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Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
I have a 1st gen dual 2ghz G5. It has 3gb of ram, 2 internal SATA drives and an aftermarket 9800 pro and 9200 vid cards each with a 17" LCD hooked up. I get tons of lag all of the time, more than I should be. Itunes does not even play smoothly while doing normal tasks. What could be the issue? My factory 9800 pro died and I made the mistake of putting one in that only had one DVI port and had to add the 9200 for the second monitor. Is this the reason since the 9200 does not use quartz extreme? Anything I can do about this? Anything else I can do to try and get things back to how they used to be speed wise?
 

gzfelix

macrumors member
Jun 14, 2007
83
0
Charlottetown, PE
I have a 1st gen dual 2ghz G5. It has 3gb of ram, 2 internal SATA drives and an aftermarket 9800 pro and 9200 vid cards each with a 17" LCD hooked up. I get tons of lag all of the time, more than I should be. Itunes does not even play smoothly while doing normal tasks. What could be the issue? My factory 9800 pro died and I made the mistake of putting one in that only had one DVI port and had to add the 9200 for the second monitor. Is this the reason since the 9200 does not use quartz extreme? Anything I can do about this? Anything else I can do to try and get things back to how they used to be speed wise?

What are your normal tasks?
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
shouldn't be running that rough. have you done a permissions repair, checked on the health of your disks?

If you haven't done so, it might not be a bad idea to reinstall the OS. that's drastic, but your computer is still very capable and shouldn't be lagging.
 

Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
Normal operations as in dragging a window around lag out iTunes. Something is not right for sure.

My boot disk is good as far as I know. My second HD does have some sort of issue, it stopped booting one day (reason I bought the second disk) but works fine as a storage disk? Could this be part of it? I guess I could unplug it and see what happens. 10.5 was a fresh instal in the fall, don't think that is the issue. I just repaired disk permissions.
 

Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
shouldn't be running that rough. have you done a permissions repair, checked on the health of your disks?

If you haven't done so, it might not be a bad idea to reinstall the OS. that's drastic, but your computer is still very capable and shouldn't be lagging.

what is on that second HDD? That could definitely be the problem.

Nothing I use on a daily basis. Just backup.

The more I look at it the more it seems to be primarily Itunes lagging which just makes it all feel slow. My library is actually very small comparatively (11gb) and it sounds like a skipping CD just while I am typing this. Safari also renders very slow although im not convinced thats not my router being a POS.
 

AlexMaximus

macrumors 65816
Aug 15, 2006
1,181
538
A400M Base
Release that Handbrake ..

I have a 1st gen dual 2ghz G5. It has 3gb of ram, 2 internal SATA drives and an aftermarket 9800 pro and 9200 vid cards each with a 17" LCD hooked up. I get tons of lag all of the time, more than I should be. Itunes does not even play smoothly while doing normal tasks. What could be the issue? My factory 9800 pro died and I made the mistake of putting one in that only had one DVI port and had to add the 9200 for the second monitor. Is this the reason since the 9200 does not use quartz extreme? Anything I can do about this? Anything else I can do to try and get things back to how they used to be speed wise?


Uhh... the ATI Radeon 9200 is a PCI card. This PCI bus for graphic was used in G3 Powermacs back in the day. - A step back from the AGP bus.

.... thats like driving a Porsche with the pulled handbrake ....

I would absolutely not do that. Get rid of both cards on ebay and spend your G5 a card it deserves.

Since you have the early G5 AGP version, go with either the Radeon 9600 with dual DVI, or the Nvidia 6800 card. If you are lucky you may even find the original Radeon 9650 G5 version or the expensive ATI X800. You'll find them in ebay as well..
:apple:
 

-hh

macrumors 68030
Jul 17, 2001
2,550
336
NJ Highlands, Earth
shouldn't be running that rough. have you done a permissions repair, checked on the health of your disks?

If you haven't done so, it might not be a bad idea to reinstall the OS. that's drastic, but your computer is still very capable and shouldn't be lagging.

Before you do that, flush your cache in Safari.


-hh
 

MacVidCards

Suspended
Nov 17, 2008
6,096
1,056
Hollywood, CA
I wouldn't go with a 9600...it is a half-bandwidth, half rendering pipes version of 9800...so a step down.

The 9200 is a kludge....a PCI version of a card you wouldn't want the AGP version of (8500) There are 6200 Nvidia PCI cards on Ebay occasionally for Mac which would be a much happier experience...complete with Core Image over PCI, but I don't think any are for sale now.

The Apple brand X800 and 6800 cards still bring $400 or so, rather painful.

There are flashed variants of these, but only the flashed 6800 comes in Dual DVI at an affordable price ($200 or so)

Even the REAL Mac 9800 will be around $200, keep an eye out for the 256 Meg versions. But lower port is ADC, requires a minor adapter to run DVI.

But before you do any of that, run the "Repair Disk" part of Disk Utility on that errant drive...I've seen drives with boot block damage bring a system to it's knees as it tries to find things with mapping all wrong.
 

California

macrumors 68040
Aug 21, 2004
3,885
90
I bet it is just a bad hard drive. Easy fix. Dump it and get the flashed card. Also get some more memory. You'll be surprised how much faster the G5s run with it.
 

Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
Ill run disk utility on the old drive and see what it does. I think I found a apple 6800 ultra locally for $150 so will be picking that up and putting the 9800 in an old g4 450 I am setting up as a server that ironically has a failing rage 128 card. I just added 2gb of ram to make the 3gb (was 1gb). Will more be of much benefit or is my money better spent elsewhere. If more will help ill watch sales and see if I cant find some cheap.
 

bozz2006

macrumors 68030
Aug 24, 2007
2,530
0
Minnesota
more RAM will only help if you have excessive page-outs. you can check your page-outs in activity monitor, or with widget like istat pro.
 

Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
Figured out why my internet was so slow.... Helps if I use the plugged in ethernet connection and not the wireless! Im picking up that 6800 Ultra and will see if that fixes the iTunes lagging etc...
 

Dark Eternal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 22, 2007
23
0
Katy, Tx
Go figure, after I posted the internet sped up its back to slow. This reply page took about 15 seconds to load. It was very snappy right after changing to wired from wireless. Any ideas? Could it be a bad router? DL speeds are great on files (seen 900k or more)
 
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