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Really slow iMac G5 - Leopard's fault?

C

Chris W

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 13, 2009
6
0
Hi all,

First time post, long time lurk.

I have an iMac G5 with iSight, running Leopard (upgraded from Tiger about a year ago) and have recently installed a new 1G RAM card. The reason I bought and installed the additional RAM was because I thought that the slowness of my Mac was due to the fact that the 512 RAM I had was not sufficient to run Leopard properly. (It was fine when I was running Tiger.)

But it is still slow. Maybe even slower than previously. And over the last few days, it has been even slower still. I get beach-balls all the time for 30+sec's, and moving from one app to another takes ages!!

Any advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Haven't done either as yet. I am fine with reinstalling the OS, but how would I know if the RAM is fully functioning? Everything works, it's just super-slow.
Thanks for your help.
 
Chris W said:
Haven't done either as yet. I am fine with reinstalling the OS, but how would I know if the RAM is fully functioning? Everything works, it's just super-slow.
Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

I installed leopard on an iBook G4. First time I did an upgrade from Tiger and it really slowed down my computer. Then, I reinstalled completely, erasing all previous content off the hard drive, and then it was as fast or even faster than it was before with Tiger. Just do a clean install and your problem will be solved. I had 764 Mb of RAM, by the way
 
To check the RAM, see if its listed under the About This Mac and then, if it is, restart your mac with either the original DVD or (dunno, but it think so) the leopard DVD, holding down D to run low-level diagnostics and see if the memory passes under extended testing
 
Chris W said:
Hi all,

First time post, long time lurk.

I have an iMac G5 with iSight, running Leopard (upgraded from Tiger about a year ago) and have recently installed a new 1G RAM card. The reason I bought and installed the additional RAM was because I thought that the slowness of my Mac was due to the fact that the 512 RAM I had was not sufficient to run Leopard properly. (It was fine when I was running Tiger.)

But it is still slow. Maybe even slower than previously. And over the last few days, it has been even slower still. I get beach-balls all the time for 30+sec's, and moving from one app to another takes ages!!

Any advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...


From other peoples experience there is a ninety percent chance that it is slow because you did not do a "wipe and install". Aperrently upgrading messes up your system and makes it terribly slow. Just wipe your HD and then install.
 
Back up your gear to a hard drive and do a full wipe and install instead of an upgrade, you will thank us for it.

As for it being slower after adding memory, sounds like the memory could be faulty.
 
iMac G5's were great! Since then Apple has encouraged their customers to upgrade, to the New (Soon to be updated) iMacs. I'd recommend backing up your data via (Time Machine) and consider upgrading your hardware (even if it's a refurbish iMac).

When Apple updates their OS's it's mainly due to new technology and future hardware requirements in that are in the product pipeline.
 
Correctly configured iMac G5's can run Leopard just fine. I'd suggest trying a clean install if you're having problems running at an acceptable speed with 1GB of RAM or more.
 
SSkky Reader said:
iMac G5's were great! Since then Apple has encouraged their customers to upgrade, to the New (Soon to be updated) iMacs. I'd recommend backing up your data via (Time Machine) and consider upgrading your hardware (even if it's a refurbish iMac).

When Apple updates their OS's it's mainly due to new technology and future hardware requirements in that are in the product pipeline.
Click to expand...

Wow, a big solution to a mid size problem no?


Replace the old machine? My iMac G5 runs fine(although its no longer my main machine)

The G5 can run 10.5 just fine
 
My rev. A iMac G5 still runs like a champ. Slap 2GB of RAM in there and you're good to go. I recently re-installed Leopard (clean install) and it's quite snappy.
 
ZAP you make a compelling point:). Apple doesn't just look at the now, it looks at the future. The G5 will eventually be none supported like our recent list of products that we no longer will service. Plus if MW09 wasn't a obvious indication that, our next releases' of software (and hardware) will eventually make previous generation computer's become quickly obsolete.

Look for more announcement's about what software is recommended for next releases. (I must say the economy has slowed, what we wanted to get out sooner, which will now be later).

My solution seemed best for him for the long term.;)
:apple:

zap2 said:
Wow, a big solution to a mid size problem no?


Replace the old machine? My iMac G5 runs fine(although its no longer my main machine)

The G5 can run 10.5 just fine
Click to expand...
 
Dunno about your G5, but my wife's G4 PowerBook and my G4 Mini, which ran fine under Leopard originally, had slowed to a crawl recently. Turns out to have been an increasing number of website ads using flash animations. Install Flashblock plugin for Firefox, or Safaribock for Safari. My computers sped up straight away after I did.
 
Thanks everyone for their help.
I have just noticed that neither "About this mac" nor System Profiler indicate that I have now got 1GB of memory - both are still displaying 512MB.
Is this to be expected?
 
Chris W said:
Thanks everyone for their help.
I have just noticed that neither "About this mac" nor System Profiler indicate that I have now got 1GB of memory - both are still displaying 512MB.
Is this to be expected?
Click to expand...
I had that on a Macbook.

Just reseat (pull out and put back) the chips. Make sure they are definitely in.
 
Create a new user and login as that user and see if it is any faster. Also have you tried repairing permissions?
 
Follow-up question

This is a pretty old thread, but I recently upgraded my dad's iMac G5 from Tiger to Leopard and it's a little sluggish as well. It's a 1.8 GHz G5 iMac with 1 GB memory. What I've noticed is it seems a little laggy in general, but specifically the graphics sometimes aren't smooth. For example, he has magnification enabled in the Dock, and running the cursor across the dock results in jerky magnify animations. I really expected it to be smoother.

Before I wipe the drive and install Leopard from scratch, can anyone comment on if the slightly-slower-than-Tiger speed and somewhat jerky animations are normal for this machine?

Oh, and for just casual use, do you think there's any point in upgrading the memory?

Thank you!
 
smirk said:
Before I wipe the drive and install Leopard from scratch, can anyone comment on if the slightly-slower-than-Tiger speed and somewhat jerky animations are normal for this machine?
Click to expand...

Crap animation is normal for early versions of 10.5. Have you run Software Update yet to get 10.5.8? Being slightly slower than Tiger is normal for even 10.5.8 though.
 
Amdahl said:
Crap animation is normal for early versions of 10.5. Have you run Software Update yet to get 10.5.8? Being slightly slower than Tiger is normal for even 10.5.8 though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I think it is on 10.5.7, so it is a relatively recent version. As I recall, bootup speed was really slow, too. Compared with my Early 2006 iMac Core Duo, which isn't exactly cutting edge, the speed difference is night and day.
 
Arthagnan said:
Install Tiger, it's better for G5 CPUs.
Click to expand...

That's a line of BS right there.

Avoid Tiger, it doesn't get any security updates.

smirk said:
Thanks for your reply. I think it is on 10.5.7, so it is a relatively recent version. As I recall, bootup speed was really slow, too. Compared with my Early 2006 iMac Core Duo, which isn't exactly cutting edge, the speed difference is night and day.
Click to expand...
10.5.8 has new drivers for some ATI cards, so I would recommend going to 10.5.8. As long as you've always had at least 10% of the disk space full, it should be running fast. Other things to try are booting the Leopard DVD, and running Disk Utility to Repair Disk and Repair Permissions.

Where is the boot process slow spending the extra time?
 
Chris W said:
Thanks everyone for their help.
I have just noticed that neither "About this mac" nor System Profiler indicate that I have now got 1GB of memory - both are still displaying 512MB.
Is this to be expected?
Click to expand...

I know this is late(after 3 years)but no that is not right you didn't install RAM right try to take RAM out and put it back in and make sure that it's installed correctly.And to speed up your iMac do fresh install of leopard(when installing choose to delete old files)that should speed it up(that is not solving the problem with incorrectly installed RAM but the speed problem.:apple:Good Luck:apple:
 
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