How much speed increase with new Mac over G4

[AberyClark]

I'm running a white ibook G4 (1.33, 1.25 maxxed out, 5400 drive). I use Adobe Lightroom and PSE. I'm running Tiger, I'm afraid Leopard may make computer even more sluggish. I'll give example, then ask question. If I use an Alien Skins Exposure plug in preset on a tiff image (full sized 54 inch), it takes (on average) 2 minutes and 30 seconds to process. Lightroom is also SLOW and I'm processing 20 -30 photos at a time with my side business. I was hoping to cut my computer processing time in half. I now spend 75% of my time waiting on the computer (beach ball). I cannot afford a Mac Pro and monitor right now. I'm considering a mid- to high end iMac. I know newer ones may come out later this month. Anyway, what kind of speed increase would I likely see? 10%, 20%?

[Tony-S]

More like 5x with the current Core 2 Duo top-end. If the updates have the hyperthreading cpus, then you're talking 8-10x over what you have now.

[MaxxuM]

It will be like night and day, but I too would wait a little longer and see what happens with the iMac in October.

[basroil]

Second on waiting, though not very likely apple will go with the 45TDW (or 55TDW) i7 chips in favor of a 35TDW i5 (when they are released, expect 50-75% performance of the i7 720qm if that happens). Current core 2 laptops should be between 4 and 6x as powerful (assuming about 5gflops for a powerpc g4 1.25gh processor, might be less powerful than that), but that power won't equate 1:1 for speed. If it's a program designed for intel macs (like LR2), then it could be slightly faster, but 4-6x seems about right depending on the speed of the chip (from 2.0 to 2.93gh is a large enough jump in speed by itself).

[Damian75]

Agree on the wait through october and the speed increase you will see will be huge I really think 6x faster is conservative considering the HD throughput increase and the RAM increase.

[Kronie]

Is October when they announce major updates? I'm somewhat new to mac having bought a MBP in February. Now I'm waiting to see what they do to the Mac Pro's.

[MaxxuM]

Is October when they announce major updates? I'm somewhat new to mac having bought a MBP in February. Now I'm waiting to see what they do to the Mac Pro's.

It depends on which product is being announced. Apple moves things around, but February usually was when they did most of their announcements. Now that there is no annual event it's debatable if February announcements will be the magic month. You can look at the Wiki's for each product (iMac, MBP and so on) to see the release schedule.

The Mac Pro is not going to get updated for a good while, maybe another year or two (likely when 6 core cpu's become more mainstream). We'll see slight price drops OR slight upgrades in cpu speeds in the Mac Pro line until the next big update.