Power Mac G5 or Mac Mini Core 2 Duo

igrantigrant
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hi



I am looking to get another mac to do some basic video editing and encoding. All the editing is going to be done in the mpeg4 format and once the video has been edited I am going to encode the video into H.264. My question is which will be better A Power Mac Dual 1.8Ghz G5 or a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo?



I am looking for stable set up that can handle encoding video for a few hours at a time. I am leaning towards the Power Mac Dual G5 because of how much more cooling it has however that said a Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo running at 1.66 Ghz would also probabley work well. I appreciate any opinions or insight you might have.



Thank you so much

iGrant

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    joe_the_dragonjoe_the_dragon Posts: 931member
    the mac mini with it slow laptop HDD will be slower for video work.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    kareliakarelia Posts: 525member
    Mac mini.



    The Core 2 Duo destroys the PowerPC 970 at encoding, and the CPU is where the encoding takes place. Geekbench 2 scores the dual 1.8GHz G5 at 1592 points. The bottom-end Mac mini, with the 1.83GHz Core 2, scores a 2472. About a 40% increase in CPU power.



    One question though... where would you get a Mac mini with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo? That was never available. In the case that you're confusing it with the Core Duo, the 1.66GHz Core Duo scores a 2120, so about 25-30% over the G5.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    igrantigrant Posts: 180member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Karelia View Post


    Mac mini.



    The Core 2 Duo destroys the PowerPC 970 at encoding, and the CPU is where the encoding takes place. Geekbench 2 scores the dual 1.8GHz G5 at 1592 points. The bottom-end Mac mini, with the 1.83GHz Core 2, scores a 2472. About a 40% increase in CPU power.



    One question though... where would you get a Mac mini with a 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo? That was never available. In the case that you're confusing it with the Core Duo, the 1.66GHz Core Duo scores a 2120, so about 25-30% over the G5.



    Thank you for your reply, however will the mac mini over heat when I encode video? Also I worry about upgrade ability, with the Power Mac G5, I know I can upgrade the ram to at least 4gb and I if I get the Sonnet Jive unit for the G5, I could have 5 sata hard drives, where as with the Core Duo Mac Mini, I will be limited to firewire 400 external hard drives, not even firewire 800. Still my main concern is over heating, I know how small the Mac Mini is.



    Thanks

    iGrant
  • Reply 4 of 9
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,322moderator
    The Mac Mini is fine - it shouldn't get very hot at all. The G5 would probably get much hotter - it's one reason Apple moved away from the PPC line. I've run rendering sessions that used both processors 100% for hours on end and the fans barely even kick in. I've encoded 12 DVDs to MP4 in a single day and again, it was pretty much silent - though the drive makes a bit of noise.



    I'd say if you were getting a Mini for DVD encoding, get an external tray loading drive because the internal slot loading laptop drives are about half the speed.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon View Post


    the mac mini with it slow laptop HDD will be slower for video work.



    huh ??? Any machine can pull stuff off the HDD faster than the CPU can encode video. So the "slower hard drive" argument makes no sense at all.
  • Reply 6 of 9
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    Mmmm... that's interesting. I would have (wrongly) said that the G5 would have been faster with it's ability to support RAID 0 and 8-16GB of RAM. Just goes to show!



    Mac minis really are good aren't they?
  • Reply 7 of 9
    igrantigrant Posts: 180member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    The Mac Mini is fine - it shouldn't get very hot at all. The G5 would probably get much hotter - it's one reason Apple moved away from the PPC line. I've run rendering sessions that used both processors 100% for hours on end and the fans barely even kick in. I've encoded 12 DVDs to MP4 in a single day and again, it was pretty much silent - though the drive makes a bit of noise.



    I'd say if you were getting a Mini for DVD encoding, get an external tray loading drive because the internal slot loading laptop drives are about half the speed.



    Thanks for the info, but I am not ripping dvds, I am editing tv shows that I record that are in mpeg4 format and then encoding them to h.264 format. I know when I do that on my current machine which is a 1.6Ghz Power Mac G4, it runs with the cpu at 100% pretty much the entire time.



    -iGrant
  • Reply 8 of 9
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,180member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iGrant View Post


    ... I know when I do that on my current machine which is a 1.6Ghz Power Mac G4, it runs with the cpu at 100% pretty much the entire time.



    -iGrant



    The new C2D CPU's will also run at 100% during that task... but the transcoding will take a fraction of the time. I've tried it... my 2.16 C2D iMac can transcode a 90 minute .avi to an mp4(h264) in about 70 minutes (using Quicktime). That same task on my 1.5 G4 pBook takes over 6 hours!



    Now different bus speeds would certainly affect these times, but obviously, the newer chips are MUCH better suited to this type of task than the G4, so it seems reasonable that they might have a distinct advantage over a G5 as well.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    kareliakarelia Posts: 525member
    The PowerPC G5 actually has the advantage in bus speed, but the improved Intel architecture more than makes up for it. G5's always had a bus speed of exactly one half of the core clock, so a dual 1.8GHz would have a dual 900MHz bus, as opposed to the single 667MHz on the mini.



    The fact that the mini STILL performs better says volumes about the Core architecture...
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