How fast of a Mac do I need?

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adric22

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Currently I have two Macs, an aluminum Intel iMac, and an old iBook Indigo Clamshell (366 Mhz) Obviously, the iMac is plenty fast. But I'm thinking of getting a faster laptop. I do a lot of stuff on my Indigo with OS X 10.3.9 but the one thing it can't do that I'd really like is to be able to play youtube videos and various Divx videos that I download from bit-torrent sites. The Indigo, with its 366 Mhz CPU just can't handle either task. With Youtube, I can get about 1 frame per second, unless I rip the video and save it to my harddrive to play under VLC player. With downloaded Divx movies in 640x480 resolution, they will not play at all.

Now, keep in mind, I'm a minimalist when it comes to these types of things. I do not want to spend any more money than I have to. I've been eyeing some 12" white G3 iBooks on ebay. They seem to go for about $150 to $200. I've noticed they start at 500 Mhz and go up from there.

So the question is.. will a 500 Mhz do the job? 800 mhz? What exactly do I need. I know that with a Windows PC, my experience has been that 600 Mhz tends to be the breaking point for that kind of thing.
 
When I had my iBook G3 800, one of its problems was playing higher res DivX or XviD files. 640*X was choppy most of the time. A G4 processor, imho, is the _lowest_ starting point you should take.

That said, I find your logic flawed. You'll spend quite a bit of money now for something that only _almost_ fulfills the tasks you want to throw at it. You won't be very content with the results at the beginning, and that feeling won't improve much over time.
I'd go on for a couple more months with what you have - and then get a used MacBook instead. Mac OS X 10.6 is right around the corner. There'll be performance increases for most intel Macs (quite probably all), as it'll be a leaner, meaner version of Mac OS X for intel Macs. Yes, a MacBook will set you back more, but it'll do the jobs you want it to for a much longer time.
 
ElDiabloConCaca, I much prefer the design of the ibook (vs. the powerbook) and especially the compact size.

fryke, I disagree with your statements. A macbook of any age would most likely set me back at least $600 to $700. That costs considerably more than an older iBook. I was looking at iBook G3's on ebay for under $200. But if I needed to go with an iBook G4 to get the speed I need, then I can still get one for $300 or so. That is still half of the cost of a Macbook.

As for speed.. I'm surprised to hear the 800 Mhz didn't perform well on 640x480 movies. I have a Powermac G4 - 400 up at work that I play with sometimes (It is decomissioned from any kind of real work) and it can "almost" handle the 640x480 divx movies. It can actually play them, but the framerate leaves a little to be desired. That being said I realize the powermac is using a 100 Mhz bus and has much more CPU cache than the iBook. So that is why I'm left in the dark about the performance because I don't have access to any macs faster than 400 Mhz without jumping to a G4 Mac Mini. I have nothing in between.
 
adric22 said:
As for speed.. I'm surprised to hear the 800 Mhz didn't perform well on 640x480 movies. I have a Powermac G4 - 400 up at work that I play with sometimes (It is decomissioned from any kind of real work) and it can "almost" handle the 640x480 divx movies.
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Likely what you're seeing is the benefit of "AltiVec" that the G4 has vs. the G3. Some 400-500MHz G4s can keep pace with 800MHz-1GHz G3s due to the vector processing units ("AltiVec") they have that the G3s lack.

AltiVec especially comes in handy for parallel computing, video encoding/decoding and graphics (in general).
 
That's why I meant you should wait. In a couple of months, you _can_ afford a MacBook instead of an old iBook G4 or (very) old PB G4. Just save instead of spending and ending up with 200-300$ again in a couple of months. Spending hundreds of dollars now on a notebook that only "kind of" fulfills the task is money wasted. I know I'm kind of a d*ck about it, but saving up to something that's _worth_ the money is, well, worth the money.
 
I used to play 640x480 Divx videos on a 450MHz G3 iMac, but I got slight frame skipping on most videos and there was the odd one that was too slow to watch. Based on my experience with that system, I would recommend at least a 600MHz G3. However, it's likely that today's Divx movies are more CPU-intensive than the ones from 4+ years ago. Today's software might also be slower (back then 3ivx was the speed king, but it's outdated now, and I don't think VLC and the like have gotten much faster).

If at all possible, get a G4. Performance will be much better at the same clock speed. Like ElDiablo said, AltiVec helps a lot. It was made for multimedia.

If you want to try H.264, you'll want need at least triple the CPU power. Flash is obscenely slow, so you'll probably still need to use VLC or QuickTime (with Perian installed) to play them well on any older system. I've never used YouTube on a G3-class system, though, so I can't say exactly what you'd need. My 1.25GHz G4 Mac Mini has issues with quite a lot of H.264, and in-browser Flash performance leaves a lot to be desired.
 
I gotta agree with Fryke on this one: spending $200 to $300 on a pitiful G3 or G4 laptop will get you through the next year or year and a half.

Spending double that on a MacBook (~$700) will get you through the next 4 or 5 years.

Not to mention the whole "experience" will be much more enjoyable on the faster MacBook. You're spending twice as much, but easily getting 10 times the power of the G3 or G4, not to mention longevity and expandability.

It's one of those situations where spending more up front will save you money in the long run.
 
Also with the new MacBooks coming out, the older ones drop way down. Such as when I saw this MacBook with 15 minutes left, it was $355. Thats cheaper than what I got my iBook G3 900 mhz for about a year and a half ago!
 
This is most fascinating. I bought a 12" iBook from somebody on Craigslist. It is a 600 Mhz unit and I have installed the same operating system and run the same applications side by side with my Clamshell 366 Mhz. Guess what? There really isn't much difference in speed. Youtube videos play about the same (which is about 1 to 2 frames per second) and VLC player doesn't do any better on 640x480 divx movies on either one that I can tell. However, I do notice some web-browsing improvements on firefox on the newer one. Still, I'm thinking a G4 model would probably be a minimum requirement for me. I think I'll sell this one back on craigslist and keep looking for a G4.
 
I take back what I just said about the Divx movies.. I was trying to play those over the wireless connection, which I do all the time from other computers. But I guess the 802.11b is too slow for that. When I copied the movies to the harddrive and played them from there, they were fine.. well, almost fine. I can see that it skips a frame every now and then.
 
adric22 said:
So the question is.. will a 500 Mhz do the job? 800 mhz? What exactly do I need. I know that with a Windows PC, my experience has been that 600 Mhz tends to be the breaking point for that kind of thing.
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I have the snow ibook G3/500mhz and with the lower res youtube it would not play the videos smooth at all, it was bad. now that youtube is playing higher res videos it does not stand a chance at all. and this machine has 640mb of ram in it.
 
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