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G4 mini: Want to improve performance, need suggestions

J

Jethro70

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 3, 2009
10
0
Orygun
I have a 1st gen. 1.25 GHz G4 mini with 512 MB of RAM, and I am wanting to perform a few fairly cheap upgrades to improve performance, and was wondering what suggestions you all had.

My goals:

  • Increase overall speed, and decrease the frequency of getting 'beachballed'.
  • Be able to sync with my 3rd gen. iPod nano (currently need to sync w/ my PC), and with my soon-to-arrive 2nd gen. iPod Touch.

Here is what I had in mind for upgrades:

  • Max out the RAM with a 1 GB stick -- $35-40 for the stick, plus a couple bucks for putty knives to break into the mini.
  • Wipe the HD, and install Leopard from my brother's Family Pack (currently running Panther).

From what I have read, this should accomplish my goals. If anyone has any other advice or suggestions, I would very much appreciate it -- or if I'm way off track, let me know that, too.
 
replace it with an intel mini :p

I don't think you can really do much to speed it up, RAM will help you multitask though. Getting a larger hard disk might be useful to you. There aren't many upgrade options available really.
 
If you're going to open it up, then how about a faster hard drive? Weren't the stock units something like 4200 RPM in those? I'd look around to see if it can handle the heat of a 7200 RPM unit, as I know they do have those in the 2.5" form factor. Might make a pretty big difference in performance...
 
Im sorry to say Leopard wont be increasing performance any for you, in fact it will do the opposite :eek:. You might be better off getting Tiger.
 
edgew8 said:
Im sorry to say Leopard wont be increasing performance any for you, in fact it will do the opposite :eek:. You might be better off getting Tiger.
Click to expand...
That was my initial thought, but then my brother said he had the Leopard family pack. And I figured it was worth a shot since he wouldn't charge me for Leopard.. and if I went with Tiger, I'd have to pay through the nose to get a copy.

In doing a few searches, I did find instances where people had good results installing Leopard on machines similar to mine, including this MacRumors thead: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/579873/

I'm willing to give it a shot with Leopard... unless someone knows where to find a really good deal on an unused copy of Tiger.
 
Jethro70 said:
I have a 1st gen. 1.25 GHz G4 mini with 512 MB of RAM, and I am wanting to perform a few fairly cheap upgrades to improve performance, and was wondering what suggestions you all had.

My goals:

  • Increase overall speed, and decrease the frequency of getting 'beachballed'.
  • Be able to sync with my 3rd gen. iPod nano (currently need to sync w/ my PC), and with my soon-to-arrive 2nd gen. iPod Touch.

Here is what I had in mind for upgrades:

  • Max out the RAM with a 1 GB stick -- $35-40 for the stick, plus a couple bucks for putty knives to break into the mini.
  • Wipe the HD, and install Leopard from my brother's Family Pack (currently running Panther).

From what I have read, this should accomplish my goals. If anyone has any other advice or suggestions, I would very much appreciate it -- or if I'm way off track, let me know that, too.
Click to expand...

You should definitely max out the memory to 1GB and install a 7200RPM HDD. That should noticeably speed up your mini.

If you're feeling especially brave, you could always overclock you're 1.25GHz CPU to 1.42GHz.... %14 speed gain!
 
edgew8 said:
Im sorry to say Leopard wont be increasing performance any for you, in fact it will do the opposite :eek:
Click to expand...

That is false. A 1.25 mini will do well with leopard.

The best things to do are max out the RAM, install a 5400rpm hard drive and overclock it to 1.42ghz.
 
I've done what your looking to do, more RAM and a faster drive will help, but don't expect a huge difference. 10.4 is faster than 10.5, but there were some things in 10.5 I wanted so I stuck with that.
 
danrel said:
You should definitely max out the memory to 1GB and install a 7200RPM HDD. That should noticeably speed up your mini.

If you're feeling especially brave, you could always overclock you're 1.25GHz CPU to 1.42GHz.... %14 speed gain!
Click to expand...

That's pretty awesome! I just picked up a 1.42 so I might try OCing it to 1.67 or possibly 1.83 :eek:

Wow and the 80gb 4,200 hdd is definitely the bottleneck. I am eyeing up those Western Digital 250gb 5400rpm drives though ;)

They do make 7200rpm drives but the largest is only a 100gb drive.
 
More RAM (essential)
Faster harddrive would improve the speed quite a lot. Get the largest, highest RPM drive that fits.

10.4 tiger would be your best bet. But if you NEED to go to a later iTunes and don't have 10.4, then 10.5 might be ok, just don't go widget crazy since you only have 1gb of max ram.
 
Yeah I forgot to mention, I'm running Leopard right now with 1gb of memory and it's pretty good. Like I said though, I can tell the hard drive is what's slowing everything down.
 
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