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Tiger on a G4 PowerBook?

M

macguymike

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Thanks to discovering a few programs that simply will not run on Panther, I'm thinking of upgrading to 10.4 Tiger.

However, as things are right now, my 867MHz G4 PBook (with 640MB RAM) still fires up its fans fairly frequently when I'm running more than one or two medium-sized applications (Firefox, iTunes, etc.), downloading heavily from the 'net or other such things (and the fan is not quiet).

So my concern is that Tiger will push my computer even harder (especially with Dashboard).

Is this concern valid or am I worried over nothing?
 
Yep, Tiger will work fine, but for better performance you should get more memory, preferably at least a gig.

Something else to consider is that Leopard, Apple's next operating system is coming out this spring, so if you can wait a few months, you'll get the next version.
 
My friend ran Tiger on his 1GHz iBook G4 12" and it ran just fine, I'd assume that it run just as well on your PowerBook. He had slightly more RAM though, but only 128MB more.
 
macguymike said:
Thanks to discovering a few programs that simply will not run on Panther, I'm thinking of upgrading to 10.4 Tiger.

However, as things are right now, my 867MHz G4 PBook (with 640MB RAM) still fires up its fans fairly frequently when I'm running more than one or two medium-sized applications (Firefox, iTunes, etc.), downloading heavily from the 'net or other such things (and the fan is not quiet).

So my concern is that Tiger will push my computer even harder (especially with Dashboard).

Is this concern valid or am I worried over nothing?
Click to expand...

I've got Tiger running on the same machine as yours. It works just fine. It does not make it run any hotter than Panther did.
 
itsme92 said:
Yep, Tiger will work fine, but for better performance you should get more memory, preferably at least a gig.
Click to expand...

I've considered waiting for Leopard.

However, I don't know if this model (1st gen) of PowerBook will accept a RAM chip larger than 512MB (128 is hardwired to the mobo).

Edit:
According to Crucial, I can put 1GB in the single slot on my PBook. Hey, I learned something!

Thanks for the answers, guys!
 
I just had a look on everymac.com and found this:

Standard RAM: 256 MB Maximum RAM: 640 MB*
*Apple officially reports that the maximum memory capacity of this system is 640 MB with 128 MB of onboard memory and a single 512 MB memory module. However, third-parties have been able to upgrade the RAM to 1152 MB with a single 1.0 GB memory module.
Click to expand...


Could be worth a try...



EDIT: too slow... 🙂
 
"Could" be worth a try? Uh, no you almost have to have this amount of memory for Tiger. I've had that same pbook and max the memory and it ran Tiger like a champ...

But I also bumped up the hard drive to a 7200 rpm drive and it ran EVEN FASTER.

That's the secret. Fast big hard drive and maxed ram on your PB...

The hard drive swap was not that big of a deal.

Meanwhile run delocalizer for Tiger and disable Dashboard. I did that on my mac mini powerpc and it's been running GREAT.
 
I've had first Jaguar, then Panther and finally Tiger running on my old 700 MHz eMac and you know what? With each new OS the computer ran faster and faster! (And my own benchmarks confirmed it)

Oh, it also had 640 megs of RAM.

So you should experience any slowdowns in Tiger (or Leopard), compaired to Panther.

🙂
 
eXan said:
I've had first Jaguar, then Panther and finally Tiger running on my old 700 MHz eMac and you know what? With each new OS the computer ran faster and faster! (And my own benchmarks confirmed it)


🙂
Click to expand...

My finding, too. Go ahead and upgrade, but I would wait a few months and get Leopard if that isn't too inconvenient.
 
Go for it - I have Tiger on my iBook G4 with 512 MB of ram and it works fine. Or you could wait for Leopard and then upgrade your ram at the same time...
 
A friend of mine from uni upgraded to Tiger on her aging iBook G3, cpu was probably less then 600mhz and the ram was probably 512mb but you know what... Photoshop and Illustrator ran quicker than it did on Panther.

Maybe the clean install cleaned out a lot of trash to be fair... but she said it was worth the upgrade.
 
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