Making OS X faster...

[davincijones]

I have a G4 QS 733 w/756MB Ram with a Radeon 7500. I don't know if anyone here has written out the names of these programs and used them together but these little tweaks have made OS X move about twice as fast. It's actually "snappy". Oh yeah...

I added a second hard drive and created a partition that contains the OS X swap file. I did this using Swap Cop. Then I created another partion and installed OS 9. I also put the disk images for Virtual PC on another partition but left the program on the master drive.

Then I ran Xoptimize to adjust my prebindings, used BroadbandOptimizer for my cable modem connection, and WincompressX to compress the window buffer.

It's like I doubled the speed of my computer. The dock used to stutter and I used to see the beachball thing all the time. Not anymore.

 

[Catfish_Man]

The dock stuttered???

On a G4? Even with 10.0.0 the dock never stuttered on my G3 233MHz. It lagged before unhiding sometimes, but it almost never stuttered. Also, the window buffer compression is on by default in 10.1.3 and later.

 

[jefhatfield]

for us stuck in the old technology, i think it would be great if apple could make the next os x version work fast on computers with g3s with limited ram like 128, 160, and 192 MBs...just a thought

 

[iGav]

I'd love total hardcore mutha performance from OSX, ideally they should offer a Hi-Performance option or mode, where by they strip out all the unecessary eyecandy, and replace it with a clean plain graphite look, with no pulsating icons etc etc.... plain, simple and fast please!!

I need hardcore performance for cutting/rendering DV/post work, and I think this would be good for pro users....

The same way as Porsche do club sport versions of their cars for the dedicated performance driver!!!

 

[jefhatfield]

that is a great idea!

 

[blackpeter]

Full RAM in a PowerMac G4

Speaking of power...
I've just been offered 2 more 512MB RAM chips for my G4. Is it ok to put 3 (512MB) chips in? I know this will put me over the 1.5G limit and I'm wondering if there are any problems associated with going over the maximum...

 

[rainman::|:|]

Personally I use MOX Optimize for all my needs... from prebindings to deleting multiple language sets, to checking real RAM usage... it does actually speed things up, and clears a TON of disk space... only problem is, if you play around with Startup Items without knowing what you're doing, you'll have to reinstall. sometimes 3 times. not that i know...

but if you do know what you're doing, you can speed up startup, and i think subsequently use less RAM by adjusting these settings...

i don't have a second hard drive/cd burner, so i can't do many of the normal things (defragmenting, partitioning) i'd like to do... but this utility helps a lot...


pnw

 

[menoinjun]

Re: Full RAM in a PowerMac G4

Originally posted by tfaz1
Speaking of power...
I've just been offered 2 more 512MB RAM chips for my G4. Is it ok to put 3 (512MB) chips in? I know this will put me over the 1.5G limit and I'm wondering if there are any problems associated with going over the maximum...

I don't believe that's technically over the maximum. If you were to have 2 512mb chips in a G4, then Apple System Profiler will tell you that you have 1 gig of memory, not 1024mb. 1536mb ram is what they mean by 1.5 gig.

Go for it. If it doesn't work, it may be the quality of the ram chips. G4's can be picky.

-Pete

 

[eyelikeart]

another way to speed up OS X

I understand X fragments the hard drive more than 9 does...

so optimizing the hard drive with Norton SystemWorks helped out a ton for me...

 

[Falleron]

There wont be any problem at all by inserting 3 512Mb Chips. 1.5Gb is just rounded to look better.

 

[mc68k]

Re: Full RAM in a PowerMac G4

Originally posted by tfaz1
Speaking of power...
I've just been offered 2 more 512MB RAM chips for my G4. Is it ok to put 3 (512MB) chips in? I know this will put me over the 1.5G limit and I'm wondering if there are any problems associated with going over the maximum...

I guess it depends on the G4 model that you have. If you have a G4 with three mem slots, max it out with 3/512— no problem. If you have a G4 with 4 mem slots, it might be a different story. Everymac.com said for the models w/4 memory slots, you can hold a max of 2.0GB physically, but in a footnote it says the MacOS cannot use the extra 512MB.

See footnote 4: http://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_server_g4/stats/macserver_g4_450.html

I believe that what they meant by "MacOS" is 9.2.2 and prior, not BSD/X. Also, I think that they implied that you could physically put 4/512 in there w/o harm but just not have it be recognized or be usable by the OS, I'm not sure which. It doesn't specify if the memory controller can actually handle >1.5GB

Originally posted by Falleron
There wont be any problem at all by inserting 3 512Mb Chips. 1.5Gb is just rounded to look better.

1.5GB is rounded of albeit on the low side— 512*1024*3=1,572,864MB
Should be closer to 1.6GB, go figure.

 

[xlemming]

i use MOX optimize also and it seems to work, unfortunately i don't have a g4 processor. Apple should make it more g3 friendly like os 9 is.

 

[mc68k]

I have this program called ShadowKiller boot up every time w/the OS.

I simply click disable dropshadows, and all of the rendering for the drop shadows dissapears. There were some benchmarks a while back on xlr8yourmac.com that used an Applescript to make 1000 windows appear, then the script closed them all.

Disabling the drop shadows made the biggest difference for any change to the interface using this benchmark. Combinations of themes that used different styles for opacity of the menus, colors, buttons, and diabling drop shadows were used. Disabling the drop shadows took off the most # of seconds.

So I kill the shadows at startup so that my windows will render faster.

 

[TiMacLover]

Apple needs to bring back Rhapsody, it was OS 9 with the UNIX base, it was fast and nice and only required a PPC 603. It runs great on my PC and has on older macs.

 

[bobindashadows]

Rhapsody...

Plus Rhapsody runs seti@home faster too:

Macintosh (os 9): 17 hr 43 min 54.4 sec
Macintosh (os x): 18 hr 10 min 17.5 sec
PPC Rhapsody 5.6: 8 hr 46 min 44.3 sec