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macrumors 6502a
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Aug 7, 2013
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What is the most maxed out PPC i can make, the one with the absolute best specs that can run tiger 10.4. Thanks.
 
"Best" would be relative. In theory I suppose it would be a quad processor G5 with maxed RAM and HDDs/SSDs. But in practice it could vary as the quads are more susceptible to some issues (like the coolant leakage).


Just my .02c.....

In the realm of these older machines most people seem to place a lot more emphasis on what they want and the value to them. I love the PowerMac G5 series, particularly the dual processor 2.0 models. But other people prefer the G4 MDD or iMac G4, or even the iMac G5. The max specs become less important if you want to use the machine for nostalgic purposes or just to appreciate the machine itself.

Why are you looking to max our the machine? Just a project? To have the maxed our top of the line PPC? Just for fun? All are valid reasons in our world, but make sure you get the machine you like, not just the specs.
 
What is the most maxed out PPC i can make, the one with the absolute best specs that can run tiger 10.4. Thanks.

I'm not sure I understand your question fully "maxed out PPC I can make?" You can't really build/make a PowerPC Mac yourself unless you want to go to the trouble of finding every single used component on ebay and build it that way. I assume you mean just to upgrade?

In terms of performance and overall specs the fastest tower is the Power Mac G5 2.7Ghz Dual Processor system or a 2.5Ghz Dual Processor Quad core system both with liquid Cooling. The max ram you can get in the latter model is 16GB. I would say its really not worth spending a lot of money unless you can get one very cheap, you Might as well buy a much newer intel Mac Pro. I managed to get my Dual G5 for £49 with free delivery.

If PowerPC is what you need for software though I would avoid a liquid cooled G5 a lot of them tend to develop coolant leaks.

Also G5's can run Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard perfectly fine, my Dual 1.8Ghz G5 unit with 3GB RAM runs Leopard flawlessly.

If its a hobbyists thing then go for it, as long as you don't spent too much. I've bought all my PPC machines for less than a £100
 
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I'm not sure I understand your question fully "maxed out PPC I can make?" You can't really build/make a PowerPC Mac yourself unless you want to go to the trouble of finding every single used component on ebay and build it that way. I assume you mean just to upgrade?

In terms of performance and overall specs the fastest tower is the Power Mac G5 2.7Ghz Dual Processor system or a 2.5Ghz Quad system both with liquid Cooling. The max ram you can get is 16GB in the later models, but its really not worth spending a lot of money unless you can get one very cheap, you Might as well buy a much newer intel Mac Pro. I managed to get my Dual G5 for £49 with free delivery.

If PowerPC is what you need for software though I would avoid a liquid cooled G5 a lot of them tend to develop coolant leaks.

Also G5's can run Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard perfectly fine, my Dual 1.8Ghz G5 unit with 3GB RAM runs Leopard flawlessly.

If its a hobbyists thing then go for it, as long as you don't spent too much. I've bought all my PPC machines for less than a £100


It's just a hobby thing. Already have 2013 intel macs that work perfect, i just want the very best ppc that can run tiger :p
 
What is the most maxed out PPC i can make, the one with the absolute best specs that can run tiger 10.4. Thanks.
Sorry. Any maxed out system won't be running 10.4. It will be running Leopard, 10.5.

Why max it out and then cripple yourself by running Tiger?
 
Sorry. Any maxed out system won't be running 10.4. It will be running Leopard, 10.5.

Why max it out and then cripple yourself by running Tiger?

too true, Tiger is extremely smooth if you have a G4 machine, I run it on my PB G4 since it only has 512MB currently, but a G5 maxed out should eat Leopard, Tiger has hardly any browser or flash support these days unless you go the Tenfourfox route, Leopard ran much smoother on my G5 than Tiger ever did. Webkit & Safari shell also runs flaws on my G5 under Leopard
 
It's just a hobby thing. Already have 2013 intel macs that work perfect, i just want the very best ppc that can run tiger :p

if you really do want to run Tiger you could buy a 2006 Mac Pro and max that out & probably run faster than any Powerpc machine ever would.

On ebay there is currently a 2.5Ghz Quad Core G5 going for £250

+16GB RAM is about £268.00 from Crucial

+ a nice 1TB hard drive is about £50.00

This is not even including a maxed out GPU

Total here is £568 not including any shipping charges.

Or you could get a 2.66Ghz Quad 2006 Mac Pro for much less with a bit more support and it can even run Mavericks with a hack of the EFI.
 
Sorry. Any maxed out system won't be running 10.4. It will be running Leopard, 10.5.

Why max it out and then cripple yourself by running Tiger?
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I mean the most maxed out that can run tiger, and i will use tiger because of the os9 function.
 
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you mean classic environment? Most later Powerpc Macs cannot boot natively into OS 9 I think the last mac to boot into OS 9 was the Power Mac G4 Mirror Drive Door released in 2002.

The Classic environment wouldn't really take advantage of a G5 by much to be honest if that is all you want. Classic environment is nothing exciting either it was designed to be pretty much an invisible layer over OS X. Not like the full blown OS 9 operating system which I love very much

If you want to try out OS 9 much better buying a old G4 Power Mac so cheap these days.
 
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you mean classic environment? Most later Powerpc Macs cannot boot natively into OS 9 I think the last mac to boot into OS 9 was the Power Mac G4 Mirror Drive Door released in 2002.

The Classic environment wouldn't really take advantage of a G5 by much to be honest if that is all you want. Classic environment is nothing exciting either it was designed to be pretty much an invisible layer over OS X.

If you want to try out OS 9 much better buying a old G4 Power Mac so cheap these days.


I want to use tiger, because it is os x and its good system + it has the function to run os 9 apps. I have an iMac g5 1.6 ghz 970MB ram that i used back in the days, i know that os 9 is nothing exciting but i want to run my old games from cds. but i want an even faster one.
 
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I mean the most maxed out that can run tiger, and i will use tiger because of the os9 function.
As stated earlier, "maxed out" is relative. What you may think is maxed out or what I may think is maxed out may be low end or mid range to someone else.

Let me give you an example…

I have a Quicksilver G4. 733mhz, but it's got a 1.2ghz Sonnet upgrade. I dropped in a flashed PC SATA card and now it's got two SATA drives and two IDE drives. Of those four drives, NONE of them are even close to 1TB in capacity. I've got a PC Dual Layer DVD burner I dropped in when I got the Mac.. The QS has the 250mb ZIP drive.

Just this last weekend I bought two 17" Studio Displays and one 20" Cinema Display. Both are the old plastic type with the kickstand in back (I hate the metal ones) and I want to keep this period to the QS. I also bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 256mb video card AND won at eBay auction an ATI Radeon 9200 LE PCI 128mb video card (previously used in a B/W G3). Both cards will go in my QS and with the ATI Rage 128 card I have in there I will have the capacity to drive 5 displays at once. That is, once I can afford and buy the DVI to ADC converters for the displays I just bought!

Eventually I'll replace the ATI Rage 128 with some sort of TV Tuner video card. That's the idea I'm aiming for anyway. But when I'm all done I will have a system running 5 monitors. One 20" Cinema Display, two 17" Studio Displays, an HDTV and whatever crap monitor I have around at the time.

Is that maxed out? No. Maxed out would be all 5 displays running 23" Cinema HD displays, whatever the largest size SATA I/II drives are (can't use SATA III), 750MB+ IDE drives (EXPENSIVE!!!) and probably some other type of video card, even though I think I scored the best ones that can be used with this Mac.

But, when I'm done, I'll be happy! It will be maxed out enough for me. Sure, there will always be something I want to do with the Mac (probably a different PSU at some point to handle the load). That's part of being a PowerPC Mac owner. But maxed out? Maybe not. And yet, there are quite a few people here who probably think I'm crazy to even be doing what I'm doing right now. For a lot here, what I'm doing is way, way, WAY overkill!

All of this to say…maxed out is only what you perceive it to be.
 
Sorry. Any maxed out system won't be running 10.4. It will be running Leopard, 10.5.

Why max it out and then cripple yourself by running Tiger?

The only problem I have with Tiger is that it is very hard to find apps for it. ;)
However whenever I have to I run Tiger on PPC. It is also VERY fast on my G4 with just 1.5 GBs of RAM.
 
Maxxed can be subjective, but my G5 is close:

G5 Quad 2.5GHz (maxxed)
Geforce 7800 GTX 512MB (maxxed)
Geforce 6600 256MB (extra graphics leftovers)
16GB ECC DDR2 RAM(maxxed)
2*250GB HDDs <--(Room for improvement)
Airport Extreme/Bluetooth

Then you can get into RAID/expansion cards and other hardware above and beyond that, depending on what you need.
 
If you want to go old school my B&W is getting pretty upgraded! This and my Mac Pro are the ones getting maxxed to the limits!

450MHz FastMac G4
1GB PC133 RAM
Radeon 9200 128MB PCI
80GB IDE HDD (SATA in the Future)
DVD Burner (again with SATA, BluRay is a possibility!)
OS X Tiger (want to hack Leo on it for the lol)
 
My G5 is not exactly maxed out but there isn't much point in upgrading it anymore past where it is as any gains would be minimal.

G5 2 x 2.0ghz
4gb RAM
250gb + 500gb HDD
6800 Ultra DDL 256mb
Wifi / Bluetooth
USB 2 card
Fiber Channel card
XServe RAID attached - 14 x 500gb

Nice little home storage server for files I don't need all the time.
 
In reading through this thread, I'll add my own machinery using Tiger exclusively. All of these Macs run without any issues.

Gretzky:
G5 Dual 2.0
5 GB RAM
1x 250 GB, 2x 500GB, and 1x 1TB via SATA PCI card.
ATI Radeon 9600 with 128 MB VRAM driving an M8536 23 inch Apple Cinema HD Display via ADC.

(The 250 GB drive is partitioned into Tiger and Leopard sections; I use the Leopard section for my iPhone 4.)

Apple USB Pro Speakers attach to the USB port on the back of the Cinema HD display. An old-school black key Apple Pro Keyboard is the main input, but a Logitech mouse does the pointing. I hated the Apple Pro and Magic mice.

Elizabeth:
G4 Dual 1.25 MDD
2GB RAM(max)
3x 500GB, 1x 250GB
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB of VRAM driving an M8058 23-inch Apple Cinema Display via ADC. Another old school black key Pro Keyboard goes into the USB port on the back of the monitor. A Logitech mouse does the pointing.

The MDD has a port for the Apple Pro Speakers, and I have a set attached to it. All of my music archived for the past 14 years goes on this Mac due to the superior quality of the Pro Speakers.

Jeanine:
G4 400 Mhz
1.5 GB RAM (max)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB of VRAM driving an HP 19 inch widescreen LCD via VGA. I have a 17 inch Apple Studio Display I use on it from time to time, but I prefer the widescreen aspect ratio of the HP.
1x 80GB, 1x 250GB, 3x 500 GB, 1x 500GB SATA with IDE adapter. A IDE controller card facilitates the 4 500GB drives. The 250GB drive takes the place of the internal ZIP drive.
This Mac has a port for the Apple Pro Speakers, and I have a set attached.
I use both TenFourFox and Camino on this Mac when web browsing. When JavaScript is turned off, both browsers fly really well.

Every Mac I've owned has run Tiger without issues. I have my own qualms with Leopard, namely the ugly interface and memory hogging issues, so I run Tiger every day. No issues for me when that happens.
 
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you mean classic environment? Most later Powerpc Macs cannot boot natively into OS 9 I think the last mac to boot into OS 9 was the Power Mac G4 Mirror Drive Door released in 2002.

The Classic environment wouldn't really take advantage of a G5 by much to be honest if that is all you want. Classic environment is nothing exciting either it was designed to be pretty much an invisible layer over OS X. Not like the full blown OS 9 operating system which I love very much

If you want to try out OS 9 much better buying a old G4 Power Mac so cheap these days.

I want to use tiger, because it is os x and its good system + it has the function to run os 9 apps. I have an iMac g5 1.6 ghz 970MB ram that i used back in the days, i know that os 9 is nothing exciting but i want to run my old games from cds. but i want an even faster one.
From my experience it is not much fun running OS 9 games in classic environment with a 1,33GHz G4 processor (didn't test it on my G5). Even a strategy game like Master of Orion II is not fluently. The mouse hangs and stutters.
I would better use a G4 that can boot OS 9 natively (or the nice ibook G3 with 800-900MHz, because of the size or an iMac G3 for looks). I do not know however, if OS 9 games have a better performance on a G5!
 
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