My Valentine: New Dual 1.25 PowerMac

uhzoomzipuhzoomzip
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Actually, I didn't get it until the morning of the 15th but who's counting anyway...



I ordered the PM the day they were released. There was a slight delay in shipping it which I assume was because of some logic board problems I had read about.



Impressions:



First of all, I've read a lot of people are concerned about noise issues. I have it setup next to my old Gigabit PM 400Mhz and it is louder than that machine (I can't really hear anything coming from the Gigabit PM) but it's really not an issue. I haven't really listened to the old "leafblower" MDD model anywhere except Apple Stores and CompUSA - so I wasn't really aware of noise issues with those. Yes you can hear the fan(s) running on the new PM. No, it is not loud. In fact, I've got an old PC in my room which is definitely louder than this new PM.



I am surprised at how warm these things get. I have it sitting on my desk with the back of the tower facing the wall...and the wall gets pretty warm at times. So unless I've got something going on, I just put the machine to sleep when I'm not using it.



Coming from an old Gigabit 400 PM, this new PM feels like it's cutting through butter. I ordered it just with 256MB of RAM but I had a stick of 512 from OWC waiting to put it in. I don't really see a performance decrease even when I have 10+ apps running at the same time including Photoshop. It's fast, responsive and feels as solid as any new PC I've used recently.



The first thing I did when it got booted into X was to run the software update. It did not have 10.2.4 yet...but didn't take too long to get that installed. Software update also downloaded and installed the PM firmware update.



I know others have written about this, but the new towers do come with a WHITE pro keyboard and mouse.



I tested some mp3 rips...the superdrive seems to peak at 12-15x - with my LaCie 48x firewire burner, it peaks at 25-26x! iPhoto works like a dream - imports and exports quickly and flawlessly.



I haven't started any projects in iMovie/Final Cut but based on the performance so far, I think it will be very productive.



I finally get to run my Mitsubishi NX85 18" Flat Panel on a DVI connection...this along with the Radeon 9000 is WORLDS of improvement over the VGA connection I was using with the Rage 128 card in my old PowerMac. The screen is brighter, crisper and text is not blurry at all.



All in all, this is a quality machine and I'm certain this will last me at least a couple of years just as the Gigabit 400 tower did.



I'm curious if these machines will ever be able to accept a potential 970 processor upgrade like the 7475 upgrades that are about to be released...



Anyway...I love my new PowerMac. Cheers to anyone else getting a new tower.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Thanks for the review, just makes my mouth water
  • Reply 2 of 14
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    970? I doubt it. I'm sure the bitness alone would make to too much trouble to be worth it. Also do you want to run any kind of 64 bit CPU on a motherboard for 32?
  • Reply 3 of 14
    falconfalcon Posts: 458member
    Even more importantly you would still have the same slow ass FSB, which would hobble the 970 even more than the current G4.
  • Reply 4 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    [quote]I tested some mp3 rips...the superdrive seems to peak at 12-15x - with my LaCie 48x firewire burner, it peaks at 25-26x! iPhoto works like a dream - imports and exports quickly and flawlessly.<hr></blockquote>



    There must be something wrong with your set-up because my old 2x1000 MHz QuickSilver with a DVR-104 DVD-RW drive gets 24x+ encoding straight from CD. There's no way the new DVR-105 should be slower, especally on a faster machine.
  • Reply 5 of 14
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>



    There must be something wrong with your set-up because my old 2x1000 MHz QuickSilver with a DVR-104 DVD-RW drive gets 24x+ encoding straight from CD. There's no way the new DVR-105 should be slower, especally on a faster machine.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    He may be encoding at a higher quality than you do.
  • Reply 6 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    [quote]Originally posted by Wrong Robust:

    <strong>



    He may be encoding at a higher quality than you do.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Nope, that has nothing to do with it. Try again. He already stated his other drive lets him rip/encode at +24x, so it's definitely rips that are slower and not the encodes.



    Even at the highest possible quality settings, my machine gets about 18x in iTunes, better than his much faster machine.



    [ 02-16-2003: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
  • Reply 7 of 14
    rashumonrashumon Posts: 453member
    Thanks for the review man ! I have recently ordered myself one of these too, should be here in a few days (can't wait damit) this makes me want it even more now.....

    So you recon its not too noisy? how would you compare this box to the quicksilver models in terms of noise?



    I will be using mine for pro audio and noise is a big thing for me......



    Cheers

    have fun!
  • Reply 8 of 14
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    For valentines day, I got an espresso coffe/dark chocolate bar. I don't know about you, but I think I got a better gift... I mean, I already have an iBook, what more could I want?



    Yum this is a yummy bar.



    EDIT: /me remembers the Will Farrel switch ad... "the computer's better than the parfait, and this parfait is good." I suppose if I got a dual 1.25 G4 I could sell it and buy lots and lots of chocolate bars. I still like my chocolate though



    [ 02-17-2003: Message edited by: Luca Rescigno ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 14
    frostymmbfrostymmb Posts: 131member
    I haven't calculated and actual ##x rip speed for my Superdrive, but it comparison to the 48x12x48x Lite-On in the second bay, it's much slower. It should be, since the read spead is only 24x. Considering no one ever gets even close to the true rip speed of drive (which is only the speed at a certain part of the disc), 25-26x rip speed is about what you'll get out of a 48x read drive. The Superdrives only read at 24x or 32x, depending on which model it is.
  • Reply 10 of 14
    uhzoomzipuhzoomzip Posts: 7member
    Eugene - I'm consistently ripping my mp3's at 192 kbps with iTunes. The internal Superdrive is definitely slower than my external firewire CD-RW on mp3 rippings.



    I tried adjusting the kbps rate and there is no difference in the ripping speed.



    I think the issue must be related to the throughput of the Superdrive vs. the LaCie. I assume this has to do with the drive's reading performance (32x vs. 48x) + the bandwidth speed (firewire 400 Mb/s vs. ATA 100 Mb/s). That might not be correct but I'm no supagenius.



    I also know that your machine includes processors with 2MB L3 cache vs. the 1MB L3 cache on my 1.25's. Maybe that would sport some extra performance?



    Otherwise, I am at a loss of whether or not there's something *wrong* with the Superdrive or the machine itself or the instructions coming from the software.



    Anybody else have some mp3 ripping benchmarks they wish to report?



    [ 02-17-2003: Message edited by: uhzoomzip ]</p>
  • Reply 11 of 14
    frostymmbfrostymmb Posts: 131member
    There's nothing wrong with either drives or your system. The LaCie should be faster because it's read speed is faster. Eugene's Superdrive is no faster than yours. Anyway, I wouldn't ever trust a software report of a speed, not iTunes, Audion, Toast, etc; use a stopwatch and calculate the speed.
  • Reply 12 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    [quote]Originally posted by FrostyMMB:

    <strong>There's nothing wrong with either drives or your system. The LaCie should be faster because it's read speed is faster. Eugene's Superdrive is no faster than yours. Anyway, I wouldn't ever trust a software report of a speed, not iTunes, Audion, Toast, etc; use a stopwatch and calculate the speed.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    It depends on where the track is on the CD then, because my SuperDrive definitely allows me to rip at 24x for the later tracks on the outer edges of the CD. Perhaps Uhzoomzip's only testing track rips from the inner radius. That would possibly account for his lower encoding speeds.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    russsrusss Posts: 115member
    This might help explain MP3 ripping speeds in iTunes. According to the Pioneer web site for the DV-105:



    [quote]Read speeds up to 6X for DVD (single layer), 24X for CD-R/RW and 16X for CD-Audio Extraction<hr></blockquote>



    I recently replaced my DV-104 with the DV-105. I had ripping speeds up to 20x with the DV-104. With The DV-105 I get around 10x!
  • Reply 14 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    RussS, I guess that explains it. I wonder what changed to make DAE speeds slower in the new drives. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[oyvey]" />
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