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Is a PowerMac G5 Quad Usable as a daily driver in 2020?

F

Fcr-900

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 27, 2020
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I’ve been doing research on old ppc based powermacs, and I came across a lot of videos on YouTube like “iMac g5 in 2020” (Had 2ghz processor) and YouTube in fourtenfox couldn’t even play in 144p smoothly but then I saw another video of a powermac g5 Quad on Linux playing 1080p video in fourtenfox. I’m just wondering, is the G5 quad good enough still to be a daily driver or is even the fastest ppc reached its end of life? I can’t recommend the eMac 1.42ghz Or any g4 system as a daily driver at all, but it’s good enough for what I need it for temporarily.
Can a quad G5 be made into a good daily driver if someone had one laying around or is it just not worth it/or just a computer that’s fun to play around with just not usable?
 
Well, it worked as a DD for me up until a couple of weeks ago when I got a new Mac Pro.

My Quad has 16GB ram, and three video cards (one a X1900 XT). I used it to drive six displays and I had a 2TB boot drive and a 4TB secondary drive installed.

YT video can be done, but don't use T4Fx for that. There are other apps. @Dronecatcher can fill you in.

Adobe CS4 will run on a Quad. Office 2008 (or 2004, if you like that better), Acrobat 9 and Suitcase Fusion 3. I really had no browsing issues, what with uMatrix and my own modified prefs file for T4Fx. I also loaded both the app and the user profile into a 8GB ram disk.

So, yeah. It can be used. Just depends on how much effort you're willing to give to make things work.
 
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RogerWilco6502 said:
May I just say that we need to be very careful about this topic. Threads of this nature in the past have turned into he said/she said situations and ultimately have caused more harm than good.

While I'm here, I second what @eyoungren says ;)
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From what I’ve heard, there Is always lots of arguments always regarding the G5 cpu, especially the quad about its usefulness that’s why I wanna know for sure
 
I use a dual cpu 2ghz (not the better dual core version) G5 daily. However, i use Linux on it. It does what i ask of it, and is still rather snappy. Here's a crappy quality video of it in action. Videos played/streamed are in 720p. Youtube 480p.
It all depends on your needs / requirements though. I'm pretty simple, and all i ask is that it browses the modern web, streams audio & video, burns cd/dvd's, edits photos, and handles light office work. So for me, yes, still 100% usable in 2020.

Cheers.
 
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Fcr-900 said:
From what I’ve heard, there Is always lots of arguments always regarding the G5 cpu, especially the quad about its usefulness that’s why I wanna know for sure
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How do I put this…?

An argument could be made as a daily driver for literally any model of PowerPC. It just depends on what you need it for and how you work. Do you really need two 2.5Ghz dual core CPUs to load up Microsoft Word and type out a memo?

But if your job is coding cutting edge websites then yeah, the Quad isn't going to cut it.

Don't get caught in the trap that to do anything you need more power or the top of the line. There are lots of things that can be done with lower spec hardware. The Quad just happens to have the most powerful processors of the lot. Doesn't mean your memo is going to get typed faster or easier in Word just because you're doing it on a Quad though.
 
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I just tested not long ago - about 3 months ago and ran Leopard webkit and it rendered every page I threw at it, including wikipedia. Youtube? I was able to watch a 1080p video. I suppose an SSD can fix all this, maybe.
 
Macbookprodude said:
I just tested not long ago - about 3 months ago and ran Leopard webkit and it rendered every page I threw at it, including wikipedia. Youtube? I was able to watch a 1080p video. I suppose an SSD can fix all this, maybe.
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1080p YouTube on a ppc? That’s possible? And from what I heard leopard WebKit is an old outdated browser that can’t render many websites do to it being based on safari 5. And YouTube won’t be supporting the old version of YouTube that loads in WebKit much longer anyways. I’ve loaded Wikipedia on Firefox 10 (Kernelx to make it run) in Windows 98SE recently, not much of an achievement bud. Try Loading discord or new reddit and see what happens.
 
Fcr-900 said:
1080p YouTube on a ppc? That’s possible? And from what I heard leopard WebKit is an old outdated browser that can’t render many websites do to it being based on safari 5. And YouTube won’t be supporting the old version of YouTube that loads in WebKit much longer anyways. I’ve loaded Wikipedia on Firefox 10 (Kernelx to make it run) in Windows 98SE recently, not much of an achievement bud. Try Loading discord or new reddit and see what happens.
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Now I don't know about 1080p video streaming as I don't have a quad, but I know for a fact that Leopard WebKit works just fine due to the updated certificates and other components that make it more compliant with the web than Safari 5. I generally browse using it in conjunction with a mobile user agent and have no problems getting to any website that I need, even newer Reddit (albeit it is a demanding site and loads relatively slow) or YouTube. In regards to HD video streaming, I can definitely say that my dual 1.8ghz G5 can at least handle 720p video streaming, so there is some validity on that front.
 
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possibly, but most applications probably won't make use of the multiprocessor setup. the G5 quad has 2 dual core CPUs so i could imagine one of those dual cores would be used for most applications. not sure what linux would do, though
 
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I say we call it Rainbow pizza.

1589216210445.png


That or PowerPizza maybe?
 
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Hi,

Also, for more speed on a Quad or PowerBook, there is Office v X for the Mac. Very fast and very proficient for what it can do.
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Windreader said:
Now I don't know about 1080p video streaming as I don't have a quad, but I know for a fact that Leopard WebKit works just fine due to the updated certificates and other components that make it more compliant with the web than Safari 5. I generally browse using it in conjunction with a mobile user agent and have no problems getting to any website that I need, even newer Reddit (albeit it is a demanding site and loads relatively slow) or YouTube. In regards to HD video streaming, I can definitely say that my dual 1.8ghz G5 can at least handle 720p video streaming, so there is some validity on that front.
Click to expand...

So, a Quad can do it, as I ran 3-5 months ago a video 1080p and it worked, had to put the CPU on highest setting, but I wasn't paying the electric bill.
 
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Macbookprodude said:
Hi,

Also, for more speed on a Quad or PowerBook, there is Office v X for the Mac. Very fast and very proficient for what it can do.
[automerge]1589258603[/automerge]


So, a Quad can do it, as I ran 3-5 months ago a video 1080p and it worked, had to put the CPU on highest setting, but I wasn't paying the electric bill.
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1080p local playback or streaming?
[automerge]1589383065[/automerge]
Windreader said:
Now I don't know about 1080p video streaming as I don't have a quad, but I know for a fact that Leopard WebKit works just fine due to the updated certificates and other components that make it more compliant with the web than Safari 5. I generally browse using it in conjunction with a mobile user agent and have no problems getting to any website that I need, even newer Reddit (albeit it is a demanding site and loads relatively slow) or YouTube. In regards to HD video streaming, I can definitely say that my dual 1.8ghz G5 can at least handle 720p video streaming, so there is some validity on that front.
Click to expand...
Is it true the browser is updated to safari 11?
 
Fcr-900 said:
1080p local playback or streaming?
[automerge]1589383065[/automerge]

Is it true the browser is updated to safari 11?
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Before I downloaded TenfiveTube, Leopard webkit 3-5 months ago played 1080p, sometimes depending on codec, 1440p played flawlessly on my G5 Quad. I haven't tested Tenfivetube on my PM G5 yet. I have other concerns right now on my mind. Once that has passed, then I will try it.
 
Macbookprodude said:
Before I downloaded TenfiveTube, Leopard webkit 3-5 months ago played 1080p, sometimes depending on codec, 1440p played flawlessly on my G5 Quad. I haven't tested Tenfivetube on my PM G5 yet. I have other concerns right now on my mind. Once that has passed, then I will try it.
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I have eMac g4 with leopard and I haven’t tried WebKit yet, can you explain how it works? How do I get 1080p YouTube to work if it only offers 360 and 720 options
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Macbookprodude said:
Before I downloaded TenfiveTube, Leopard webkit 3-5 months ago played 1080p, sometimes depending on codec, 1440p played flawlessly on my G5 Quad. I haven't tested Tenfivetube on my PM G5 yet. I have other concerns right now on my mind. Once that has passed, then I will try it.
Click to expand...
Also how do you load the new YouTube design in WebKit as the old one isn’t supported anymore
 
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