now, I usually use my PowerBook with a full Gig of RAM for Photoshop. Since the eMac can use up to a full Gig it seems to make the most sense, but the iBook uses faster DDR SDRAM ... so would the iBook perform better with Photoshop than the eMac?

luca

I think the eMac would still beat the iBook. First of all, the G4 can't really take full advantage of DDR's speed advantage. Also, once the RAM runs out, the eMac will have a big speed advantage because of the much faster hard disk. 7200 RPM vs. 4200 RPM is a huge difference, and I know from experience (moving from an iBook to an eMac). The iBook can take over 1 GB of RAM, but it's very expensive to do so and for that price you may as well get a PowerBook.



Out of the box, I'd expect the iBook to outperform the eMac because iBooks ship with 256 MB of RAM as opposed to 128 MB on the eMac. If you brought them both to 640 MB, the eMac would win.