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My G5 2.3 feels as zippy as my Mac Pro?

R

rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
543
346
So I have a 2006 Mac Pro, with the 2.66 Xeon and 12 gigs of ram +SSD drive.

For every day tasks and web browsing, my 2.3 only feels a little bit slower than the Mac Pro. Safari tabs are a little slower, and windows pop up slightly slower, but I also do not have an SSD drive in the G5, only the Mac Pro.

Obviously, if you start to tax the computer with heavier usage the Mac Pro is much faster. But it seems for web browsing, they aren't too far apart. Flash and video are the only issue, but it's not so bad.

Any similar experiences?

To clarify, my G5 is the dual core 2005 2.3, with 8 gigs of ram and a 7200rpm hard drive.
 
Understandable as you the G5 is fast enough for typical web browsing, so the Mac Pro isn't going to show huge advantages. As you start pushing the limits, of course the Mac Pro is going to show huge gains. Also, the SSD has nothing to do with the performance of a web browser once it is running, so you won't see any advantages there.
 
I moved from a June 2004 G5 with dual 2.0GHz processors to my quad core G5 and I'll agree that a good bit of day to day tasks really didn't feel any different. Reading the sports page on Yahoo and using Mail are pretty much the same no matter what. That said, the quad is still much faster when it comes to anything dealing with multimedia and photos. Video playback and even iPhoto definitely benefit from the extra 500MHz per chip & extra 2 processors.
 
Dear OP, those computers have been made only 1-2 years apart. The SSD is not going to change speed much after the OS and apps (browser) are running. Try a new Mac Pro, sure makes Safari feel snappier.

But more seriously, yeah, the G5 was quite a beast, and still performs well.
 
Oddly enough, Leopard 10.5 on my G5 isn't worlds apart from Lion 10.7.4 on my Mac Pro, either.

No iCloud? Sure, but the G5 can go to icloud.com and you can still have similar functionality.

For normal use, I am really not finding that big of a difference between them - Leopard really is pretty advanced and introduced most of the modern aspects of OSx.
 
rondocap:

Based on this and other threads you have made you clearly have a lack of basic knowledge when it comes to hardware function.

You need to understand more about general function and power required for given tasks before you can even understand the answers to what you ask or find puzzling.
 
So enlighten me - Am I just comparing low power functions and the real answers lay in high power functions where the hardware is taxed more?
 
Web browsing on any modern day computer isn't going to really be a big issue, whether it be on a Pentium II or a Core i5 processor. What really makes it feel different to many of us is the fact that fast internet speeds are more accessible to us than they were 10 years ago. Hard drives are also much bigger, built better, and thus are able to handle the data on them more efficiently.

Tabbed browsing on the other hand is a big issue. Especially on older machines. Just because the computer has to keep all of your tabs in memory. Along with browser resources like plugins.
 
Web browsing isn't exactly Pushing the Limits of any computer really. I hate to tell ya, I have Windows 2000 Installed on a Pentium 1 166mzh Laptop with 128mb of ram ( MAXED OUT WOOO ). And as long as I don't try watching youtube videos, and don't go nuts with Tabs, it can browse the web just fine. Hell, if I crank the video down to 240p, its almost watchable lol.

Web browsing isn't an issue for a Dual Core, Dual Processor machine with a ton of ram and a decent video card.
 
Its interesting how these days computers are thought about functionality mainly with browsing. We all have fancy 3D cards in our boxes now, but hardly ever get used..

Interestingly to me is the business side of computer upgrades...

As in needing a I5 core terminal to browse the web and access the nas database. Just crazy..
 
VanneDC said:
Its interesting how these days computers are thought about functionality mainly with browsing. We all have fancy 3D cards in our boxes now, but hardly ever get used..

Interestingly to me is the business side of computer upgrades...

As in needing a I5 core terminal to browse the web and access the nas database. Just crazy..
Click to expand...

Unless you're like me who uses their machine primarily for rendering. I bought the Pro over the Air because I thought it would handle my Adobe/Autodesk products better, especially multitasking them with Safari in the background. I needed all the power I could afford in a Mac that was still portable. :)

And I completely agree with you. My dad has a $2,000 DELL desktop in his office. The top of the line when it came out a few years back. HUGE hard drive, 3GB of RAM. What does he do? He uses it to check his e-mails, read the news, and some word processing. Behind him, he has the servers, he's the one who manages them most of the time, and he's not even an IT guy!
 
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