I've finally found a launcher to get Minecraft (1.5.1) running on my Powerbook G4 (1.25gigs of ram, Radeon 9700 64mb), but the only problem is; the game's performance is dreadful. Starting and playing a singleplayer creative map, I'm getting 1-5 fps. I've also tried installing Optifine (light and ultra) and turning the settings much much lower, and even those don't improve any matters. I have read however that running multiplayer does improve the performance by quite a lot, although, I don't know of any still existing 1.5.1 servers. Anything I can do to get a playable frame-rate? Thanks.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
G4 getting very poor performance running Minecraft
- Thread starter hellothere231
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'd like to try your Minecraft-version and could check, how it works in multiplayer-mode.
I've set up a Minecraft-server on our MacMini C2D. Would be nice to check, how PPC do perform.
Could you send some information how you've got it running on PPC?
Not much, just got the Minecraft 1.5.1 game files/launcher from here: http://users.vermontel.net/~kevin_ondre/mac files/Minecraft for PPC/Game Folder/
Unzipped it, put the folder named minecraft into ~/Library/Application Support, and put the special AppleScript launcher into my /Applications folder.
We had a Minecraft 1.5.1 server for PowerPC Macs going awhile back. @128keaton was hosting it and I'm Admin, but idk if it's still online. Those were the good ol days 
Version 1.5.0_30-b03.
Aw, just saw the server status webpage: it seems to be offline.We had a Minecraft 1.5.1 server for PowerPC Macs going awhile back. @128keaton was hosting it and I'm Admin, but idk if it's still online. Those were the good ol days
Thanks for guiding me. Was able to get minecraft running on Powerbook G4 1,6GHz, but it's unplayable lame ...
Couldn't connect to our minecraft server at the mini, guess it's related to different versions of PPC-Client (1.5.1) and intel-server (v.1.10. ...)
id just quickly like to point out that the Minecraft app originally came from this thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-cider-powerpcs-minecraft-solution.1827849/ @Surrat was the one who put it together and fixed sound
That .app worked well on all the PPCs I tossed it on (iBook G4 1.33, PowerMac G5 dual 2.3). Sound was working perfectly, and it was easy to use. I can't recall, did it have optifine too?
Does the server-version have to match the clients version?We had a Minecraft 1.5.1 server for PowerPC Macs going awhile back. @128keaton was hosting it and I'm Admin, but idk if it's still online. Those were the good ol days
ICYDK, Minecraft is a voxel-based game, by nature of these types of games, you'll find that their performance is directly related to the single-thread processing speed of your CPU unless someone has painstakingly taken the time to separate the elements of the game into dedicated cores. Yes your graphics card eventually renders the voxels, but your CPU has to process a lot of information before it even hits the GPU.
Prime example - I played Arc: SE (also voxel-based) on an unlocked 3.33 Ghz i7-5820k (6-core) with an MSI 980ti Sea-Hawk (6GB (1500 MHz, 6.1 teraflops)) (Almost on par with a Titan X).
I was getting about 53 fps at Epic (highest) quality.
I overclocked my CPU (not my GPU) to 4.0 Ghz on every core. Relaunched the game, 91 FPS average.
Your G4 assuming it's top of the line has an 1.6 Ghz processor in it (according to Wikipedia). This is the reason Minecraft sucks on it. Your RAM might need to be boosted to 2 GB but good luck finding RAM that will work in it, I don't think they sell DDR2 much less DDR anymore. Your graphics card shouldn't have too much bearing on the game, but in all reality your best bet is to buy a $300 Windows 10 laptop if you are just looking to play Minecraft. The newest intel i3s handle it without flinching and your almost guaranteed to have at least 2 GB of shared graphics and 128 MB of dedicated graphics. No sense in buying a $1000+ computer for that.
Prime example - I played Arc: SE (also voxel-based) on an unlocked 3.33 Ghz i7-5820k (6-core) with an MSI 980ti Sea-Hawk (6GB (1500 MHz, 6.1 teraflops)) (Almost on par with a Titan X).
I was getting about 53 fps at Epic (highest) quality.
I overclocked my CPU (not my GPU) to 4.0 Ghz on every core. Relaunched the game, 91 FPS average.
Your G4 assuming it's top of the line has an 1.6 Ghz processor in it (according to Wikipedia). This is the reason Minecraft sucks on it. Your RAM might need to be boosted to 2 GB but good luck finding RAM that will work in it, I don't think they sell DDR2 much less DDR anymore. Your graphics card shouldn't have too much bearing on the game, but in all reality your best bet is to buy a $300 Windows 10 laptop if you are just looking to play Minecraft. The newest intel i3s handle it without flinching and your almost guaranteed to have at least 2 GB of shared graphics and 128 MB of dedicated graphics. No sense in buying a $1000+ computer for that.
Last edited:
Just saying, I never have trouble finding DDR and DDR2 when I need it. Newegg still sells DDR2-the only real issue is the cost of 4gb sticks, which are irrelevant since no G4 will take more than 2gb of RAM.
Heck, you can easily find new PC66/100/133 in any capacity you want up to 512mb. I even bought a couple of gigabytes worth of new 60ns 168 pin EDO RAM not too long ago.
BTW, the fastest factory Powerbook G4 was 1.67ghz.
Lol I rounded to the nearest 10th, good suggestions on where to find the RAM <thumbs up>
Uups - next question: where can I find the complementary server-stuff to v.1.5.1 ...?
[doublepost=1472895520][/doublepost]
Very interesting to know more about the limiting factors of "voxel-based"-stuff (I've never heard about that before).
My MacBook2008alu core2duo with 2.4GHz does run latest Minecraft at good speed.
If I do understand everything right, then a single core MacBook CoreDuo/Lion with comparable processor-speed of 2.xGHz would have same performance too.
Those machines are available at about 150-200€ (my MB came at 250€ 1.5y ago...)
Sadly, minecraft is very difficult for a PPC mac to run smoothly.
I once tested the minecraft 1.5.1 server app on my Xserve G4 dual 1.33ghz.. the app ran so slow that with nobody logged on, it was complaining about not keeping up its speed.
A 2ghz+ G5 tower with good video card can run minecraft 1.5.1 pretty well, enough to play it and have fun, but very few G4's can run it smoothly.
I once tested the minecraft 1.5.1 server app on my Xserve G4 dual 1.33ghz.. the app ran so slow that with nobody logged on, it was complaining about not keeping up its speed.
A 2ghz+ G5 tower with good video card can run minecraft 1.5.1 pretty well, enough to play it and have fun, but very few G4's can run it smoothly.
Yeah, the only reason I knew about it is because of a friend who sells computers and games the rest of the day. It wasn't until I read about it that I actually understood why. There isn't an easy laymans explanation but for those who are still interested and from what I gather. Voxel is like a 3d bitmap that contains X, Y, and Z coordinates. Now bitmap is an image format that states the height*width*length and then provides information to what is in each hwl coordinate, from there, you might have more hwl coordinates for subobjects such as rocks to describe what they look like. Your processor handles all these coordinates one at a time (unless the game is multi-core) and at each coordinate it processes the subobjects inside one coordinate at a time, luckily in the case of minecraft, it's just putting a premade-templated block inside of the coordinate.
This falls under the bad design of loops and big o notation O(n^2). Which basically states if you have 10 objects inside each of 10 areas you'll have to loop through the 10 areas, then loop through the 10 objects so 10 to the 10th power or 10,000,000,000 calculations. (or 10 seconds on a 1 Ghz machine).
32-bit games process numbers up to 2,147,483,648
64-bit games process numbers up to 18 billion and some change which is why No Man's Sky has *over* 18 billion unique planets.
But going back to Minecraft, the maximum world size if I remember correctly is 256 high, 256 long, 256 wide. Why does this matter? You have to process information at each of the coordinates, so start at (0,0,0) and build up and out (0,0,1) (0,1,0) (0,1,1) (1,0,0) (1,0,1)... (256, 256, 256). Basically it will have to process 16,777,216 squares then process another 16,777,216 times just to add the data (image object of dirt, water, tree bark, tree leaves, lava, etc.) to the square. One this happens, it has to keep track of everything within your view bubble. This means if you can see 80 blocks out, you can see 80 blocks up, and 80 blocks down (even if it's blocked by objects) Think wire-frame. So your computer is constantly drawing these objects, not a problem for a GPU, but traversing these objects requires CPU and that is one of the reasons why you see lag on lower performing systems. Memory is one thing but when you have to crunch many (80^3) objects (or 512,000) every second, there might be some bottleneck considering memory retrieval is about 10 nanoseconds, processor speed is 1 billion calculations a second (or 1 per nanosecond), then the processor also has to relay this information out to the GPU so now we are up to another 512,000 object calculations going to the GPU for a total of 1,024,000 calculations per second (1 Mhz), now include how much data is being sent in each object. If each object is 1 kb in size which might be about right, that's 1 billion calculations per second + the overhead of the OS. The GPU isn't sweating but you'll be getting your money's worth out of a single core of your CPU.
This is not official and is open for edits by someone more inclined in the actual processing done by Minecraft. Just an overview of how your computer handles that data.