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Is the 2.3GHz DC PowerMac G5 the best "safe" PMG5?

alexreich

alexreich

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 26, 2011
640
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Just a few weeks ago, I acquired a Late 2004 1.8 (single) G5. I am pretty satisfied, but I've found that I am pretty CPU limited on some tasks/games. So I figure I'll sell off the G5 I've got and get a bit more powerful one.

I've been doing some research and I'm trying to find out which model is the most powerful PMG5 that IS NOT water-cooled. After spending the last few days looking into all of the G5's online, I've seen too many horror stories about the liquid cooled models, so I don't want to fool with that stuff.

In short, is the Dual Core 2.3GHz PowerMac G5 the most powerful G5 tower that uses standard cooling? If so, that's the next Mac I'll be purchasing, after selling my current 1.8GHz (single) G5.
 
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I understand what you are saying but...If you keep upgrading soon you'll find yourself back in the world of Intel Macs ;-)
 
Haha, I have a pretty snappy 2010 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 8GB RAM and an SSD. I don't think I'll have to get another Intel for a while. :)

The main reason I want to upgrade to a more powerful G5 is that I would like to be able to multitask better, and my single core 1.8GHz CPU struggles. It seems like if I have iTunes, TenFourFox, and Mail open all at once on this thing gets sloooow. :(

Also, though not really important, my current machine seems to struggle with some of the better PPC games. CoD2 (UB) is completely unplayable, and Prey is so~so most of the time, glitchy at others.
 
The DC 2.3 is the ''best safe'' G5 - in the fact it was the last G5 released that was air cooled. The DC & DP will pretty much breakeven with eachother performance wise with base spec - however the DC will run a lot cooler (as it's 1 CPU - 2 cores as oppose to 2 CPUs). You'll be getting quicker DDR2 RAM as oppose to DDR on the DP. And on the DC you get PCIe, which gives you less choice, but quicker graphics cards (the DP has 8xAGP). You can also wedge in double the RAM into the DC (2gb per slot, the DP 1gb).
 
Goftrey said:
The DC 2.3 is the ''best safe'' G5 - in the fact it was the last G5 released that was air cooled. The DC & DP will pretty much breakeven with eachother performance wise with base spec - however the DC will run a lot cooler (as it's 1 CPU - 2 cores as oppose to 2 CPUs). You'll be getting quicker DDR2 RAM as oppose to DDR on the DP. And on the DC you get PCIe, which gives you less choice, but quicker graphics cards (the DP has 8xAGP). You can also wedge in double the RAM into the DC (2gb per slot, the DP 1gb).
Click to expand...

Sweet. Thanks for the info. Exactly what I needed to know and more!
 
I have one of the 2.3 Dual Cores, 16GB of RAM, 120GB SSD and a TB WD HDD. Got ATI x1900 on it, but it is sitting on the attic as spare machine for my quad G5.

As I have found out, they run much cooler and quieter than the quad.
 
Goftrey said:
The DC 2.3 is the ''best safe'' G5 - in the fact it was the last G5 released that was air cooled. The DC & DP will pretty much breakeven with eachother performance wise with base spec - however the DC will run a lot cooler (as it's 1 CPU - 2 cores as oppose to 2 CPUs). You'll be getting quicker DDR2 RAM as oppose to DDR on the DP. And on the DC you get PCIe, which gives you less choice, but quicker graphics cards (the DP has 8xAGP). You can also wedge in double the RAM into the DC (2gb per slot, the DP 1gb).
Click to expand...

Nameci said:
I have one of the 2.3 Dual Cores, 16GB of RAM, 120GB SSD and a TB WD HDD. Got ATI x1900 on it, but it is sitting on the attic as spare machine for my quad G5.

As I have found out, they run much cooler and quieter than the quad.
Click to expand...

I see... Why isn't it in use!? :p

I may keep the single 1.8 G5 I have now AND buy a DC 2.3GHz later. The machine I've got now is still useful, I just can't multitask much. Haha. :)

Do you think maxing out the RAM and adding an SSD to my current G5 would assist in the multitasking, or is it the CPU that's holding me back? I'm assuming it's the CPU.

Typically when I'm using my main apps (TenFourFox, Mail, iTunes, sometimes TextEdit as well), my CPU is at 100%! If I quit iTunes, I get around 40% CPU back, but I find it easier to do things with music playing :D
 
The 1.8GHz (single) Late 2004 G5 I have has a Geekbench of 1005.
The DP 2.0GHz Early 2005 G5 has a Geekbench of 1734 (roughly 73% higher).
The DC 2.0GHz G5 from Late 2005 has a Geekbench of 1814 (roughly 80% higher).

Geekbench wise the DC vs. DP seems about a 7% difference...

Would I notice much performance difference between the 2GHz DP and DC models? If not, I've found a DP 2GHz model to buy online! :)
 
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The DC will bench more against the DP of the same CPU clock because of the faster RAM.

And as I have said, my 2.3 DC is on spare duties. 4 cores are better than 2 am I right? If the quad would die on me, the 2.3 DC would take over. I keep him turned on at least once a week to recharge the PRAM battery.
 
Nameci said:
The DC will bench more against the DP of the same CPU clock because of the faster RAM.

And as I have said, my 2.3 DC is on spare duties. 4 cores are better than 2 am I right? If the quad would die on me, the 2.3 DC would take over. I keep him turned on at least once a week to recharge the PRAM battery.
Click to expand...

I see. Is your quad still water-cooled or have you done something with air? I'd love a quad but the water is frightening.
 
It is still water cooled. I just recently acquired it. Don't be afraid with it being liquid-cooled. If you had a chance for a really low price then why not?
 
Nameci, interestingly that you mention the 2.3dc being quieter than the quad, the quad I owned was the quietest Ppc I've ever owned, only spooling up under wow. At all other times it was quiet as a mouse, couldn't even hear the fans running.
 
Litany said:
Get a Quad. There is no reason to be afraid of water-cooling.
Click to expand...
I'll echo this. By the time the late 2005 systems came out Apple knew what they were doing with the liquid cooling. My quad is my everyday system and I never worry about the cooling system. I'd be more concerned about a power supply or logicboard failure to be honest, and that's just how it is with any computer. Quads are so cheap now, its really not with wasting time buying anything else if you really want to use it. You'll just find yourself wishing you had gone for it later on when the dual core starts feeling slow much like you're already doing with the 1.8 you picked up.
 
VanneDC said:
Nameci, interestingly that you mention the 2.3dc being quieter than the quad, the quad I owned was the quietest Ppc I've ever owned, only spooling up under wow. At all other times it was quiet as a mouse, couldn't even hear the fans running.
Click to expand...

@Vanne,

When I turn on both side by side with 6600 on both to isolate noise from gfx card, the quad is noisier. The back side fan on my quad is noisier than the back side fan of the dual core. I find that on idle the fans on the quad spins much faster at 970 rpm while on the dual core if i remember it correctly it is just about 490 or 500 rpm.
 
The quad beats the 2.3 DC of course. Every quad I owned was very quiet.

There is a difference in the 2.0ghz DP's. I think the earlier ones were faster and better. I had one of those, it was incredibly stable and quick for a 2003 DP PMG5.

The single 1.8s sucked in both versions.
 
For games I can report a DC 2.3 (albeit with a 7800GTX) run the following with maxed out settings :-

UT2004, Medal of Honor, CoD, Homeworld 2, Quake 3, Quake 4, Doom 3, Civilization IV & Amnesia (this is a more recent game and isn't 'maxed out' but still high settings).
 
I did not know that Amnesia works on PowerPC? Definitely need to look into that.

By the way, I've decided that I'll play PPC only and lightweight UB games on this machine, and the ones that this one can't play I'll play on my 2010 Intel Mac mini.
 
I also like Nameci, had one of these 2.3DC PM as my only box while i was in Unzed(NZ) doing contract work. Great box, loved it. hasnt got the horsepower like the Quad to do some heavy lifting, but has plenty and more in store for everyday use and gaming.

Love that box, go for it :)

Esp with a nice vid card in it :D
 
Hrududu said:
Quads are so cheap now, its really not with wasting time buying anything else if you really want to use it. You'll just find yourself wishing you had gone for it later on when the dual core starts feeling slow
Click to expand...

I'll echo that too. I used to have a DC2.3, came across a Quad for $350, sold the DC2.3 for $350 and couldn't be happier.
 
I have a PowerMac G5 1.8 (Original) and a Powermac G5 2.3 DC, both have 2gigs of RAM. The DC is my main desktop system. (the 1.8 is acting as file server-on-demand in the basement).

The 2 machines are far away from each other in performance. As the 1.8 struggles at almost every simple duty, the DC runs reasonably fast.
I bought a 60 GB OCZ Vertex2 SSD into the DC, it has made awesome speed increase . Only the 10.5 System files and applications are placed on the SSD, the most storage consuming things are alias'd to the HDD (dropbox, iPhoto library, iTunes libraries etc.) I kept the one of the original 250 GB HDD in the machine for backups and media files.
I made the SSD and HDD bootable, the cold boot start time is about 0:45 with SSD and about 1:50 with HDD. The shutdown time is quite below 10 secs with SSD (about 6 sec average), the HDD is much slower.
The DC feels much more handy and snappy than my late 2009 Macbook Pro (with HDD).

The DC plays 480p videos flawlessly and 720p videos quite enjoyably from browser in YouTube in full screen (23" LCD). If you previously save full HD content from youtube, it plays that quite good from HD.

The machine is quite silent, i surf the web, edit docs and doing work on it. The CPU load is rising only if you watching youtube, it goes about 80-85% on both CPU cores. If you watch videos from youtube or HD videos from disk, the fans don't rev up badly. (if I start a browser or start a 720p video on the 1.8 G5, the fans are automatically starting rev up, and the fan noise soon becomes annoying ).

On switch off state, the 1.8 comsumes 20W (!!!), the DC has switching relay in it.

If I remember right the Xbench score of my DC and my 2009 MBPro were not very far from each other.
It is a very pity that Apple let down PPC systems. I seriously think that for basic operations a dual or dualcore Pmac G5 will do nowadays.

It is VERY hard to find specific apps that support PPC architecture. It will be the main problem with these machines, not the hardware limitations.
 
Anyone have practical experience running a windows vm on a dp 2.0? I was wondering if 2gb ram is enough to run it. I have vpc for ppc, should I use it?
 
Zeke D said:
Anyone have practical experience running a windows vm on a dp 2.0? I was wondering if 2gb ram is enough to run it. I have vpc for ppc, should I use it?
Click to expand...

I also have a windows xp vm on my 2.3 DC through VPC7. I found it practically useless, because if I wanted to install major programs onto that, it had stopped with an error message. i read somewhere that the memory handling is not very good in Virtual PC programs.
 
Dual 2.7 lqs or quads are the sweethearts,just rebuild the las immediately !! we are talking get one working and immediately tear down the lqs!!!
 
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