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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.
What do you mean? Mine is loaded with an Internet Explorer 9 user agent and works fine...

View attachment 914760

Yep, thats how my G4 PB 1.67 plays youtube with the same user agent, strangely though the G5 Quad under youtube is giving me blank square boxes.
 
Hey I maybe a bit late, but I use a Quad as my regular desktop. I'm an engineering student so need it to run CAD stuff and need to be able to use it for writing software - as well as writing reports and watching (entirely course related stuff, of course) online video.

The Quad is perfectly capable at all of this with Void Linux or a BSD (PPC64 BE Debian is way too buggy) - I use KiCad, openSCAD, and FreeCAD for design, use the same programming environment I use on my Intel laptops, and am able to watch online video fine (though it is much better played through VLC). The Quad core is quite helpful for this.

The only problem is writing reports, TexLive doesn't want to build - but a Thinkpad has a better keyboard anyway.


If you're just interested in POWER and have a bit of cash laying around, the Raptor POWER 9 Workstations are supposed to be excellent, and are much better supported in the modern Free Software world.
 
You'll have to ask him, I specifically don't use the default ua for better performance. TFF has options up to 1080P on my Powerbook - maybe it's just a case of you assigning another ua?
I know on Windows XP Firefox, it allows up to 4K/8K YouTube playback which is shocking since I was using FF47 (or the last version to support non sse2 processors like the pentium iii which I have)
 
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.

Maybe your tenfourfive app can play 1080/1440p videos on the Quad. As I mentioned posts back under leopard webkit a few months back, or maybe it was a year back ? i was able to play 1080/1440p(depends on codec) videos with no issues. Now, Leopard webkit can barely play 720p, I will try tenfourfive to see if it plays. If so, i may just hook up my Quad and start using it next to my Mac Pro.. but concerned about the electric bill.

If by some miracle I get Ubuntu or Phenix installed, will this also provide for calming the fans down as this is a non os x OS ?
 
I think tenfivetube's max is 720p. Hard to say as YouTube keeps changing.

As for Linux, my fans barely run. They don't even wind up in turbo mode when I'm compiling browsers (which uses 100% cpu for 4 hours to build them). They oddly run less often than they do in Leopard.

Cheers
 
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Probably not. It uses a mobile phone user agent. YouTube sees that it's a "phone" and sends a lower quality stream to it.

Cheers
 
Speaking of YouTube playback performance on the web... here's an odd trend I notice on my late 2009 mac mini. I run High Sierra and use the current Mac Firefox, and when I play video on YT it actually uses more CPU at 480p than 720p. 360p and 720p are virtually identical in CPU use, but 480p is always 5-10% higher. And 1080p only uses 2-5% more than 480p. So I just keep it on 720p, which uses approx. 35% of my 2.26GHz C2D P7550.
 
I'm actually guilty of not even watching it myself.

Strange, several months back in late 2019 I could watch 1080p/1440 barely on my Quad G5. My graphics card is a 256MB 6600 Nvidia. I may, just msybe get an SSD for this thing and see if that speeds it up. Then again, I wish I could still use QuickTime player with YouTube as that would be a big up.
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I'm actually guilty of not even watching it myself.

Tim, can this card still be purchased ? What about the Quadra 4500 512MB ?
 
Actually, which brings me to my next question - is there another way to get YouTube to play the videos in QT ? I remember watching also YouTube videos via QT through Leopard WebKit.
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I found this video on YouTube about using QT player - is click to flash still capable in 2020 ? If so, then this can assist with watching YouTube videos on any G5 and G4 system.

 
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when I play video on YT it actually uses more CPU at 480p than 720p

It could be that your browser is selectively choosing the more CPU efficient video format when available? 360P and many 720P are available as h264 video with audio embedded, whereas 480P is webm video only and the audio is taken as a separate stream and mixed in is more CPU intensive than straight h264 playback.
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I found this video on YouTube about using QT player - is click to flash still capable in 2020 ? If so, then this can assist with watching YouTube videos on any G5 and G4 system.

NinjaKit plugin gives you this feature and is widely referenced on here - same with Greasemonkey.
 
Link ? Because it seems those plugins don’t work anymore. Strangely, when I uninstalled the plugins from WebKit, youtube is playing normally on my PN G4 1.67 without any issues.. full screen plays great too. Except I have to change from 720p to 360p which is nice for my needs on the PB.
 
Because it seems those plugins don’t work anymore.

Working for me.

NK.jpg
 
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I see its working on your end. Please explain what I need to do for Quicktime player to play the videos ? Also, when I deleted the extensions, it seems leopard webkit plays all youtube videos at 360p which is the norm for the G4, but any help would be appreciated on getting quicktime player to play youtube again - each time I tried to go into preferences/extensions and choose quicktime player, it loaded it - but the video never played. I wish Tobias was still developing Leopard Webkit, perhaps someone on here can continue to develop it. Its much faster than tenfourfox and does almost 100 percent what I need.
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Wait a sec.. "viewtube" ? Is this another app ?
 
I see its working on your end. Please explain what I need to do for Quicktime player to play the videos ? Also, when I deleted the extensions, it seems leopard webkit plays all youtube videos at 360p which is the norm for the G4, but any help would be appreciated on getting quicktime player to play youtube again - each time I tried to go into preferences/extensions and choose quicktime player, it loaded it - but the video never played. I wish Tobias was still developing Leopard Webkit, perhaps someone on here can continue to develop it. Its much faster than tenfourfox and does almost 100 percent what I need.
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Wait a sec.. "viewtube" ? Is this another app ?

You seem to be confused about the whole thing....
First make sure you have QuickTime 7.7 installed, then install the NinjaKit extension, then go to:


and click ViewTube to install the script.

Once you have a youtube clip loaded up, click on the 3 dots for options and set up as shown...

Picture 1.png
 
Ok, I got it.. Thanks. You see, the knowledge I had 10 years ago and given life situations has rendered it not easy to make time to use my PPC macs.. That is why all this is new to me, like most who still have PPC macs - those who don't even come to mac rumors.
 
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