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G4 Dual 1GHz (Mirrored Drive Doors) Reader Review | |
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Intro The DDR series of G4 Macs have been made initially available in 867 MHz, 1 GHz and 1.25 GHz configurations all featuring dual processors. I opted for the 1 GHz unit, justifying it on the basis that the faster system bus and standard SuperDrive would best suit my needs. The intention of this review is to concentrate on my real world experience of using the machine rather than a blow-by-blow technical assessment and speed comparison. Sites such as www.barefeats.com or www.macaddict.com have extensive discussions on the merits of the new Dual GHz DDR Mac as compared with the superseded Dual GHz Quicksilver machine. However to summarise those reports, in laboratory tests there appears to be very little real world performance advantage of one machine over the other (Quicksilver vs DDR dual 1 GHz), Barefeats considers the older Quicksilver machine faster in most tests and Macaddict reveals the new DDR machine to be faster in most tests. (Note - the best tests I've seen are at this DigitalVideo site comparison of the new series of G4s vs the previous QS models, which does show some gains from the New G4s in their specific pro apps tests. Results in other apps/tests may vary however.-Mike) Neither actually out performs the other by more than a few percent. Suffice it to say if you own a dual GHz Quicksilver Mac then buying a dual 1 GHz DDR Mac would be a waste of money as far as additional performance is concerned.
In my opinion, the best advantage the new Dual 1 GHz Machine has, when pitted against a dual GHz Quicksilver - it's cheaper by 20-30% so performance for your dollar is much better. In reality, Apple seems to have got the basic system right since both Machines seem to be largely processor bound in performance tests. Therefore the faster system bus of the new DDR unit has little affect on overall performance in most instances. Having got that out of the way, how does it rate as an upgrade to an older machine specifically my Yikes Mac? Out of the box, the Dual 1 GHz DDR Mac features the following.
There are also the following expansion options included.
As set up (configured) my machine now also features; Bundled software also includes
Plus much more. This latter inclusion of software is a boon as iMac's have always had generous software bundles and traditionally the Professional Mac range has had none. Out Of Box Experience
The Mac has gained weight when compared to the Yikes machine in-fact my scale suggests the bare machine weighs 18.5 kg, so it's no a portable. On opening the case it is easy to see why it is so heavy, there is a massive heat-sink mounted over the processors (by comparison the G4/400 has a tiny heat-sink). Cooling is also seems to be a priority since the new DDR Mac has no less than 3 cooling fans (one for the power supply (actually the DDR Mac Power Supply has 2 fans inside - shown in this previous article here on PS Fan replacments for lower noise-Mike), one for the processors and one for the 2 drive-bays). The old Yikes machine by comparison only has a single fan in the power supply. Also of interest while comparing the old and the new is the case design, ignoring the outer design differences, they are identically in dimensions but quite different structure - that is while they look similar I don't think there are any common parts in the cases. As with all USB equipped Macs setting up is quite painless and merely requires connecting the power cable, keyboard, mouse and monitor. The keyboard sensibly comes with a short cable and there is an USB extension cord in the accessories box so cable clutter is reduced if your keyboard is close to the CPU. As always the keyboard also features two USB outlets so the mouse can be easily mounted on either the left or right side of the keyboard As the 22" ADC Cinema Display derives its power from the graphics cards no additional power cord is necessary for the display (further reducing cable clutter). However I also noticed that the auxiliary power output on the power supply has been eliminated so if your monitor requires power it will also need to be connected directly to a wall socket. Turning it on for the first time
When I turned on the new machine, I was greeted with a new start-up (OS 10.2) and then asked to insert a disk, which then had me fumbling through the many suppled CD disks for the right one. I inserted the disk and after a short wait and a reboot we were ready for business. Not as convenient as before, but hardly a problem. How does it go
The OS also includes a CPU activity monitor. According to the monitor the two processors never seem to be overly stressed they also seem to take turns in doing the work. Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar)
Actually, until now I have never used OSX so the entire experience is new to me. As an initial impression the eye-candy is in my opinion a bit over the top and I clearly have some learning to do to become competent with the overall operation of the OS (some of the shortcuts seem to have disappeared or changed). For stability it is impressive to date OS 10.2.1 hasn't faltered. Actually through 10+ years of Mac usage I have rarely experienced system crashes except when upgrading software. However, I have had a few programs quit unexpectedly (Internet Explorer, Codewarrior 8.2) with appropriate warning messages from the OS. Also some programs that were written for carbon (and work fine on MacOS 9) but pre-date the original release of OSX seem to either refuse to launch or fail soon after launching (Vise Installer, my own software). It seems the memory protection on OSX works well. Most of my usage is software development (Codewarrior) and Photo/Video Editing. I also use the Machine as an entertainment unit - music playing and DVD watching. For entertainment, Apple come to the party with DVD player, iMovie and iTunes (and now I also have iPhoto). When I originally purchased the machine, Codewarrior 6.2 was really giving grief by simply refusing to operate the debugger -once I upgraded Codewarrior to version 8.2 the problems seem to have been cured. That said I am still experiencing compile errors when developing OpenGL applications using GLUT (so far I've simply stopped using GLUT), and compiling classic code is also not completely stable (todate I still tend to run my old G4/400 to compile classic software). This latter problem is annoying as I use the same base code and transferring between machines is prone to having a mistake occur (I hope to fix this soon as well). Even better Apple also supplies a full SDK for writing Objective C applications in Cocoa with OS X so I will explore this (I have bought some books on the subject - but before new applications are to be developed I first need to get my head around Objective C and the development environment). The Superdrive
As fitted the SuperDrive offers the ability to burn DVD's at 2x, CDR's at 8x and CDR/W's at 4x. It can also read DVD's at 6x and CD's at 24x. The Mac also includes full support for creating all compatible media. Simply this drive can be all things to all users. My first gripe is OSX's support of creating and using CDR's and CDR/W's. When you mount a recordable CD, OSX recognises its type and supplies an appropriate icon. I then assumed (incorrectly) that writing to the disks would be like using a zip disk, memory stick or other removable media where you would drag info to the disk at will. This is not the case once a disk has been written to it is locked for further writing. A CDR/W can only be reused after reformatting. I therefore find Rioxo Toast to be a far better way writing to a recordable CD as it allows multi sessions, disc to disc copying etc. Secondly the SuperDrive itself, by trying to be all things it is compromised in speed as far as CD operation is concerned and as such is noticeably slower at reading and writing CD's when compared with more dedicated CD drives, for example my Lacie CDRW can burn a CD a 40x but the SuperDrive can only read a CD at 24x so copying an entire CD would restricted to the speed of the SuperDrive. There is salvation though - the second drive bay. For my money if you intend to write lot's of CD's then buy a dedicated CDR/W drive and place it there or at least put a decent CD drive into it. I haven't yet attempted to burn a DVD so a later update can cover that situation. One final note is that the DVD appears to be a RPC2 drive, which is limiting for people like me since I have access to DVD's from several countries (read regions). On my G4/400 I replaced the standard CD with a DVD and then I had to convert the DVD from RPC2 to RPC1 to get freedom of disk region playing. Converting the SuperDrive from RPC2 to RPC1 will invalidate its warranty so at this stage I reluctant to do this and my be forced to install a DVD ROM drive in the second bay instead.
Video and Screens
With the 17" monitor, operation was good but with an optimum resolution of 1024 x 856 pixels there is no comparison in the desktop real estate equation when compared to the Cinema Display that offers 1600 x 1200 pixels as an optimum resolution. You can place 2 full pages of text sided by side (great when developing software). There are many articles on how great this display is and they are not kidding. The 22" display has beautiful picture sharpness. This display has an impressively wide viewing angle and the picture sharpness doesn't seem to be affected by altering the display resolution (I have seen some rather poor LCD displays recently). Neither can I find any dead pixels. My only warning is this, don't try a 22" Cinema Display if you can't afford to buy it, since everything else by comparison will be inferior afterwards (except perhaps the Apple 23" display). The Radeon 9000 Pro display card as fitted has 64 Meg of DDR Ram and it runs noticeably faster than the ATI Rage PCI Card fitted to my Yikes machine. An unofficial/impromptu tests of displaying full screen patterns on iTunes for example reveals the following; the Radeon 9000 gets +60 fps at high resolution and the Rage 128 on my Yikes only 20 (NB this as stated is only an impromptu comparison). Above I indicated that I also use my Mac as an entertainment unit - here the Cinema Display comes into its own, allowing me to play DVD movies in wide screen format. To complement the picture you need good sound (lets face it the single speaker is pathetic) and here the Harman Kardon sound sticks that I also have fitted more than adequately suffice. As a home entertainment system the Mac works well and everybody who sees it remarks on the elegance of the overall system. There is one drawback (isn't there always) the new Mac is noticeably louder in operation since at least one of the 3 fans runs continuously. At infrequent times, you can also hear others cut in out. At first the noise was disturbing and audiophiles in particular will dislike the noise, but given time you basically become tone deaf to the single fan, although you do notice the other fans activating occasionally. The Sound Sticks easily drown out the fan noise anyway. The Superdrive
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