G5 Still good for todays uses?

[joeturner11]

I have been looking at the past few weeks at some cheap G5's going for £80ish quid on ebay and other sites. I have been wondering weather to get one or not, I have been thinking about buying one ( duel 2ghz model ) and upgrading to 8GB Ram and putting 1tb of SSD harddrive in it to start with, upgrading the other slot with another 1TB SSD in the near future after, I would be using this for Photoshop and editing in that area and gaming ( may duel boot with Windows after time ) to Play COD and such games, Working it out the total cost will be around £240 for the Ram and hardrive.

So...

Apple G5 - 2ghz duel Processor - 8GB Ram - SSD 1TB Hardrive

For £240 ( I have monitor etc. already )

Worth it or not?

All opinions welcome

 

[eyoungren]

Well…whether it's worth it or not is entirely your call.

I can say that up until the logicboard died last year I worked for 9 years on a 1.8Ghz G5 with 4GB ram. The logicboard has been replaced and my coworker uses it now.

Adobe Creative Suite 4
QuarkXPress 8.5
Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro w/Enfocus Pitstop 7.5 and Quite A Box of Tricks
Microsoft Office 2008

Those are the main apps we use every day. The G5 has performed well since February 2005 and it's been on 24/7 since we got it.

We're a weekly newspaper and the G5 (and my Mac Pro) are used for ad design, pagination, newspaper composition, legals, classifieds and in house design work.

 

[Zotaccian]

English is not my native language, but if I understood correctly OP said he is going to buy a G5 and occasionally boot to Windows? That is not possible on G5. G5 and earlier Mac Pro -machines look the same outside but are different, Mac Pro contains Intel -processor which is from the same family as PC's have had for ages. Windows has been compiled for Intel (x86) but not for PowerPC (aside from Windows NT 4 as far as I know, but no XP, Vista, 7 etc. available).

 

[Twimfy]

English is not my native language, but if I understood correctly OP said he is going to buy a G5 and occasionally boot to Windows? That is not possible on G5. G5 and earlier Mac Pro -machines look the same outside but are different, Mac Pro contains Intel -processor which is from the same family as PC's have had for ages. Windows has been compiled for Intel (x86) but not for PowerPC (aside from Windows NT 4 as far as I know, but no XP, Vista, 7 etc. available).

Yup, you understood perfectly and you're also completely correct.

Doesn't sound like it's the right machine for the OP at all.

 

[Altemose]

OP, you are potentially purchasing at the oldest a 11 year old Mac, or at the newest an eight year old Mac. Granted the last models came out in 2005 but continued to sell well into 2006. You say you want to put in a 1 TB SSD. Sorry, but that won't work as most SSDs that big are going to be SATA III, which doesn't coexist with PPC Macs well at all. Also, Adobe Flash will be terrible on PPC Macs, and it will only get worse. I am not trying to discourage the purchase, just giving the facts.

PPC Macs like mentioned earlier cannot start into Windows. Only Intel models can through a feature called Boot Camp. I think you need a new Mac to do what you want, as any eight year old computer, PC or Mac will not handle new games well.

 

[joeturner11]

Thanks for the input everyone! I will have a look at Mac Pros now as it is clear the G5 is too far gone

 

[gavinstubbs09]

I had got my G5 first (dual 2GHz early 2005) and I was able to get it set up the way I liked it easily enough. CS4 worked fine and my Wacom tablet worked so I was set! But one place the G5 wasn't too good at these days - video rendering. So at that point I got a bone stock 2.66GHz Mac Pro 1,1 for $230. I since threw in stuff like a SSD, 2x HDDs in RAID0, Blu Ray Burner, 12GB Ram, Radeon 5750 1GB, and the best part: 2x Xeon x5355s. Thing is a beast. But at the end of the day if I didn't need video rendering, you'd best bet that I'd still be using my G5!