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PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz

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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
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Alice, TX
Would a PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz for $130 be a good deal? This would be great for my mom I think. She has my old AMD Athlon XP 2500+ PC from 2004.

Would this be worth the upgrade? To do any kind of upgrade on her computer, I would basically have to rebuild this whole thing, aside from the case.

I'd also keep this once she upgrades for myself, just to have since it's a bit of history.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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I'd be much better than that eMac you where looking at. I have an eMac and a dual 2.0Ghz PowerMac G5, the G5 is so much faster. While still not a speed machine, it is usable for lots of stuff. It can handle the internet well and has support for the more modern SATA drives. Plus, for that price, it's a good buy.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
400
Alice, TX
That's what I'm thinking. I had just looked at the eMac because I saw one on here some guy had that he was using basically just for decoration and as a photo slide thing. I thought that was neat, and for $45 not too bad.

Would this be an a significant improvement to what she has? She's been "happy" with her's so far, but it's an old Windows XP machine and she hasn't really used anything else.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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Even though the two machines are about the same age, Macs tend to age better. Plus the G5 is a professional grade machine. I'm guess that the current one is a budget box. I've found my PowerMac G5 to be faster at a lot of things than my 2005 Dell box.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
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Alice, TX
Yup, it was a budget box, something decent at the time but with the intent of upgrading in the future. Never happened, and it will cost about the same to rebuild than to upgrade.

The guy's at home, said he won't be available to sell until Monday. Drat.:(
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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All the G5 really needs is some more ram, at least 2G, and possibly a newer hard drive. After that it will be fast enough to do lots. Because it has 8 ram slots, you can get 8 cheap PC3200 256Mb sticks to reach 2Gb of ram. It can of course take a lot more, but 2Gb should be the minimum.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
400
Alice, TX
It comes with 2GB already, and a 160GB HDD. I'm not sure what version of OS X it has. I THINK I just have Snow Leopard, so I may need to find a copy of Leopard.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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A copy of Leopard is going to be slightly pricey. But well worth it. Leopard is much faster then Tiger on G5's.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
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Alice, TX
Yup. I'm hoping I can find one on eBay or on here on the cheap. I might still have mine laying around somewhere, but it's not on my shelf, that's for sure.
 
transphasic

transphasic

macrumors 6502
Apr 6, 2012
258
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I joined specifically to address your OP. DO NOT buy a G5 machine!!!

Go to google and type in "G5 coolant leak" - it happened to me and my apartment nearly caught fire.

Get her a mac mini, i did for my parents (both over 75 years old) and they work fine. While more expensive than the G5, that machine is not an option.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
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transphasic said:
I joined specifically to address your OP. DO NOT buy a G5 machine!!!

Go to google and type in "G5 coolant leak" - it happened to me and my apartment nearly caught fire.

Get her a mac mini, i did for my parents (both over 75 years old) and they work fine. While more expensive than the G5, that machine is not an option.
Click to expand...

The 2.0Ghz models are air cooled and do not have leaking problems. They are rather stable and able to work well.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
400
Alice, TX
transphasic said:
I joined specifically to address your OP. DO NOT buy a G5 machine!!!

Go to google and type in "G5 coolant leak" - it happened to me and my apartment nearly caught fire.

Get her a mac mini, i did for my parents (both over 75 years old) and they work fine. While more expensive than the G5, that machine is not an option.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up. I believe this is the 2003 model that is air cooled.

Also, I'm sort of doing getting this for me, but letting her use it until she really wants to upgrade. They're awesome looking and for the price seems like a very good deal.
 
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davidg4781

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
2,799
400
Alice, TX
Ok, scrap the idea on giving this to my mom. From what I've read a bit, she won't be able to play some Flash based games online since Adobe dropped support for PowerPCs.

I do have another question... I have some videos on my MacBook that I recorded from a VHS tape. I'm wanting to fix these up and put them on a DVD for family (they're old family reunions and such). Using my CD MacBook, it's been somewhat of a slow process.

Will this PowerMac be more efficient in this process? I know it's 3 years older but it's also a different animal.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
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Inside
She could probably still play Flash based games on it if the games only need 10.1, which is the last version of Flash released for PPC Macs. The Power Mac G5 may be faster than a CoreDuo Macbook for video editing.
 
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Ccrew

macrumors 68020
Feb 28, 2011
2,035
3
davidg4781 said:
Yup. I'm hoping I can find one on eBay or on here on the cheap. I might still have mine laying around somewhere, but it's not on my shelf, that's for sure.
Click to expand...

Finding a retail copy of Leopard and "cheap" are not usually in the same sentence unfortunately.
 
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