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Just stuck an SSD in my G5

Jethryn Freyman

Jethryn Freyman

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 9, 2007
2,329
3
Australia
And baby, THIS IS AWESOME.

It's a 120GB OCZ Vertex Plus, SATA II, spur of the moment purchase. Drive recognised by OS X with no trouble. Disabled Filevault, booted from my original HD and used SuperDuper to clone the main system and most applications over. Booted from the SSD, then cleaned out the 1GB Seagate Barracuda drive and left on it about 400GB of music and stuff I wanted to store.

Definitely snappier. My Macbook 4,1 with a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD and 6GB memory and an Intel GMA X3100 feels like a slug in comparison. It still wins in CPU benchmarks like Handbrake, but in real life usage I only want to use my G5 tower.

Question: how can I make my G5 faster? Can't upgrade the CPU, got an SSD, got the fastest GPU I can get, memory maxed out... sometime I'll stick a 4GB 7,200rpm drive in for storage. And I can't be bothered to use RAID. And I want USB 3 ports, USB 2 is horrible.

Some benchmarks from AJA System Test, 1920x1080 8bit 4GB disk test:

Write:
7,200 Barracuda 7200.12: 44.7MB/sec
OCZ Vertex Plus SSD: 44.8MB/sec

Read:
7,200 Barracuda 7200.12: 68.6MB/sec
OCZ Vertex Plus SSD: 122.5MB/sec

And that doesn't take into account random access time. Can't remember which, but one Xbench disk random test scored over 2,000.

If you got a G5 tower, get an SSD for your boot drive. Do it.
 
I don't notice the difference between the 7200RPM Black that was my boot to the Vertex 2 that is now my boot again. I didn't notice it in the DP G5 and now I don't in the quad..

On my notebooks SSD's are nice performance improvement, on my G5's not really.

***edit*** in the upgrading theme I have 12GB of DDR for the G5 that I'd be willing to sell or trade for something interesting.
 
You didn't see an increase in boot time from your 7200rpm drive to the ssd? Man that's crazy. Can u please post some read/write specs of said ssd and said standard spin drive?
Cheers.
I am curious, as the difference on my mp was night and day. Boot time went from 30 secs plus to around 9 secs.. And that's with my home folder on a standard 7200rpm drive.
 
VanneDC said:
You didn't see an increase in boot time from your 7200rpm drive to the ssd? Man that's crazy. Can u please post some read/write specs of said ssd and said standard spin drive?
Cheers.
I am curious, as the difference on my mp was night and day. Boot time went from 30 secs plus to around 9 secs.. And that's with my home folder on a standard 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...

It was in my MP too..

I'll give you the SSD on Monday but not the spinny it's now out and will become a data drive.
 
Enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do. I had an Intel 320 Series SSD in my main machine for a bit but once I bought and used the VelociRaptor in my secondary machine I saw it was actually faster at writing, booting and app launching so I now run the VR in my main system.

They are 10,000 rpm 2.5" magnetic drives enclosed in a 3.5" housing/cooler.
 
zen.state said:
Enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do. I had an Intel 320 Series SSD in my main machine for a bit but once I bought and used the VelociRaptor in my secondary machine I saw it was actually faster at writing, booting and app launching so I now run the VR in my main system.

They are 10,000 rpm 2.5" magnetic drives enclosed in a 3.5" housing/cooler.
Click to expand...

But VR are not exactly quiet at least they weren't in the past
 
A url does not speak for my real life experience with the Intel SSD and VR. I am not making what I say up. My experience is exactly as I describe.

Why do so many use a url to explain themselves. It's not you explaining anything but rather making a statement with no substance then pasting a url. If you know then try using your own words and knowledge.
 
PatentlyApple said:
Try getting the Geek Bench scores!
Click to expand...

Geek bench and the plethora of artificial scoring systems are irrelevant. Comparing geek bench scores is like comparing penis size. They all get the job done. People with low self-esteem just have to comment that their penis or geek bench score is larger than everyone else.
 
TacticalDesire said:
What year is your G5?
Click to expand...
June 2004.

zen.state said:
A url does not speak for my real life experience with the Intel SSD and VR. I am not making what I say up. My experience is exactly as I describe.

Why do so many use a url to explain themselves. It's not you explaining anything but rather making a statement with no substance then pasting a url. If you know then try using your own words and knowledge.
Click to expand...
URLs can link to articles written by people who have done extensive testing of many different components across many different systems. Your argument here is far too broad.

Zeke D said:
Geek bench and the plethora of artificial scoring systems are irrelevant. Comparing geek bench scores is like comparing penis size. They all get the job done. People with low self-esteem just have to comment that their penis or geek bench score is larger than everyone else.
Click to expand...
LOL. True, though they do have their uses.
 
VanneDC said:
You didn't see an increase in boot time from your 7200rpm drive to the ssd? Man that's crazy. Can u please post some read/write specs of said ssd and said standard spin drive?
Cheers.
I am curious, as the difference on my mp was night and day. Boot time went from 30 secs plus to around 9 secs.. And that's with my home folder on a standard 7200rpm drive.
Click to expand...

here is xbench
 

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Here is my Geekbench to show that a SSD doesn't effect it's score
 

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zen.state said:
Why do so many use a url to explain themselves. It's not you explaining anything but rather making a statement with no substance then pasting a url. If you know then try using your own words and knowledge.
Click to expand...

But "the URL" is Anandtech, one of the most respected tech review sites out there. :rolleyes: I think I trust their "real world" analyses than yours.

It's not like you're explaining yourself. Which VelociRaptor are you using? Have you actually precisely measured boot times and application launch times or whatever you want to benchmark by, on the same system with the same setup?

Are you sure you're not just being bottlenecked by an insanely slow interface somewhere down the line because you're, I don't know, using nearly 10 year old computers with modern components?

The access times on modern SSDs are hundreds of times faster than HDDs - HDDs just can't compete on many levels.
 
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tninety said:
But "the URL" is Anandtech, one of the most respected tech review sites out there. :rolleyes: I think I trust their "real world" analyses than yours.

It's not like you're explaining yourself. Which VelociRaptor are you using? Have you actually precisely measured boot times and application launch times or whatever you want to benchmark by, on the same system with the same setup?

Are you sure you're not just being bottlenecked by an insanely slow interface somewhere down the line because you're, I don't know, using nearly 10 year old computers with modern components?

The access times on modern SSDs are hundreds of times faster than HDDs - HDDs just can't compete on many levels.
Click to expand...

I am speaking of my and only my experience. I never claimed that my experience would be everyones. Are you confused?

I made a comment on my experience with an Intel SSD vs a VelociRaptor on my hardware and then Reason077 comes along and tells me I'm wrong as if they have sat at my computer and used it.

This is the PowerPC forum so I am speaking in regard to older Macs which should be obvious since it's... wait for it.... the PowerPC section.

Why would anyone ever have to explain they are speaking for themselves when it's them typing the words? Do people really need massively obvious things pointed out.

I'm speaking the same language and you cannot understand the words or the basic logic that follows them.
 
zen.state said:
I am speaking of my and only my experience. I never claimed that my experience would be everyones. Are you confused?
Click to expand...

No, I'm not confused. You said:

zen.state said:
Enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do.
Click to expand...
This sounds awfully like a generalization and not your "personal experience" to me. Any VelociRaptor will absolutely not be faster than an Intel 320, and, as a result, will result in worse boot times and application launch times. Maybe some old, first-gen SSD will be slower than the WD VR, but that's it. You didn't say "in my experience, enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do," you said "enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do." This could confuse new users, who might be misled into thinking many SSDs are actually slower than a VelociRaptor.

zen.state said:
Reason077 comes along and tells me I'm wrong as if they have sat at my computer and used it.
Click to expand...

No he didn't. Reason077 didn't say you were wrong, and he didn't say you didn't find the VelociRaptor faster. I'm not saying that either. He just said:

VelociRaptors are great hard drives, but they do not perform better than modern SSDs on most workloads
Click to expand...
And then he linked to an Anandtech review that showed just that, while you scolded him for backing up his statements with an article. Like it or not, this is a FACT. Modern SSDs ARE faster than any hard drive money can buy, no matter how "enterprise-class" the hard drive is. Magnetic storage technology just cannot approach the performance level of even an entry-level modern SSD. If your experience says otherwise, great, continue to use the VelociRaptor in your primary machine, but your experience runs contrary to, I don't know, pretty much every tech reviewer ever to touch an SSD.

You're the one who confidently made the declaration that "Enterprise grade magnetic drives like the WD VelociRaptor actually make better boot drives than many SSD do" with just anecdotal evidence to back it up. :rolleyes: Look, I don't doubt that you found the VelociRaptor to be faster on your setup, but I wouldn't put my money on most people finding the VelociRaptor to be faster.

zen.state said:
This is the PowerPC forum so I am speaking in regard to older Macs which should be obvious since it's... wait for it.... the PowerPC section.
Click to expand...
And yet you still made a sweeping generalization from an observation you made on your 10 year old G4 setup and applying it to any computer with a boot drive.
 
Thanks for the numbers GermanyChris. will have to have a closer look at that later, cos i am sure i had my ssd in my quad and it did make a difference.
 
VanneDC said:
Thanks for the numbers GermanyChris. will have to have a closer look at that later, cos i am sure i had my ssd in my quad and it did make a difference.
Click to expand...

My benchmark, generic SSD with SF 2281 (as far as i remember) controller on a Powermac Quad.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/786411

And yes it did not affect GB scores. I got it both RAID0 and single as boot and scores remain at around 3700+.
 
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