Which is better?

Paragon

Paragon

Interstellar traveler
I've got a friend who wants to buy a Mac and he asked me which one to get. I was wondering which is the better system performance wise. The new iMac 700 MHz or the PowerMac 733 Mhz. Also which one of the PowerMac's is better, the "summer" or "winter" edition. As I remember there is a difference between the two. I would also like to know which G4 is in the iMac and PowerMac. In the winter PowerMac I think it's the 7450 model G4, or am I mistaken?
 
Well he want's to mainly do some wordprocessing and some light movie and photoediting. He also uses Indesign a lot.

What my main concern is the ability to upgrade the computer. But if the iMac is much better in terms of speed then that also has got something to say.
 
The Power Mac 733 QuickSilver (which I have) is nice. It's basically in between the 700 and 800 iMac. It doesn't have an L3 cache so that makes it similar to the iMac, however it does have a 133 MHz bus.

If he's going to want to do a lot of upgrading to PCI cards in the future, then the Power Mac 733 is the way to go. He'll need a monitor, because that's not included. An iMac would be good if he only ever wanted to upgrade the RAM and use USB/Firewire devices. It comes with a nice LCD so that's a plus, but it doesn't support high resolutions so that could be a drawback for the type of work he wants to do. The Power Mac 733 w/ GeForce 2 MX supports up to 1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz (at least on my ViewSonic).
 
Now since you are the owner of a 733 MHz mac perhaps you can answer me this. Was there any difference in the two mac's that both shipped with the 733 MHz G4. I'm thinking about one of them being the top of the line mac the other the bottom of the line when new mac's shipped? Also do you know which version of the 4 is in your mac?
 
The graphite 733 Power Mac which was the high end Graphite Power Mac (pre-quicksivler) Had a L3 cache, thus making it have a speed boost for a lot of things like video and editing and such. When the QuickSilvers were released the 733 became the bottom line so to cut costs and keep margins high (theaving cheap bastards) they took the L3 cache off of the low end 733 QuickSilver, thus making it very similar to the "Consumer" g4 chip that's in the new iMacs. Basically the only difference between the QuickSilver 733 and the new iMacs is the Bus speed and ability to add PCI/AGP expansion cards. The processors are pretty much the same.

If you have a choice, you may want to get the 733 Graphite because of the L3 cache. But I'm perfectly happy with my 733 QuickSilver for every day browsing, photoshoping, and IMing. YMMV.
 
Thanks dricci...BTW I justed checked with "hostinfo" and my iMac says it's the ppc7450 version of the G4? is this true? Then I talked to someone in the chatroom and he said that in terminal "hostinfo" is wrong that in fact its a 7455. Do you know if this is true?
 
I personally would suggest that he buy the Quicksilver, the reason being is that it is expandable, and in the future your friend might be looking to expand :)
 
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