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PowerMac G5, is it still useful?
- Thread starter macswitcha2
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in 2014, ppc macs still have uses. i am 14 year old and even for a kid ppc macs are useful. i use a dual g5 2.0 ghz for everything basic like iwork 09, ilife 08, tenfourfox for web browsing, playing games like call of duty 2, halo, mupen64 for nintendo 64 games and youview for youtube video's. a 1.42 ghz mac mini as a dvd player, and an ibook g4 as a portable machine. i don't use any other computers than these. and people say that kids need good computers for games and all that stuff. for that i use a ps3. so ppc macs still have many uses as i stated before. you just need 1 ghz or more and at least a g4 or better. a tip: you will need leopard these days to use a ppc mac for pretty much anything. correct me if i'm wrong. for leopard i would use a graphics card with core image and quartz extreme for all of the eye candy that leopard uses.
Check out the Leopard Speed Improvements guide eyoungren, Intell, and I made. There are some good tips to making Leopard much faster.
For GPUs I recommend anything better than the Nvidia FX5200.
You realize this thread is three years old right!
I don't care how old it is, its still the only thread you get to see if you google: are powermacs still useful
Of course they are useful and as long as there is a community of users devising tweaks, tips, and shortcuts there will be good support in the future for what software there already is...
There is nothing wrong with these machines for any use. They still do everything that they did when you bought them.
Back to the original purpose of this thread... I do find a mid-to high spec G5 is extremely useful for basic tasks and power hogging old programs that you would like to use. I in fact, am writing this on a G5 Quad right now using TenFourFox. Although I would recommend not getting the early dual models as they can be very loud. And avoid all liquid-cooled models except for the late-2005 Quad. Another note is that if you get a Quad they are power hogs with their 550w power supply and processors. But I would recommend a G5 if you are looking for a cheap well-rounded Mac. 
Back to the original purpose of this thread... I do find a mid-to high spec G5 is extremely useful for basic tasks and power hogging old programs that you would like to use. I in fact, am writing this on a G5 Quad right now using TenFourFox. Although I would recommend not getting the early dual models as they can be very loud. And avoid all liquid-cooled models except for the late-2005 Quad. Another note is that if you get a Quad they are power hogs with their 550w power supply and processors. But I would recommend a G5 if you are looking for a cheap well-rounded Mac.
They all are power hogs. Just the Quads were the worst! If the LCS is rebuilt on a Dual or even a Quad they can be pretty reliable and run very cool.
Ahhh...
Back, when I was at the peak of my nerd-career (not entirely true, but makes better copy) I had a maxed-out 400 Ghz Lombard, and of all the Mac's I've had that's the one I miss the most.
Kudos for anyone who still makes sensible use of his Lombard.
RGDS,
This Italian dude...
...is rocking a quad G5, he's playing two youtube videos in Leopard Webkit (using HTML 5), Firefox is running a youtube video (slowly) in Windows XP ( Virtual PC), and he's got a couple games running and to top it off Sheepshaver is up and running with Mac OS 9.0.4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsTw6AN-0uE
Whilst this may not be "useful", it is impressive, given the quad is now pushing a decade old and has been shamefully abandoned by its creator for several years now.
Oh, and he's got a video of Lubuntu 14.04 LTS up on what I believe is the same G5.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp_IvG7h5_0
So in a pinch he's good till April of 2019. If someone can fix Firefox 29 for LinuxPPC, which currently is derailed by a major, major bug.
...is rocking a quad G5, he's playing two youtube videos in Leopard Webkit (using HTML 5), Firefox is running a youtube video (slowly) in Windows XP ( Virtual PC), and he's got a couple games running and to top it off Sheepshaver is up and running with Mac OS 9.0.4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsTw6AN-0uE
Whilst this may not be "useful", it is impressive, given the quad is now pushing a decade old and has been shamefully abandoned by its creator for several years now.
Oh, and he's got a video of Lubuntu 14.04 LTS up on what I believe is the same G5.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp_IvG7h5_0
So in a pinch he's good till April of 2019. If someone can fix Firefox 29 for LinuxPPC, which currently is derailed by a major, major bug.
8 years before this post was made, the G5 used to be considered super computers : link
Simple, machines die. Keyboard breaks, wires cut, screens die, or communication apps like skype, FaceTime... etc will not run on your older hardware (because the developer does not want it to do so I guess).
You can always maximise the life of your machine by continousely tinkering and replacing parts, but if you can afford it pay up and enjoy the modern life. If you are short on money, you can always buy a couple of year old machine that will be cheap(er) but fast enough to last you at least 5 years ahead.
If you are still running OS 9 in 2014 as a working machine, not hobby, I salute you. I wish I can do this but I do not have a laptop hardware that will do so.
Simple, machines die. Keyboard breaks, wires cut, screens die, or communication apps like skype, FaceTime... etc will not run on your older hardware (because the developer does not want it to do so I guess).
You can always maximise the life of your machine by continousely tinkering and replacing parts, but if you can afford it pay up and enjoy the modern life. If you are short on money, you can always buy a couple of year old machine that will be cheap(er) but fast enough to last you at least 5 years ahead.
If you are still running OS 9 in 2014 as a working machine, not hobby, I salute you. I wish I can do this but I do not have a laptop hardware that will do so.
I'm about to swap my G5 currently on TV media duty back out with my Win box, I just can't stand using Win8 for my work day-to-day stuff and really decided that Windows only benefit to me is games - hence it should hook up to the TV.
The G5 does office (MS 2008), photo libraries (iPhoto), email (TenFourBird) and browsing (TFF) just fine and thats 80% of what I do. No more video calls on Skype is a bit of a pain but I've been using my iPad for most of those recently anyway.
As for OSX I hardly notice the difference between Mavericks on my MBP and Leopard on the G5 - I don't use iCloud (I use Fruux for sync of contacts etc between devices), I abhor Facebook etc. All the time Spotify, Skype (for text chat and voice calls at least), Office and iPhoto continue to work along with the ability to view YouTube vids occasionally it's still just as useful as the MBP.
P.S. Use a Turbo.264 dongle for .264 video encoding, runs about real time so a 1 hour video will take a little less than 1 hour to encode - fine for me.
The G5 does office (MS 2008), photo libraries (iPhoto), email (TenFourBird) and browsing (TFF) just fine and thats 80% of what I do. No more video calls on Skype is a bit of a pain but I've been using my iPad for most of those recently anyway.
As for OSX I hardly notice the difference between Mavericks on my MBP and Leopard on the G5 - I don't use iCloud (I use Fruux for sync of contacts etc between devices), I abhor Facebook etc. All the time Spotify, Skype (for text chat and voice calls at least), Office and iPhoto continue to work along with the ability to view YouTube vids occasionally it's still just as useful as the MBP.
P.S. Use a Turbo.264 dongle for .264 video encoding, runs about real time so a 1 hour video will take a little less than 1 hour to encode - fine for me.
Just found this thread, even though it's old I figured I would put up my question. I'm planning to sell mine to get some cash for a newer mac. However, I really do like my G5 (would rather keep it), but there are just too many software that the software community won't support anymore.
Myself for example, would really like the ability to use Matlab, or similar computational package on it. Considering the older OSX already has to emulate Matlab, the older version already don't work as well. However, those are just simply not supported anymore or are painfully slow. I once ran the same algorithm on my G5 vs my Mac mini 2009, the G5 simply took forever to get the job done. Maybe it's Matlab's fault.
Can anybody as an engineer (or scientist) who does a lot of programming similar to those of Matlab or Octave share a few work around? Or are you simply forced to adapt the newer hardware? Thanks.
Myself for example, would really like the ability to use Matlab, or similar computational package on it. Considering the older OSX already has to emulate Matlab, the older version already don't work as well. However, those are just simply not supported anymore or are painfully slow. I once ran the same algorithm on my G5 vs my Mac mini 2009, the G5 simply took forever to get the job done. Maybe it's Matlab's fault.
Can anybody as an engineer (or scientist) who does a lot of programming similar to those of Matlab or Octave share a few work around? Or are you simply forced to adapt the newer hardware? Thanks.
I still have my G5 DP1.8 and I love it!
Got it last year, very cheap and very perfect condition (not at least a scratch on it)
4GB of RAM, next step is a new HDD (or SSD when I find the right controller) and a new Gfx card.
Running all-day tasks on it.
best
Got it last year, very cheap and very perfect condition (not at least a scratch on it)
4GB of RAM, next step is a new HDD (or SSD when I find the right controller) and a new Gfx card.
Running all-day tasks on it.
best
Most any SATA II SSD will work in that machine. Almost all of the SATA III drives have issues and as a result, the community generally just says all SATA III drives won't work.
Could you link to this guide pls? Sounds very interesting!
Sure! Here it is!
There is someone here (I think it was Laterne) who mentioned an SATA-Bridge-adapter, that would clock down from SATA-III to SATA-II.
Also, though we generally say that SATA-III doesn't work, there is someone (was it Webogong or webart), who has another make SATA-III-SSD that he aplied a firmware update to, that made it working in his G5. Maybe, if you start a new thread, that names G5 and SATA-III SSD in the title, you will get more hits and also get told what that exact model was.
I was able to use a 1,8" Crucial m4 256GB, mSATA-III (CT256M4SSD3) with an mSATA-to-IDE Adapter in an ibook G4. I picked that model, since at the time it was told, that it has the best garbage collection (since Trim doesn't work in G5s). But for some reason, I had the feeling the SSD got slower, after I had written and deleted some big movie files to it. Which would speek for a bad or not working garbage collection feature (SSDs don't replace/delete sectors like HDDs, you might want to read up on that, if you are not familiar with it).
The Samsung Evo is picked in the PC world a lot, since it has a very good TRIM feature and fast performance. I don't know, if its garbage collection feature is as good.
Also, though we generally say that SATA-III doesn't work, there is someone (was it Webogong or webart), who has another make SATA-III-SSD that he aplied a firmware update to, that made it working in his G5. Maybe, if you start a new thread, that names G5 and SATA-III SSD in the title, you will get more hits and also get told what that exact model was.
I was able to use a 1,8" Crucial m4 256GB, mSATA-III (CT256M4SSD3) with an mSATA-to-IDE Adapter in an ibook G4. I picked that model, since at the time it was told, that it has the best garbage collection (since Trim doesn't work in G5s). But for some reason, I had the feeling the SSD got slower, after I had written and deleted some big movie files to it. Which would speek for a bad or not working garbage collection feature (SSDs don't replace/delete sectors like HDDs, you might want to read up on that, if you are not familiar with it).
The Samsung Evo is picked in the PC world a lot, since it has a very good TRIM feature and fast performance. I don't know, if its garbage collection feature is as good.
I know this is an old thread, but any information that could be given would be most welcome.
I currently use an early 2008 black macbook , intel core 2 duo 2.4ghz with 4gb of RAM. I use it for music production with Logic pro 9.
I'm tempted to buy a G5 powermac quad, which comes with 7gb RAM, as I've seen one for a good price (and my budget is limited). I appreciate my intel macbook has a newer generation CPU, but am I correct in assuming that the G5 Quad should still outperform it as Apple's logic software can spread the load across 4 cores?
This machine would purely be for music production, it wouldn't be needed for internet, youtube, watching movies etc. I also have Logic Pro 8 which is coompatible with power PPC macs, and I can download older drivers for many of my plugins from the vendors' websites. I also don't care about the latest software or versions of OSX.
Many thanks for any help that can be given,
Dan
I currently use an early 2008 black macbook , intel core 2 duo 2.4ghz with 4gb of RAM. I use it for music production with Logic pro 9.
I'm tempted to buy a G5 powermac quad, which comes with 7gb RAM, as I've seen one for a good price (and my budget is limited). I appreciate my intel macbook has a newer generation CPU, but am I correct in assuming that the G5 Quad should still outperform it as Apple's logic software can spread the load across 4 cores?
This machine would purely be for music production, it wouldn't be needed for internet, youtube, watching movies etc. I also have Logic Pro 8 which is coompatible with power PPC macs, and I can download older drivers for many of my plugins from the vendors' websites. I also don't care about the latest software or versions of OSX.
Many thanks for any help that can be given,
Dan
If you are fine with running older programs they are great machines. Keep in mind, up until 2006/2007 era these were new machines found in any decent recording studio.