Thoughts on a G4 or G5?

[Quailane]

And the overclocking they do is some hardcore crap. I dont see any of us soldering points on a pcb to overclock

Well, I see myself doing that. It is a piece of cake. Just because you don't means nothing.

 

[ToiletDuck]

I soldered my Athon XP's to make them Dualie compat.

 

[speed bump]

I didn't see Far Cry on that list or any of the hitman series. So I guess I shouldn't get a mac becuase I spend way to much time playing those games.

Anyway I would find out about it atleast you might end up with a great dually that you can at very fold with for cheap.

Also it would be kinda cool to take apart and mod, Mac has some cool weird ideas about how to build computers. I just don't get those one button mice I don't have enough buttons with 4.

 

[jamesavery22]

Macs are good for somethings. If someone would sell me a dual G4 or G5 for really cheap(almost free) Id gladly throw it in a closet and use it for a F@H box. The PowerPC is a very powerful platform for a lot of apps, does much more work per cycle than most platforms.
Macs in general arent really the most versatile PCs in general. I'd never be able to use one for my main workstation because I do software dev stuff for my job. Im sure there are tons of visual compilers for all types of languages for Macs so dont respond and list them all. But face it, not many large business's use Macs, atleast Ive never seen any.
With games, sure there are tons of games you CAN play. But Im getting really F'ing addicted to HL2 and I want to try Halo2, so in that respect Mac's are out also.
In terms of upgrades and OCing, sure it can be done but it seems like a waste to me. To quote from the same links above:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/g4_tower_upgrades/upgrading_G4_tower.html
I paid $70 for the Radeon 8500 and $210 for the Sonnet CPU upgrade.

While a G4 is a pretty fast CPU Im sure its not faster than a 3200+ Winchester thats listed on pricewatch for 200$ at the time that xlr8yourmac article was posted...
As for OCing this is the first page I found from the same site:
http://www.ethernetworks.de/imac_g4_usb2_overclocking.html
And no soldering a PCB to OC isnt that nuts. Go over to forums.2cpu.com and you'll find tons of people doing it with PC-DLs, with much better success I might add. Getting a 1ghz proc to 1.25 is ok. But at the price you are paying for that thing I wouldnt be hooting and hollering.

If you got a mac for free then sure why not, OC it and mod ti all you want. It can be done and its not a waste. But if you are going to actually put money into a system that you want to use the computer for a wide scope of stuff, not just music or video editing, or not just a folding box, there are much much better values out there, even if someone is selling the mac for cheap.

 

[denz_1]

I use macs at school. Awesome. Only problem is the games. Perfect fro everything but games. I would love to have a dual g4 Or better yet a G5 Everything but games I tells ya.

 

[aeiou]

How about this- You can get a used 800mhz emac for about $500 and oc it to about 1.33ghz, as well as make a bunch of other upgrades for cheap. Nice- http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/eMac/eMac-upgrade.html

 

[DaveB]

Look, I know that Apple has a very dedicated and loyal fan base who run to the defense of any perceived negative (or not completely positive) characterization of any Mac, but .............

If this link is correct, we're talking about a duallie that uses PC100 SDRAM and doesn't have an AGP slot. If this is the case, then the G4 is not in any way shape or form a gaming system. It may play many games at low resolutions and low frame rates, but you don't want it if you're into gaming. No long list of available games will make it into a reasonable gaming system.

 

[denz_1]

I sadly agree. I love the ease of use of Macs. And am not bias towards either but Mac= Awesome everything but... games. and thats onyl new ones. Dual g4 should be fun tho. get it anyway if you can.