G5 Power Mac 2ghz x 2

Marcusmbook · Oct 21, 2009

I know of a local guy who is selling a G5 Power Mac 2ghz x 2. I called the guy and I know it will come with standard 5200 video card and it will have OSX 10.5. I would like to use this G5 for handbrake, itunes/home network for videos, office 2008, imovie, idvd,and music, download files from the internet. Thats about all the need I have for a desktop.

I have a black Macbook 2.4ghz, 4gig ram, 250 harddrive. Man I love my macbook!

Already have this con list for the G5
Can't run Snow Leopard, vmware fusion

Will the G5 be as fast as my macbook or extremely slower for my uses?

Eidorian · Oct 21, 2009

The 2007 Mac mini is faster at Handbrake.

Marcusmbook · Oct 21, 2009

Eidorian said:
The 2007 Mac mini is faster at Handbrake.

Yeah a mac mini has been on my lists of wants but the guy only wants about 300 bucks for the machine.

DavieBoy · Oct 21, 2009

I do not think that it will be fast when it comes to handbreaking. My G4 tower was slow to the point that it was almost unusable to handbreak. I do not think that the G5 will be much better.

With that said I would still buy the computer if you get it for a good price. As a matter of fact I did, last week I picked up a dual 2.0 G5 and a 20" ACD cheap.

I will handbreak a dvd right now just to find out how bad it is. I'll get back to you.

DavieBoy · Oct 21, 2009

FYI i did realize that I spelled Handbrake wrong... Ha

UltraNEO* · Oct 21, 2009

DavieBoy said:
I do not think that it will be fast when it comes to handbreaking. My G4 tower was slow to the point that it was almost unusable to handbreak. I do not think that the G5 will be much better.

With that said I would still buy the computer if you get it for a good price. As a matter of fact I did, last week I picked up a dual 2.0 G5 and a 20" ACD cheap.

I will handbreak a dvd right now just to find out how bad it is. I'll get back to you.

It'll probably take you a good part of the day...
I ain't tried it.. but your more than welcome to try.

Marcusmbook · Oct 21, 2009

DavieBoy said:
I do not think that it will be fast when it comes to handbreaking. My G4 tower was slow to the point that it was almost unusable to handbreak. I do not think that the G5 will be much better.

With that said I would still buy the computer if you get it for a good price. As a matter of fact I did, last week I picked up a dual 2.0 G5 and a 20" ACD cheap.

I will handbreak a dvd right now just to find out how bad it is. I'll get back to you.

Thanks I will be waiting for the results. I have never used a mac desktop other than a Imac's with intel chips. I don't own a desktop and hate to run my macbook for long periods of time for dvd burning, converting and so on. the biggest thing I don't like is I have to keep my macbook on to stream to apple tv, ps3 and xbox 360. I figured the G5 in my home office would be perfect for my needs and I like the option with accessing it with mobile me while I'm away at school for assignments and stuff. I like the mac mini but I also like things that can be easily user fixed. I have been looking around the net and memory, harddrives, optical drives and such are cheap for the older machines. The mac mini is nice but I want something that can handle 24/7 performing if necessary for long periods at a time.

gugucom · Oct 21, 2009

The G5 PM looks pretty but it really is a very slow machine on H.264. It cannot even run HD videos with smooth output. A 2009 mini is running rings around such a machine. It will even run an internal Blu-Ray ODD as a guy recently demonstrated. A PPC G5 will never do this due to lack of native Windows running. Just about the only advantage is the option to run two 2TB SATA hard disks.

splitpea · Oct 21, 2009

I have a dual 2.0GHz G5 Power Mac with 4GB of RAM and a better graphics card than the one listed. It's fine for email, word processing and spreadsheets, playing music and video, and even some fairly intense graphics work in Photoshop -- still my main working machine. It should be OK for occasional video editing on the iMovie level, but I wouldn't use it for FCP-type work.

My biggest problem with it is actually web browsing, because javascript performance in Firefox on PPC bites, and Safari is extremely unstable for me; plus Flash runs like molasses on PPC. If you like Safari and don't use the context menu in your browser, you should be OK though.

DavieBoy · Oct 21, 2009

LOL well im going to bed. It has been going for a 1/2 hour and is about 1/6 done. When I started it said 1 hr 30 min and now it is up to 2 hr 30 min. It has averaged 11.02 fps.

I also have a mini that I used to rip a bunch of movies before I picked up my iMac. It is very fast for ripping dvd's even though it is only a 1.67 with 512 ram.

A mini is much better and I would prefer it to a G5 tower, but as I said before I just picked up a dual 2.0 and I love playing with it. I installed leopard server to change things up because I have enough regular computers. If you have a change to get a nice tower for 300 I would do it.

gigacom10 · Oct 22, 2009

Hi, I am new to Mac's and have got hold of a Power Mac G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X 2) I do a lot of photo editing and wondered what is the fastest card I could put in it? It has a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64Mb at the moment. Sorry if this is off topic a bit. Cheers

splitpea · Oct 22, 2009

Couldn't tell you what the fastest is that it will support, but mine has a Radeon 9650 XT with 256MB of memory. IIRC, that wasn't the top card available then, but it was close.

DavieBoy · Oct 22, 2009

gigacom10 said:
Hi, I am new to Mac's and have got hold of a Power Mac G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X 2) I do a lot of photo editing and wondered what is the fastest card I could put in it? It has a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 64Mb at the moment. Sorry if this is off topic a bit. Cheers

Sorry don't know. I checked and I have have the same card so no help there. I do not think I am even using it because I do not have a display plugged in.

gigacom10 · Oct 22, 2009

Thanks splitpea, I rang a company in the UK called MacUpgrades and they told me that the fastest card that they got to work was an ATI Radion X800 XT 256MB but it must have Mac firmware on it. So any advance on that???

Techhie · Oct 22, 2009

gugucom said:
The G5 PM looks pretty but it really is a very slow machine on H.264. It cannot even run HD videos with smooth output. A 2009 mini is running rings around such a machine. It will even run an internal Blu-Ray ODD as a guy recently demonstrated. A PPC G5 will never do this due to lack of native Windows running. Just about the only advantage is the option to run two 2TB SATA hard disks.

As always, I have to agree with gugucom

About the only reason I can find for buying this machine would be to use it as an expandable giant Aluminium RAID set.

splitpea · Oct 22, 2009

gigacom10 said:
Thanks splitpea, I rang a company in the UK called MacUpgrades and they told me that the fastest card that they got to work was an ATI Radion X800 XT 256MB but it must have Mac firmware on it. So any advance on that???

Nope, just try googling for "radeon x800 xt mac" and make sure you buy the Mac version. You'll probably be able to find one, although you may have to settle for secondhand -- don't know how recent that card is.

gigacom10 · Oct 22, 2009

Nope, just try googling for "radeon x800 xt mac" and make sure you buy the Mac version. You'll probably be able to find one, although you may have to settle for secondhand -- don't know how recent that card is.

Thanks for the suggestion, I had a look but cant find much. Maybe i'll get a PC version cheep and try flashing the firmware. Seen on on ebay foe arround £10. Haven't lost too much if that don't work.

Macinposh · Oct 22, 2009

Anyone know where to get a G5 2.0 dual mother board for cheap?

Been scouting ebays and the like now for couple of weeks and being a bit hesitant to pull the trigger,as I dont know the reliability of the cheap resellers..

Have the usual symptoms of mobo failure,machine not turning on (chime,black screen,red lights in memory department,fans kick on after 30 sec) so thinking if I could find a 150$ mobo somewhere,I could try to reanimate the machine to be a raid box.[/Hijack]

OrangeSVTguy · Oct 22, 2009

My dual 1.8 will Bandbrake a 2hr DVD in H.264 at 2mbps in about 3-4 hours. H.264 usually takes double the time but it's worth it. Shoot it took my Powerbook roughly 20 hours for the equivalent DVD

.

Yeah a newer Mini has faster processing but lacks in the graphics department and internal storage and overall expandability.

Marcusmbook · Oct 23, 2009

SLow slow slow

I usually rip movies with my Macbook 2.4, 4g ram in 1-2 hours depending on the movie. I usually use the apple tv or ps3 preset. I got a older xp laptop that runs a 1.8 with 1g ram and the handbrake performance was horrible. If I don't get the G5 I guess I will just convert stuff on my macbook and put it in the 1TB external drive that is connected to the laptop. this laptop will serve as the main media point for my home network. I tried it today and apple tv along with 2 laptops and 1 macbook were able to stream movies and music perfectly.

I guess I will try this set up out for a month or two then see if its worth it to me to buy a imac.

G5 Power Mac 2ghz x 2

macrumors newbie

macrumors Penryn

macrumors newbie

macrumors 6502

macrumors 6502

macrumors 601

macrumors newbie

macrumors 68020

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors newbie

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors newbie

macrumors 65816

macrumors 65816

macrumors newbie

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 601

macrumors newbie

Our Staff