Hardware :: 2009 Mac Mini VS Dual 2.7 PowerMac G5 - Is Better In Every Way
Jul 18, 2009
I don't want to spend much on a replacement for it. I am looking at the entry level Mac Mini. According to the Mactracker app, the entry-level Mac Mini has a benchmark score of 2782, while my 4-year old G5 powerhouse sits at a 2245 benchmark. Is it really possible that the little Mac Mini is actually faster than my Power Mac G5? This may be a silly question to even ask, but I just thought that there would be SOME advantages that my machine would have over the little guy. Can anyone think of any drops in speed that I might encounter if I went with the Mac Mini? My main purpose for using my Mac is for pro audio; Logic Pro and such. Would I be taking any kind of speed hits, I don't know, with bus speed or cache or some other little thing that I am not taking into consideration?
Here are a few things that I have considered or pondered: I know that the new Mac Mini can support dual monitors, so I can use my existing Samsung monitors, which is great (what kind of connectors does that Mac Mini have, I wonder?). One thing I noticed is that the SuperDrive on the Mac Mini is 8X, instead of the 16X speed of my G5's. I don't really care about that though, how often does one really burn discs? I know I don't do it frequently..................
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Jan 1, 2008
I'm kicking around the idea of switching my Rev. A PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 for a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo 2 Ghz with 2 Gigs of RAM. I'm wondering if I would take a big performance hit with the switch to this machine when compared to my current workstation (most likely not, but hey I ask anyways). I am looking for something with a small footprint that's quite and basically is not a furnace with computing features inside that sucks power like a maniac. It's worth mention that I am on a budget as well(Macs here in Argentina are expensive as hell). As it is right now, if I do a feature to feature comparison, I would be getting DL DVD burning, Airport, and Bluetooth, something that my PowerMac G5 is lacking.
Its worth noting that the PowerMac has 1 Gig of RAM, the stock Radeon 9600 with 64 MB of RAM, but does have a 250 Gig HD. I regurlarly use Photoshop CS3 (working mostly with A3 sized files @ 300/600 DPI), Illustrator, in Design, Dreamweaver, some Flash. Of course the run of the mill, Web browsing/email checking along with IMing and iTunes activities. So what you guys think? You think a trade of my ol' faithful PowerMac from 2003/2004 to a top of the line mac mini would be a good idea?
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May 4, 2008
replace powermac 2.5 / 2.7 dual g5 with mini Has anyone here done this?
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Dec 13, 2007
Wondering if it makes sense to sell my QS dual 1ghz and get a Mac Mini C2D or upgrade the QS with a faster video card (Ati 9800 pro, about $120 on ebay). The QS already has a fast HD and 1.5gb ram. Looks like either option would be about the same price. I won't need to upgrade either Mac in the future, it will be the home Mac (A new Mac Pro after 1/15 will be my main Mac at work).
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Aug 23, 2010
I am a Graphic/Web Designer. Currently I have a dual 867mhz G4 that doesn't cut it. I can go all out and bring the machine up to dual 1.42 G4, 2gb ram, Radeon 3850, etc etc... BUT Before I lay out the money for it, would it be worth going for a second hand intel mini? The gpu in them I know is terrible but that aside does anyone have experience of the performance between the two when running; Adobe Photoshop, In-Design, Illustrator and Dreamweaver CS3 as well as Inkscape and GIMP and occasionally Google Sketchup. I'm not bothered about noise etc, only the performance difference.
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Nov 24, 2009
I like eMacs but the G5 looks sooo nice. I know I probably won't be able to use any for very long but whatever. What is the best?
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Feb 13, 2009
Hey all, so Im pretty knowledgable when it comes to my mac but I just cant figure out why its running so slow. For example It takes about 10-12 seconds to open up firefox, thats just crazy.
I have repaired permissions, verified my disk, and even ran a techtools fullscan. Nothing seems to be working. Ive got 6.5 gigs off ram in this thing (doubt it reads it all), 150gig sys HD plus many externals for file dumping, and an ati radeon 256mb vid card plus the newest OSX.
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Apr 10, 2009
I'm still hanging in there with my powermac g5 from 2004 (dual 1.8 g5, 2gb ram, ati 9800xt 256mb).
I do a lot of photo processing, and some video editing. This summer i'll be upgrading my SLR (10mp to 15mp), and I'll also be shooting 720p 30fps video.
I'm thinking I should upgrade my computer the same time as the camera. The g5 has leopard and CS3, Apeture, Final cut pro. these programs are really chugging along (sigh, the g5 used to be SOOO fast).
SO my question is... will the new imac (3.06, 4gb ram, ATI HD) be a noticeable bump in performance, worth the upgrade? Also, how much should I sell my g5 for (including the aluminum 20" apple cinema display).
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Nov 18, 2006
I've got a PowerMac G5 dual-core 2GHz box. Can I add another dual core CPU to get a quad-CPU system?
Forgive me for not wanting to open the case and look for myself, but it lives in a little hole that is hard to get out of b/c of all the cables and stuff... just wondering if anyone knows off the top of their head if the motherboard has another slot...
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Jul 30, 2008
Its old but its a workhorse. I need a DVD burner for this machine. I am so outdated on the new burners I am not sure what will work. Last I knew the Pioneers A06 work but having trouble finding them. Not sure if the new stuff in stores is compatible or not. Anyone have any suggestions on a cheap one? Need one kind of quick.
Would this work? [URL]
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Jun 20, 2010
Im looking into buying a second hand G5 Powermac Tower for Audio & Video Editing can someone give me a little insider because I beleive they don't all run latest OSX Snow or behond......
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Oct 3, 2010
i have just bought a PowerMac g5 1.8 Dual core its the model with 8 ram slots, and i want to upgrade the graphics card to the best one possable that the mac can take but i dont know which ones are compatible i know its AGP but other than that i have no idea what im looking for!!!
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Dec 31, 2006
i'm sure someone has experience here, but how does powermac G5 dual core 2.3 compare to MBP CD 2.16... and how does Mac Pro 2.66 compare to them?
i'm especially interested in processing photographs... not necessarily in photoshop as the CS2 comparison is kinda biased, and CS3, well, if you have those data, it's very welcomed.
i'm sure MacPro 2.66 will out perform the former two by far, but by how far? and will PMG5DC out perform MBP CD 2.16 or the other way?
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Mar 1, 2007
I have a Dual 2.0 Powermac G5 that has been shutting down without notice. It first started doing this every couple of days. I'd have to let the computer sit for a few hours before it would run again. Now it does it more and more frequently and stays running ofr less and less time. As of now, it will only stay on for 15 minutes before suddenly shutting down.
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May 14, 2008
how do i add an additional hard drives to my G5 tower, what type of drive is needed? Is there a max limit to the the drive i can use like the G4's? What type of memory do I need to buy, and lastly, how do i determine what series fo Dual G5 do I have? It seems as if there was a 2003 and a 2005 produced G5 dual 2.0 GHZ model.
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Oct 15, 2008
I'm new to this forum, just registered and you've helped me before with some of my mac issues.. Recently, I was offered a Powermac G5 2.3 Ghz dual core. I'm interested but I want to know if the machine is worth paying for, he was asking $1700.00 AUD.
Here are the specs.
POWERMAC CPU
* 2.3GHz Dual PowerPC G5 processor
* 1.15GHz frontside bus
* 512k L2 cache
* 2.5 Ghz RAM (400MHz DDR2 PC3200U DDR SDRAM Memory)
* 300GB Serial ATA hard drive
* 16x SuperDrive (double-layer) DVD Burner
* 4 Firewire port PCI-X Expansion card
* Two open PCI-X expansion slots
* ATI RADEON 9650 Video Card with 256MB of GDDR SDRAM
PORTS & BAYS
* 1x FireWire 800 port
* 2x FireWire 400 ports (one on front)
* 4x USB 2.0 ports (one on front)
* 2x internal SATA hard drive bays
BUILT IN AUDIO
* Optical digital audio input/output
* Analog line-level input/output
* Front headphone minijack and speaker
Upgradable to 8Gb RAM and 2-3 Terabyte of Hard Drive
I was told its a good, non-problematic machine. Are they telling the truth. I am also planning to check it out, what should I check or watch out for.
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Feb 2, 2009
I've bought a dual 2Ghz powermac G5 secondhand, and bought a new drive and installed 10.4.3 and updated to 10.4.11, the fans where always on full blast so i searched the forums and ran the Thermal Calibration utility, everything seemed fine for a week. Then it started turning itself off with a click from the power supply after i left it on all night while downloading.
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Jul 19, 2009
I am running a PowerMac Dual 2.0 G5 with the latest updated version of Tiger. I have maxed out the RAM to 8GB and upgraded the original video card to support my 30" display. I use a helper applications called "Free RAM". This program basically calculates what RAM you have available.
I am a graphic designer and need to run Quark Xpress 7, InDesign, Photoshop & Illustrator (CS4 with latest updates) simultaneously. On top of these 4 I also run Mail, Safari, Acrobat Professional, Extensis Suitcase X and iBiz (time management). These programs are all running all the time.
After launch and all apps running, everything is great. I have 2.95 GB of RAM still free (Free RAM). As the day goes by, and I have opened and closed numerous files this amount of free RAM dwindles and eventually I am left with 96 mb of RAM just before the CPU says "Enough is enough!" and everything grinds to a halt. Now previously I was running CS2 and I never ran into this issue. The problem started when I upgraded to CS3. Now with CS4 I am seeing the issue almost daily.
Now comes the question... Is the issue simply outdated hardware? Or, do I have a software issue.I am afraid to purchase a new CPU in the attempts to remedy this problem. If, in fact it is only a software issue. I find it strange that after a restart I have almost 3GB of RAM available. And yet as the day goes by I run out of RAM. I understand that as I open files more RAM will be used to support the open file.However, after the file is closed the RAM should free-up and be available again.
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Aug 13, 2008
I have a powermac G5, dual 2.5 ghz from 2004. I was wondering what the best graphics card upgrades are. I currently have an nvidia Geforce 6800 ultra, but I really want something with more vram
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Aug 20, 2008
does anyone know what the largest gfx card i can put in this machine? (agp)
radeon 9600 256mb is the largest one ive found that i compatible :S
i just bought the powermac from a work colleague for �120 with a 19" apple lcd (not a bad price) 2gb ram, 1.42 x2 PPC and im going to put 2x WD Caviar Blue 500gb HDD's in (using it as a home media center and torrent box)can anyone help me with regards to the gfx situation?
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Sep 12, 2010
I have an Early 2009 Mac Mini with Mini DVI and Mini DisplayPort. And I have two 1080p HDTVs. The Mac Mini is capable of dual display, and I've gotten it to work before, so the issue is not the TV or Mac. And I have tried both Mirroring and No Mirroring.
I got a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter (#5311) and a Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter (#4852) both from MonoPrice. And for some reason I can't get the Mac Mini to dual display, it's only one or the other.
Before I had a Mini Displayport Male and USB Male AUDIO to HDMI Female Converting Adapter (#5969) and I got video on both HDTVs, but not audio at the same time b/c one was USB and one was TOSLINK.
I'm not sure why I can't get video on both monitors. Any help?
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Jan 9, 2011
One of the drives in our 2009 mac mini server 2009 has died. I have taken apart many minis so have no problem taking it apart to replace, but does anyone know which drive is the primary, "Server HD" drive? Would it be the top drive (first drive you come across during disassembly) or the bottom drive closer to the logic board with the two pads stuck on? Just wondering if anyone knows for sure so I can avoid removing the drive that's still working fine.
Also, to keep the server running in the mean time, I am booting to the second drive which is working fine. Just curious, once the dead primary drive is replaced , can I simply use carbon copy clone to copy back from the 2nd drive, or will I need to install snow leopard server back onto the new drive?
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Jun 6, 2010
With a sharp fingernail I seem to have damages the internal ribbon cable that connects the audio card in my 2009 Mac Mini, and am looking to source a replacement, preferably in the EU. I'm currently in the UK.The part number is 922-8809.
A Google search reveals a few parts suppliers in Europeland, but they are all charging silly prices for the cable, and US suppliers impose ridiculously high postage charges.
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Jun 10, 2009
Now that I have a New Mac Mini, What is the best internal hard disk to upgrade it with. I'm thinking dependability first and one that's quiet. Now that the Seagate 500gb 7200rpm drive is at v.4 it seems the way to go, just want to make sure. The Hitachi TravelStar 7K320 320gb is a cheaper option if its just as good or better for dependability and silent/cool operation. And on reading some reviews of the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500gb 5400 it seems a very good drive too and maybe just as fast as the higher priced and faster spinning Seagate.
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Jun 15, 2008
Our old powermac died recently (G5 2.5ghz x2), the cost to repair was quoted at 850$, which is roughly the same price as a new Mac-Mini 2.0ghz. Just wondering how the performance of new mini compares to the 4 year old powermac? A new powermac is out of the question right now.
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Apr 22, 2012
Can I install Snow Leapord or Lion on a Powermac 10.1 Mini with PowerPc processor 1.42 GH processor speed and 1 GB of memory? Current OS is 10.3.
Info:
Imac 27, Macbook Pro 13,Imac 24, Mac OS X (10.7)
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Sep 25, 2008
Is there any way to hook up two monitors to a mini?
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Mar 9, 2009
Just about to purchase the new mini and I need to buy the adapter to use dual monitors. Is it the Apple Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter that I need to buy? I'm connecting my Samsung 24" which is dvi.
Just wanted to double check before I purchased it.
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Nov 7, 2010
I've been given the Blu-ray set of season 1 of the classic 70s sci-fi series Space:1999, but I don't have a BD player. What I am thinking about doing is buying an external BD drive for my Mac mini HTPC, ripping the episodes with MakeMKV and playing them in Plex.
I want to maximise the quality so I don't want to recompress the video in any way. At the risk of asking a really dumb question, will I get reliable playback from a truly "raw" 1080p24 BD rip played off a Firewire 400 drive, or will the data rate be too high?
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Mar 9, 2009
I have seen mentioned in a few other threads that the total recognized RAM might be superior to the official 4 Gb, just like older minis could see 3 Gb instead of 2. Has anybody tried it yet?
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