why r people still buying G5's

emulatorloo · Post by **emulatorloo** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 3:49 pm

When the price drops on G5's I'll probably buy one. . .got some PCI cards I want to hang on to, and I am a CHEAP BASTARD. I expect prices will drop once Adobe gets its apps done for intel.

Frodo · Post by **Frodo** » Wed Nov 08, 2006 9:28 pm

emulatorloo wrote:When the price drops on G5's I'll probably buy one. . .got some PCI cards I want to hang on to, and I am a CHEAP BASTARD. I expect prices will drop once Adobe gets its apps done for intel.

Hey 'loo:

I think the idea of buying a refurb G5 holds a lot more water these days than it might have at most other times people would opt for an older machine when a newer model was on the market.

In addition to the falling prices of the machines themselves, chances are better that you might find one with more than the factory allottment of RAM-- and additional RAM for the G5s will be cheaper, too.

It's not like it was when OS9 was being phased out. G5's will run OSX for a good while-- and will run UB apps, so the threat of incompatibility is quite low. In fact, lots of apps are slow to go UB anyway, and I don't suspect that 64-bit apps are going to be a major consideration for a year or more. Besides, I wouldn't want to be among the first to try it our, to be honest.

One thing occurs to me-- someone might get the bright idea to phase out UB and just do Intel-native. Hmmm. Nothing would cause the price of G5s to drop faster than that!!

As long as things are in 32-bit world, VIs, etc., are subject to that 2.5GB limit anyway.

The best thing about the Intels are the upgradable CPU and the speed of PCIe. That comes at a premium, however, and for the potential savings the speed of a PPC Quad or a 2.7 Dual is not as significant when CPUs are compared.

I know, the Quad Cores and Quad 2 Cores are coming. But in addition to gadget excitement and the need for speed, there is also sticker shock and buyer fatigue. If the release of a new model does not indeed render what you already have as someting that sucks, so goes it that interim models neither suck. I have a 2.5 Dual PPC and so far the need for speed is not enough for me to turn over my tower every 18 months The speed difference is simply not that significant. With my computer, it doesn't make sense to freak out about a .5 bump in CPU clock (or a .16 bump or a -.17 decline).

"No, but the Intels are 36% faster!"

Is DP 36% faster?