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PowerMac G5 questions

T

torchwood04

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 7, 2007
249
0
Hi,
I'm thinking of purchasing a PowerMac G5 1.6 dual (or is it 1.8?) with 4gb ram.. What applications would you recommend to a presently G3 user with a 350mhz Blue and White with 384mb ram...

Is Tiger faster than Leopard on it, or vice versa?
How does the iLife suite run (I know iMovie 09 and 08 don't run on an older G5)
How is iTunes tv show viewing? (Non HD)
How is DVD ripping (how long does it take to rip a DVD)
I may have more questions soon, thanks..
 
torchwood04 said:
Hi,
I'm thinking of purchasing a PowerMac G5 1.6 dual (or is it 1.8?) with 4gb ram.. What applications would you recommend to a presently G3 user with a 350mhz Blue and White with 384mb ram...

Is Tiger faster than Leopard on it, or vice versa?
How does the iLife suite run (I know iMovie 09 and 08 don't run on an older G5)
How is iTunes tv show viewing? (Non HD)
How is DVD ripping (how long does it take to rip a DVD)
I may have more questions soon, thanks..
Click to expand...

Not too many users here will be able to answer these questions, even though I know it is technically also a PowerMac forum. A great resource for older Macs is http://www.lowendmac.com. This site is very active, constantly updated, and has articles and links to many resources and forums. They were very helpful to me recently when I was given an old G4. Good luck! :)
 
I have/had a dual core 2.0 G5 w/ 6.5gigs of RAM. Here are my observations:

1. Leopard felt faster than Tiger did
2. according to apple's specs,

"Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor.; iMovie requires an Intel-based Mac, Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster); GarageBand Learn to Play requires an Intel-based Mac with a dual-core processor or better."

So you'll need a least a dual 2.0Ghz G5.

3. haven't had any problems with iTunes TV shows viewing (I downloaded some samples) and also HD movie trailers played smoothly (assuming they were completely downloaded). the one thing is that I have an upgraded graphics card (7800GT) which may or may not have an impact on that.

4. I've only ripped DVDs for my ipod touch (so no so much ripping DVD for HD quality). Roughly it takes about a 1:1 ratio of length of movie to time for ripping for ipod touch/iphone format via handbrake. So a 2 hour movie takes about 2 hours to rip via the standard settings for iphone/ipod touch format.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks to you both. THose answers and the referral to lowendmacs helped a bunch... I'm so psyched, I'm stuck with a G3 right now, so a G5 will be a huge improvement!!!!
 
Is Tiger faster than Leopard on it, or vice versa? Leopard feels more responsive just have plenty of RAM.

How is DVD ripping (how long does it take to rip a DVD) About 15minutes for a straight rip to a Video_TS folder though it varies on encryption quatlity. I don't know about converting as I only make straight backups of my movies.
 
It's a 1.8 dual G5 with 4gb ram and a 250gb HDD and a 256mb video card.. BTW, thanks for the reply.. That helps
 
Leopard will run very smoothly on your G5. The 4gb of memory will be very nice to you.

You can upgrade the DVD burner if you want better performance. I think the stock DVR104? will rip a DVD in 20-30 minutes. I purchased an OEM Pioneer DVR-108 and patched it with the latest firmware and removed the Rip-lock limitation and was able to rip my DVDs in under 8 minutes.

There was never a dual 1.6gbz G5, it was either a dual 1.8 or 2.0 or a single 1.6. There's also 2 models of the dual 1.8, one had 4 memory slots while the latter one had 8 memory slots which also had PCI-X slots.

I've had both the 1.8s and Leopard to me outperformed Tiger with at least 2gb of memory. Sounds like you are purchasing a really nice system. Hopefully you don't pay no more than $500-$600 for it :p.
 
Is the Power Mac your only option and at what price?

Honestly I have to admit that the Power Mac G5 is getting really long in the tooth.
 
Pressure said:
Is the Power Mac your only option and at what price?

Honestly I have to admit that the Power Mac G5 is getting really long in the tooth.
Click to expand...

It is all a matter of money, isn't it? And then about what the purpose of the Mac is. I have a G5 2.7 Dual-Core that still is blazing through most apps.
 
THe G5 also has an X800XT mac edition and a 7.1 channel sound card... I saw that those video cards don't come cheap..
 
Get a dual core 2.0, late 2005. It's takes up to 16 gigs of ram, and is the slowest of the last powermacs I have owned and would still consider owning.

I'm running the 2.3 dual core right now, VERY HAPPY.
 
It was a limitation that Pioneer had on their drives which limited the ripping speed to I think 2-4x? Flashing with the newer firmware and removing that riplock limitation would let you rip at the fastest speed possible, which I think was 12x(on my particular model that I had).

Just google, "Pioneer riplock".
 
The Mini is the better machine for just about everything. With an eSATA card you could hang more disks off the G5 than the Mini, but that's it.

I just upgraded from a dual 1.8 G5 to an old quad 2.66 Mac Pro. It's awesome. My dual 1.66 Mini is faster at many things than my G5 (until the mini runs out of its 2GB RAM, or needs to use a GPU - the new Minis are much better than the old in this regard).

With regards to your original questions:
-Leopard is better than Tiger in most regards.
-The G5 won't run iMovie 08/09. Well, it will, but it's unusable. The other iLife apps works fine.
-Ripping a DVD is never fast enough. Just don't have to do it at the last minute and you'll never have trouble.
 
I was planning on getting the high end version with 4gb ram upgrade? Or should I get the 2.2 ghz processor instead?
 
I'd just avoid any of the liquid-cooled G5's (ie Dual 2.5, 2.7 and the Quad 2.5).

I'd hit up a dual 2.3 if I could find one.
 
Apple contracted Delphi, a company that made coolant systems for cars, for the cooling systems. Maybe not such a good idea in hindsight. I mean, if you got a coolant leak in your car, you get it fixed, no harm no foul. You get a coolant leak in your Mac, it's done.
 
Yeah avoid the liquid-cooled G5's like a hooker with Syphilis.

There have been many members on here though that got theirs either replaced for free or upgraded to a Mac Pro for free even off warranty. It's a gamble though.
 
I have a 1.8 (SOLO :rolleyes:) G5. With 1.25GB of ram, it runs fine, struggles a bit for certain things but it's reliable. Also check what graphics card it has, the nvidia has a performance issue (FX5200) it doesn't do the transparent tool bar thing.

I can confirm that iLife 08 and 09 and iWork 08 and 09 work fine. Just a little slow if anything, but workable.
 
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