New imac VS. 4 year old G5???

Hello. I currently have a single processor 1.8ghz Power Mac G5. It is about 4 years old and running a little funny lately (im sure nothing yet another install and restore cant fix). I was looking at the specifications for the new imacs and noticed that the specs for the imacs seem to be better than the specs on my 4 year old G5. For some reason, I've always had the experience that laptops, imacs, anything small, runs slower than my desktop. Is there anything other than the normal specifications that apple lists on the site that might make the imac actually slower than my G5? For example, on paper, the imac looks like it would by far be a better computer, but I'm not sure if there is anything that isn't listed here that would affect the performance.
imac specs:
- 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 1GB memory
- 250GB hard drive
- 8x double-layer SuperDrive
- ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB memory
Here's the "hardware overview" of my computer in the apple system profiler
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,2
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.8 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 900 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.4f0
Serial Number: XB33617RNVR
Anyone have any thoughts? By the way, I do use the computer for some graphics heavy work (I am a graphic designer and sometimes have large photoshop + illustrator files). I was in the market to purchase a new monitor, which is what got me started questioning the imac. I was probably going to get the 20" apple display, and when I saw that the imac starts at $1199 and the monitor would have been $599, I thought I should look into getting the imac since the monitor is very similar to the one I want. I can't afford a mac pro right now either. Any feedback would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks so much in advance for your time.
Regards,
Dayna

Hi Dayna Reilly-
I am going to throw in the same basic thoughts as the others.
IMHO the iMac tops out as a +high-end consumer+ machine. It gives you the tools out of the box to get started doing some pretty cool things and to do them fairly well. It also gives one room to grow and improve upon those skills by giving you the ability to run some higher-end applications to get a taste of what you can do with a Mac.
For reasons well described by the others and based on the description of your work, you would soon push an iMac to it's limits. If you generate any revenue at all by using your computer you really should consider investing a little more in a Mac Pro. Your payback will be short-term as the time savings to your workflow alone will be significant.
No matter what Mac you get, do not forget to add in the cost of upgrading your professional applications such as Photoshop.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

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