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Upgrade my Hackintosh or buy iMac?


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Hi everyone,

 

the 8 september will be my birthday and, as usual, I'll receive a good amount of money...

 

Now I'm undecided if upgrade my hackintosh or buy an iMac 17".

 

My actual configuration is in my signature, and I'm planning to upgrade it as follows:

 

Replace Celeron D 336 with a Pentium D 930

Add 512 Mb DDR2

Add Ati Radeon X1600

 

The iMac I'd buy is as follows:

 

17" screen

1,83 Ghz Core Duo

512 + 512 Mb DDR2

Ati Radeon X1600

 

...which is best?

Consider that I'll be using it for Logic Express, Final Cut Express and the iLife suite, as weel as with Photoshop and Office (rosetta apps).

I'd also like to use it for gaming (mainly UT2004).

 

What do you recommend?

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I see...

My big problem is that the upgrade to my hackintosh will cost no more than 500 €...

An entire iMac costs 1300 € !

Is it worth it?

 

I'd like to see benchmarks which show the difference between an hackintosh with Pentium D and a real iMac, but I haven't found anything yet.

 

I think that as long as the version of Tiger I "own" (10.4.6) works fine I don't need to update anything... but I don't know how longer it will last...

It may last several years as well as few months.

 

The applications listed above are the only ones I'll ever use because I don't need anything more, but at the same time I need 100% workability, which (apart from the Mic which I don't use and the upgrades which are useless for me until now) now I have and I'll have as well upgrading my hackintosh.

In addition, I can always upgrade my hackintosh (even with some limitations), the iMac isn't upgradable apart from few things, so if I'll ever need more HD space I have to buy an external Firewire HD case and a SATA HD which is quite expensive and it doesn't perform as an internal HD.

 

All I'll ever use my Mac or Hack for is video, audio and photo editing, Office (PowerPoint in particular) and some games, nothing more.

 

I'd like to buy an iMac but it is very expensive and still I don't know if it is strictly necessary...

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I see...

My big problem is that the upgrade to my hackintosh will cost no more than 500 €...

An entire iMac costs 1300 € !

Is it worth it?

......

I'd like to buy an iMac but it is very expensive and still I don't know if it is strictly necessary...

 

sounds that you're more prefer to upgrade hackintosh :P then DO IT ..

 

there is no reason for you to spend more than 500 €, as you are, well .. computer literate, what are other proofs other than ability maintaining hackintosh

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First, thanks for your replies and your suggestion! :D

 

Second, can anyone tell me where I can find some kind of comparison between a Mac running on Pentium D and a real iMac?

I'd like to see the differences... in particular xbench scores and UT2k4 benchmarks.

 

EDIT:

I've ran xbench on my hackintosh and compared with the iMac results and... MY CELERON D PERFORMS NEARLY AS THE IMAC'S CORE DUO!!!! ALL THE SCORES ARE REALLY NEAR!!! AND WHAT'S MORE, I HAVE SUPERIOR OPENGL SCORE!!! WITH A CRAPPY GMA950!!!

 

HOW CAN THAT BE!??!?!?!?

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First, thanks for your replies and your suggestion! :(

 

Second, can anyone tell me where I can find some kind of comparison between a Mac running on Pentium D and a real iMac?

I'd like to see the differences... in particular xbench scores and UT2k4 benchmarks.

 

EDIT:

I've ran xbench on my hackintosh and compared with the iMac results and... MY CELERON D PERFORMS NEARLY AS THE IMAC'S CORE DUO!!!! ALL THE SCORES ARE REALLY NEAR!!! AND WHAT'S MORE, I HAVE SUPERIOR OPENGL SCORE!!! WITH A CRAPPY GMA950!!!

 

HOW CAN THAT BE!??!?!?!?

 

 

you see ... you just need someone to cheer you "GO GET UPGRADE" ...

........................

:)

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wait, wait... :)

 

Now I've ran also other benchmarks...

 

SciFi and Cinema4D... and the difference is huge... the iMac is 2x faster than my actual machine... and the OpenGL the iMac went something like 5x faster than my GMA950...

 

Let me suggest you... trash forever xbench.

It's unreliable.

Though, I'd like to see how a PentiumD 930 with an ATI X1600 with 1 gig of ram performs in Cinema4D and compare it to the iMac...

 

EDIT:

The Pentium D is quite slower compared to iMac Core Duo... the only point where an hack wins is the Graphic Card: a "normal" X1600 is quite faster than iMac's... but since I'm not going to use the Mac as a gaming platform, I think that I'll go for the iMac, even if now I'm not sure and want to do more research...

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I don't know, but I hope it uses a "normal" (non mobility) Radeon X1600...

 

the addition of 128 Mb VRAM will cost me +80€

 

Is it worth it?

 

P.S.: sorry for my dumb question, but what does "woot" or "w00t" or "whoot" mean? Is it something like "Hurray!" ?

 

EDIT:

 

Allright, the +128 Mb VRAM is available only for the 20" iMac, so don't worry, I have no choices. :D

 

EDIT 2:

 

The MBP uses an ATI Mobility Radeon X1600, instead the iMac uses a normal X1600.

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Dude, I would just upgrade. I mean I got a setup that uses rambus, which is high, other than that I got easy upgrades. I plan to redo mine with a new mobo, chip, ram, and video card down the line (the Mac Pro is the one I do want in time). The hackintoshes are much faster than iMacs and Mac Minis and you know what you go and can upgrade etc. I would just stay with Hackintosh.

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I never really used OSX86 very much, just read about it alot, but ounce I tried it, even without sound, it hooked me onto OS X. I bought an iMac about a month later, and yes I know I could've gone down the road of dell and got alot faster of a computer, but I'm happy I went with the iMac. As for the 128MB and the 256, my iMac only has the 128MB, and it plays COD2 just fine, haven't tried any other games though. Also, running Vista RC1 on my iMac right now (17", only 512MB RAM) with Aero enabled, working very fast, just no sound support yet.

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I know that upgrading my hackintosh I'll get a much faster computer than an iMac, but the mac's software and OS upgrades often makes applications and the OS go faster.

Consider that the Intel transition is still young and there's a lot of work in progress at Apple.

BTW, to have a faster machine than the iMac I should change my Motherboard with one supporting the new Core 2 Duos, which is quite expensive, both the MB and the CPU... add a good quality 2x 512 Mb DDR2 and the Graphic Card... the price for this upgrade will reach, more or less, the iMac price.

Also, the OSX86 project is obviously against the "Mac philosophy": working out of the box.

We always have to manual edit something or modify things, and still there's the risk that something doesn't work properly or doesn't work at all.

I switched to Mac because I cannot stand anymore to fight with hardware, incompatibilies, drivers, etc. . Now I'm not anymore at school, i'm at university, and i need a reliable machine which just works.

 

Think of Leopard: will its kernel be decryptable, so we can run it on beige PCs?

Our future is so uncertain... I'll always keep my hackintosh, but I'll buy the iMac.

If there will ever be the "perfect" configuration which is cheaper than an iMac and is 2x faster and, most important, works out of the box, then I'll switch back to hackintosh, considering it an "upgrade" to my iMac.

 

ah, btw, I've heard that the iMac's Core Duo can be easily replaced with a Core 2 Duo... is it fake or real? Has anyone already tried it?

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Well after reading Jas is gone, I am begining to wonder if I need to stay with OSX86. I do love OSX and I plan to get a Mac toward the end of the year, but I don't know. The iMac is under powered in my opinion and IF you could swing it or the payments, I would go Mac Pro.

 

I just wonder if the OSX86 project is in jeopardy or I am just getting worried over nothing. If we can keep getting new OSX86 patches, OS releases etc then I would not be worrying but as it stands NOW, I don't know which way to go....

 

So what is my opinion now? If you have the ability, go Mac.

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That's what i was thinking too.

Also consider that I choose the iMac as a "transition" platform.

I'm not going Mac Pro because is way too expensive for me and I'm not going Mac Mini either because I wanted an indipendent graphic card, not an integrated one.

If we can upgrade the iMac's Core Duo to Core 2 Duo would be wonderful.

 

I'm planning to keep the iMac for at least 2 years, also because I want to see how Leopard performs and, most of all, if it will be cracked; in the mean time I'll keep an eye on "perfect compatible hardware"... so when it'll come to change my iMac I'll exactly know the hackintosh situation.

 

Thanks for all your efforts guys, if you want, we can continue here discussing about upgrading our hacks or buy real Macs.

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That's what i was thinking too.

Also consider that I choose the iMac as a "transition" platform.

I'm not going Mac Pro because is way too expensive for me and I'm not going Mac Mini either because I wanted an indipendent graphic card, not an integrated one.

If we can upgrade the iMac's Core Duo to Core 2 Duo would be wonderful.

 

I'm planning to keep the iMac for at least 2 years, also because I want to see how Leopard performs and, most of all, if it will be cracked; in the mean time I'll keep an eye on "perfect compatible hardware"... so when it'll come to change my iMac I'll exactly know the hackintosh situation.

 

Thanks for all your efforts guys, if you want, we can continue here discussing about upgrading our hacks or buy real Macs.

 

OK. First Gato. You're remark abut the cheering was very very funny. In fact I couldn't have said it better.

 

To Don Luca.

You have to realise that REAL Mac-users don't update their computers as often as Windows kiddies. I personally know a lot of ppl in the graphics industry (mostly Mac-oriented) and if you'd know what Macs they (still) use and which old OSX- (and classic) versions they keep on using, you'd turn grey immediatly. E.g. A good friend of mine bought my ancient beige G3 and he's still using it with OSX 10.2.x . So as long as the apps don't demand that newer OS and as long as he can keep using his favourite app, he won't change, he won't buy a new mac, he won't upgrade his OSX to 10.4. He has at home an old iMac (bondi-model with the crt), my old beige G3 and a PowerMac 9600 (which he incidentally also bought through me). Sure he thinks spotlight and dashboard look nice. What a big deal. You don't buy a new computer just because the new one has a nice OS feature that you'd probably never gonna use anyway.

 

So in that respect I think that even your HackIntosh will be usable for at least the next 2 years. Hell, Adobe (one o/T driving apps-builders i/t mac-world) still hasn't released their unibin apps while OSX-intel is out for allmost a year now. How ridicoulous is that!!!! And don't come telling me that recompiling Photoshop and ironing out the few niggles take THAT long. Especially since big-developpers (like adobe) probably have their Intel-dev-macs a lot longer than the average OSX86-member.

 

On the other hand. Perhaps Apple does deserve your cash. If you really think that they ought to get a bigger market share. Then go ahead. Buy that iMac. I personally think 1300 $ for a "transition" platform is quite steep but who am I.

 

My own reasons for NOT buying from Apple have been mentioned somewhere else on this forum so I wont dig deeper in that.

 

For myself I already upgraded my Hack with the proper gfx-card to become 98% compatible. Oh sure my old P4 630 is definitly no Core 2 Duo. So what? That core 2 cpu at 1800MHz isn't twice as fast than my 3000MHz Hyperthreading cpu. In fact I seriously doubt that the eventual performance increase is really that stellar. I've build hundreds PC throughout my carreer and I allways found on PC the performance increase more evolutionary than revolutionary and quite insignificant compared to the previous model. There was a kick-in when 2D/3D accelerators came on the market but even that wasn't such a big deal. Unlike my old Acorn RiscPC where a switch from ARM710 40MHz to StrongARM110 200MHz gave a performance increase of WELL-OVER 5-fold.

 

In your case I'd go for that Pentium D (at the next Intel-price drop) and that X1600 gfx-card. In fact I'd even step down and only go for that GFX-card. Since that GFX-card will solve most of the hassle of OSX86.

 

But then again, who am I to tell you what to do.

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I think it depends on the reasons you want the computer. If you enjoy tinkering, and like the idea of "build your own", upgrading for you may be better. For me, not. I've long ago lost the enthusiasm for self engineering my desktops and notebooks. I have both a mini and a MBP, couldn't be happier. Each does the day to day appliance type stuff wonderfully, and I do all of my system administration work with the power of Darwin at my disposal. Too many people worry about the money spent, IMO, I've saved a lot of time in avoidance of the windows compatiblity issues, antivirus, antispyware, treadmill stuff. But then again, its easier to say that if you've got the cash to afford, and have had the chance to play with any PC for free.

 

Everything works on my macs. On the hacks I used to have, (I built several before trashing them all) they were never 100 percent, and it always bothered me that I was in a gray area of what is considered legal.

 

So, if you are a person who wants to compare and benchmark, and get geeked about the internals, that says something for what you may prefer. For me, I'm happy to buy the machine and use it until it dies, then buy another. No upgrading here.

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EPDM, I'm loving your post, the way it is written and its contents. :)

Really.

 

In fact I said that I'm considering the iMac as a transition platform, but I never thought that in the end I'll only use it for a few everyday-apps.

I must admit that now my hack is too slow to work with Photoshop, Office and other Rosetta applications, and it's too slow too for applications like Final Cut Express.

So, in any case, I must change it (upgrade or buy mac), and since I'll be using always the same applications until something "revolutionary" comes out (Autocad for Mac, for example, or even Photoshop CS3), I think that my new iMac will last longer than 2 years... or less? Who knows...

 

But then, if I have to spend 600€ or more to upgrade something which will not work @ 100% because it's not 100% compatible, then I think it's better go Mac... either Mac Mini, iMac or Macbook or whatever we need.

Personally, since I'm considering a "total" switch from windoze to Mac, I go for the iMac so I can also play some games like UT2004 or WoW, but if someone is searching for a compact workstation without great graphic power, then he could choose the cheap Mac Mini...

 

Summarizing, that's what I think:

 

If you're planning to "massively" upgrade your hacks and spend a great amount of money (500€ or more), then go Mac, unless you're a benchmark addict and you want the fastest mac ever.

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Dude if your going to spend 1300 buy a 30" lcd. who needs a faster pc. you just need more screen real estate! ahah.

 

seriously tho, if your going to spend 1300 for an Imac. Wouldn't it be better put into a sli config or some other nice config for the windows gaming side, pair with with a core2 cpu. I imagine you could get a pretty nice core 2 system for 1300 :\

 

Going a bit off-thread here, I was a bit disappointed by the Mac Pro announcement. I was hoping Apple would have announced a more gamer friendly system too. Something perhaps with like a sli config or a somewhat newer gamer video card. Oh well.

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