How Much Processer Do I Need? Options

[pigtails]

i am looking to buy a g4 powermac to run protools on. for the time being i will be using protools free, with a view to purchasing a m box later in the year. my tutor at college told me it's best to get a g4 with 1gig processor. however i have come across someone selling a g4 powermac and it's got 800mhz processor, 512ram 40gighard drive and is running os9 and os10.2. i am under the impression that i need os9 to run certain plug ins- if u know what i mean. i dont really understand about os. the bloke says it boots up in either os9 or os10. will this make a difference as to how it will run?
i'm really confused.......please help me.

[boze]

'always buy the fastest computer you can afford'?? that seems like kind of a sweeping statement to me. just because it's what i always do doesn't mean it's right for everyone! =)

in fact, i think there are plenty of cases when somebody can say 'this G4 is good enough and i'll keep some money left over for that _______(soundcard or other piece of gear)!'

pigtails, what's yer budget? sometimes it's easier to give advice when the money available is right there to be factored in. a G4 800 is fine to do lots of stuff but for any price >$1100 it becomes less of a value.

i think synthetics comment about that 350mhz G3 is misleading. don't expect to get 60 tracks of audio and 16 plugins on your G4 800 just because it's twice as fast as his old beige or whatever. if you anticipate using soft synths and plugin effects, just bare in mind that they are very processor intensive. still, a machine like the one you're considering could do fine running a half dozen or so of the less beastly vst instruments with some room left over for effects and plenty of audio tracks. this sort of thing is a ballancing act, and you pay for more headroom so you can produce freely and worry about it less.

all that said, i think a G4 800 is an okay machine for a beginning audio producer, but i'd really rather know the pricetag to draw conclusions about value and what kind of performance you should be getting for that money.

oh-- and one last thing:
not sure if you know this- but used mac hardware is sometimes a bit of a rip-off because folks on ebay are just silly for the stuff and will pay more than it's worth for it. this is a boon for mac hw owners but can make it awkward when you're looking at getting a used G4 tower from a friend. the friend can be like 'well they're going for $1200 on ebay so i'll sell it to you for $1050, buddy!' and in reality the best thing to do is to let the friend sell it on ebay and get a refurb 12" pbook from the apple store for $1199. or something like that, ya know?

let us know what happens.