Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Downsides of using Panther or Tiger on a powerbook

So I'm rocking the 15 inch Powerbook G4, early 2005 (1.67 GHz like yours, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB HD). And I did some real world testing. Geekbench can only tell you so much.

These are fresh installs, no third party apps, OS fully patched and updated via Software Update

Boot up time with 10.4 - 2:31
Boot up time with 10.5 - 1:42

Start Safari with 10.4 - :10
Start Safari with 10.5 - :07

Copy 8 GB file to USB with 10.4 - 19 minutes
Copy 8 GB file to USB with 10.5 - 14 minutes


I think you see my point :) Go with Leopard on that machine - It runs beautifully. You'll be kicking yourself if you don't.
 
dbrewer80221 said:
So I'm rocking the 15 inch Powerbook G4, early 2005 (1.67 GHz like yours, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB HD). And I did some real world testing. Geekbench can only tell you so much.

These are fresh installs, no third party apps, OS fully patched and updated via Software Update

Boot up time with 10.4 - 2:31
Boot up time with 10.5 - 1:42

Start Safari with 10.4 - :10
Start Safari with 10.5 - :07

Copy 8 GB file to USB with 10.4 - 19 minutes
Copy 8 GB file to USB with 10.5 - 14 minutes


I think you see my point :) Go with Leopard on that machine - It runs beautifully. You'll be kicking yourself if you don't.
Click to expand...

That's what I said all along to the OP.

Nice comparison, shows clearly Leopard is substantially faster on this Powerbook.
And, if you remove all non essential Intel code it is even faster.
Boot up times can even be improved by removing non essential .kexts from extensions folder but that’s not an easy task.
 
justperry said:
That's what I said all along to the OP.

Nice comparison, shows clearly Leopard is substantially faster on this Powerbook.
And, if you remove all non essential Intel code it is even faster.
Boot up times can even be improved by removing non essential .kexts from extensions folder but that’s not an easy task.
Click to expand...

He just happened to catch me at a good time. :) I just got this G4 off of eBay, and installed Tiger on it, then decided that I wanted Leopard on it instead.
 
orestes1984 said:
If you put an SSDin an external firewire enclosure it will be faster than the internal PATA drive.
Click to expand...

Not always. That Powerbook has a ATA/100 bus that maxes out at 100MB per second. With real world speeds hitting close to 90MB/s. FireWire 400 maxes out at about 40MB/s. Even my lowly 550Mhz Powerbook G4 would boot faster from a new internal drive on its ATA/66 bus then it would over a FireWire drive.
 
Intell said:
Not always. That Powerbook has a ATA/100 bus that maxes out at 100MB per second. With real world speeds hitting close to 90MB/s. FireWire 400 maxes out at about 40MB/s. Even my lowly 550Mhz Powerbook G4 would boot faster from a new internal drive on its ATA/66 bus then it would over a FireWire drive.
Click to expand...

Except that that same Powerbook has Firewire 800;)
 
I just did a comparison.

External disk is a Carbon copy of internal disk, did this right before this test.

Boot Up from chime to login screen.

Internal = 1.18.5 minutes

External Firewire 800 Sata 2 disc inside = 1.16 minutes

Timed with iPhone, the difference is probably near to zero, can not time exactly.


Note: System is PPC code only and 105 kexts less in Extension Folder, not really relevant but it seems quite a bit faster than the above poster.(dbrewer80221)
 
justperry said:
Note: System is PPC code only and 105 kexts less in Extension Folder, not really relevant but it seems quite a bit faster than the above poster.(dbrewer80221)
Click to expand...

I haven't removed the Intel code from my install. I just did another boot and got 1:33. I consider the system to be up when I have a dock, desktop, and everything in the menu bar.
 
Guys do you think that maybe Panther 10.3.7 that came with my PBook could do better on speed than either Tiger or Leopard?
 
zoran said:
Guys do you think that maybe Panther 10.3.7 that came with my PBook could do better on speed than either Tiger or Leopard?
Click to expand...

Not really. Tiger is faster than Panther at nearly everything and it can run much more modern software than Panther.
 
PowerPCMacMan said:
Forget Panther.. and to an extent Tiger.. if your PowerBook is over 1Ghz and can handle it, get it up to Leopard..
Click to expand...
it has very little memory, i think its only 512mb and i cannot afford getting more, thats why should i just use an OS that was used back then?
 
zoran said:
it has very little memory, i think its only 512mb and i cannot afford getting more, thats why should i just use an OS that was used back then?
Click to expand...

Tiger is still a much better option for it. Even Leopard would run well for light monotasks on that machine.
 
zoran said:
it has very little memory, i think its only 512mb and i cannot afford getting more, thats why should i just use an OS that was used back then?
Click to expand...

Tiger will run very well with just 512 mb. That is what my intel iMac came with.
 
zoran said:
Guys do you think that maybe Panther 10.3.7 that came with my PBook could do better on speed than either Tiger or Leopard?
Click to expand...

Why can't you afford another 512mb stick, ram is soooooo cheap nowadays its only 12 cents a megabyte, compare that to $1 a megabyte a few years ago and then $5 a megabyte in 1993.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back