Playing Halo and video on an iMac G3

[wickedking94]

Ok... so probably asking for a miracle, but would there be any way to play halo for mac on my iMac G3?
Specs:
500Mhz G3 750
640 MB ram
16MB Vram
20GB HDD.
Mac OS 10.4.11
I know the game requires 32MB Vram, but i'm hoping theres a way around this.
Also, i had panther on before, and i could play videos off the HDD fine, but since i upgraded to tiger, it plays lousy. and yes i've tried VLC. should i downgrade back to panther if i want to watch videos?

 

[BlueRevolution]

Yes, I suggest downgrading. My iBook has similar specs and also runs Leopard Tiger, and it can't even run iTunes without lagging.

Halo... uh, I doubt it.

 

[Xeem]

I'm afraid Halo is not going to happen on your G3; the game is really only semi-playable with minimum settings on my 1.33 GHz iBook G4 with 1.5 GB of RAM and a 32 MB Radeon 9550. If you really want Halo, you're probably going to be best off just getting an Xbox.

 

[wickedking94]

Thanks..

Thanks for the quick responses!
I was thinking though, if i put a faster Hard Drive, like a 7200RPM, and maxed the ram to 1GB do you think video playback would improve?
Might even upgrade it anyway just for a general performance boost.
I cant believe how well this 10 year old mac works for most things..
Also what about youtube? I've read elsewhere about a couple people watching youtube on 450Mhz models with less ram?
Should I use flash 10 or flash 9?
I'm still a little new to mac (this is my first, but I've been using one for about 8 months).
Thanks.

 

[wickedking94]

Hey wait a sec...

I just noticed, you run Leopard on a mac with similar specs?
How? Would i hypothetically be able to put Leopard on my machine? I'm just curious.
Also, I do have an xbox 360 (the only good thing from microsoft).
I just wanted to use the multiplayer without having to pay for gold.
I talk a lot.......

 

[BlueRevolution]

Thanks for the quick responses!
I was thinking though, if i put a faster Hard Drive, like a 7200RPM, and maxed the ram to 1GB do you think video playback would improve?

The extra memory would help, but the hard drive wouldn't be a significant factor unless you're trying to do some other hard drive-intensive task at the same time. RPM doesn't affect the sequential read/write speeds of a hard drive, used when playing videos and such, where the bottleneck is the bus connecting the drive to the computer. It does affect the seek time of the drive, or the time it takes to get from point A to point B when it's being called on to read from multiple areas of the drive at once, but that's not normally relevant to video playback. Besides, your problem would be processor/graphics/memory rather than hard drive.

I cant believe how well this 10 year old mac works for most things..

Yeah, I was surprised to find the same with my iBook. But really, what I use it for is the same thing that I would've used it for ten years ago: web browsing, IM, and light coding.

Also what about youtube? I've read elsewhere about a couple people watching youtube on 450Mhz models with less ram?

There's no way my iBook can handle YouTube without skipping and without the audio getting out of sync with the video.

I just noticed, you run Leopard on a mac with similar specs?

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention when I was posting previously. It's running Tiger, and slowly at that.

How? Would i hypothetically be able to put Leopard on my machine? I'm just curious.

I don't think Leopard supports the G3 architecture at all.

 

[tlinford]

Thanks for the quick responses!
I was thinking though, if i put a faster Hard Drive, like a 7200RPM, and maxed the ram to 1GB do you think video playback would improve?
Might even upgrade it anyway just for a general performance boost.
I cant believe how well this 10 year old mac works for most things..
Also what about youtube? I've read elsewhere about a couple people watching youtube on 450Mhz models with less ram?
Should I use flash 10 or flash 9?
I'm still a little new to mac (this is my first, but I've been using one for about 8 months).
Thanks.

Are you sure the HD controller would handle the 7,200 drive: what speed is you frontside bus? My wife's, late, iBook 1.25 Hhz CPU is only 133 Mhz, nearly 10 times slower that currently MacBook tech... and grinds when playing things like flash (not a CPU or OS concern, but the internal data processing. Even if the HD controller could handle a 7,200 drive (which I doubt) you machine couldn't move the data around internally fast enough!

get a new machine!

I keep trying to convince my wife of this, but she loves her iBook G4, and given that it was this machine that brought me back to Mac, from a dalliance with a Dell Inspiron, I guess I love it too!

Though I love my current machine, there is something to be said for that non-wide-screen chunky classic iBook... I would like one, with new internals, I actually would love one of the old colourful clamshells with fast internals!

someone ask Mr Jobs!

 

[wickedking94]

Actually

Actually, slot loading iMac's can actually support 7200RPM drives, and if the drive has a large data buffer (over 8MB) its shown to increase overall performance.
I was pretty sure the youtube thing was BS.
And the Frontside bus is only 100Mhz. which I guess sucks.
It seems kind of mixed, because i can edit on Photoshop, make keynote presentations, and those little flash advertisements work. but playing a video off my HDD just doesnt work.
I think quicktime is a Pig.
Also, I probably cant get a new mac for a little while. but when i do im going to use this one for "tests", im not going to destroy it though.

 

[tlinford]

I wouldn't destroy it either. I through out an old Bondi-Blue iMac a year ago. It was running like a pig, with a 6 Gig HD and a 233 Mhz CPU.

It was getting pretty useless, but I regret it now, I'm sure I could have used it for something, but it was taking up space

peace!

 

[wickedking94]

uggg bondi blue.

I would not have bought a bondi blue iMac.
I pestered the guy i bought this from with a million questions on its hardware.
So, anyway, I did as i mentioned and downgraded back to OS 10.3.9 (it took about 20 minutes, i didnt install all the fonts and languages, and older programs) and here is a summery:
Pros:
Faster start
Faster shutdown
General performance boost
video playability
I can still use photoshop and iwork
I got 3 GB of space back
Cons:
Cant use the newest versions of software
no spotlight
had to re-download older versions of software
Other:
I dont have dashboard, which is good.