Dual Xeon 3.6GHz vs. Dual 2.5GHz G5

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

I’m debating between the following two stations. They’re more or less comparable in price.

Boxx:

Dual XEON DP 3.6GHz, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB (extended lead time)
4GB DDR2-400 ECC (4 DIMMS)
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400 256MB G-DDR3 (extended lead time)
120GB 7200rpm Serial ATA 8MB cache drive

Apple:

• Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5
• 4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
• 250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL

Aaarg. Decisions. Any takers? I think Boxx is what I’ll head for, but I do so enjoy OS X. Hm. Decisions, decisions. Anyone heard anything good about Longhorn? :wink:

2

longhorn is a Long way off.

if you like your OSX then go for OSX.

other than that i think the systems are fairly comparable.

however i use many macs (almost that fast) and they feel very slow LOL. so i don’t know.

and blender crashes on them constantly on renders (suposedly because of more thn 1gb mem on the G5’s LOL)

good luck though

Alltaken

3

here are some real world tests between a boxx system and a G5 (go to page 2):

They’re about the same in terms of performance. Also pretty girls will want to lick your face if you have a G5 under your desk. They’ll also do anything to get under the desk just to be near it. :wink:

I heard that it’s going to be a rip-off copy of Mac OS X but will be a better attempt than XP as they’re taking much more time, so I suppose if it tries to imitate the best OS there is then that’s a good thing.

Lukep (the person who builds/maintains the Mac Blender binary) explained that there is a problem with all versions of Blender and any machine that has over 2GB Ram. This causes problems with large renders.

Conclusion, get either one. Mac is more stable, secure, sexier, easier to use/setup, is better for multimedia, has better build quality, no viruses (so no virus software), has less trouble-shooting issues and has a better developer environment with it being a unix system so it’s easy to compile open-source unix software.

But you won’t get as good gaming since things like half-life 2 isn’t on Mac. Despite the fact Doom 3 and Halo is, you will likely be missing out on some great games. Some software too as 3ds max is Windows only. Also, repairs are cheaper on the PC (but usually happen more often).

If you’re a hardcore gamer, the PC is unquestionable. Otherwise I recommend the Mac.

Either way, there will likely be times when you question if you’ve made the right choice.

4

I would recommend the PC simply because it’s a PC but I’ve seen some really kickass stuff done with OSX.
I’d still go with the PC. But it’s really just personal preference. I spent a year working with both Macs and PCs strenuously and the PCs are still more to my liking.

5

Go for the G5 dude - It will serve you well and last many years. Why do I say this you ask? Well, My 33Mhz Mac LC 525 from '94, 16Mhz LC II from '92, and my little 400Mhz iMac from 2000 are all still working perfectly, and none of them have EVER needed repairs.

Besides that, my next purchase will be a G5 2.5…

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Hah, I got an LCIII from my great uncle… too bad it doesn’t have a monitor… (i’m currently looking into a mac-to-ibm monitor adapter…)
It sounds like it still works though hen i turn it on…