Which for DVD burning - Mac Mini or Dual G4 800?

[patp77]

I'm contemplating buying either a Mac Mini 1.42GHz w/1GB RAM or a dual processor G4 800 w/1GB RAM for around the same price. Is there one that would be more suitable for using with iLife '05 to create DVDs with the video from my Sony TRV-25 digital camcorder?

Thanks for any suggestions you can make.

 

[HateEternal]

I am going to go with the dual 800. First off, as far as I/0 goes, the 800 should have a much faster hard drive than the mini, it would have slower ram but i think the slower hard drive would be a much bigger bottleneck. You are also going to able to do more while your video's are encoding with the dual processors. OS X splits up the tasks very well, you can have a DVD encoding and still be using other applications with out much of a difference. On the Mini things might be really sluggish when you are encoding something.

I guess if you don't need to do a lot at the same time the mini would be fine, but for me Mac OS X + 2 processors = win.

What kind of video card does the 800 have?

 

[patp77]

I am going to go with the dual 800. First off, as far as I/0 goes, the 800 should have a much faster hard drive than the mini, it would have slower ram but i think the slower hard drive would be a much bigger bottleneck. You are also going to able to do more while your video's are encoding with the dual processors. OS X splits up the tasks very well, you can have a DVD encoding and still be using other applications with out much of a difference. On the Mini things might be really sluggish when you are encoding something.

I guess if you don't need to do a lot at the same time the mini would be fine, but for me Mac OS X + 2 processors = win.

What kind of video card does the 800 have?

I think the one I'm looking at comes with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro which is probably better than the one that comes with the mini, right? Everything seems to point towards the dual processor as long as desk space isn't an issue.

 

[jprupas]

I think the "dual processor G4 800 w/1GB RAM " will be slow for what you are doing. I use a Dual 1.25 1 GB Ram and it bogs down using IMovie and IDVD. If you can afford the IMac Intel go with that.

 

[fryke]

Or rather the intel Mac mini, since you've already got a monitor, I guess, and the iMac would be _quite_ a bit more expensive...?

 

[sinclair_tm]

remember, imovie and idvd are resorce hogs when encoding. i use ilife05 on my sp466g4, it slow, but gets the job done. i would get the tower for one main reason, its upgradeable. and the 1st thing i'd do is max the ram out to its 1.5gig, the g4 mini is only 1gig. that is going to be the best thing you can do to speed up things. plus the dual 800 has l3 cache, which really helps alot to do imovie and idvd. i have seen bench marks that put a dual 800 w/l3 cache as fast as a dual1.25 w/out when it comes to qt encoding. also if you want, you can upgrade the cpu to dual 1.8. and because it has pci slots, you can buy interface upgrade cars, like a sata150 and matching hard drive, which helps big time. the g4 mini's hd interface isn't any faster then 100, and the drive doesn't spin faster then 5400rpm. sata drives interface is 150, and most spin at 7200rpm or faster. plus they can hold alot more. on the mini you will run out of room fast, but you can always add more to the tower.
so to make a long story short, the dual 800 is the better buy, and it will be useful much longer then the mini because it can be upgraded.

 

[fryke]

Hm. I'd still try to go with the intel mini, if the price allows you to buy it with 1 or 2 GB of RAM. (Get the RAM from someone else, not Apple, it's cheaper...) Because: Well, the tower might be upgradable, but _not_ to a point where its CPU power even matches the new mini (core duo version). You'd buy into dead technology and would plan on further investing into it. I definitely don't think that sounds like a good plan... Rather I'd get the new intel mini which comes with the newest version of the software you want to be using, anyway, and update _that_ over the course of its life. You'll add RAM (up to 2 GB, sounds good enough) and FireWire harddrives over time. The external add-ons will later be of use, when you sell the intel mini and replace it with either a newer Mac Pro or a newer Mac mini in a couple of years.

 

[Mikuro]

Hm. I'd still try to go with the intel mini, if the price allows you to buy it with 1 or 2 GB of RAM. (Get the RAM from someone else, not Apple, it's cheaper...)

But keep in mind that installing RAM in a Mini isn't nearly as easy as most other machines. With my Mini, I had my RAM professionally installed, which I've never done before, so that offset the cost savings a lot. I actually thinking buying the RAM as a BTO option would have been cheaper. Depends on how much RAM you want, though, I guess.