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powermac g5 Upgrades for the beginner.

M

MaCnation

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2009
29
0
I'm completely new to the forum and completely new to mac's as well. For the last few years I have been fed up with pc's in general, and have decided to go with mac's. For my first machine, I chose an early 2005 powermac g5 dual 2.0 ghz machine. I realize this is not the best or the fastest to start out with, but I don't need the best or the fastest. Yet. What I needed was an inexpensive solution to get me up and running on a mac. My intent is to use this as a learning process and if I screw it up, well chalk it up to experience.

What I plan on doing is first maxing out the ram to 4 gigs. I also want to add a 1Tb drive for internal storage and swap the main drive for a western digital 300 gig 10,000 rpm velociraptor drive, and then add a geforce 6800 ultra. To top it off, I want to add a Blu Ray drive.
According to my research the 10,000 rpm 'raptor drive should help with system speed and the added ram and better graphix card should help too.

My main question is what about drivers? Most everything i've seen for info so far has not said anything about drivers or software at all. It's as if everything is "plug and play". The research i've done for the 6800 ultra has said nothing about required driver's. same with pci usb cards. Plug and play? I heard someone say that driver's we're built in in a mac. Is that true?
The blu ray drive I looked at said it was compatible with the mac pro the g5 and the g4, and was plug and play. How is that possible?

I am taking a photography course and need to run photoshop cs4 "adequately". I plan on running dual monitors, hence the 6800 ultra for a better video experience.

At some point down the road, I will upgrade most likely to a mac pro, at which point I can part the g5 out and get some money back.
 
Some pointers...

1. Keep in mind that in Mac OS X, a BD-R drive is only useful for writing data discs. There is no support for commercial Blu-ray movie playback. You don't have to install drivers for optical drives; OS X will treat the drive as a typical optical drive with burn capabilities, just as Windows does. Note that if you're planning on replacing the stock internal drive, you'll need an ATAPI/PATA model if you want to avoid running additional cables. MCE Tech makes a couple models.

If you end up getting a BD-R drive, Toast Titanium with the BD plugin is a good investment.

2. A typical Mac OS X installation includes drivers for a lot of common hardware. An updated OS should already have the driver for a 6800.

3. You'll be able to run Photoshop CS4 just fine on a G5.

4. Just FYI, a 2005 dual G5 2.0GHz will actually support up to 8GB of RAM (8 DIMM sockets, 1GB max per socket).
 
1. I've been a Mac person since 1989, never owned a Windoze machine in my life. Drivers are built in to most macs this is the least of your concerns.

2. Pump up the ram to max if you can. Only buy ram that is Apple guaranteed. G5s have very narrow spec tolerance for ram, especially the PC3200 DDR ram.

3. Keep the G5 very very clean. You have a fan cooled model, which is good but the fans do suck in dirt and I believe, sometimes actually short out the logic board. Keep it clean, with good protected powersupply.

4. I am running the final revision Powermac G5 that takes DDR2 ram with PCIe slots, the Quad. I have fourteen gigs of ram in it. I STILL disable Dashboard on this machine to maximize performance in Leopard. Find a link for a free download to "Disable dashboard" unless you feel you absolutely love Dashboard. It just sucks up CPU power, imho.

5. If I were you, I'd get a PCIx esata (I think that's what its called) adapter so you can run your hard drives at SATA II speed. I'm about to do that on my Quad. The faster Hard drives do make a difference on the G5s. I have not done all the research on this issue but someone else on the board can correct me if I'm wrong about the adapters needed.

6.I've noticed at least on the final revision PCIe (not your PCIx) G5s, that failing hard drives are somehow very difficult to diagnose for beginners especially. I always get a new fresh hard drive when I get a used machine. You never know what stress the former owner put that drive under and you don't want it to fail. Use Time Machine with any older hard drives.

7. Airport and Bluetooth on PCIx G5s. Apple remedied the problem on the last revision G5s, because they offer those little t connector antennas on your machine and the others. The Dr. Bott antenna extender thing for the G5 is the BEST solution I've seen. Try ebay if you want to go wireless. The bluetooth on your G5 is useless pretty much 1.0 bluetooth and expensive. Just get an airport extreme card and slide it in.

8. I always replace the optical drive for the same reason as the hard drive on G5s. I've owned the 1.8 single, the 2.5 dual processor, the 2.0 Dual core late 05, the 2.3ghz dual core late 05 and now two Quads, and I always upgrade the optical drive to the best one I can get at the time. You want a dual layer at least.


9. I haven't raided anything yet, but you can raid with the Sonnet Raid cage most easily.

That's about all i know, literally, about G5s. I'm buying a 2.0 Dual Core tomorrow, but this is a different machine than your Dual Processor. I love these G5s...
 
300D said:
Skip the slow 10k rpm hard drive and get an SSD.
Click to expand...

:p but then the OP may saturate his SATA-I bus!

As for drivers being built into the Mac, yes. Many graphics cards are supported automatically - expansion cards, like the one California was talking about, usually need to have their drivers installed in order to work.
 
WOW this place rocks!! The G5 showed up friday. The thing is built like a tank! I have never, in all my pc foolishness, seen anything like it!

CAPTAINCHUNK:
The BD_R not playing movies is fine with me. I have a DVD player for that:)
As long as I have the capability of the BD-R fore storage that's great!

Toast titanium with BD plugin is software I assume?

My G5 only has 4 dimm sockets:(

CALIFORNIA:
#5 Where can I find more info on the PCIx eSATA adapter?
#6 I could not agree with you more on this one. I was gonna replace the drive for this very reason. The V.Raptor was my first choice due to the high read speed.
#7 What about the wireless cards with the little walkie talkie lookin rubber antenna's?

300D:
Thats a Solid State Drive?

CAPTAINCHUNK:
Black as in "Caviar Black"?
 
MaCnation said:
#5 Where can I find more info on the PCIx eSATA adapter?
Click to expand...

"PCIx" does not exist. There's PCI-X and PCIe. I think you have an older machine with just PCI-X. Don't confuse it with PCIe (PCI Express).
 
Toast titanium with BD plugin is software I assume?
Click to expand...

You can actually burn BD-R/BD-RE data discs with Toast without the plugin. But you would need the plugin if you want to burn playable non-DRM BD video discs.
 
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