In the large thread "What have you done with a PowerPC today?", I posted a few days ago to say that I had upgraded my PowerMac G5 DP 2.3 GHz with a WD Blue 2 TB HDD (spinner, not SSD). That was all I had planned to say about it, but the results were impressive enough that I thought I would pass them on. Upgrading an HDD is a fairly low impact way to achieve significant performance improvements.
For years now, I have had two HDDs in the machine: the original 250 GB drive Apple delivered it with (a WD2500JS, with 8 MB of cache) and an HDD/SSD cross from Seagate, a 500 GB Momentus XT drive. The main OS at the time, Tiger, was installed on the Seagate drive for performance reasons, and the WD2500JS was just used for higher volume, non performance critical data, like music and photos.
Then came Sorbet Leopard. Since I was just experimenting with it at first and not at all sure that it was a "keeper", I installed it onto the original Seagate drive (the slower of the machine's two drives). Of course I loved Sorbet and started using IT as the main OS, but it was installed on the slower drive. That didn't make sense for the main OS; it should run from the fastest drive available. Simultaneously, I was running out of free disk space anyway, so simply swapping the contents of the two drives would only solve one of two problems.
Clearly it was time for a new, larger HDD. I could have gone SSD, but a spinning HDD seemed more period-appropriate, and I have had great luck in the past with upgrades using WD Blue HDDs. A little shopping later and I had bought a WD Blue 2 TB HDD. The key thing about this particular model is that it is equipped with a whopping 256 MB of cache! I expected, and as we shall see in a bit, received, great performance as a result.
I will spare you the mundane details of the upgrade process, but it was very straightforward and 100% successful. In the end, the Tiger install that had been on the Seagate Momentus XT drive is now on the WD2500JS (the machine's original HDD) and Sorbet Leopard is installed on a 250 GB boot partition of the new WD Blue 2 TB drive. The rest of that drive is given over to a single 1.6 TB data partition
I am writing all of this because the results of this upgrade far exceeded my expectations. Booting is faster, but not incredibly so... 12% faster. It is app launching where things get interesting. AquaFox launches 27% faster and Adobe CS3 launches an incredible 45% faster. These are BIG numbers! I wish I had done more timed testing prior to the upgrade itself. Microsoft Office, particularly Word, feels much faster to launch, but I can't quantify how much faster, because I didn't time it's launch prior to the upgrade. I have always said that Microsoft Office is just about the only app (suite of apps, actually) that can bring a Mac to its knees! It is bloated and SLOOOOOOW, so ANYTHING that speeds it up is good.
Anyway, based on the limited information above, I *estimate* that the average launch time improvement is around 33% for most apps. This is a BIG performance gain for a relatively simple (and not very expensive) upgrade. If you would like more from your PowerMac G5, look at your HDDs and upgrade. SSD will be fastest, but a spinning HDD will be more period-appropriate. Your choice!
For years now, I have had two HDDs in the machine: the original 250 GB drive Apple delivered it with (a WD2500JS, with 8 MB of cache) and an HDD/SSD cross from Seagate, a 500 GB Momentus XT drive. The main OS at the time, Tiger, was installed on the Seagate drive for performance reasons, and the WD2500JS was just used for higher volume, non performance critical data, like music and photos.
Then came Sorbet Leopard. Since I was just experimenting with it at first and not at all sure that it was a "keeper", I installed it onto the original Seagate drive (the slower of the machine's two drives). Of course I loved Sorbet and started using IT as the main OS, but it was installed on the slower drive. That didn't make sense for the main OS; it should run from the fastest drive available. Simultaneously, I was running out of free disk space anyway, so simply swapping the contents of the two drives would only solve one of two problems.
Clearly it was time for a new, larger HDD. I could have gone SSD, but a spinning HDD seemed more period-appropriate, and I have had great luck in the past with upgrades using WD Blue HDDs. A little shopping later and I had bought a WD Blue 2 TB HDD. The key thing about this particular model is that it is equipped with a whopping 256 MB of cache! I expected, and as we shall see in a bit, received, great performance as a result.
I will spare you the mundane details of the upgrade process, but it was very straightforward and 100% successful. In the end, the Tiger install that had been on the Seagate Momentus XT drive is now on the WD2500JS (the machine's original HDD) and Sorbet Leopard is installed on a 250 GB boot partition of the new WD Blue 2 TB drive. The rest of that drive is given over to a single 1.6 TB data partition
I am writing all of this because the results of this upgrade far exceeded my expectations. Booting is faster, but not incredibly so... 12% faster. It is app launching where things get interesting. AquaFox launches 27% faster and Adobe CS3 launches an incredible 45% faster. These are BIG numbers! I wish I had done more timed testing prior to the upgrade itself. Microsoft Office, particularly Word, feels much faster to launch, but I can't quantify how much faster, because I didn't time it's launch prior to the upgrade. I have always said that Microsoft Office is just about the only app (suite of apps, actually) that can bring a Mac to its knees! It is bloated and SLOOOOOOW, so ANYTHING that speeds it up is good.
Anyway, based on the limited information above, I *estimate* that the average launch time improvement is around 33% for most apps. This is a BIG performance gain for a relatively simple (and not very expensive) upgrade. If you would like more from your PowerMac G5, look at your HDDs and upgrade. SSD will be fastest, but a spinning HDD will be more period-appropriate. Your choice!
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