Awesome performance tweaks

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 7, 2012

For make benefit of all oldschool Mac users (as well as the newer ones):

The short version:

Download the Secrets preference pane [link].

Go through Secrets and go to the Finder tab and disable all eye-candy like animations. Go to the System tab and stop the animation of windows, and set the "window and sheet" animation time to something like 0.0001.

Turning down the *deliberately* slow animations make your Mac feel a hell of a lot snappier. More to come, like stripping out the Intel code and foreign languages to save space, RAM disks, defragmenting, and the best value hard drives [hint: RAM and an SSD, and if you don't have one, a Core Image capable GPU.]

Long version: http://michaelanthonyralph.com/wp/2012/11/07/how-to-speed-up-an-old-mac-with-a-few-simple-tweaks/

wobegong · Nov 7, 2012

Nice to have, I played around with Ramdisks from a long time ago and still have the 'Esperance DV' preference pane to set it up, originally had it for Photoshop I think...scratch disk? not sure now, havn't used it in ages and ages. Good info for many I'm sure and thanks for your time and effort.

orestes1984 · Nov 7, 2012

Given RAM is so cheap these days if you've got a G5 and can put a lot of it in it, like 8GB or 16GB you can make good use of a RAM disk to speed things up. Low density Mac compatible 1GB DDR RAM sticks can be had for around $25 or a bit less per module these days.

A good performance boost to make things load quicker is a cheap SSD capable of maxing out your SATA or even IDE bus. 32gb SSDs are cheap and make a good boot drive as well as storage of your most frequently used apps.

A video card that's capable of Quartz Extreme and Core Image are also nice upgrades if you don't have those. You don't have to go the length of the earth to find the best performing card, just one that provides the basics for desktop acceleration. A Quartz Extreme video card will also help with playback of video through applications such as VLC that take advantage of it.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 7, 2012

Ha, pretty much everything that I would have said on the hardware side of things.

orestes1984 said:
Given RAM is so cheap these days if you've got a G5 and can put a lot of it in it, like 8GB or 16GB you can make good use of a RAM disk to speed things up. Low density Mac compatible 1GB DDR RAM sticks can be had for around $25 or a bit less per module these days.

Yeah definitely, I got 2x 1GB sticks of RAM from the tubabug eBay store for about $45, I think OWC had similar prices.

A good performance boost to make things load quicker is a cheap SSD capable of maxing out your SATA or even IDE bus. 32gb SSDs are cheap and make a good boot drive as well as storage of your most frequently used apps.

Yeah I did this for my iMac G5, I paid $39 for a 32GB SSD. Cheap stuff from China on eBay and a brand called "KingSpec", but it still reads at 130MB/sec. 64GB drives of the same brand were going for $58 with free postage.

A video card that's capable of Quartz Extreme and Core Image are also nice upgrades if you don't have those. You don't have to go the length of the earth to find the best performing card, just one that provides the basics for desktop acceleration. A Quartz Extreme video card will also help with playback of video through applications such as VLC that take advantage of it.

I remember upgrading my 466MHz G4 tower from a 16MB ATI Rage Pro card to a 128MB Radeon 9600 XT. Absolutely massive difference. The entire GUI was totally responsive and fluid, I could run at resolutions beyond 1600x900, and games that required hardware acceleration could actually take advantage of it [the Rage card was just too old.]

orestes1984 · Nov 7, 2012

I'm still looking for something that will make 1080p playback look fluid on a G5 Xserve. I set up Eye TV just to get a look and its almost smooth but drops frames with HDTV 1080p, mind you I'm stuck with PCI video cards and no Quartz Extreme. It plays 1080p through Quicktime with Perian installed but drops frames.

I wonder if there's much I can do, I tried PCI extreme but it didn't work

Mind you I am running 10.5.8.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 7, 2012

orestes1984 said:
I'm still looking for something that will make 1080p playback look fluid on a G5 Xserve. I set up Eye TV just to get a look and its almost smooth but drops frames with HDTV 1080p, mind you I'm stuck with PCI video cards and no Quartz Extreme. It plays 1080p through Quicktime with Perian installed but drops frames.

I wonder if there's much I can do, I tried PCI extreme but it didn't work

1080p on a G5 seems pretty hopeless, I can get it to run smooth on my system if it's 1080p and no more than 4mbit/sec, whereas I can play 720p at 8mbit/sec. The extra resolution really taxes the CPU. I remember when I upgraded my GPU from the Radeon 9600 to the X800 and I got absolutely no more performance in terms of play HD video.

You're using Quicktime, download VLC, it performs better. CorePlayer is a huge step up then from VLC, but has been discontinued and so far nobody has cracked it.

Starfighter · Nov 7, 2012

Sweet! Just be aware of the FAQ, it has a section named "Are there any software tweaks that I can make to make my experience better?" that explains, among other things, how to strip the intel code. If you provide more/new information about speeding things up I'll be eternally grateful and maybe it can be added to the FAQ for future reference.

orestes1984 · Nov 7, 2012

Jethryn Freyman said:
1080p on a G5 seems pretty hopeless, I can get it to run smooth on my system if it's 1080p and no more than 4mbit/sec, whereas I can play 720p at 8mbit/sec. The extra resolution really taxes the CPU. I remember when I upgraded my GPU from the Radeon 9600 to the X800 and I got absolutely no more performance in terms of play HD video.

You're using Quicktime, download VLC, it performs better. CorePlayer is a huge step up then from VLC, but has been discontinued and so far nobody has cracked it.

VLC doesn't play nicely without Quartz Extreme you'll get an error saying it will still playback, but performance will basically be terrible.

If you have a PCI graphics machine i.e. a G4 PCI Graphics model or a G5 Xserve it seems the best bet is to stick with 10.4, or for playback on 10.5 use Quicktime with Perian.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 7, 2012

Starfighter said:
Sweet! Just be aware of the FAQ, it has a section named "Are there any software tweaks that I can make to make my experience better?" that explains, among other things, how to strip the intel code. If you provide more/new information about speeding things up I'll be eternally grateful and maybe it can be added to the FAQ for future reference.

Ah, my dad. Heh.

orestes1984 said:
VLC doesn't play nicely without Quartz Extreme you'll get an error saying it will still playback, but performance will basically be terrible.

If you have a PCI graphics machine it seems the best bet is to stick with 10.4, or for playback on 10.5 use Quicktime with Perian.

OK - never used an Xserve before either or a PCI G5, so, yeah. I'll stay quiet on this one.

orestes1984 · Nov 7, 2012

I was just wondering is all, but the Xserve is hardly a desktop machine. After doing the hardware and software tweaks, adding an SSD and removing the intel code my Xserve has basically gone back to its duties of serving content for my home network.

666sheep · Nov 9, 2012

Starfighter said:
If you provide more/new information about speeding things up I'll be eternally grateful and maybe it can be added to the FAQ for future reference.

Nothing new here, OP is only advertising his blog

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 10, 2012

666sheep said:
Nothing new here, OP is only advertising his blog

SSSH

I will add one quick protip here: for the love of god, DO NOT use Xslimmer to strip don't anything in /System or /Library. That caused me several days of misery as it was failing to boot, and my Leopard DVD was running 10.5.2 and didn't have the specific FireGL-flashed Radeon X800 XT drivers.

Could barely see the installer text, had to go from memory, heh.

wobegong · Nov 10, 2012

Jethryn Freyman said:
SSSH

I will add one quick protip here: for the love of god, DO NOT use Xslimmer to strip don't anything in /System or /Library. .

I agree, I don't bother stripping code any more after having to do an archive and install last time, to be honest i notice ZERO performance improvement with this - maybe if you have a slower G5 or G4 it makes a difference....

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 10, 2012

wobegong said:
I agree, I don't bother stripping code any more after having to do an archive and install last time, to be honest i notice ZERO performance improvement with this - maybe if you have a slower G5 or G4 it makes a difference....

The main benefit I've seen is saving disk space, specifically on my iMac G5 which has a 32GB SSD in it.

PowerPCMacMan · Nov 11, 2012

1080p playback on G4 and G5.

First off, I'd like to add that with the impressive power of the Quad G5 i am able to fully play back 1080p as well as a little bit of 4096p while using youtube and or mactubes. Thats number one.

I assume that most, if not all dual-core based PowerMac G5's(2.0 and 2.3) shouldn't have any problems with playing back 720p or 1080p respectively. With the loss of coreplayer and the ability to get ahold of it, what therefore, can be considered a 2nd option for those with PowerBook G4's running at 1.67 Ghz.

I tried XBMC and it does allow playback even on a PowerBook G4 1.67 at 720p, though does struggle a bit at 1080p. Not bad for a G4 processor in my opinion. Of course, I'd still like to know a 2nd option which will allow any G4 to be able to play back at 720p or 1080p?

Imixmuan · Nov 11, 2012

The Luddite

posted a nice tutorial on how to get HD playback using the extracted mplayer binary and a bunch of commandline tweaks. Hint: You can copy and pasted those into a text document of some sort, so when you need it, you can just copy it into a commandline window and hit enter (after you have put in the path to the file, natch).

http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/2011/05/hd-on-old-mac-with-mplayer.html

He specifically mentions getting a 720p Star Trek trailer to play on a Powerbook with similar specs to yours.

Good luck.

MacinDan · Nov 11, 2012

Imixmuan said:
posted a nice tutorial on how to get HD playback using the extracted mplayer binary and a bunch of commandline tweaks. Hint: You can copy and pasted those into a text document of some sort, so when you need it, you can just copy it into a commandline window and hit enter (after you have put in the path to the file, natch).

Also, check out the mplayer scripts B-G wrote in this post. You can enter your own commandline arguments in the script, then highlight the video file in the Finder and play it from the scripts menu in the menubar.

orestes1984 · Nov 12, 2012

I honestly think the best thing to do to watch HD content is to get an Apple TV these days. I just AirPlayed my Apple TV 3 directly from iTunes and it didn't drop a frame. I'm going to see if I can try the same with my EyeTV tuner.

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 13, 2012

orestes1984 said:
I honestly think the best thing to do to watch HD content is to get an Apple TV these days. I just AirPlayed my Apple TV 3 directly from iTunes and it didn't drop a frame. I'm going to see if I can try the same with my EyeTV tuner.

Apple TV and Elgato EyeTV are totally differemt product... EyeTV is for receiving TV signals, Apple TV streams from iTunes Store/iTunes library over a network connection.

orestes1984 · Nov 13, 2012

Jethryn Freyman said:
Apple TV and Elgato EyeTV are totally differemt product... EyeTV is for receiving TV signals, Apple TV streams from iTunes Store/iTunes library over a network connection.

Yes I know that, but I was just fiddling around and sending content from my G5 Xserve to my Apple TV directly from iTunes using AirPlay. It wasn't taxing the CPU at all on the G5 and playing content fine on the Apple TV

Jethryn Freyman · Nov 14, 2012

orestes1984 said:
Yes I know that, but I was just fiddling around and sending content from my G5 Xserve to my Apple TV directly from iTunes using AirPlay. It wasn't taxing the CPU at all on the G5 and playing content fine on the Apple TV

Ha, yeah I guess that a lot of us in this section of MR do similar stuff, mucking around, playing with stuff...

Awesome performance tweaks

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