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4 year old G5's compared to todays?

eclipse

eclipse

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 18, 2005
989
14
Sydney
Hi all, my wife's machine was bought about 4 years ago and has the following stats. She's a graphic designer. How does it compare to today's G5 towers and should she upgrade now or wait for something big that might be coming out just around the corner?

(When she upgrades I can get this machine below and do some "assistant design" stuff and home movies!:D I'm currently on a 1999 G4 that's starting to clunk.)

Hardware Overview:

Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,2
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 3.5 GB
Bus Speed: 1 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.4f0
Click to expand...
 
It might be a sign that the Power Mac G5 isn't sold anymore...

I suggest getting a faster hard drive and more RAM.
 
So the 4 year old hard drives can be a limit to CPU? What... retrieving the data? And the RAM is more important than the increased CPU power of modern machines?

I guess you're being kind and looking at saving us some serious $$$$.

(In your best kids whining voice... "But when do I get MY nice shiny mac!? :(:(:()

OK, whining over.
 
A 10,000 RPM hard drive would improve access times and more RAM would prevent paging to hard disk.

It's much cheaper then a new Mac.
 
If you wait a few weeks or so, they will have updated the Mac Pro, which is the Intel version of the PowerMac G5.

I presume it will come standard with 8-Cores, (8 Processors).

The current Mac Pro is about 2-3x faster than the Fastest G5 that Apple produced, which was the Quad G5.

You're looking at a big performance jump, I'm thinking up to 6-8x faster, which might be exaggeration.

Ram is important, you need at least 4 gigs, ram comes cheap if you buy outside of Apple, same applies to Hard Drives as well.

Unless that G5 is really slowing you down and you feel a faster Mac would make you a lot more productive, then go the Mac Pro route.

Otherwise, upgrade it, it doesn't cost that much and will save you lots of money.
 
Might be a good time to sell it as a graphics machine, as it would still preform most tasks very well. You'll get a good price for it now, but if you leave it another 2 years it'll end up gathering dust somewhere.
 
Eidorian said:
A 10,000 RPM hard drive would improve access times and more RAM would prevent paging to hard disk.

It's much cheaper then a new Mac.
Click to expand...

yeah, it's cheaper, but whether or not it would be effective depends on what the bottleneck is in eclipse's wife's system. If she's maxing out the processors with RAM to spare then adding more isn't going to do anything.

IMO after the new mac pros are released would be a great time to upgrade a 4 year old G5. But again, whether that makes sense depends on what the limiting factor in the current machine is.
 
She's got 4 Gig's Ram (on lots of little RAM chips... you remember the days of 250 mb chips?)

And she's got 2 of these hard drives...

Serial-ATA Bus:

ST3160023AS:

Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: ST3160023AS
Revision: 3.05
Serial Number: *********
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ata
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Serial-ATA
Bay Name: "B (lower)"
OS9 Drivers: Yes
S.M.A.R.T. status: Not Supported
Volumes:
Click to expand...

What were the RPM's of these guys?

I'm hearing that the next machine is going to be way cool and FAST!
 
Slightly not on topic, but I've been with my Macbook for 18 months now and I still miss the speed of my single 1.8 G5 PowerMac.

Back on topic, I got a chance to use a pair of Raptor HDs (the 10K SATA kind) RAID striped for about a week when I had my PowerMac and it was startling how responsive my computer became. That and cleaning up the finder (i.e. removing all the orphaned files lying around on my desktop) made Panther scream, I can only imagine what it would do for Leopard.

EDIT: It looks like your "ST3160023AS" hard drives are 7200 RPM.
 
My box still rocks for what I do. 4GB RAM keeps Ps snappy. Until the real estate business turns around (I shoot virtual tours) I'll be just fine.
 
i have a dual 1.8GHz G5 with a gig of ram. it is FAST. I haven't used a new mac pro, but even the macbook pros can't touch it. For a 4 year old computer it can still hold its own.

the G5s came with 7200rpm SATA drives. upgrading to a 10k rpm drive that could be used to store all her projects would help. Also more ram. this mac can hold 16GB of ram lol. ram is so cheap now days. Go get like 2-4 sticks of 1gig ram. The G5s take PC3200, or DDR400 ram. Same ram, just different ways of saying it.
 
I've been looking at stats and asking around and the current mac pro towers will be quite a bit faster then that g5 even though it's quite a powerful machine itself. However, if you will be getting rid of your g4 and cycling the g5 to you, then maybe it's a good time to get a new mac pro for the wife :)

Definitely just sit and wait for about 2 weeks and see what is offered after macworld. At that point, probably think about getting what will then be the lowest tier mac pro then (which like was mentioned will probably be 8 cores for most of them and newer processors) which will wipe the floor with that g5 :) and get you the most for your money.

Upgrade the hardrives and ram by yourself though through 3rd party though and not through apple. Cheaper option. :)

anyway. Upgrading now may be good if you can afford it go ahead. You can still get a little money for the powermac g4 ... a couple hundred anyway probably depending on specs which will cover the extra ram and harddrive expense for the new mac pro and then you can snag the g5 from her hehe.

from what i've read she will definitely see a nice performance boost.

Goodluck and join the wait for macworld!
 
I love you all, and would have your children for you — if I wasn't an Aussie bloke. ;)
 
(Sticks hand up)
Oh oh oh!!!!

Anyone got a diagram for how to actually stick in the RAM or hard drives I get? (In Yellow, you know, "Sticking in extra RAM and Hard-drives without killing your computer or electrocuting yourself — For Dummies!"):)
 
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