Dual PowerPC

[daniel-osx]

OK guys, and gals, looking through the myriad of configuration options from Apple over the last few years and you see a lot of the "Dual 400Mhz" PowerPC arrangements available. My question is does the Dual 400 equate to 800 or is it lesser because of the configuration? Should I find an 800 Mhz single processor config and be better off?

[consolation]

First of all; there never was a dual 400, there was a dual 450. You are comparing two different generations of the G4 line, a Gigabit and a Quicksilver. The QS 800 would also have a faster AGP slot, faster ram and bus. Having said that; a dual processor gives about 25~50% boost on PPC except for some specific tasks, e.g. media encoding. The single 733 & 800 QS models are the turkeys of the Quicksilver era as they have half the L3 cache of other models. This is very important as these computers still use relatively slow SDRAM. The "good" quicksilvers are the Dual 800 and 867, best ones are the (2002 model) dual 1GHz and the 933 single -they can mount volumes over 128GB.

 

Performance wise they are equivalent to a pentium 4 approx. 1.5X their speed, so a 1GHz G4 ~ 1.5 GHz P4. Unless you plan to upgrade heavily (highly recommend at least flashing a PC 9800pro for a graphics card, it's a 5 minute job and does wonders for a G4 era powermac), they are getting a bit long in the tooth. The MD (mirror door) models that followed are a much better proposition with DDR RAM and faster HD controllers (and FW800 on some models). The dual 1.42Ghz is a surprisingly grunty machine, even by today's standards.

Edited January 22, 2007 by consolation

[Paranoid Marvin]

I would aim for a dual 1.4ghz, they may be expensive, but they would have the most potential for upgrades.

I think you can up them to a dual 2.0ghz 7448!

[blackandblue]

in everyday use im sure the single 800 would walk all over the dual 400, but that is only off the top of my head. Ive had a 400mhz g4 sawtooth i hacked a 933mhz cpu into (only runs at 700 due to bus speed differences) but that thing is great for everyday use such as internet, movies, music and the like.

[daniel-osx]

Thanks a lot guys. I was just informed that my school is upgrading from some old iMacs. Snow 600Mhz models. I am going to get two of those for free. I have plans for one but the other is still in the works.

[alloutmacstoday]

single 2x is better than dual x

 

you get more power

[A Nonny Moose]

For a dual processor Mac, multiply the processor clock speed of ONE of the processors by 1.5

[sHARD>>]

*sigh*

 

Like usual everyone forgets the real advantage of a dual proc box. Sure, it may do certain tasks faster than a single proc box, but it also does a *lot of tasks* at once without slowing down much. For a modern comparison, I'd much rather have a 2.0GHz Core Duo than a 4.0GHz Core Duo (let's pretend it exists for the sake of arguement). Why? Sure it does each task slower with a 2.0GHz Core Duo, but that only really matters if you are doing something that's single threaded and takes a lot of CPU power (MP3 encoding is a usual suspect). Most users instead find themselves browsing the web, chatting online, perhaps editing a document or picture, and doing other tasks. This will lead to greater overall performance, as the system can more effeciently distribute tasks (you remember Hyper Threading? that was the point of it really, it made it *look* like you had 2 processors in order to provide superior task management).

 

It sounds counter-intuitive really, but given modern operating system software, it's true.

 

Bottom line? If you are going to be multi-tasking, dual, if you want fast single-application performance, single.

 

If that isn't a tie-breaker, than look at the advice consolation offered you in order to decide.

[Alucard!]

It is like they say: 2 heads are better then 1 =)

Edited February 12, 2007 by Alucard!