After parts upgrade: Keep Tiger or install Leopard?

[454Angell]

Hello from a Mac newbie!

I want to do some upgrades to my Power Mac G5 (June 2004).

What I have planned is: 4 GB addition to the 1 GB currently installed.
And GOD WILLING.. find an ATI RADEON 9600 XT 128MB card to replace my crappy 64MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. Thoughts?

I'm also thinking of buying an 500GB or 1TB drive to replace the old 160GB drive. But since I have a PowerPC processor.. and Leopard is the last of version to support it.. is it really worth the $$ to buy Leopard? Will I gain a significant increase in speed and function?

Anything that you can offer about the upgrade process would be much appreciated!

Thanks

 

[Intell]

I say get Leopard now while its at it current price, rather then try to find it later when its more expensive. Also you will notice a big speed gain and more functionality.

 

[454Angell]

I say get Leopard now...

Yeah, I am thinking that I may just go ahead and get Leopard. I mean.. if I'm going to upgrade and try to extend the life of my PowerMac, I might as well go all the way I suppose. I'm happy with Tiger, but I guess I just want to justify spending the money for Leopard.

 

[chedda]

same boat

Yeah, I am thinking that I may just go ahead and get Leopard. I mean.. if I'm going to upgrade and try to extend the life of my PowerMac, I might as well go all the way I suppose. I'm happy with Tiger, but I guess I just want to justify spending the money for Leopard.

i just ordered a family leopard disc from ebay. I am also considering an ssd to squeeze as much out of this machine powermac 7,2. The only flaw is the lack of internal drives and lack of a sata connection on the optical drive. I am aware of 3rd party extra internal drives but i fear they could easily effect cooling. I am using a 64 bit rendering app so i should be faster under leopard although like you suggested Tiger has been great and super stable. I suppose we are just being clever (& tight) moving from one fully mature OS to another.

Chedda

 

[Giuly]

Every PowerMac G5 out there should run Leopard, that's why it supports PPC. If not the PowerMac G5, which other PPC machine should run Leopard? Tiger is for PowerMac G4 <867MHz and <512MB RAM. I would even run Leopard on a G4 Mini.

 

[454Angell]

i just ordered a family leopard disc from ebay..

Chedda

Awesome, Chedda

I sorta now wish I didn't commit to join a fantasy football league, because I'd have extra money right now to start buying upgrade parts!!

I think a SSD would be so sweet, but alas.. might just go with a regular SATA.

 

[454Angell]

Every PowerMac G5 out there should run Leopard, that's why it supports PPC. If not the PowerMac G5, which other PPC machine should run Leopard? Tiger is for PowerMac G4 <867MHz and <512MB RAM. I would even run Leopard on a G4 Mini.

Guily, I think I will pull the trigger for Leopard once I get the $$$.

 

[Hrududu]

Guily, I think I will pull the trigger for Leopard once I get the $$$.

Do it. I've got 2x of the same June 04 dual 2.0GHz G5's and both have Leopard installed. One only has 1GB of RAM and its still very usable. Both still have the 5200, and its really not bad at all.

 

[MaxMike]

IMO, Leopard just looks sooooooo much nicer than Tiger. I had an eMac with Tiger and I think that Leopard was much more appealing. Plus all of the extra features (i.e. Time Machine) in Leopard

 

[Davy.Shalom]

Tiger is more stable, but Leopard has more features. You decide.

 

[MacHamster68]

i too would go for tiger and not upgrading to leopard , leopard might have some feature which you do not really need as there are programs for tiger which do the same thing apart from front row which basically only transforms your mac in a ipod
and leopard does not give you more performance , in most cases it slows things down as its already to much focused on intel Mac's
so tiger is more stable , better performing and most software still has tiger as minimum requirement

 

[DSPalpatine]

If you were on the fence about installing Leopard on a G4 iMac, for instance, I'd probably recommend to stick with Tiger. However, with a G5 PowerMac, a good amount of RAM, and a decent video card, I can't see a major reason not to upgrade, at the very least for the reason that Tiger no longer receives security patches. On the other hand, with Leopard, you not only can get patches but also newer Apple programs such as Safari 5 and iLife '09.

I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but anecdotally, Leopard has been fast and stable on my G5 iMac. 10.5.7 was a bit buggy for me, but since 10.5.8, it's been running well.

As an aside, I've seen plenty of comments that Leopard is less stable than Tiger (beyond just this thread), but has anyone ever done a comparison of uptime on PPC systems running 10.4 versus 10.5, with a fairly large sample size of machines? I'd be interested in reading it, if you know of one.

Also, if you ever find yourself wanting an iPad or an iPhone 4, you'll need Leopard, as they aren't supported on Tiger.

Just my $0.02.