Quad G5 - 1,1 Pro Speed Increase?

Yep, it's worth it.

Goftrey said:

My dear old dual 1.8 G5 is chugging along as good as ever, but ever since I received my MacBook, it really hasn't seen much use. The speeds are just worlds apart.

To accompany my MacBook I'm looking in to 'upgrading' my desktop, to either a quad 2.5 G5 or a 2006 Mac Pro. PowerPC really does not hinder or affect my day to day use in any way whatsoever so the whole Intel vs PowerPC debate is irrelevant, it's purely a question of performance/value. Now the quad G5's are around £200 cheaper than the 1,1 Mac Pros, are the Pro's worth the extra cash?

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I recommend the quad I notice zero differnce between my quad, my 8 core 4.6ghz amd build, and 2011 2.4 MBP.

rabidz7 said:

I recommend the quad I notice zero differnce between my quad, my 8 core 4.6ghz amd build, and 2011 2.4 MBP.

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I will strongly disagree with this statement. I also own the Quad 2.5 and while it is pretty good for what it is and perfectly suitable for every day use, I'd liken it in performance to an early desktop Core 2 Duo. Satisfactory, but to say you can't notice a difference is misleading. My Air is noticeably faster than it is, as is any modern Core iX desktop or AMD FX processor, and this is in every day tasks (launching apps, startup, web browsing, etc), not gaming or anything computationally intensive.

I think since you already have a G5 tower, if you're going to upgrade, you might as well get some other benefits than a minor spec bump, and go for the Intel, not the Quad G5.

Which MacBook do you have? For cost savings, you might even consider just getting a monitor to dock it with and foregoing the desktop completely, as it seems to have fallen out of use for you anyway (or is that only the case temporarily, as now you find it too slow?). Depending on your budget, which I'm guessing based on your post might be in the £300-400 range, you should consider just getting a more modern Mac Mini.

ybz90 said:

I will strongly disagree with this statement.

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Well, this is the Quad that gets a 4700 on Geekbench...

MisterKeeks said:

Well, this is the Quad that gets a 4700 on Geekbench...

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Hahaha, touché!

MisterKeeks said:

Well, this is the Quad that gets a 4700 on Geekbench...

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And it runs Mountain Lion.

OP, get the Quad. Sigs never lie

The Quad is a beast and you will grow attached to it. Something about a little water cooled aluminum box humming along is just cool.

Get an NVidia 6800, dump a pile of ram in it, and call it a day.

Goftrey said:

Okay then. I've decided to keep off the Mac Pro track for a little while longer & just keep an eye on the quads, play the patient game & wait for a cheap one to slip through the net. I just can't justify paying ~£250 for one but if I can pick one up for somewhere below the £200 mark I'm on to a winner.

@ybz90 I love the Mini's, and yes they're superb value for money but the reason I'm looking at only G5's/Pros is for the pure reason of expandability. The Mini's are just MacBooks minus the screen.

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Valid reason. I apologize if this is a taboo topic on MR and will amend/delete this from my post if it is, but have you considered a Hackintosh if expandability on a budget are your primary requirements? When I was in college, I built one on the i5-750 when it first came out (when Hackintoshing first became "easy") and upgraded to a 2500K later, but since then I've downsized and will probably get a Mac Mini when it refreshes. Word on the street (and by that, I mean internet) is that it's even easier now, you don't even need DSDT files at all on newer boards anymore.

Goftrey said:

Okay then. I've decided to keep off the Mac Pro track for a little while longer & just keep an eye on the quads, play the patient game & wait for a cheap one to slip through the net. I just can't justify paying ~£250 for one but if I can pick one up for somewhere below the £200 mark I'm on to a winner.

@ybz90 I love the Mini's, and yes they're superb value for money but the reason I'm looking at only G5's/Pros is for the pure reason of expandability. The Mini's are just MacBooks minus the screen.

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What expandability? G5s can take up to 2 drives internally unless you mod them, and I think their limit is 2TB drives. Ram isn't nearly as well used as it would be on hardware that can make proper use of a 64 bit OS. The mini with 16GB (under £90) would grant you better memory performance than the G5 with 32GB. It would be cheaper to upgrade too. The graphics cards that work with the G5 are ancient. You can't get usb3. For fast external IO solutions you're probably looking at eSATA or fibre channel. Where is the expandability there? Obviously I'm referring to one of the new minis, which would cost more. I just disagree that the G5 offers you much in the way of expansion at this point.

thekev said:

What expandability? G5s can take up to 2 drives internally unless you mod them, and I think their limit is 2TB drives. Ram isn't nearly as well used as it would be on hardware that can make proper use of a 64 bit OS. The mini with 16GB (under £90) would grant you better memory performance than the G5 with 32GB. It would be cheaper to upgrade too. The graphics cards that work with the G5 are ancient. You can't get usb3. For fast external IO solutions you're probably looking at eSATA or fibre channel. Where is the expandability there? Obviously I'm referring to one of the new minis, which would cost more. I just disagree that the G5 offers you much in the way of expansion at this point.

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G5's can take up to 4 internal drives without a problem. They do not have a limit on the size of the drives, only a limit on the size of the bootable drive. They are 64-bit running a 64-bit abled OS that can take full advantage of 4GB+ of ram. While their graphics cards are old, so are the newest games made for a G5.

Goftrey, seeing as you already have a G5, go for the Mac Pro.

Intell said:

G5's can take up to 4 internal drives without a problem. They do not have a limit on the size of the drives, only a limit on the size of the bootable drive. They are 64-bit running a 64-bit abled OS that can take full advantage of 4GB+ of ram. While their graphics cards are old, so are the newest games made for a G5.

Goftrey, seeing as you already have a G5, go for the Mac Pro.

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You'd have to take out the optical drive or add in one of the third party drive sleds made for them at the time. That's why I said without modding. They cannot run 64 bit applications. Look for one. You won't find anything below Snow Leopard except a couple hacks that did little to improve speed. They can run multiple applications each using 4GB of ram. Since a mini was the point of comparison, a new one can take 16GB there. I wasn't thinking of games, but I guess you're right. I don't really play games, so I don't think of graphics cards in those terms.

thekev said:

You'd have to take out the optical drive or add in one of the third party drive sleds made for them at the time. That's why I said without modding. They cannot run 64 bit applications. Look for one. You won't find anything below Snow Leopard except a couple hacks that did little to improve speed. They can run multiple applications each using 4GB of ram. Since a mini was the point of comparison, a new one can take 16GB there. I wasn't thinking of games, but I guess you're right. I don't really play games, so I don't think of graphics cards in those terms.

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One could leave the optical drive in and put a second PATA hard drive above the optical drive. Very easy, minimal effort. They can indeed run 64-bit executables to utilize more than 4GB of ram. That was a small selling point of the G5 line. Not many programs used that feature because at the time more than 4GB was fairly expensive and the rest of the OS was lightweight.

Intell said:

One could leave the optical drive in and put a second PATA hard drive above the optical drive. Very easy, minimal effort. They can indeed run 64-bit executables to utilize more than 4GB of ram. That was a small selling point of the G5 line. Not many programs used that feature because at the time more than 4GB was fairly expensive and the rest of the OS was lightweight.

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Blah I remember a change of some kind at Snow Leopard and reading the details of what was or wasn't 64 bit. Obviously it wasn't a 64 bit kernel. I can't remember if Tiger had 64 bit libraries. I'd have to look it up.

Good point about drives though. I still wouldn't spend too much on the really old machines. I'm surprised they still go for that much.

thekev said:

Blah I remember a change of some kind at Snow Leopard and reading the details of what was or wasn't 64 bit. Obviously it wasn't a 64 bit kernel. I can't remember if Tiger had 64 bit libraries. I'd have to look it up.

Good point about drives though. I still wouldn't spend too much on the really old machines. I'm surprised they still go for that much.

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Tiger was the first OS to support any form of 64-bit. It supported 64-bit libraries only. Leopard supported 64-bit executable and libraries. Snow Leopard brought full 64-bit support with a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit extensions.

Intell said:

Tiger was the first OS to support any form of 64-bit. It supported 64-bit libraries only. Leopard supported 64-bit executable and libraries. Snow Leopard brought full 64-bit support with a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit extensions.

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Damn you for knowing more than me.

I'm kidding. It just didn't look as funny without the angry face.

So as to be at least somewhat on topic, I'm still puzzled by the desire for a G5 with what the OP mentioned about spending more of his time with the macbook pro. If it's a newer one, the first generation mac pro would still be slower. For certain things you can pull a lot of speed out of one with a cpu upgrade, essentially making it a 2,1. I'm personally hesitant to spend a lot on old hardware though. It's difficult to assess if anything is failing prior to purchase.

thekev said:

Damn you for knowing more than me.

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Intell knows more than most anyone on Macrumors.

64-bit Tiger

Everyone knows this. Tiger gave way to early 64-bit, Leopard refined it a bit more... but it really got up and running with the switch from PowerPC to Intel and then Snow Leopard.

Even I knew Tiger supported some 64-bit applications.. While Tiger and Leopard don't allow booting a 64-bit kernel, the ability to run 64-bit apps was way ahead of its time. Too bad Snow Leopard couldn't be made to run on a Quad G5.. With two processors and two cores each I think Grand Central Dispatch would have run quite well on the Quad G5 or even Dual Core model G5's.

thekev said:

Damn you for knowing more than me.

I'm kidding. It just didn't look as funny without the angry face.

So as to be at least somewhat on topic, I'm still puzzled by the desire for a G5 with what the OP mentioned about spending more of his time with the macbook pro. If it's a newer one, the first generation mac pro would still be slower. For certain things you can pull a lot of speed out of one with a cpu upgrade, essentially making it a 2,1. I'm personally hesitant to spend a lot on old hardware though. It's difficult to assess if anything is failing prior to purchase.

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Those who have been exposed to PowerPC since the beginning tend to know more than their peers, especially the newbies who climbed on board Mac through Intel. They missed out on the fun days of PowerPC.

I too know quite a bit about the PowerPC architecture as I have been with PowerPC Macs since 1999.. Thats about 13 years of Mac experience.. couple that with the Intel Mac experience I have.

MisterKeeks said:

Intell knows more than most anyone on Macrumors.

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Goftrey said:

My dear old dual 1.8 G5 is chugging along as good as ever, but ever since I received my MacBook, it really hasn't seen much use. The speeds are just worlds apart.

To accompany my MacBook I'm looking in to 'upgrading' my desktop, to either a quad 2.5 G5 or a 2006 Mac Pro. PowerPC really does not hinder or affect my day to day use in any way whatsoever so the whole Intel vs PowerPC debate is irrelevant, it's purely a question of performance/value. Now the quad G5's are around £200 cheaper than the 1,1 Mac Pros, are the Pro's worth the extra cash?

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Well, I got a dual 1.8 Power Mac, upgraded to the max with SSDs and graphics cards and all, plus a Macbook 4,1 with an SSD and 6GB of memory...

G5 is still the boss.

I guess it's the combination of disk drive speed PLUS capacity, plus 5-port USB cards, ability to run two screen at above full HD, that puts it ahead. Also, the faults in my secondhand Macbook I guess.

But yeah, multithreading never really came to be until during the Intel era, so a fair bit of G4/5 strength is locked away forever.

Personally I wouldn't blow money on a faster G5 tower, these days I find my G5 tower only limited by the software that still supports the PPC architecture, and the fact that a single G5 core at a low clock speed struggles with games, even with a top-end GPU.

thekev said:

You'd have to take out the optical drive or add in one of the third party drive sleds made for them at the time. That's why I said without modding. They cannot run 64 bit applications. Look for one. You won't find anything below Snow Leopard except a couple hacks that did little to improve speed. They can run multiple applications each using 4GB of ram. Since a mini was the point of comparison, a new one can take 16GB there. I wasn't thinking of games, but I guess you're right. I don't really play games, so I don't think of graphics cards in those terms.

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They do run 64 bit apps.

PowerPCMacMan said:

Those who have been exposed to PowerPC since the beginning tend to know more than their peers, especially the newbies who climbed on board Mac through Intel. They missed out on the fun days of PowerPC.

I too know quite a bit about the PowerPC architecture as I have been with PowerPC Macs since 1999.. Thats about 13 years of Mac experience.. couple that with the Intel Mac experience I have.

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I had a powerbook G4 (first generation) and later a G5 tower, although I was under the impression that much of that capability didn't show up until later. The applications that Apple developed in house didn't switch to X64 builds until much much later.

Goftrey said:

Would just like to say I've actually just bought an iMac. Considering it was going for the same price as a Quad, benchmarked similarly, came in mint condition in original box with a copy of Snow Leopard, as well as the bluetooth keyboard & mighty mouse, as well as the fact it will run Snow Leopard & Windows (and Lion, not fussed on it though). It was just too good to turn down, especially when it comes equipped with a gorgeous 17" display.

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decided against G5 Imac?

I have same 2006 17" Imac...mine has 2 gig and em running lion...I'm running lion off a external drive (usb) with a ssd...it's make a Massive difference!

As always,look foward to watching your utube vids,as Im guessing were gonna get to see this new puppy...