Goodbye Mac Mini C1D, Hello Dual Core 2.3 G5

[Tucom]

Yup, as I've been saying in other threads for the past few days I've been looking to trade one of my Core 1 Duo Minis for a G5, specifically like the one Nameci has - the Dual-Core G5 2.3Ghz model.


It's COMING TOMORROW! Off of craigslist the beast has 5 Gbs of RAM


I was just watching some videos of these incredible machines form apple's 2003 WWDC, and it's really shame IMO that Apple went away from the - at least at the time - far superior PPC architecture.

Well, that its gonna be getting a kick ass home here for this kick ass machine!


Sorry for the language


Current PPC G5 owners ya dig? Or just jealous? JK

ok /end brag/psychedness/psyched

Anyone else out there still rocking G5's for main heavy lifting tasks or any kind of serious production? Curious as to what are the latest versions of some PPC appls, too, but that's potentially another thread?

 

[dontwalkhand]

Nice choice, I have the DC 2.3 Myself, and use it over my Intel Macs, it is my main machine.

 

[Nameci]

Congratulations! Welcome to the club. My favorite dual 1.42 is sick so this is my main machine right now. I have no complains whatsoever my my G5, running strong, no temp spike, no freeze, no hangups, flash is working great in safari, with a lot of cpu capacity to spare. I have not encoded heavy video clips yet so there is still a lot to see on this good ol' pal.

Good that it came with 5GB of ram already. But it is good for me that mine came with less since I have all the opportunity to put in more on it.

Enjoy it! It still have more years of life in it.

 

[Tucom]

Awesome, yeah planning to use the latest updated PPC apps that can run on it, and because they're out dated, I find it relatively ethical for getting such apps while making "RRRR, me matey!" sounds if you know what I meant


Usually not that person, but aye, it's almost respectable in this situation, right? Haha.

Anyways, it does have the stock 6600 LE card in it so I'll probably get around to upgrading it, too, and do the necessary research to make sure it works Nameci Heh. Still though that card if it works in a Windows box (the ATI one) it's probably still flashable to be used in your G5.

 

[Nameci]

DC 2.3 comes with 6600 256mb not the 128mb 6600LE. LE's were on the 2.0 DC.

Well as for my ATI, I need to items to flash it; 1. PC and 2. An ATI x1900 ROM for Mac G5.

 

[VanneDC]

its possible someone has swapped out the card, my Quad G5 came with the LE card... (most notably replaced by fx4500 asap)
Congrats mate, they are great boxes, though i do miss the extra quiet and cpu performance of the Quad LCS.

 

[DrakkenWar]

Nice!

Welcome to the club man! And what a find! My single 1.8ghz G5 is still my stable mac. I would love to find a cheap dual proc for it and a bit more ram. Currently have 4 gigs of the wrong clock speed I grabbed from eBay on a whim thinking it would fit. Alas it is for the next generation up. But what can ya do?

Enjoy, the PPC G5's are really great machines!

~Drake

 

[Tucom]

Well my second mac actually was a Dual 2.0Ghz G5 w/ just 1GB of RAM, first being a B&W 450Mhz G3. That there is like where this desire for another PPC G5 stems from, they do have that "feel", and deeper then that my mother and father both being in the software engineering field their whole lives (Mother still programming for IBM on the Z architecture for mainframe/server work); a quote from the pops Rick Cook (he's done work for MS in the past too, for Win 95, name sound familiar to anyone? IDK): "I always thought the PPC architecture were a rather smart design", in a way such that it conveyed a deep, serious instillment of that thought.


So, uhh, yeah, still kinda too bad IMO Apple when away from them, haha, I think it would be rather sweet if Apple were to go back to PPC, or some kind of architecture that had the advantages PPC did over Intel/x86 (more to much more efficient pipelining, for one).

I think the video card IS a 6600 256Mb, Nameci is right in that only the baseline 2.0Ghz came w/ the LE, but someone could always have swapped it out..but I doubt it.


There's a couple Daul-Core machines in the LA area if anyone else reading this is interested, another guy I was gonna trade w/ is selling a 2.0Ghz w/ tons of pro-apps and a 19" widescreen for $450, another 2.0 or 2.3Ghz Dual Core for $300, I've got the adds bookmarked if anyone wants 'em?

Anyone care to post what uses they're still using their machines for, and for the PCIe models specifically, anyone know of any good PCI-e sound cards for the G5s?

 

[Tucom]

Welcome to the club man! And what a find! My single 1.8ghz G5 is still my stable mac. I would love to find a cheap dual proc for it and a bit more ram. Currently have 4 gigs of the wrong clock speed I grabbed from eBay on a whim thinking it would fit. Alas it is for the next generation up. But what can ya do?

Enjoy, the PPC G5's are really great machines!

~Drake

You know you could actually get faster/cheaper DDR2 memory and I think as long as it'll fit in the machine, it'll just down clock but work as good as any other - and be cheaper. Plus it can be put into a later machine if so desired at any point.

Glad this machine came/is coming (tomorrow) with 5 gigs, which is 2.5 per proc, may bump it up for the heck of it if I come across some cheap DD2 memory, and again, anything over the PC-4200 spec and fits should work in the G5 - (this rule applies to any computer really) - it'll just down clock and work fine.

 

[Tucom]

It's all setup! Man it feels good having one of these air-craft grade aluminum enclosured, still very powerful monsters again. Compared to my Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, it honestly feels faster in some areas, and that's running Leopard (there's been speculation as to Tiger running even faster/better on PPC machines, regardless of age, but sticking with Leopard for sure).


It's nearly brand new with the right hand top corner of the handle slightly pronged "off" of the case by amount a mm, but besides that, there was even the "fresh out of the box" protective plastic on the inside of the doors etc.


It has the full blown 6600.

So, yeah, I think it'll be the daily driver, at least for now.


There's a Time Machine back up HDD I stuck in the second drive bay as it has 400Gbs of music, but it can't see it, anyone have any idea as to why? I think it was TimeMachine'd on Snow Leopard, good that be it?

The HDD is loud and clickity, it'd be sweet to get an SSD for this beast.

Lovin' it for now though, PPC for life! Plus Intel too

 

[Nameci]

about your backup HDD, I am not sure but PPC Leopard can read GUID as data disk, it will not boot with a disk partitioned as GUID, it should be APM.

Shove in an SSD as boot drive and opening of apps would be faster than you can imagine this machine can do.