Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

LJ280

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 25, 2013
3
0
Hi everyone :) I have a Power Mac G5 1.8 GHz single core with 2 GB of RAM And a ATI radeon 800 XT graphics card.
I'm running it on a 17 inch Apple LCD monitor and it is very slow and lags noticeably watching DVDs and In general. Even the screen saver.

Running OS X 10.2.8 right now. Was wondering if you had and ideas? I zapped the P-RAM it helped a little.
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
30
located
You should at least upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther or Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, maybe even Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, as 10.2 is quite not a finished version of Mac OS X.

Hopefully you can find the following useful albeit your outdated Mac OS X version.

Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to show you the process(es) slowing down your Mac, and also go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back.

If you want to enhance the performance of your Mac, be sure to check these two articles, do not just use applications, that promise to do it for you.
 

bax2003

Cancelled
Dec 25, 2011
947
203
Faster HDD, more RAM, clean 10.4.11 OS X. You already have good graphics card for AGP G5.
When you pgrade, you can install Leopard 10.5.8
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
10.2? That might be your problem. I have a late 2004 1.8Ghz PowerMac G5 and the original OS on that system was 10.3.1. So, not sure if 10.2 should even be on your G5 anyway.

I any case, boot from the install disk. Repair permissions, repair disk. If you have a copy of DiskWarrior, boot from that and run it too.

I'd also track down an old copy of Onyx for 10.2. Run the Daily, Weekly and Monthly Scripts, clean caches, etc. That should improve performance.

But as others have said, 10.2 is pretty old, so I would update. My G5 has 4GB of ram and it flys on Leopard. So you would benefit from increasing the ram.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
Sure. But what if the caches are corrupt? I'm not recommending it as an everyday thing, but as a general troubleshooting method.
 

666sheep

macrumors 68040
Dec 7, 2009
3,686
291
Poland
Faster HDD, more RAM, clean 10.4.11 OS X. You already have good graphics card for AGP G5.

This. Get another 2GB of RAM, faster (preferably new) HDD and look for cheap copy of 10.4.
If you can live with 10.2.8 nowadays, you don't need 10.5 :)
 

skateny

macrumors 6502
Jul 19, 2012
448
0
New York, NY
What everyone else said.

I never noticed any decrease in performance when using Leopard instead of Tiger, but anything older than Leopard, and you won't be getting the best performance from your Mac. Also, dump Intel code with Xslimmer or by using any of the freeware apps that do the job.

With Leopard, you can use browsers and other apps optimized for your Mac.
 

LJ280

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 25, 2013
3
0
Thank you everybody :)
I've Managed to find a cheap copy of osx 10.3.
I'll look for some ram and a new hard drive as well.
 
Last edited:

LJ280

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 25, 2013
3
0
It's a little hard to find out here.
I ran 10.3.6 off my iMac g3 for the longest time.
I might try and find 10.5 if I can

----------

Everywhere I can find just sells intel junk, I guess I'll try eBay or amazon.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,698
26,713
It's a little hard to find out here.
I ran 10.3.6 off my iMac g3 for the longest time.
I might try and find 10.5 if I can

----------

Everywhere I can find just sells intel junk, I guess I'll try eBay or amazon.
Search for the retail disk. The retail disk is Universal.
 

slomo86

macrumors member
Jul 30, 2008
91
0
Turkey
It's a little hard to find out here.
I ran 10.3.6 off my iMac g3 for the longest time.
I might try and find 10.5 if I can

----------

Everywhere I can find just sells intel junk, I guess I'll try eBay or amazon.

If you haven't found a copy yet message me.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.