I have a cousin who's looking at buying a new Mac (he's a switcher, BTW). His main apps are the Adobe Creative Suite 2, and WoW (World of Warcraft). He'll probably want to program in Xcode as well.
His questions are how his apps would run compared to an IBM PC (P4 2.26GHz, 512 RAM DDR266, Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB), on an iBook, specifically WoW.
WoW would be playable I think, but he would have to turn down alot of settings (there's only a 32mb graphics card vs. the PCs 128 mb). If you load up on RAM, the difference will not be too bad, but I think there would be a small overall slow down.
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Which iBook? The highest iBook is 1.33 GHz G4, which is pretty slow when compared to P4 2.26GHz (my 1.8 GHz is beating my 1.25 Ghz Mac Mini IMO). But if you boost the RAM on the iBook, to at least 512, but preferabbly s/t like 768 or 1 GB then that is much better.
Well I of course recommended upgrading the RAM to a GB, because I know how much RAM makes a difference on a Mac. This comparison is hard considering the differences between Mac's and PCs. I think he might be best off with a base iMac G5 (but upgrade the RAM), but he wants portability.
Well sure a PowerBook is quite nice (had mine since October and have developed a personal relationship with it), but unfortunately it's a pricey little beast. Getting an iMac G5 is pushing the price limits as it is (the other option, an eMac or mini, is pointless when looking at the value in the iMac.)
Well sure a PowerBook is quite nice (had mine since October and have developed a personal relationship with it), but unfortunately it's a pricey little beast. Getting an iMac G5 is pushing the price limits as it is (the other option, an eMac or mini, is pointless when looking at the value in the iMac.)
I don't have a lot of experience with any G4 platforms.. I'm a more recent switcher, having come from a 2.8ghz P4 with a ATI 9800 128mb card, but I do know this:
- G4s are a lot slower than G5s;
- I'd say my performance on my 2.0ghz iMac G5 is similar to my 2.8ghz P4... not faster, maybe a touch slower... so I really couldn't recommend any platform with a G4 if Adobe CS2 and games are the target use.
I play WoW on my 12', 1.2 GHz iBook with no issue... (768Mb RAM). Maybe I don't have all graphic options on the highest setting, but this doesn't really bother me, and I find it very 'playable'...
eMac 1.42Ghz is only a touch slower than iMac G5s on Automatic setting on everything except games (because the iMac has a 128MB 9600). I would not recommend to turn the iMac G5 to high performance setting due to potential cooling issues -- and yes the eMac has a lowly CRT screen but u can't beat the $999 price...
my iBook only has a 32MB ATI 9200 but it's played some games quite well, albeit on 640x480 with medium settings and low special effects, but most of the time I'm just playing Simcity 4 anyway so...
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