PowerMac G5 vs new Mac mini?

Question

I hope this is the right place to ask this (maybe I ought to put the question in the Powermac G5 forum as well...)
I currently have a G5 Dual 2 GHz, and it's definitely starting to show it’s age! I have been looking at getting a MacPro but the cost is prohibitive. And then I thought (as I have a screen (two actually), mouse and keyboard, plus external drives etc, why not try the Mini?
So I guess the main question is would a new Intel Mac Mini run/operate faster than an old G5 or would I still be looking at the spinning beach ball of death? The most CPU intensive thing I use is Final Cut Express; would the Mini handle that ok?
Any other ideas/suggestions?
Thanks!!
Andy

Answer 1

I don't own an Intel mini myself, but I buy and set them up for users in my networks from time to time. I recently had my G5 DP in the office when a new 1.83 C2D mini arrived, and in a direct comparison, the G5 gave a benchmark score of 78, the mini gave 96. In reality, since benchmarks don't really exercise the system the way real applications do (and in particular don't cause a lot of paging activity so the relative differences in hard drive performance are not really measured) the mini was perhaps 10% faster. Just to give you some solid data!
And it's not that they are not good systems - I never cease to be impressed and pleased at how well such small systems really perform - but if you are going to spend money, you really need to be looking for something that notably outperforms the G5. An iMac would, for example. In the same benchmarking test, a 2.4GHz 24" Aluminium iMac turned in a score of 149.
In terms of the G5, upping the RAM would certainly help - not a massive boost in performance, but making the system smoother to use. Final Cut Express is really not a particularly demanding application in terms of system hardware though, so beachballing suggests there is something awry.
To clear caches and logs (and indeed perform some general housekeeping) I would generally suggest a simple utility such as YASU (http://jimmitchelldesign.com/projects/yasu/). Set it to all tasks and make sure nothing is running. When it's done it will force a restart, which will be slower than usual, after which the system will run a little slow for a time as it rebuilds caches. YASU performs other tasks that can help with system performance too.
It is true that in MacOS you don't really need to defragment or optimize the drive, but that isn't always true if you handle lots of large files such as video. Those can cause fragmentation over time.
A full erase and install is a good way to test the system overall however, because it returns everything to the 'out-of-the-box' condition. If the system performs well (or at least better) when that is done, you will know much more clearly whether it needs replacing or not!