has anyone a/b'd performance of a g3 vs. a g4

[mullet rocker]

anyone...you don't have to give long elaborate details of pci slot placement, room temperature, position of the moon...etc.
just a basic feed back. "be there" demo for instance.

[ThomCat]

I can tell you this much:

My DP 500 runs rings around my old clone with a G3 300 card...significantly faster (under Logic). I think much of that may be Altivec, and DP, however.

[Sugarite]

No need for an A/B test, even Apple will tell you G4's only have a 3-5% advantage over a G3 of the same clock speed for any non-altivec-enabled apps. That slim advantage comes from a marginally better FPU, which has very little effect on audio DSP, so in reality there is currently no worthwhile advantage to having a G4 CPU over a G3 for using ProTools, except that the G3 is not available at 733MHz.

ProTools also does not take advantage of dual processor G4 models, and won't until it's carbonized (made compatible with OSX natively). Neither does almost everything including OS9.x, except some graphics apps.

IMO, there are only two Mac models worth buying for using ProTools: a 500MHz B&W G3 at around $700 on used market, or the 733MHz G4 at $3000 retail. The 733MHz G4 is only worth buying if you're tight on space, since you can get two G3/500's and two Digi001's for $850 less than the cost of one G4/733 and one Digi001. The two G3's can be networked for a total of 48 tracks, 36 channel i/o, and over 25% more CPU power for plugs than the G4/733. Plus there's less financial risk in overclocking G3's

I sincerely hope the surprisingly high number of people reporting to be using low-end G4's and DP G4's didn't buy them for use as ProTools-dedicated machines...

[mullet rocker]

thanks for the info and sadly, i did buy a g4 400 solely for digi001. also as a side note i'm currently buying a g3 300. but i saw you post about g3 500's going for around 700. well please give me more info because every time i find a good price at ebay the bidding has 3 more days left!!!

[Kerry C]

Hmmm....Sugarite's comments are interesting...
I can only tell you what I know from my personal experience and that is this:
On my G3 350 Mhz, when using 24 tracks, 2-3 D-verbs was all my system could handle without getting the PCI bus too busy error. The hard drive was a 10,000 rpm SCSI.
On my new G4 466, I had 9 D-verbs going plus several EQ's before it finally bogged down, and this is with an ATA drive.
Not an expert in the field, could be various system differences causing this discrepany, but PT LE version and Mac OS were identical on the 2 systems.
I think your G4 purchase is not a waste.
Later,
kc

[Sugarite]

Kerry: I suspect the G3/350 only had a 512k level 2 cache, which makes a big difference. Come to think of it, the new 733MHz G4 processors have both an on-die 256k level 2 cache and a 1MB level 3 cache. With that in consideration the G4/733 would probably be pretty close to the performance of two 500MHz G3's for ProTools. Unfortunately the G4/733 processor won't be available as an upgrade for probably 6 months or so, and even then it will cost almost as much as it would to upgrade to a used G4/733 tower.

Mullet: Keep an eye on usenet, lots of people only advertise locally when they want to unload a Mac cheap. I'm in Canada so I can't offer much advice on which US areas are good to monitor. Keep in mind 500MHz G3 upgrades are only $259 at OWC (macsales.com), and zif carrier cards have helped maintain decent resale value on slower G3 processors. Be sure to get a rev 2 B&W, the rev 1's have a bug in the ATA33 controller. Check www.xlr8yourmac.com to learn how to distinguish the two.

I hope that Digidesign gives us some warning when they eventually carbonize ProTools, so we know whether to hang on to G4's etc.