Hey everyone I'm back and am in need of advice I bought my G4 Cube about 2 years ago and it's my main machine and it has coped well but it's pretty slow and I'd like more speed I looked into a CPU upgrade and after looking on eBay I can get a solo 1.6/1.8 GHz G5 Powermac. What would you do upgrade the Cube or get a G5 I only need to have the machine up and running for a year or two at max.
What's your budget? Prices on Intel Macs are starting to fall; your money will be best spent on something more modern. Considering the collectible status of the Cube, I'd leave it alone.
my budget is around between $200-400 that's why I considered a cpu upgrade since it was only half leaving some room for hardrive/optical drive but the G5 is a win too since it would barely need upgraded right away.
For $400, you can easily snag a first-gen Intel Mac mini from eBay -- a quick search of completed listings shows an average price for those models between $350 and $500, depending on configuration. A Core Duo mini will smoke a single-CPU G5.
well yes you are correct I originally looked for a mini on eBay but it must have been because I keyworded it "intel macmini" but I searched again with "mac mini and used the side bar options and got many with in my price range. But the problem is my speakers and monitor I want to use will not work with it and atleast my monitor would have worked with the G5. I have 17" Apple Studio Display (LCD) and I don't think there's any way to get it to work with out ADC is there ?
IIRC Apple had gone away from ADC with the G5's, so your Studio Display wouldn't work off the bat with one of those either. Apple does make an ADC to DVI adapter; brand new it's $100, but they seem to hover between $40 and $60 used. That adapter would let you use your monitor with anything that offers a DVI output, so you could keep using it for years to come.
Hmm that's odd because when I went to the everymac page for the 1.6 GHz it said DVI and ADC look here http://www.apple-history.com/ and here http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/faq/powermac-g5-adc-ports-dvi-ports-resolutions-supported.html
We've got a couple G5s with ADC and DVI.
It's kinda like the MDD G4: There's a few variations within that case design.
I'd suggest going for the Mini and skipping the ADC adapter. Sell the Cube and the Studio display and you'll have more than enough for a third party 22 inch or larger display.
A lot of the upcoming software will likely be Intel only or require OS 10.6