G5 Tower & Monitor V. Cheaper Imac G5, Is the tower worth all the dough? Options

[drewott]

Quick thought and question for everyone:

I know the G5 tower is superior since it is a dual processor, however, a tower alone is expensive. Plus the fact that the monitor is separate (and starting at $800) makes it even more pricy.

I have seen refurbished G5 towers on ebay for $1300 - $1500, is it worth shelling out the extra scratch for the tower and the monitor vs. a brand new iMac w/ lots 'o' RAM for appoximately the same price?

If the tower is far superior, I will bite the bullet and save a little more money, if not I would love to get an iMac G5 ASAP so I can start playing around.

[slexer]

IMO the tower will be far better. However to save quite a lot just gett a cheaper second hand monitor. I use my G5 with an older 17" CTR and a 17'' tft I picked up from ebay.

[rickenbacker]

More powerful, better expansion, probably more RAM, PCI cards etc - a PowerMac is meant to grow with you. But it does come at a price.

There's another similar topic also currently running somewhere on these boards - have a look at that.

[gdoubleyou]

You can use any standard monitor with it I vote tower.

[mortalengines]

It also probably depends on the app that you want to use as well. Your high end DAWs like Logic (even express) will probably work much better with the G5 tower. But if you were just using a smaller app like Garageband or even Reason (as a standalone) the Imac would be all you would ever need. I would still probably go for the tower.

[hahaworld]

I disagree that the iMac is enough for Garageband. Garageband is much more inefficient with CPU usage, and runs much slower than Logic Pro 7 does on my PowerBook 1.33GHz G4. I agree that you should go with the tower over the iMac.

[deaconblue]

You can never have too much RAM or hard drive space on a computer being used for multi-media endeavors. The iMac is a great CPU, but it is a consumer product. It's RAM maxes out at 2GB. The Hard drive can be upgraded, but you will always be limited to one on the internal bus.

The PowerMac G5 limits at 8GB of RAM and two Serial ATA drives on the internal bus. It also has almost double the front side bus speed of the iMac making it far more efficient in processing multimedia information.

If you can afford it, even with scraping by with an older CRT monitor for the time being, I'd recommend the tower since it will proivde you with better options for RAM and HDD, but also for PCI expansion, more monitor support, greater access to more DAW interfaces, etc.

Hope this helps!

peace,
Deacon

[mortalengines]

I may be incorrect on this one but I don't think that you necessarily need to get the $800.00 mac monitor to go with the tower. I believe you can use just about any monitor & get an adapter for it to work with the G5. However, I would like to hear from some other people out there to confirm this.

[rickenbacker]

It's true that you can't have enough RAM, but my G4 1GHz DP PowerMac maxes out at 2Gb and that's what it's got in it right now and it's been plenty fast enough for most things I try and do. Nice to have more, sure, but don't go thinking 2Gb is a paltry amount of RAM, that's all.

I also have a UAD-1 PCI card in my Mac, which helps take the strain off the Mac's processors. Can't do that with an iMac. With that and some judicious freezing, I have few complaints with using Logic Pro 7. I also have three hard drives in there - another plus for the PowerMacs.

Logic is also definitely way more efficient than Garageband - it's in a different class.

[deaconblue]

true, 2GB is plenty of RAM for most set ups, but, more RAM equals better processing capabilities even with Mac OS X's swap file management. Not necessary, but more or at least the option of more is always a good deal.

Also, the PowerMac G5 towers ship with a DVI to VGA monitor adapter in the box, so any CRT/flat screen VGA monitor will work (multisync is required). View Sonic has some good 17" and 19" that work flawlessley as well as other manufacturers.

And, the G5 tower also ships with a video card that supports dual monitors out of the box. Separate ADC and DVI connections on the same AGP card. The DVI adapter is indcluded; the ADC to VGA adapter is about $25US and is available at the online Apple store as well as many retail outlets which sell Apple products.

peace,
Deacon

This post has been edited by deaconblue: Mon 21 Nov 2005, 16:59