Improving an agp G5?

[repairedCheese]

So, about two weeks ago, I got what I believe to be an early 2005 dual core 2ghz G5 PowerMac7,2 with pcix for the low, low price of $60, and having played with it, tested out the operating systems it can run, found that it sadly can't seem to run the G5 version of Jaguar for better classic support, but have also been impressed with Leopard on hardware actually meant for it, I've come to the conclusion that this toy will end up being a (relatively minor) file server.

While my ideal mac would be both able to run 9, or at least 10.2, all while having enough grunt to happily run a web browser without feeling like agony, that seems like a much less likely prospect than I thought.

Still, that doesn't feel like I've really hit the limits of this machine. I know all the complications of using an ssd on a system that doesn't support trim, but it still looks worth it, and the machine already has 4 gb of ram. The Radeon 9600 doesn't exactly seem to be doing me any favors, though. I know some people have messed around with cpu swapping, but that seems like a massive gamble that costs way more than I spent to even get the computer in the first place.

Am I missing anything? I'd certainly like to get the system running 3d accelerated games, but I barely know what a good agp card is in the windows world, never mind the world of the ppc mac. And I've never heard of pcix, nor does it seem like Amazon has, with how little there is on offer. Weirdly, the machine has what looks like a scsi card inside of it, though I can't tell if it works, but the seller said it was a video capture card.

I really am trying to get the most out of this beast, but I feel like I've hit the limits of what I can easily find.

That said, I really wish Leopard Webkit was more stable, it feels like it runs circles around even the most stripped down builds of Tenfourfox, running on Tiger. Is that one of those things an ssd would help with?

 

[eyoungren]

So, about two weeks ago, I got what I believe to be an early 2005 dual core 2ghz G5 PowerMac7,2 with pcix for the low, low price of $60, and having played with it, tested out the operating systems it can run, found that it sadly can't seem to run the G5 version of Jaguar for better classic support, but have also been impressed with Leopard on hardware actually meant for it, I've come to the conclusion that this toy will end up being a (relatively minor) file server.

While my ideal mac would be both able to run 9, or at least 10.2, all while having enough grunt to happily run a web browser without feeling like agony, that seems like a much less likely prospect than I thought.

Still, that doesn't feel like I've really hit the limits of this machine. I know all the complications of using an ssd on a system that doesn't support trim, but it still looks worth it, and the machine already has 4 gb of ram. The Radeon 9600 doesn't exactly seem to be doing me any favors, though. I know some people have messed around with cpu swapping, but that seems like a massive gamble that costs way more than I spent to even get the computer in the first place.

Am I missing anything? I'd certainly like to get the system running 3d accelerated games, but I barely know what a good agp card is in the windows world, never mind the world of the ppc mac. And I've never heard of pcix, nor does it seem like Amazon has, with how little there is on offer. Weirdly, the machine has what looks like a scsi card inside of it, though I can't tell if it works, but the seller said it was a video capture card.

I really am trying to get the most out of this beast, but I feel like I've hit the limits of what I can easily find.

That said, I really wish Leopard Webkit was more stable, it feels like it runs circles around even the most stripped down builds of Tenfourfox, running on Tiger. Is that one of those things an ssd would help with?

You have a 2.0 Dual Processor, not Dual Core. The DCs were late 2005 and have no AGP slots.

A good card if you can find one would be a Radeon FireGL X3. There are eBay sellers that flash these cards to Mac. A 9800 Pro is also a good card as well. A step up from what you have would be the Radeon 9650 which would double your ram.

There are two stickied threads in this forum that are all about tweaking TenFourFox. You might want to take a look. My Quad and my 2.3DC as well as all my other PowerMacs/PowerBooks benefit from it.

You can go up to 8GB ram. PCI-X slots are backwards compatible to PCI, so any PCI card you can find that is Mac compatible will work. You don't need to search for a specific PCI-X card. That means you can have more than one video card if you like.

Also, an SSD is good, but it's not going to solve performance issues. Modern SSDs have their own garbage collection, so TRIM isn't strictly necessary. The boost you get is mainly on boot and app load times. It's not going to make Webkit stable or faster.

 

[iluvmacs99]

I bought a PowerMac G5 just like yours last year for a song from the thrift store I am working in and it died within 1 month. These PCIX G5s are notorious for 3 common failures; memory controller (logic board), dying CPUs and dead power supply. All the G5s we have in the store to be recycled suffered one of the 3 issues. So before you commit yourself into upgrading your G5 to a better video card, let that machine run for at least 3 months straight on. If it survives more than 3 months, then I would invest a little of money in upgrading the computer. Otherwise, the most reliable machines to get if you want a G5 is the 2.3 DC (Dual Core) and the 2.5 Q (Quad). Both the 2.3DC and 2.5Quad share the same motherboard and are PCIe based and will last longer than the Dual Processor G5 of the older boards. Thankfully, I heeded the advice of our resident Mac technicians who had worked on these G5s when they were Apple Genius techs working for Apple Inc. So my only lost was the new SAFT 1/2 AA battery that I bought to replace the dead one on the board.

Having said that and when I had it working, I really enjoyed the machine and actually used it as part of my work process -- my digital DAW and my digital DV and legacy DVD restore machine for older vintage video footage via Final Cut Express 4. I also played some vintage games like Myst, Robosport (OS 9) and X Plane 9 which I got recently from a free bin in my thrift store. Sadly I couldn't play that game now since my G5 is dead. Although I might get a hold of a 2.3DC which was refurbished by a former Apple G5 tech and running well so I can get back into the game again.

I was also able to run TenFourFox using the PowerUOC mode and it ran very well and very fast! The only downside is Youtube which is limited to 360 to 480p. Other than that, it works just as fast as my Mac Pro 5,1 running High Sierra and Chrome. I also had 4Gb of RAM and an Nvidia FX5200 which allowed me to play most non-action games. You would only benefit with better video cards if you want to run Photoshop or Aperture 2 which demands better than FX5200 or ATI9600, but you can still use it. My Final Cut Express 4 works just fine with the Nvidia FX5200 with only 64MB of VRAM. With Tiger and OS 9.2.2, I could run most of my legacy applications and access most of my legacy files. That was the main point owning the G5 and thankfully restored those files back into my modern RAID 5 server before its death.

In terms of my only performance boost with my ex-G5, I was running with a Momentus XT which is a hybrid drive with 8Gb of built-in SSD and 750Gb of storage. It was just as fast as a SSD and definitely faster than the 1Tb 7200RPM WD Black I had running as my 2nd drive. With the Momentus XT, I don't have to worry about TRIM as it does its own garbage collection, but some modern SSDs do perform its own TRIM so you won't have an issue with using on a G5. But you are not going to get any major performance boost aside from booting faster to desktop and launching apps as the G5 is limited to SATA 1. When I did a performance check, I got 80-90MB/s on most read and writes with the Momentus XT. You could probably get slightly better performance with a pure SSD as SSD are relatively affordable nowadays. But then I got the Momentus XT for a song so I can't complain.

 

[repairedCheese]

You know, I should have caught that it was a dual processor mac. The dual heat sinks is a dead giveaway. But I've practically never been in the same room as a dual cpu machine and everything else I've had has been multi core, if it was anything. This is wonderfully extra.

And you're making me glad I didn't spend more than $60. It's been a fun machine so far, but losing more money on it would really be quite painful. The machine is definitely going to be running 24/7 as that's how I run my systems, and that's probably good for my wallet before I start pouring money into it.

I don't really think I knew quite what I was getting myself into when I bought this thing, but it is honestly a pretty amazing piece of hardware. I honestly hope it lasts years.

 

[z970]

I was also able to run TenFourFox using the PowerUOC mode and it ran very well and very fast! The only downside is Youtube which is limited to 360 to 480p. Other than that, it works just as fast as my Mac Pro 5,1 running High Sierra and Chrome. I also had 4Gb of RAM and an Nvidia FX5200 which allowed me to play most non-action games. You would only benefit with better video cards if you want to run Photoshop or Aperture 2 which demands better than FX5200 or ATI9600, but you can still use it. My Final Cut Express 4 works just fine with the Nvidia FX5200 with only 64MB of VRAM.

Adding into this (and as the FX 5200 is notoriously bottom of the barrel), I think you would absolutely benefit from a better card, especially concerning YouTube playback. When the Partitioned Engine Patch is installed, and with its GeForce 6600, my DC 2.0 G5 can stream 720p HD video on YouTube effortlessly. There's been no problems at all.

Unfortunately, 60fps playback is still a slightly different story...

 

[repairedCheese]

Adding into this (and as the FX 5200 is notoriously bottom of the barrel), I think you would absolutely benefit from a better card, especially concerning YouTube playback. When the Partitioned Engine Patch is installed, and with its GeForce 6600, my DC 2.0 G5 can stream 720p HD video on YouTube effortlessly. There's been no problems at all.

Unfortunately, 60fps playback is still a slightly different story...

It also looks like that GeForce 6600 will run a few circles around my system's Radeon 9600. I wouldn't want to spend too much because of reliability issues that would, at this point, get me to buy a whole new system, if they struck, and because the whole system did only put me back a whole $60, I know I could easily spend more than that upgrading the thing.

That doesn't mean I won't keep an eye out, especially after I've put the system through its paces for a few months.

 

[1042686]

Did it happen to come with it’s WiFi & BT antennas?

 

[repairedCheese]

Did it happen to come with it’s WiFi & BT antennas?

Unfortunately no. I didn't even know to ask about that at the time, but the guy I bought it from clearly knew less about the system than I did. And speaking of, I should really replace the 2.5" hard drive taped down in the lower drive bay. Or at least get an adapter.

 

[1042686]

Unfortunately no. I didn't even know to ask about that at the time, but the guy I bought it from clearly knew less about the system than I did. And speaking of, I should really replace the 2.5" hard drive taped down in the lower drive bay. Or at least get an adapter.

That’s a drag but it’s a very common part to go missing. You can buy an aftermarket replacement MCX 2.4ghz bluetooth antenna & a DIY WiFi antenna can be fashioned readily & cheaply.

Anyhow, If you spent any money on it, I recommend a 128gb or larger SSD as they’re dirt cheap nowadays & you could recycle it in any computer should the pmg5 stop working.

 

[repairedCheese]

That’s a drag but it’s a very common part to go missing. You can buy an aftermarket replacement BT antenna & a DIY WiFi antenna can be fashioned readily.

Anyhow, If you spent any money on it, I recommend a 128gb or larger SSD as they’re dirt cheap nowadays & you could recycle it in any computer should the pmg5 stop working.

Honestly, I'm not even sure the system has bluetooth. Oh sure, it has a bluetooth antenna port, but absolutely nothing in the os, including the system profiler, shows it as having internal bluetooth. It does, however, definitely have wifi, as even though that antenna is missing too, I've managed to connect it to my network. It's just better wired.

And yeah, an ssd probably would be very worth adding. If this thing keeps working, I'll end up filling both drive bays, without a doubt. No clue exactly how an ssd will help with these old versions of OSX, but one did wonders for a Core 2 Dell running Windows 10.

 

[Dronecatcher]

When the Partitioned Engine Patch is installed, and with its GeForce 6600, my DC 2.0 G5 can stream 720p HD video on YouTube effortlessly.

That can't be as a result of the 6600 - there is no hardware accelerated h264 playback under PPC - unless you know otherwise?
Streaming Youtube at 720P on a dual G5 has always been standard in Webkit.

It also looks like that GeForce 6600 will run a few circles around my system's Radeon 9600.

Unless you want to play games, getting a different GPU will be a waste of money - your biggest performance gains will be choosing the right applications and fine tuning the OS.

 

[repairedCheese]

Unless you want to play games, getting a different GPU will be a waste of money - your biggest performance gains will be choosing the right applications and fine tuning the OS.

I mean, I did literally buy this thing to play games, and anything else it can do, like play 1080p h264 video smoothly in VLC on Leopard, that's really a bonus. In fact, I was just using it to play Escape Velocity Override, which I know is overkill for a mac of this power, but Tiger can run everything from Civilization 1 to Civilization 4, and Sim Citys 1, 2, and 3. Heck, it can even play Sid Meier's Pirates, both 1987 and 2004, even if the resolution is really too high to play the old 68k game in classic.

So yes, gaming performance is very important to me.

 

[Dronecatcher]

I mean, I did literally buy this thing to play games, and anything else it can do, like play 1080p h264 video smoothly in VLC on Leopard, that's really a bonus.

My apologies - you did say that in your first post, so you might feel the benefit there with a higher GPU.
My experience with a beefy GPU regarding video is there is no difference whatsoever - having said that your G5 can happily play 1080P video in VLC, Coreplayer, MPlayer and XBMC with any GPU.

 

[z970]

That can't be as a result of the 6600 - there is no hardware accelerated h264 playback under PPC - unless you know otherwise?
Streaming Youtube at 720P on a dual G5 has always been standard in Webkit.

Compared to the FX 5200, the 6600 most definitely helps.

What do you mean by that? The architecture is entirely capable of HA-H264 playback. But if only TFF wasn't compiled with GPU-accelerated windows blastedly turned to off, these machines wouldn't be known as anywhere near as slow online, or when normally playing video.

The media.webm.enabled preference controls if the browser will receive software-rendered WebM video streams. When that's off, the browser will instead get hardware-leverageable H264 MP4 streams, which are much faster than WebM streams. media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled then specifically tells the browser to offload the said MP4 streams to the GPU. And this is confirmed every time the video stats are brought up, when they report the video streams as "avc / mp4". Otherwise, how else could you explain the huge gains in performance people have seen when playing YouTube video before and after?

Yes, but WebKit isn't as secure or (anywhere close to as) stable as TFF. Also, don't forget that for years, TFF HD playback on anything less a Quad was officially summarized to "LOL". ...Well, needless to say, it is no longer "LOL".

 

[Dronecatcher]

The media.webm.enabled preference controls if the browser will receive software-rendered WebM video streams. When that's off, the browser will instead get hardware-leverageable H264 MP4 streams, which are much faster than WebM streams. media.hardware-video-decoding.force-enabled then specifically tells the browser to offload the said MP4 streams to the GPU. And this is confirmed every time the video stats are brought up, when they report the video streams as "avc / mp4". Otherwise, how else could you explain the huge gains in performance people have seen when playing YouTube video before and after?

The key here is the the MP4 enabler at work, switching to h264 playback through Dr Kaiser's custom FFMPEG decoder - not accessing hitherto unavailable hardware acceleration.

 

[Amethyst1]

I believe the fastest AGP graphics cards for your G5 are the GeForce 6800 Ultra and the Radeon X850 XT.

 

[repairedCheese]

My apologies - you did say that in your first post, so you might feel the benefit there with a higher GPU.
My experience with a beefy GPU regarding video is there is no difference whatsoever - having said that your G5 can happily play 1080P video in VLC, Coreplayer, MPlayer and XBMC with any GPU.

Don't get me wrong, I love the grunt the dual cpus give me. My mouth dropped the first time I played 1080p video on it. It just never occurred to me that the hardware would be able to do that. And it can't unless it's really fully idling, so I can absolutely see why you'd need to be careful about what you're running, if you want that to be consist.

The SPDIF out being able to send 5.1 surround to my receiver it absolutely impressive, too. I've really never had a mac that gave me so many options.

 

[Dronecatcher]

The SPDIF out being able to send 5.1 surround to my receiver it absolutely impressive, too. I've really never had a mac that gave me so many options.

Yes, Macs are famous for their out of the box audio abilities - Core Audio is a terrific thing.

 

[z970]

The key here is the the MP4 enabler at work, switching to h264 playback through Dr Kaiser's custom FFMPEG decoder - not accessing hitherto unavailable hardware acceleration.

Ahh, that's right. I've forgotten about that.

Even so, I've done before and after tests with the enabler vs. no enabler, and preferences vs. no preferences, and I can definitely say that while the MP4 enabler "enables" the ability, it does not enforce it. I did not see any noticeable difference with the enabler on or off on the videos that don't depend on it. I suppose the enabler simply gives you the ability to offload MP4 streams, not that it necessarily does it for you.

I believe that even if you have an MP4 stream, you still need to tell the hardware to offload it to the GPU, thus the preferences and their accompanying playback differences. Even you yourself confirmed an improvement before and after the preferences. Not only that, I've noticed the same positive effect in other browsers where windows ARE GPU accelerated, so this can be applied and backed up there, too.

So on that front concerning which element gets credit for the result, I have to disagree.

 

[Dronecatcher]

So on that front concerning which element gets credit for the result, I have to disagree.

All aspects of the GUI will be GPU assisted and more VRAM is a benefit there but h264 video decoding isn't handled by graphics cards on PPC.
As my tests here illustrated, despite having a NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 that benchmarked nearly 300% higher than my Geforce 6600, when it came to h264 video playback the results were the same.
In TFF the MP4 Enabler/FFMPEG is simply more efficient than the native engine - it doesn't pass any heavy lifting to the GPU.

 

[repairedCheese]

Yes, Macs are famous for their out of the box audio abilities - Core Audio is a terrific thing.

These are features my Performa 6205cd and my eMac simply did not have. Oh, sure, the eMac technically has Core Audio, but not spdif in and out. I've honestly never had a mac that gave me so many options, and back when this G5 was new, I was playing Doom 3 on a Core 2 Quad using a Voodoo 5 and an Monster MX300 with a3d support. It's safe to say I've never gotten to experience Core Audio, or a Mac that gave me any hardware options at all, really. It's the reason I want to get the most out of it.

 

[z970]

All aspects of the GUI will be GPU assisted and more VRAM is a benefit there but h264 video decoding isn't handled by graphics cards on PPC.
As my tests here illustrated, despite having a NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 that benchmarked nearly 300% higher than my Geforce 6600, when it came to h264 video playback the results were the same.
In TFF the MP4 Enabler/FFMPEG is simply more efficient than the native engine - it doesn't pass any heavy lifting to the GPU.

Then that's all the more reason to use Linux over OS X for anything Internet related in 2020+. That's just unacceptable ...

Thanks for the correction.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Then that's just all the more reason to use Linux over OS X for anything Internet related in 2020+ ...

I guess...as shown here....

 

[repairedCheese]

Then that's all the more reason to use Linux over OS X for anything Internet related in 2020+. That's just unacceptable ...

Thanks for the correction.

I guess...as shown here....

And speaking of Linux, this is why I'm excited about Void Linux PPC, what with it offering full 64-bit support for the hardware, and no need to use backported browsers when you can just use current Firefox. Shame the Radeon in my G5 seems to hate the driver that distro has. I guess that's just another reason to upgrade the GPU.