Tiger VS. Leopard - iMac G5 2.1GHz

mgartner0622 · Oct 2, 2010

Hello All,

I'm trying to set up my brother's computer for him, and own both retail copies of OS X Tiger, and Leopard.

The iMac has a 128MB Video Card (ATi X1600 I think) as well as RAM that I installed to take it to its maximum, 2.5GB.
It has a new high speed seagate black 500GB hard disk installed (by me)

I'm wondering the best operating system to install, features are not really that important to me.

What the computer is used for:
Web Browsing
Apple Mail
Microsoft Office 2008
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Gaming (Older PowerPC games like Star Wars KOTOR, and a few racing games)
iTunes w/ 32GB Libray (Including the Occasional rental and all the movies)
I'm wondering which OS would provide the best framerates, and general performace on this aging but still great mac.

Thank you for your time.

Intell · Oct 2, 2010

Leopard. It is still supported by Apple, gets supported by most new applications, and works very well on G5 machines.

PowerGamerX · Oct 2, 2010

Here's my rule.

Leopard for everything with the following:

1ghz G4 or Better
80gb HDD
1gb of ram

Tiger for everything less.

Hrududu · Oct 2, 2010

Absolutely no reason to NOT run Leopard on it. More than meets the requirements to run it and run it well.

raysfan81 · Oct 2, 2010

Definitely run Leopard, no question.

sysiphus · Oct 3, 2010

Any G5 with adequate RAM (2GB+) should be very nice on Leopard. Unless you need 10.4's support for Classic mode, there's no advantage to it on that hardware. Furthermore, there's only going to be more and more software that's 10.5 only.

raysfan81 · Oct 3, 2010

sysiphus said:
Any G5 with adequate RAM (2GB+) should be very nice on Leopard. Unless you need 10.4's support for Classic mode, there's no advantage to it on that hardware. Furthermore, there's only going to be more and more software that's 10.5 only.

I think it should run well 1gb+ but 2gb is nice to have

sysiphus · Oct 4, 2010

raysfan81 said:
I think it should run well 1gb+ but 2gb is nice to have

It'll run, but if the user is doing much in the way of multitasking, the computer will be jumping to virtual memory consistently on 1GB. Given that the RAM should be accessible for ~$40 or so, I'd do it in a heartbeat if that iMac were going to be my main computer.

mgartner0622 · Oct 4, 2010

Thank you for your input everyone...
Since I don't need the classic enviroment any longer, Leopard it is!
Thanks again!

-Matt

PowerGamerX · Oct 4, 2010

mgartner0622 said:
Thank you for your input everyone...
Since I don't need the classic enviroment any longer, Leopard it is!
Thanks again!

-Matt

Glad you upgraded the hard drive in that thing. It seemed like it was starting to get a little sore.

Don't forget all the nice parental controls in Leopard too xD

themaccoder · Oct 9, 2010

Leopard all the way

smc333 · Oct 10, 2010

Plus you get Safari 5 on Leopard (which I don't think came to PPC 10.4). So that adds a little extra life to a Leopard install.

mgartner0622 · Oct 11, 2010

Yep, i've installed leopard now!
Thanks for the help again everyone.

I also replaced the default wallpaper with the snow leopard one.
without looking at about this Mac, it looks exactly like an early Intel

MacHamster68 · Oct 13, 2010

there is only 1 reason not to upgrade to leopard and for me its a very important one ...leopard has no classic support , so no OS9 games

and still most reputable programs have osx tiger as minimum requirement

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