Apple Computers Power Mac or Imac

What apple computer should i get a power mac g4 desktop or a imac g5

It doesn't matter Mac products are the beast for recording on, so you take your pick. Long as you have enough hard drive space, and ram you will be alright.

Just about all Macs are dope for audio production, but with any hardware purchase, you gotta consider what your needs are, as well as your budget.

Are you going to be recording a lot of tracks, or running a lot of plugins? If so, then the main consideration is processor speed, even more important than RAM.

Before you buy your Mac, figure out which programs you're going to be running first. Find out what the system requirements are for your software, and that will save you a lot of hassles.

G4's are still awesome machines, good bang for the buck even now, but they are kind of old, and many new software programs recommend newer Macs to run them on. By newer, I mean machines with either G5 or Intel processors. That said, you'll probably get better performance with the iMac G5. On the other hand, if you're not going to be recording a lot of tracks, you'll probably be good with the G4, assuming your software supports it, or if you're going to be running an older version of something...

Peace! I have a Mac G4! The max capacity of its Mem RAM is 1Gb. It has a 10Gb (Master) Hard Drive and a 300Gb (Slave) Hard Drive. Because of it's limited RAM I don't know if I should keep it for music production or sell it without the 300Gb Hard Drive for $200!

If ya'll don't mind what do ya'll <(I'm not from Texas) suggest?

Hey Ghengis,

That's kind of a complicated question to answer, unfortunately. A lot of things to consider, like I was saying in the previous post. You should first figure out what kind of software you want to run on the G4, along with your budget.

If you're looking to run DAW software with multi track audio and MIDI sequencing, there's so many choices out there... Pro Tools (what I use), Logic, Cubase, etc... You should find their websites to look up the system requirements for their programs, and see how your machine stands up. Like I said before, the main thing to consider for compatibility is processor type and speed. I'm sure that most of the current programs are going to require at the very least a 1Ghz G4. Especially if you're gonna be running it on OS X, which is pretty much all them , by now. Pro Tools seems to be the most "power hungry" of them all, but they have lots of cool plugins, both effects and virtual instruments. But all the major DAW's out there can do great stuff as well.

You didn't mention which kind of G4 you have, Power Mac, iMac, iBook, etc. The Power Mac G4's are super-upgradeable, if you want to go that route. I think Power Mac G4's can recognize up to 1.5 GB RAM. RAM is important for running stuff like software samplers and such... If you have one of the old Power Mac G4's slower than 1Ghz, you're definitely going to want to upgrade the processor, which is fairly simple to do yourself if you're handy with a screwdriver, haha. The good news is that there's a lot of G4 processor upgrades available that can pump it up to about 2Ghz, with single or dual processors. iMacs or Mac laptops' processors aren't upgradeable. The bad news is that the upgrades can be a bit pricey for the higher speeds, especially with the dual processors, so you'll have to compare the costs of upgrading to buying say a used G5 for example, which is what I did last summer. Or, even a new MacBook or iMac with the Intel Core Duo processors, which are really fast.

So to sum up, depending on what your needs are to run your software of choice, you can either upgrade your G4, or sell it and get a newer, faster machine. That said, if you're going for the "latest and greatest", I'd say get something newer. Anyway, once you figure out which is most cost efficient (and hassle-free), your choice should be pretty clear. Good luck with it...

Pardon self Soulab! I shoulda read that post!

This is the G4 I got...



I'm readin' the back & it says Power Mac G4 500MHZ... I have a Dell Optiplex GX270 with 1Gb Mem RAM, 160Gb hard drive... This baby holds sh*t down but I hear that Apple is the way to go when it comes to recording and thats what I'm tryina' do most of! Now if I can upgrade this baby up to run quick as hell then I'll stick with it! I already have the 1Gb Mem RAM & the 300Gb hard drive lol thats all I know... All that processor, dual processor talk I need to read up on but thanks for the info I guess I'll be keepin' it!

My bad again for makin' you repeat yourself...

Ghengis Khan 47 wrote:My bad again for makin' you repeat yourself...

No prob...

Yeah, with 500 Mhz, an upgrade is definitely in your future...

After you figure out what software to get, you can look into the upgrades. Dual processors aren't necessary, but it can get your G4 pretty smokin'. There's lots of places to look, but here's where I got mine for my old G4, to give you an idea of how much you'll be spendin' to upgrade your machine:

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=166&type=Processor&TI=1517&shoupgrds=Show+Upgrades

They even have videos on the site to show you how to install... Pretty easy.

Woooooow! Thats pretty pricey!!!

This seems to be the lowest priced 1 double the size of what I already got... Does it make a big difference cause this Power Mac is slow! It also freezes a lot...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%2 ... SG410002M/

A faster processor makes a HUGE difference. Trust me, with most if not all the current DAW's out there, 500 Mhz ain't gonna cut it... Which is also possibly the reason for the freezing.

If the price in upgrading is a major issue, you could see how you do running the software on your PC, if it's more up to date. Plenty of folks run all kinds of stuff on PC's, though I can't help much with that, sorry. Not much of a PC guy...

No doubt!

Thanks for responding! I'll deff look into that...

Thanks again!