Horses for courses. At some tasks, the dual G4 would slaughter the iMac. At others, not so much. If you equip the G4 with a graphics cared of similar or better spec than the iMacs, and max the RAM (2GB), it should beat it at most things. The imac should have faster hard drive access unless you get a SATA PCI card and drive for the G4.
GFX card in the iMac should be based on an nVidia FX5200. You can pick one of these up cheap out of a PowerMac G5 and snip a couple of pins to fit it most PMG4s. Certainly the last few (MDD) models.
Overall, the G4 will be faster and definitely a more versatile machine.
Cache matters. At least on the G4s. A dual cpu with 4mb total cache will be faster than the 1.6-1.8 with 1mb total cache models at a lot of applications. I am waiting to see just how fast the MDD 1.8dp Sonnet models really are? You got that MacMod? Lets see a review!
Registered: 10/16/04
Posts: 586
Loc: Vancouver, BC Canada
not to overtake this guys thread but speaking of cache.. my MDD as stated is a dual 867 with 1mb L3 per cpu vs. 2mb on the higher models. think i'm still better off with 2mb total L3?
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Mac mini C2D 1.83GHz - 2GB RAM - 200GB 7200rpm HD Sawtooth w/G4 1GHz - 1GB RAM - SIIG SATA w/2x1TB HD B&W w/G4 600MHz - 1GB RAM - 2x80GB HD Sawtooth G4 400MHz - 512MB RAM - 40GB HD Dell Ultrasharp 2007WFP 20" Widescreen LCD 2.94TB Total Storage