i recently bought the dual 2.7 processor powermac g5 and im starting worry about my purchase a little. When i try to do little things and all theres always this little delay i run into. Also when buring a dvd its not quite as fast at rendering as one would think, i was under the impression that two processors would finish that encoding task in under an hour for a full dvd. Is it my dual 2.7 or the fact i only have 512 ram. Should i boost it up to 1.5 gb of ram and then i will notice a difference?
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dual 2.7 sluggish?!
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Ok, let's see if I can explain the DP part. What you have is 2 processors connected on the same line. Basically, if one is being used data can be passed to be computed to the other. It has to wait before it sends back the data, but its been processed so the times will go down greatly depending on the task at hand. DVD's use GB's and GB's of data, so you are only storing about... oh lets say 200MB of those DVD's in RAM before burning. Why? Well, you're using the rest for the OS and open programs. 1.5GB of RAM will greatly increase performance. As for burning, that is one in itself - you can only burn as fast as the burner, as for rendering, it will render faster cause you can put 1.2GB of the DVD in RAM now, so the instructions will be greatly faster.
Check your System Preferences.
Go to Energy Saver and make sure the Processor setting (I forget what it's called as I'm at home on the G4) is set to Highest or High, not Automatic.
The reasoning why Apple set Automatic as a default eludes me.
Edit: And yes, get more RAM. Add 2 x 512mb sticks and you will see a difference.
Go to Energy Saver and make sure the Processor setting (I forget what it's called as I'm at home on the G4) is set to Highest or High, not Automatic.
The reasoning why Apple set Automatic as a default eludes me.
Edit: And yes, get more RAM. Add 2 x 512mb sticks and you will see a difference.
Oh god yeh, get more RAM.
I have an eMac, and I noticed such a vast change from 256Mb to a gig. It's unbelievable until you actually do it. Put in a couple of gig, that'll keep iDVD happy for a while to come!
I do not understand why apple doesn't offer a gig as standard on the higher end workstations. I mean, you pay so much for the computer, it makes sense to get the thing to blaze as much as you can.
I have an eMac, and I noticed such a vast change from 256Mb to a gig. It's unbelievable until you actually do it. Put in a couple of gig, that'll keep iDVD happy for a while to come!
I do not understand why apple doesn't offer a gig as standard on the higher end workstations. I mean, you pay so much for the computer, it makes sense to get the thing to blaze as much as you can.
512 RAM is a joke with that computer. Having so little RAM is going to seriously hamstring the processors.
would ram honestly increase the rendering speed for the powermac. even a single 1.8 g5? also is there anything else i can include ont he machine to make processing times and power better?
i got slated for it.. but check this article.. it has some suggested upgrades.
http://www.welian.co.uk/page3/page5/page5.html
http://www.welian.co.uk/page3/page5/page5.html
Hmm, slightly off topic, but I tried to go into Energy Saver, and noticed there's no drop down (where you change from automatic to highest performance and etc)? I know I saw it before. I'm using Tiger, and it's no longer there? I don't remember if it showed up in Panther on the Mac mini, but I know it did on the iBook I had.
absolutmp5 said:
Well, for overall speed, I increased my RAM to 5gigs, switched cpu to highest and plan to install 2 Western Digital Raptor (10,000RPM) Hard drives striped.
This is all on a Dual 2.7 machine as well. So far (haven't done the drives yet) it is blazing fast, much faster than my Wintel 3Ghz machine with 4 gigs of RAM. This will, by the way, help your render speeds since rendering writes to disk.
Raven VII said:
That feature only appears on portables (iBook, PowerBook) and G5's.
If you remeber from a few years ago, AMD was touting a feature called "SpeedStep", which allowed the processor to clock itself down when full speed was not necessary, thus greatly reducing power consumption.
This is basically the same thing. It makes sense on laptops, especially as the G4 found in iBooks and PowerBooks is a special mobile variant and not the same as the one in the Mac mini (thus removing that option from Mac minis).
On a G5, I assume Apple included it to reduce the obscene power that a G5 takes, not to mention to decrease processor heat when full power was not needed.
Sorry, maybe off topic.
I have a question. The link here states that the PowerMac G5 can accept 16GB of RAM because it can take 2GB modules
. Now correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't it max out at 8Gigs? Even if you could use 2GB modules, would Tiger (or any app for that matter) be able to address more than Apple's stated max of 8GB of RAM?
SpaceMagic said:
I have a question. The link here states that the PowerMac G5 can accept 16GB of RAM because it can take 2GB modules
. Now correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't it max out at 8Gigs? Even if you could use 2GB modules, would Tiger (or any app for that matter) be able to address more than Apple's stated max of 8GB of RAM? First, the mini and iBook/Powerbook use the same G4 processors; there is no "mobile variant" per se, the G4 simply doesn't use a lot of power (PPC is used in a lot of embedded applications, so low power has been a design goal). Second, the G5 doesn't consume "obscene power". When I brought my DP G5 @ 2.5 GHz online, Folding 24x7 (100% processor load), my electric bill went up about $5 a month. When I brought my DP Opteron @ 2.0 GHz online, Folding 24x7, my electric bill went up over $20 a month. The G5 out performs the Opteron by a small margin. The Opteron sounds like a jet taking off, while the G5 whispers, which is the reason for the G5 being water cooled. Anyway, I'm just making this point because it seems to be a common misconception.zach said:
If it's not a 64-bit application, it won't address more than 4 GB, if it is a 64-bit application it can access all 16 GB.
The 8 GB limit is based on 1 GB sticks, which were the largest available at the time. Now 2 GB sticks are becoming available, and I do believe they work, although I haven't tried it myself. For Tiger applications that use any of the GUI or media frameworks, a single process is limited to 4 GB of memory. For command line (non-GUI) apps, like MySQL for example, full 64 bit addressing is supported. At least that's my understanding from various readings on the subject.4God said:I have a question. The link here states that the PowerMac G5 can accept 16GB of RAM because it can take 2GB modules
