I Got An Mac Mini...


NoidZ

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Like the topic says, but there's something funny going on here... I checked the apple site, but there are two Mac Mini systems; but my mac isn't either on of them.. The macs on the site say they have a Intel processor, but I've got a 1,42Hz PowerPC G4 processor. Also I can expand my RAM till 1gig, but the others can be upgraded till 2gig.

But my question is about the processor. Is a G4 much worser than a Intel processor or...


Thanks!

-NoidZ-
 
NoidZ posted on Dec 17 2006 at 12:50 PM said:
Like the topic says, but there's something funny going on here... I checked the apple site, but there are two Mac Mini systems; but my mac isn't either on of them.. The macs on the site say they have a Intel processor, but I've got a 1,42Hz PowerPC G4 processor. Also I can expand my RAM till 1gig, but the others can be upgraded till 2gig.

But my question is about the processor. Is a G4 much worser than a Intel processor or...


Thanks!

-NoidZ-

Apple used to use their own processor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4
 
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Shikkers posted on Dec 17 2006 at 11:11 AM said:
NoidZ posted on Dec 17 2006 at 12:50 PM said:
Like the topic says, but there's something funny going on here... I checked the apple site, but there are two Mac Mini systems; but my mac isn't either on of them.. The macs on the site say they have a Intel processor, but I've got a 1,42Hz PowerPC G4 processor. Also I can expand my RAM till 1gig, but the others can be upgraded till 2gig.

But my question is about the processor. Is a G4 much worser than a Intel processor or...


Thanks!

-NoidZ-

Apple used to use their own processor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4
Technically, it was IBM's processor. A lot of companies use(d) them, and the XB360 and Wii are using PPC-based processors.

The G4 is probably not considerably worse than the Intels currently available in the Mac Mini. I don't have a lot of experience with Macs but PPCs were pretty good processors. The performance gap now likely comes more from the fact that the newest G4 minis are close to a year old now, and they were the low end of Mac performance to begin with.
 
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Jackd posted on Dec 17 2006 at 07:11 PM said:
ive got a better question... whyd you buy a mac mini?

Got it for my birthday :D But I think this is perfect for my school, and I'm really starting to hate Microsoft.
 
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A G4 mac mini is going to be alot slower than an Intel Mac mini...

Allthough u can still have alot of fun with it.

Im on a G5 Imac 1.9ghz
 
pool34 posted on Dec 18 2006 at 12:11 AM said:
A G4 mac mini is going to be alot slower than an Intel Mac mini...

Allthough u can still have alot of fun with it.

Im on a G5 Imac 1.9ghz
No it wont, last I checked the PPC architecture was capable of completing some instructions in 7 cycles versus x86's 21, or something like that. Meaning it would be better.
 
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sam fisher posted on Dec 17 2006 at 06:32 PM said:
pool34 posted on Dec 18 2006 at 12:11 AM said:
A G4 mac mini is going to be alot slower than an Intel Mac mini...

Allthough u can still have alot of fun with it.

Im on a G5 Imac 1.9ghz
No it wont, last I checked the PPC architecture was capable of completing some instructions in 7 cycles versus x86's 21, or something like that. Meaning it would be better.

A G5 mac mini would probably be faster than an intel of the same proc speed... but i dont think a G4 would.. but idk...
 
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Well, I'm gonna have to use it for things like Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver etc. Maybe some games would be great too. Although I never played games on a computer, I want to play C&C Generals, and the Mini would have to handle with them. (checked the sys requirements)

I'm gonna buy a keyboard and a mouse today, we'll see if it's something ;)
 
The G4 1.4 Mini isn't that bad though. I've got a G4 running at 1.2Ghz and you can do quite a bit of mean retrogaming on such a device. But be sure to check out the emulators available at www.emuscene.com tons of good retrogaming possibilities for the MacMini G4.

Here's a small article I wrote on Retrogaming on OSX 10.4 on AA somewhere in the summer.

Since then 've revisited quite a few of the emulators I discussed earlier in on various intel macintoshes ranging from a +- 1.4Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics to a +- 2.8Ghz Intel machine with Ati 3D accelerated graphics. Just to see if those new Mac's are up to the challenge (two Powerbooks, a macmini core solo and mini core duo)

Richard Bannister's emulators just run fine as most of them are both intel/ppc binaries. As for the emulators that only have PPC based binaries, quite a few of the sub-16 bit system- emulators running in PPC code are running at decent speeds on 1.4-2.8Ghz Intels. But that does change when I tried running MacMAME. This emulator only seems to be provided in PPC binary format. The version I've tried is 1.03u2 with the Aqua interface. On the low-end Intels MacMAME runs ok in the 8-bit arcade machine-modes. Running MacMAME on the high end Intel 8-bit arcade machine-modes run fine but with the 16-bit arcade machine-modes (like NeoGeo) MacMAME just isn't able to provide a satisfying game experience. The sound is good but the frame-rate is varying. A completely different experience is to be had when you run the same binary on a G4 at 1.2Ghz also with 3D Ati accelerated GFX card - on that machine the PPC MacMAME performs very good and smooth on most arcade machines being emulated.

For now I say that a PPC based Macintosh will provide you the most solid Arcade Emulation experience. But with Richard Bannister emulators there is no real difference on what OSX platform you are as both platforms provide a very comparable experience.

I am curious as to why no one has created a native Intel binary, as the Rosetta emulation layer on intel OSX does provide a huge bottleneck. I am off searching for an Intel OSX MacMAME binary....
Some links to sites disussing the MacMAME-PPC-only dilemma:
Ars Technica users discussing the subject

Oh and a little surfing there it is, the promise of an Intel MacMAME binary

And yes, there now are good intel binaries of a very up to date SDL-Based Mame. Of course PPC binaries are also available.

Anyways, your G4 Macmini is quite good for Mame and other retrogaming stuff. My G4 based system can even run the Halo Demo. Quake 1, 2 and Doom 3 is playable thanks to the AGP Ati 6800Pro graphics card. The mini's built in one probably won't be able to handle doom3 or halo but for the rest it's quite nice.

Virtual PC works quite nice on my G4, it's quite close to a PentiumIII at 600Mhz in performance on the G4. So you could even use some of your old Windows apps on it.

Cheers, Mark
 
From a software point of view, the Intel Macs are a lot better & let you Install MacOS, Windows, Linux & pretty much any other operating system that you can think of.

Not too sure if your interested in making it a dual boot system or anything, but You can always install Yellow Dog Linux on it if you find the MacOS software too restrictive (dual boot system possible as far as I'm aware too). :)
 
Tripmonkey_uk posted on Dec 18 2006 at 04:17 PM said:
Not too sure if your interested in making it a dual boot system or anything, but You can always install Yellow Dog Linux on it if you find the MacOS software too restrictive (dual boot system possible as far as I'm aware too). :)


Or Ubuntu PPC, as I did the other day on an old G4 TiBook.
 
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I've got the latest Intel Macbook; I update every year as my work allows me to salary sacrifice notebooks. this means I effectively pay for it pre-tax, saving myself around 34% (tax-rate).
Selling the previous years model means that I only end up paying $300 or so to upgrade.
The Intel based Mac is really good - it allows me to run Windows so that I can use the DevKits to develop with. Mind you the Mac DevKits are pretty good, but not all platforms are supported.

As for MAME, yes, no one seems to be developing the Intel MAME; though I do use a command line SDL version which is pretty fast.
 
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