Powermac G5

What exactly are you going to use it for? A 2011 Macbook Pro will be faster only if you are going to max the Powermac out.

Can this help?
Mac Benchmarks by Geekbench

If you tell us why you're thinking of buying it, what you're going to use it for & what your upgrade plans are then we'd all be able to help you a lot more.

sk8er123 said:

I was going to use it for a little CS4 editing and a little FC6.Also heavy internet use. I don't plan on maxing out ram to 16 GB just 8.5 GB. I see the benchmark for both but I was wondering if 8 gigs of ram on the powermac would boost it. Also plan on putting a Quadro FX 4500 with 512 MB of graphics memory.

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That will max it out but will do, i would recommend a first gen Mac Pro for those kind of things.

first get OS X Leopard if not already installed.


CS4?? --- Get a good fast hard drive, a decent video card, and you're set. That SSD in my G4 gives insane performance boost in photoshop.

Heavy internet use? -- no problem but get Tenfourfox 8 (keep away from 9 and up) and MacTubes

FC6?? --- Depends. I don't own a G5 so better test by yourself. But I guess it probably won't do 1080p HD proprely (I may be wrong... a quad G5 is powerful). Should be way enough for 720p HD.
But if its only for editing cheap webcam youtube-like videos, you are fine.


Adding ram will boost benchmark.

I'm partial to the PowerMac G5 Quad for obvious reasons (see signature). PowerPC Macs are still great machines, BUT you need to be aware of their limitations before you take a step forward. You're going to be limited to older software in a lot of cases, but luckily, many great developers still support PowerPC's running Leopard and occasionally (like with TenFourFox) some still support Tiger. I've got my PowerMac maxed out with the most RAM and fastest graphics available (for the G5's, obviously) and I can tell you: this computer is strong.

I also wanted to mention, I've never had any problems with Flash on my Quad. I can watch HD content without problems on YouTube and SouthParkStudios (I'm a South Park junkie). I know Flash is a big concern for most people walking into the PowerPC arena, but until the final PowerPC version of Flash becomes too old to use, I'm satisfied with its performance.

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Lastly, if you decide to buy a Quad, make sure you don't spend more than $400ish dollars on it because some eBay sellers like to charge an arm and a leg for a G5 Quad when someone could spend the same amount and get a Mac Pro.

I don't have quad but it's smaller sibling the dual core 2.3. I am more than satisfied with it, I do CS4 (PS and AI) and it is just doing pretty well no hiccups. I have Final Cut 6 as well but I don't use it too much. I max out RAM at 16GB and thrown 2xSSD in Raid0 and did all the data on external with eSATA. It works great, ripping dvd's don't break a sweat.

See my sig.

Wirelessly posted

Double post sorry! Autocorrect bubble appeared right over the submit button!

Wirelessly posted

Not a hater, but I can speak from personal experience having owned a dual 2.7 g5, 2008 MacBook pro, and now 2011 MacBook pro. the 2008 was 2x faster at rendering video than the g5, and the 2011 was almost 3x faster than the 2008... So in terms of raw performance I'm not sure how you can compare the 2011 and the g5 as being anywhere close to one another.

For day to day stuff I'm sure the g5 has plenty of power but if you are looking for something just as powerful as a 2011 mbp, I'd say get the mbp, especially of you're planning to spend money on ram and ssds.

Nova77 said:

Heavy internet use? -- no problem but get Tenfourfox 8 (keep away from 9 and up) and MacTubes

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What's wrong with 9 and newer?

vohdoun said:

What's wrong with 9 and newer?

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I'm not sure about 9, because I never really used it, but 10 and 11 are way... I mean WAAAY slower on a G4 machine. On my Powerbook G4 1.67, it was getting on my nerves. Then I got back to v. 8 and everything got faster.

TTF 8 was pretty stable and after that Mozilla changed some stuff and the guy behind TTF has a hard time finding PPC equivalents to new technology and/or rewrinting new stuff. Its not only a matter of compiling it for Tiger anymore, he has to work a lort harder just to get it to work proprely on PPC.

Hmmm... huge use of the word "stuff" but I hope you understand lolll

Nova77 said:

Hmmm... huge use of the word "stuff" but I hope you understand lolll

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Yeah, I get what you mean. Maybe it's getting done on purpose...I could be wrong but I get the impression it's fast running out on what's left for PPC.

Jump on the buy and enjoy!

I still miss my dual 1.8ghz G5 maxed out running leopard. She was a beast at anything I threw at her! Handbrake? CS? FCP? Pssh-ah. Not a stutter with spaces full of clutter. That was the mac that made my ppc life after losing my DA/533.

To be honest, I would still have that G5 if a few things had not happened. My sister in law had a Quicksilver kick the bucket about the time I had an opportunity to by an i5 mini that I could not refuse.

10.7 is well.. Something. Needless to say I missed, Leopard and my PPC experience enough to acquire a G4/1.5 Alum maxed out and my stable mobile platform. You are correct, these PPC's are beasts with a ton of life left in them for those that are willing to tweak, read, understand and find a way to make a shoe horn fix.

~Drake

stevemiller said:

Wirelessly posted

Not a hater, but I can speak from personal experience having owned a dual 2.7 g5, 2008 MacBook pro, and now 2011 MacBook pro. the 2008 was 2x faster at rendering video than the g5, and the 2011 was almost 3x faster than the 2008... So in terms of raw performance I'm not sure how you can compare the 2011 and the g5 as being anywhere close to one another.

For day to day stuff I'm sure the g5 has plenty of power but if you are looking for something just as powerful as a 2011 mbp, I'd say get the mbp, especially of you're planning to spend money on ram and ssds.

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Really, you don't say, a newer computer with faster processors is faster than an older one with slower processors.

I believe this is in addition to..you want to know how I transcode..I set up a queue and go to work..when I come home it's all done so it matters very little whether it takes 2,7 or 9 hrs I won't be there to see it...

I highly doubt the OP is doing this stuff for a living, I think he wants to edit some stuff to get it on Youtube or Vimeo. It'll work just fine for that and not tie up the portable..

The MBP will absolutely smoke it. The G5 will be a long way from keeping up.

This isn't PPC hate, but the machine is now very old and CPU tech has come a long way in the past 7 years - and the MBP 2011 cpu is FAST, even by today's standards.

For many multimedia tasks, the Core i series cpu have specific instructions to speed up such things. They have hardware AES encryption instructions, much more cpu cache, etc.


Obviously there is a massive price difference, but in terms of performance, it isn't even going to be close.

As far as heavy internet usage goes (one of the OP's criteria) - don't expect new versions of flash, video codecs, etc to get any PPC love. The platform was end of sale 6-7 years ago now, so new software will be thin on the ground.

Buy all means, feel free to get the box, just keep the above limitations in mind when considering price.

GermanyChris said:

Really, you don't say, a newer computer with faster processors is faster than an older one with slower processors.

I believe this is in addition to..you want to know how I transcode..I set up a queue and go to work..when I come home it's all done so it matters very little whether it takes 2,7 or 9 hrs I won't be there to see it...

I highly doubt the OP is doing this stuff for a living, I think he wants to edit some stuff to get it on Youtube or Vimeo. It'll work just fine for that and not tie up the portable..

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I was responding to the OPs question of whether the g5 would keep up speed wise.

stevemiller said:

I was responding to the OPs question of whether the g5 would keep up speed wise.

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I know what you were responding to with your non-answer that's why I made fun of you