Which Of These Macs Would Make The Best Daw? Options

[rlwilliams]

Hi,

I'm a little behind the curve in keeping up with the latest and greatest computer. I have three potential computers to be my main DAW. I was wondering if anyone who knows DAW computers would give me your opinion about which of these three computers would be the best.

1) G5 iMac with 1.8 Ghz processor/20 in screen - 1 GB RAM

2) G5 Tower with 1.6 Ghz processor - 1 GB RAM

3) G4 Tower with Dual 1 Ghz - 2 MB L3 cache per processor - 1.5 GB RAM


If I added more memory to any of these, would that make a difference in the deciding factor. I know some can be upgraded.

Thanks for your time and input.

Sincerely,

Ronnie

[gdoubleyou]

All ot those machines are out of production, any of the current MacIntels would be two or three times more powerful.

Benchmarks show that the core2 duo Machines are faster thean former top of the line dual G5 Powermac towers.

Current machines with Core2Duo cpus are the newly refreshed mac Mini, Macbook, iMac, and Macbook Pro.

The Mac Pro's come standard with four cores of Xeon cpus,and the top of the line is the eight core model.

I suggest looking into one of the new MacIntels, because the PowerPC based cpus ( G3,G4, G5) will only have software support for a few more years.

Also even with Apple's satandard consumer software the Power PC support is being dropped. In the new iLife '08 suite iMovie only supports the newer Intel cpus.

[rlwilliams]

gdoubleyou,

Thanks for the reply. I know the lastest models are ones to drool over, but at this time, the three listed are where I am.

Which or these would be the best of the three for a DAW?

One of these days, when I can afford the lastest and greatest I'll check into the dual core etc., but since I'm just a music hobbyist, I don't feel the need to spend that much money right now.

Thanks for anyone's reply to which you would choose if these were the ones you had to pick from.

Thanks,

Ronnie

This post has been edited by rlwilliams: Fri 10 Aug 2007, 02:41

[deaconblue]

Ronnie,

I would go with the G5 Tower since it will provide you with the most upgradable platform for the short term. gdoubleyou is correct. All three are out of production and would not be your best choice, but I know where you are coming from. If these are the three you can pick from, the G5 will allow you two large capacity SATA I drives and 4GB of RAM. Plus the AGP slot would be able to support a 128 MB Radeon 9800 or 256MB 6800 with no updates required.

You will need to get a FireWire Hub and USB Hub if you have a more than one or two FireWire devices and more than 3 USB devices (keyboard and mouse can be daisy chained to equal one device).

Expandability and speed would make me lean to the G5 without question. I used a G4 AGP for years and upgraded to a G5 (DP2.0) and have had it in service for the last four years. It has not hit the wall yet and I have room to upgrade still.

Just an opinion.

peace.

[minskybabs]

The G5 tower, I reckon, but that is just my opinion!

It will be more upgradeable and closest to the latest models. As I understand it the imacs are harder to do upgrades with. The tower will let you put in more hard drives and memory and probably have more usb and firewire ports, hopefully Firewire 800. Of course you will then need a monitor which you wouldn't with the imac, but being able to choose or upgrade your monitor could be useful?

If budget is tight don't forget you also need to factor in a sound interface (compined with or plus a midi interface?) and almost certainly an external hardrive (though if this is your only mac you could get an extra internal hard drive?).

As much RAM (min 1Gb) and as big (and fast I believe at least 72200RPM) Hard Drive will make a lot of difference to what you can do.

For a hobbyist, this stuff is fantastic, as long as you can get your head round it and give it enough time. If time is precious don't stress too much about latest and greatest computer, just make the most of what you have, you can spend a lot of time chasing upgrades and tinkering which could be better spent making music!

Cheers minskybabs.

[gdoubleyou]

Depends on what the asking price is. if it's over $500 for any of those machines especially if the the G5 tower is just a single CPU. The IMac is the most powerful of the three.

If you already own a monitor and USB keyboard I would suggest a Mac mini.

I'm running Logic Pro on one of the previous Core Duo models, haven't had any need for bouncing tracks, and I use virtual instruments exclusively, sessions of 32-48 tracks.

With the other models, if the trend holds at Apple will have OS support for 2-3 more years, then they will be locked out of new OSs and apps.

[LENPIANO]

YOU DIDNT MENTION WHETHER YOU HAD A PCI AUDIO CARD OR YOU ARE RUNNING JUST A FIREWIRE OR USB INTERFACE, THE G5S I BELIEVE NEED A NEW PCIE CARD TO FUNCTION WITH A TOWER AND SLOTS UNIT, JUST FIREWIRE OR USB 2 YOU COULD RUN THE IMAC OR MINI WITH A BIGGER PROCESSOR AND BOOSTED RAM AND PROBABLY GET AWAY WITH IT....MY MAC PRO DUAL/DUAL CORE SIZZLES BUT HAD TO BUY THE ADDT'L CARDS TO RUN DP 5.12 OR BOMB FACTORY STUFF......LENNY