Pismo upgrade: 500 G4 vs. 800 G3
I have to be mobile for the spring and summer, so I picked up a cheap Powerbook Pismo G3 400, added a 40 GB Hard Drive, 1 GB of RAM, and plan on getting one of the powerlogix upgrades for it.
The next question would be: which upgrade to get? I just wanted to hear some people's opinions on 500 G4 vs. 800 G3. I plan on using the computer for internet, iTunes, and iMovie mostly- in OSX. By the way, the G4 costs $279 and the G3 costs $379. Powerlogix did some benchmarking, which can be read at: Performance Benchmarks
So help me out... on a budget... do I go for the Altivec with lower clock speed for less money, or do I spend the extra $100 for the clock speed and lose out on the Altivec??? (and yes, I know the G3 is not available yet, but a rep at powerlogix said it would be VERY soon).
Thanks
The next question would be: which upgrade to get? I just wanted to hear some people's opinions on 500 G4 vs. 800 G3. I plan on using the computer for internet, iTunes, and iMovie mostly- in OSX. By the way, the G4 costs $279 and the G3 costs $379. Powerlogix did some benchmarking, which can be read at: Performance Benchmarks
So help me out... on a budget... do I go for the Altivec with lower clock speed for less money, or do I spend the extra $100 for the clock speed and lose out on the Altivec??? (and yes, I know the G3 is not available yet, but a rep at powerlogix said it would be VERY soon).
Thanks
Comments
Also the g3 will run cooler and use less power.
Pocket the extra hundred and save it for the next laptop you buy.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno
I'd say go for the G4. I don't think there's much performance difference just in general use (Finder, iChat, Mail, browsing, iTunes) between a 500 MHz G4 and an 800 MHz G3. My 800 MHz iBook is usually about the same as my dad's 550 MHz TiBook. But the G4 is cheaper, and it has Altivec, so get that!
Is this a joke? The 800MHz iBook trashes the old Ti's in terms of raw, non-AltiVec speed. Ask yourself how often you'll be encoding MP3's and editing DV footage in iMovie, and then ask yourself if it's worth the trade-off in heat and battery life. I'm not saying that the performance of this G3 processor will be identical to the current iBook, but let's not give the G4 more credit than it deserves. Even in its current state, it's inferior to IBM's five-stage portable powerhouse.
Altivec only has a few specific applications. Everything else will be much better served by a much faster g3. Also, does the 800 mhz G3 not have 512KB, on-chip cache?
Moreover, if it is the G3 I'm thinking of, it has all sorts of under-the-hood tweaks to maximize the (relatively) slow 100 mhz bus of the Pismo, as well as a 256-bit wide, on-chip cache running at 800mhz.
But that doesn't change the fact that my dad's PowerBook feels almost as fast as my iBook despite being 250 MHz slower. It must just be the Altivec kicking in. I use it very little so normally the only indication of speed I get is browsing through Finder, which is both Altivec enhanced and not a great way at gauging speed. From testing the two side-by-side in XBench, I found that my iBook was significantly faster on the CPU (especially floating point, iBooks seems to r0x0r at that), slightly slower for the HD, and slightly better for graphics.
So I suppose it's your choice. Looks like I can't change my vote. But I'd probably go for the G4 anyway just because it's cheaper. However I don't really know the current situation you're in with money, so maybe I'm way off base with that. Also, it's usually not wise to get a product the moment it comes out... PowerLogix has had numerous problems with CPU upgrades, sometimes resulting in many-month waits during which there's little communication and you're left with a non-working computer. I'm not saying that you'll get ripped off... I'm just saying to be cautious. The G4/500s are somewhat of a "known quantity" so it might be a safer, although not really faster, choice.
sure it has a lower clock, but it is $100 cheaper, about a 25% savings over the G3...
The G3 will be faster for most (all?) tasks... but there is no power savings... because the clock of the G3 is higher, any power savings advantage of the G3 over the G4 is negated... in fact I would bet that the G3 uses more power due to its smaller cache (512k vs 1MB on the G4)
the question is whether or not the speed increase is worth the $100.... I'm betting $100 saved now is worth more then a marginal increase in speed... chances are you will replace the computer in 2 years or os regardless of which processor you buy... so why not save some $?
The 800MHz G3 is a mobile chip. It's designed to be as power-efficient as humanly possible. The G4, ESPECIALLY the old 500's (before Motorola really started trying to pin down the power issues), was not entirely designed for use in laptops, but it's come this far because its predecessors were embedded processors. Through the magic of Apple engineering, they've seen the light of day in one-inch-thin, Titanium frames, but don't make the mistake that clock speed has much pertinence on the battery life issue.
The G4 is cheaper, but you've already invested this much money into the souped up Pismo, so you might as well splurge on the most important component.
Don't be fooled. Go with the G3, Toadie. I mean, maybe if Steve Jobs was here to do a bake-off, my words would only appear moderately convincing, but the second-rate RDF these guys are dishing out has no chance.
The 750 FX is going to use less power and produce less heat. It has the 512KB of on-chip cache, and the processor speed can be reduced on-the-fly between 800 MHz and 300 MHz to save power if needed.
Argh... the votes are nearly equal. Time may be the telling factor if the G3 is not available within the next 3 weeks.
I should get an extra daughter card and get 'em both!!!!
BTW, the PowerLogix upgrade is an awesome idea. I have a Pismo 400 and I could only imagine the change a 800MHz upgrade would do to my PB. Too bad I don't have the dough.
Originally posted by Mount_my_floppy
I say go with the g3, Altivec really needs a huge bus speed to flex its muscle to full strength which it would need to do to keep pace with the 800MHz g3.
Also the g3 will run cooler and use less power.
Not really. The altivec on the 7410 is quite potent because it operates on a 4 stage pipe and has its own cache. At a chip speed of 500Mhz you're not waiting too long in terms of memory cycles per chip cycles for the Altivec to grab the data, beyond that which Altivec takes anyway to access memory. Memory operations on the 7410 altivec are arguably faster than those on the 7450 series. Since a lot of uses of altivec are in limited memory (algoritms) the bus speed won't make as huge of a difference as you might think.
The only bonus of the 800Mhz G3 is the on chip cache. If it's a 5 stage processor I doubt there's any seriously important forwarding/bypassing. 800/5 = 160, 500/4 = 125.
Get whichever, but if you listen to mp3's you're using altivec, and more of the integer and floating point cores can be used for other stuff. . . Altivec has it's own registers, and i do believe it's own cache as well.