effects with a G5 imac vs a macmini/portable

[Scoot]

This kind of question could probably be answered by someone with access to a single chip G5 and a portable........without the need for a mini.


if you were to kit out a G5 imac (1.6 closet version to mini) and a macmini 1.4 (macmini - you could even say an emac or powerbook really) with the same memory and work with an external firewire drive.......

- the processor mhz on the G5 isn't that much greater
- the bus speed on the imac is about 3 times quicker

Would you expect to just be able to run a few more effects on the imac or would it leave the mini or powerbook for dead?
(leaving for dead would be the mini with CPU usage near 100% and the G5 at 10-20%).

If the imac is say 3 times the price, but has a potential 5 times higher than the mini, then even though, I still have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, the imac is still worth considering.

[fastlanephil]

Macintouch and bare feats have tested the Mac Mini and it is really not much slower than an iMac G5 1.6. It seems all the talk from Apple about the power of the G5 falls a bit short in the iMac G5. But the G5 can utilize 64 bit computing which will be a coming with the release of Tiger and with the eventual recoding of applications to take advantage of it. So the future seems to be the G5 and beyond but for now the Mac Mini with a external HD is an unbeatable value if you BYOMKM.

I could use a little more HP with my Imac G5 1.8 but i'll wait for Tiger. Maybe my G5 will really roar with a Tiger in it's ST2.

[Scoot]

I'm waiting to see macintouch results when they get their 60GB 2.5" 7200rpm inside the macmini.

One ugly thing about ya imac was the bit in the macintouch report about the bugs - Apple apparently made some design errors in low-level hardware priorities for the custom controller chips, starving the I/O system for memory bandwidth to feed the fast G5 processors. As a result, the much-slower G4 systems actually perform better in disk operations.


This may also be why the USB2 on the macmini is utter rubbish.
Shame the mini doesn't have 2 firewire ports. You could then have an ext drive and a firewire audio interface running together.

[fastlanephil]

Apple made some errors? More likely Apple did this to hobble the iMac G5 as it did my Mac LC vs the Mac SI. What I have read is that the front side buss on the iMac G5 is 32 bit instead of the full 64 bit of the Power Macs. As far as the USB2 vs FW 400 it would make marketing sense for Apple to give FW 400 an edge over faster USB2.

Maybe one can chain an audio device to the second FW port on a external FW HD? Apple says 64 devices may be chained with FW but I have not found this to be true with USB. My M-Audio Transit needs a Mac Port and so does the M-Audio Radium 64. I haven't tried the Tascam US-122 with a hub but I bet i'd have no luck.

The laptop 2.5 7200rpm drive is a little faster but quite a bit slower than a 3.5 7200rpm drive in the tests results I've read about.

If I had a FW audio device I could try it. You could contact the manufacture of the FW audio device you are interested in and find out if it can be used from an external FW drive.

[Scoot]

As far as the USB2 vs FW 400 it would make marketing sense for Apple to give FW 400 an edge over faster USB2.
.

Explain this one..........

I have one of those pen drives.

If I put 100MB onto it on my G4 450...........it takes 15-20 minutes.
If I do the same thing on a imac (or my partners PC) it takes about 1 minute.

Why would apple handicap the top of the range machine over the consumer machine of 1999?
Answer - they wouldn't = bug!


As for chaining firewire..........you are still on the same single bus. Yes it could be done but surely something's going to suffer?

[fastlanephil]

It seems the bugs like the one with your Power Mac G4 450 and a USB flash drive occur because something like USB flash didn't exist in 1999 so the Apple engineers couldn't forsee the problem. But with the iMac G5 I really doubt if they could over look such a serious flaw. Wouldn't something like this be pretty obvious in the development stages and surely not be corrected before the product shipped? Unless!



Yes, I bet the FW audio devices need an on-board port.

[fastlanephil]

Scoot,
Check out the article on turning a mini into a Maxi. This would give you plenty of fast HD and still have the FW port if you have the hacking skills.

http://www.byodkm.net/

[fastlanephil]

Here is an article with instructions and supplier sites to hook up a fast external 3.5 HD with an external DVR to a Macmini.

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/ ... cles/mini/

[Scoot]

or there's this..........a 7200 rpm 3.5" drive with more firewire and USB 2 ports....and can be run as a firewire or USB drive (runs as USB if firewire cable isn't attached)

http://www.micronet.com/General/minimate.asp

[fastlanephil]

I have seen the Micronet MiniMate. It's just an external HD with a USB 2 and FW 400 hub. You will still only have one FW buss and the Micronet HD takes it up and leaves you with two hub ports instead of one like on a standard external HD for chaining. The internal HD conversion dosen't use up your FW buss if you want use a FW audio interface that needs an onboard FW port. The easiest way to go of course is an external FW HD and an USB audio interface.