Suggestions for PowerMac G5 DC 2.3GHz...

Nameci · Jun 1, 2011

Hello PowerPC people!

Finally, I have satisfied my urge for a PowerMac G5. I have just received a bare PM G5. It is bare, Nvidia 6600, no HDD, 512MB of memory, no airport extreme and bluetooth and no power cable. I can rate it cosmetically to be within 95 to 98% mint.

After dusted it off, I have checked the physical conditions of the innards and they seem to look like new. I have not powered it on yet, since the power cable is still on transit.

I need your opinions so I can weigh in my selections for the hard drive. I am planning to max the RAM at 16GB. Right now I have shoved in a 2 x 2GB PC2 6400 in there. I will be learning FCS2 on this baby, so I wanted it to be at decent speed encoding medias. I am not expecting any speed comparing to early base mac pros.

Is it worth installing a Velociraptor as boot? Or I would just stick to 7200rpm drive with 16 to 32mb cache? Would it be faster if I do a software raid?

Which is more favorable to store the media on a FW external or to an internal drive?

Thanks in advance.

Next project... Aluminum ACD...

alust2013 · Jun 1, 2011

I'd pass on a velociraptor, they're pretty noisy and hot. A good 7200 RPM HDD should be fine, and a soft RAID will make it faster with another drive or 2.

Nameci · Jun 1, 2011

It's not going to be my main computer. I fell in love with my dual processor 1.42ghz MDD. Love at first sight, lol. So I more into looking for the best bang for the buck. WD Caviar Blk is I think too much, I am looking into a Hitachi Deskstar, would it be a wise choice?

Psychomacuser · Jun 1, 2011

Nameci said:
It's not going to be my main computer. I fell in love with my dual processor 1.42ghz MDD. Love at first sight, lol. So I more into looking for the best bang for the buck. WD Caviar Blk is I think too much, I am looking into a Hitachi Deskstar, would it be a wise choice?

Hey man.. congrats! I hope you enjoy the Dual Core 2.3. Its a pretty fast machine though my Quad is a bit faster.. but we are all family in the PowerPC camp.. G4 and G5 are brothers.. and the little brother is G3

Though seriously, how much slower is the dual core 2.3 versus the G5 Quad 4x2.5 processors?

VanneDC · Jun 1, 2011

the WB black would be my prefered option... fast and reliable.

Nameci · Jun 3, 2011

Got my power cable today. Opened it up cleaned by blowing compressed air. This baby is a beauty in and out. Well designed, much better designed than the PowerMac G4. The only let down is that you can only put 2 HDD.

Connected a 24" monitor on DVI-1 and powered up the baby. It booted without any errors. The folder with question mark appears, so I know that I need to have a boot drive.

Shoved in an 80GB SATA HDD for testing, opened up the superdrive and I have put a Leopard retail disk in. It continued to boot on the install DVD.

I have successfully installed Leopard, updated it to 10.5.8. It runs fluid on the NVidia 6600. Safari opens with just a bounce. CPU temps were at 38°c idle. RAM was listed as 4.5GB, 1 pair of 256MB PC4200 and 1 pair of 2GB PC6400, the PC6400 was listed as PC3200-288?.

I have ordered an ATI Radeon X1900 Mac Edition to replace the standard NVidia 6600. Might buy 2 x 500GB SATA drives tomorrow, would like to do a software raid0.

Next on the list;
1. Upgrade memory to max out 16GB for FCS2...
2. A pair of 20" Aluminum Cinema Display
3. Airport Extreme

Anymore suggestions?

brycemason · Jun 3, 2011

Throw a SSD in there and forget the raid! Use externals for the editing host.

Nameci · Jun 3, 2011

Or i can have SSD for boot and 1TB for the 2nd HDD? The thing is really fast for a machine that is more than 5 years old, probably it is because of the fsb?

666sheep · Jun 4, 2011

Congrats, you've got the best G5 ever made

Give it SSD instead of RAID, it's a lot better idea.

Power Mac · Jun 4, 2011

Nameci said:
Is it worth installing a Velociraptor as boot?

Hard drives suck as boot drives. Get any SSD and any $75 1TB hard drive for data.

Nameci · Jun 4, 2011

Do you have any recommendations? OWC is a bit pricey, and I am not willing to spend 500 bucks more for the drive. Intel? OCZ Vertex? Kingston?

Power Mac · Jun 4, 2011

Any SSD will be better than even the best hard drives.

Transporteur · Jun 4, 2011

Power Mac said:
Any SSD will be better than even the best hard drives.

Nope. There is a variety of low (and I mean really low) end SSDs (mostly from no-name companies) that perform quite horrible. Worse than a decent 7200RPM drive in fact.

Anyhow, my recommendation as usual, Intel. Rock solid drives with very good performance (not the best to be true, but the differences are indistinguishable).

That being said, I wouldn't invest too much into the machine (SSD is fine since you can re-use them in later machines). The CPU performance is very limited and 16GB seems a waste, especially considering the prices for DDR2 memory these days.
I've had the same machine (the 2.0 DC, though) and was always limited by the CPU. It had 8GB which was sufficient and should be in your case as well since FC is still 32bit, hence can't utilise more than 3GB of RAM.
So I'd recommend testing if you're fine with 8GB first (4x2GB) and upgrade later if necessary.

Psychomacuser · Jun 4, 2011

Another suggestion.. Upgrade the 6600 to the 7800 GTX.. It is the best card you can get for the G5 aside the Quadro fx 4500 though which is 512MB..

Also, is this a dual core 2.3 or a Quad 2.5? I still think highly of the G5 Quad based on my usage which is a lot faster though.. But I might even consider the Dual core 2.3 also. Like others have been saying, an SSD drive and a SATA II card would be beneficial.. Just remember though like all of us who use the PowerPC machines, Leopard is our max OS we can go to though there is another option: MintPPC linux based on Debian.

Other than that, enjoy the machine.. Good news.. icloud is universal and will work on PowerPC with Leopard.

Psychomacuser · Jun 4, 2011

Transporteur said:
Nope. There is a variety of low (and I mean really low) end SSDs (mostly from no-name companies) that perform quite horrible. Worse than a decent 7200RPM drive in fact.

Anyhow, my recommendation as usual, Intel. Rock solid drives with very good performance (not the best to be true, but the differences are indistinguishable).

That being said, I wouldn't invest too much into the machine (SSD is fine since you can re-use them in later machines). The CPU performance is very limited and 16GB seems a waste, especially considering the prices for DDR2 memory these days.
I've had the same machine (the 2.0 DC, though) and was always limited by the CPU. It had 8GB which was sufficient and should be in your case as well since FC is still 32bit, hence can't utilise more than 3GB of RAM.
So I'd recommend testing if you're fine with 8GB first (4x2GB) and upgrade later if necessary.

I thought OWC's drives would mop the floor with Intels?

Psychomacuser · Jun 4, 2011

I have successfully installed Leopard, updated it to 10.5.8. It runs fluid on the NVidia 6600. Safari opens with just a bounce. CPU temps were at 38°c idle. RAM was listed as 4.5GB, 1 pair of 256MB PC4200 and 1 pair of 2GB PC6400, the PC6400 was listed as PC3200-288?.

PC3200-288 means the memory you purchased, being PC6400 is downgrading to the speed the system will accept. You are better off with PC4200 as that is the type of memory required by the Late 2005 G5 machines. You are wasting your money on PC6400 or 800 mhz memory as that will not run on the Late 2005 models..

If you get all PC4200, you won't have any problems.

VanneDC · Jun 4, 2011

That gt card is great, you will love it. I had the same card in my quad g5 before upgrading to the fx quadro. It runs great and not much noise. Highly recommended. Good box you have there. I am looking at buying a similar machine here for fun. Cheers

Nameci · Jun 4, 2011

I don't have the 7800GT card, it's an ATI X1900 that is coming.

I have a 32GB SSD on my hack, I am thinking of putting it on the G5 as a boot drive. I will be self learning FCS2, considering it, although my boot and program launch will be fast, if it is just 32GB I can't use it as a scratch disk am I correct?

I want my experience with FCS2 to be decent at a minimum cost. This Mac will have nothing of other apps but only FCS. I have my G4 as my main Mac and I love it to death.

If I will do a software raid0, I can be a little faster than the current 1.5G the G5 supports, boot and scratch on the same drive. Or other option, 32GB SSD boot, 750GB internal storage and a 500GB FW800 scratch disk. Doing this setup, there is no need for me to spend a penny since I already have these parts, well except maybe for the SSD 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor.

Thanks guys for the replies. What do you think?

Power Mac · Jun 4, 2011

Transporteur said:
There is a variety of low (and I mean really low) end SSDs (mostly from no-name companies) that perform quite horrible. Worse than a decent 7200RPM drive in fact.

Thank you for demonstrating you know nothing about SSDs.
Data transfer rates mean nothing. The entire point of an SSD is seek latency. Even the absolute fastest hard drives have a 1ms seek time, even the crappiest SSDs have a 0.1ms seek time.
OSX has nearly 100,000 files across the 3 Library folders across 4.5GB, that means an average size of less than 25kb. Seeking large numbers of small files is what hard drives suck donkey dongs at doing and SSDs excel at.

That being said, even the crappiest SSD will greatly increase the responsiveness of a computer over a fast hard drive.

I've had the same machine (the 2.0 DC, though) and was always limited by the CPU.

No. The DC 2.0's limitation is the very weak GeForce 6600LE.

Power Mac · Jun 4, 2011

Nameci said:
I don't have the 7800GT card, it's an ATI X1900 that is coming.

Good. The X1900 is a much superior card.

I have a 32GB SSD on my hack, I am thinking of putting it on the G5 as a boot drive. I will be self learning FCS2, considering it, although my boot and program launch will be fast, if it is just 32GB I can't use it as a scratch disk am I correct?

32GB is ample. OSX and all applications only occupy 12.9GB, so you will still have more than half the drive empty. And if you're working with scratch files larger than 19GB, you will very likely need a computer MUCH more powerful than any G5.

You can also create RAM disks as large as you want using the terminal's software RAID command, which will be even faster than a scratch disk and there is no 2.2GB 32-bit limit.
Though if you have enough ram you won't need a scratch disk.

Or other option, 32GB SSD boot, 750GB internal storage and a 500GB FW800 scratch disk.

FW800 is much slower than SATA.

well except maybe for the SSD 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor.

An SSD does not need an adapter. Just let it rest on top of the hard drive or on the floorboard of the drive compartment.

Nameci · Jun 4, 2011

I bought an adaptor bracket for cheap, 7 bucks. I am now updating the install to 10.5.8.

I am not looking for boot speed I am looking for app launching speed. I will let you all how did it go.

Paired it with an aluminum wireless keyboard and magic mouse, and a 24" LCD Display. Res at 1920x1200.

Thank you all for the much needed advises and information.

Nameci · Jun 4, 2011

Update!

Woohoo! 6.5 secs loading FCP... I am more than satisfied.

Now I am getting excited. Next 23" Al Cinema Display.

VanneDC · Jun 4, 2011

The card your getting/got is actually an x1900gt thus I called it a gt card. At any rate it's a great card.

Nameci · Jun 4, 2011

Oh I see, is it a GT? I thought GT's were for NVidia's?

Anyhow, here's the picture. Bear with me, I have taken this with a crappy samsung mobile phone.

Geekbench score for those of you who wanted to know.

XBench Score;

Transporteur · Jun 5, 2011

Power Mac said:
Thank you for demonstrating you know nothing about SSDs.
Data transfer rates mean nothing. The entire point of an SSD is seek latency. Even the absolute fastest hard drives have a 1ms seek time, even the crappiest SSDs have a 0.1ms seek time.
OSX has nearly 100,000 files across the 3 Library folders across 4.5GB, that means an average size of less than 25kb. Seeking large numbers of small files is what hard drives suck donkey dongs at doing and SSDs excel at.

That being said, even the crappiest SSD will greatly increase the responsiveness of a computer over a fast hard drive.

Just FYI, there are SSDs out there that have lower IOPS (read 4k random reads/writes, which is what the OS benefits from) than mechanical hard drives. The fasted access time means nothing if the drive can't supply the required data (read IOPS).
There are really horrible drives out there, but again, no-name and really cheap.

Power Mac said:
No. The DC 2.0's limitation is the very weak GeForce 6600LE.

My system never came with the 6600LE. I've had 200% CPU utilisation almost all the time.

Oh BTW; Hello 300D again. Wondering how long it takes the mods this time to ban you. I give it two weeks, tops!

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