PowerMac G5 Use in 2016

[PowerMac G5]

I'm thinking of getting a Power Mac G5 this model: (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_1.8_dp_2.html)

I am mainly going to use it for GarageBand and other Mac related tasks, The current Mac I am using is a PowerBook G4 1.4GHz which is terribly slow for most things. Is there going to be much of a difference,? I can purchase upgrades for it but what is the best GPU it can take and is it still semi usable for most things ?

Thanks

 

[oi!]

Yes, there will be a noticeable difference. Very noticeable in fact!

Best GPU is open to debate, X800XT is a good Mac Edition card, pretty much plug and play in an AGP machine.

X1900 G5 Mac Edition is probably the best plug and play for a PCIe machine.

There is the possibility to take a PC card and flash it with mac rom, but good luck, solid usable info on how to do this is scares and so much of what was on the net now links to 404 pages.

A Gainward Bliss 7800GS card is said to be awesome agp card(when flashed, but you need the right one, and identifying which is which isn't always that easy.
Quadro FX4500 is basically the same spec as a 7800GTX, but slightly down clocked.
According to some an X1950XT can work on a PCIe G5, and not according to others.
IDK if there is a PPC rom for an HD4870?


Is it still semi usable for most things? Oh yes!



You can upgrade it to 16Gb of ram, and fit a larger HD. I'd hold off on an SSD as, at the moment, prices seem to be artificially high to me (and others I know in RL).

If you can wait and are intending to keep it long term, I'd wait another year and get an SSD then, I suspect it'll be way way cheaper.



Just a question, G5's are pretty cheap these days with prices all over the place (2.5ghz quad core around $87.70 not so far from me, and a dual 1.8ghz $509.28, and a 1.6ghz single processor model - 2gb ram/80gb HD - for $387.8). So why go with a low end model?

 

[Dronecatcher]

Go for it - there's a significant performance kick over a Powerbook, it'll be great for Garageband.
Don't waste money on a GPU unless you're doing gaming as well - there's no improvement on general tasks, the money's much better spent on RAM.
As oi! said, given the current prices you'd be just as well going for a higher spec machine - all depends on what you can find.
If you need reminding how capable they are for music

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan04/articles/appleg5.htm

 

[MysticCow]

I'm thinking of getting a Power Mac G5 this model: (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_1.8_dp_2.html)

I am mainly going to use it for GarageBand and other Mac related tasks, The current Mac I am using is a PowerBook G4 1.4GHz which is terribly slow for most things. Is there going to be much of a difference,? I can purchase upgrades for it but what is the best GPU it can take and is it still semi usable for most things ?

Thanks

That's because a single processor G4 is woefully outdated now. Yes, I still get some use out of my G4's and G3's but that's only in OS 9 where a single processor machine at 600-733 MHz can run it fast.

Getting an SSD and about 8 GB of RAM would be extremely good for OS X usage on the G5 towers. Yes, you can upgrade it to 16 GB, but it won't give the speed boost you're thinking it will. The SSD alone will take care of that.

It's very usable today also. Web browsing with TenFourFox, using Office 2004 with the docx translators, old school gaming (Tropico Mucho Macho edition runs without an issue or stutter), audio editing, limited video editing, and it can run AppleWorks. Yes, I still use AppleWorks from time to time.

 

[eyoungren]

We use a single processor 1.8Ghz G5 at work.

Building ads, classifieds, legals, pagination (building our newspapers), flyers, etc.

It runs the same suite of design apps my Mac Pro does. Adobe CS4, Acrobat 9 Pro. It also uses Office 2004 and Suitcase Fusion 2 (although SF3 will run on PowerPC Macs).

Does the job every week, every time and has been doing it since February 2005.

PS. My PowerMac G4 is a a dual 1.8Ghz. I do the same sort of things on it at home that I do at work and the dual makes it quite fast.

Apple called it a Quicksilver for a reason.

 

[oi!]

Don't waste money on a GPU unless you're doing gaming as well - there's no improvement on general tasks, the money's much better spent on RAM.

Dronecatcher has a point, eBay has a good few G5 graphics cards on there ATM, often for more money than you can pick up a complete running G5!

That's not to say there aren't bargains, they're just very few and very far between. If you fancy flashing a PC card, PC cards tend to be massively cheaper!
Good luck with finding info on how to flash them, I've turned up a lot of 404 pages and not a lot of useful anything.
I've turned up way too many of posts saying that if you can't be bothered to read through trillions of older posts, then person X won't give you any help. (I have tried reading masses of older posts on many many sites across the net, many of them link to pages that had the relavent info, but now only get 404's)

 

[eyoungren]

Dronecatcher has a point, eBay has a good few G5 graphics cards on there ATM, often for more money than you can pick up a complete running G5!

That's not to say there aren't bargains, they're just very few and very far between. If you fancy flashing a PC card, PC cards tend to be massively cheaper!
Good luck with finding info on how to flash them, I've turned up a lot of 404 pages and not a lot of useful anything.
I've turned up way too many of posts saying that if you can't be bothered to read through trillions of older posts, then person X won't give you any help. (I have tried reading masses of older posts on many many sites across the net, many of them link to pages that had the relavent info, but now only get 404's)

Have you tried running any of those 404 pages through the Internet Way Back Machine?

 

[oi!]

The what now?

I mean, no, what is this Internet Way Back Machine? Sounds like it might be worth a try.
[doublepost=1464640886][/doublepost]"Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived."

 

[eyoungren]

The what now?

I mean, no, what is this Internet Way Back Machine? Sounds like it might be worth a try.
[doublepost=1464640886][/doublepost]"Wayback Machine doesn't have that page archived."

Try what you can. Sometimes it does have it archived, some times it does not.

 

[stewart1981]

What can't it be used for?

Mine is at work as my reserve machine now but until January as the main machine in my wife and I's music teaching business. ITunes from this era is still a decent music player and with TFF tweaked (courtesy of Erik himself) we had access to YouTube at more than acceptable speeds. TenFourBox was jist a little late. Office 2008 handled lyrics in Word and Excel our accounts while Preview was fine for online sheet music. For audio work I actually preferred Logic 8 as freezing tracks meant less cpu useage by VSTi's. Sibelius 6 with Garritan Pro 4 met my needs for composition work.

Since January when my role at an exam board changed I have had to go PC as Pagemaker 7 is required and Sibelius 8, both unavailable on PPC. However I use the G5 for CS2, especially InDesign and some Photoshop work on the music publishing side. I write/typeset in Sib 8 and have to use PM7 for print work but often convert to InDesign if we need external work doing. The hack to get the newest Libreoffice on it means I also have a bang up to date office suite as well. I nearly got an upgrade to CS4 when we looked at finally going up to InDesign (we have a license but never used it...) so we could use n old 1.6 g5 to run an international music publisher. With servers set up I can also get to Dropbox via the windows 10 box.

it also looks damn smart in the corner with the Lion theme on it.

 

[eyoungren]

…and with TFF tweaked (courtesy of Erik himself) we had access to YouTube at more than acceptable speeds.…

I always enjoy hearing these stories, not because I'm self-centered or narcissistic (although I've been accused of that from time to time) but because it makes continuing to dig for this stuff so worth it. All the years spent trying to make the damn browser faster and now I am not the only one who benefits from it because I can pass it along to anyone who wants to use it.

And that makes it better for everyone.

Since January when my role at an exam board changed I have had to go PC as Pagemaker 7 is required and Sibelius 8, both unavailable on PPC. However I use the G5 for CS2, especially InDesign and some Photoshop work on the music publishing side. I write/typeset in Sib 8 and have to use PM7 for print work but often convert to InDesign if we need external work doing. The hack to get the newest Libreoffice on it means I also have a bang up to date office suite as well. I nearly got an upgrade to CS4 when we looked at finally going up to InDesign (we have a license but never used it...) so we could use n old 1.6 g5 to run an international music publisher. With servers set up I can also get to Dropbox via the windows 10 box.

it also looks damn smart in the corner with the Lion theme on it.

Ouch!

Pagewrecker! One undo. So sorry for you man!

 

[PowerMac G5]

Wow, thanks for the replies, got it and it's coming in a few days, turns out it's an even better model (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_2.0_dp_2.html). I don't thinks it's coming with a power cable, but it looks like it takes a standard C13 cable, will a normal black c13 cable work? Also it doesn't have any ram I have plenty of spare DDR 400 ram sticks, will this work or does it need special ram?

 

[stewart1981]

I always enjoy hearing these stories, not because I'm self-centered or narcissistic (although I've been accused of that from time to time) but because it makes continuing to dig for this stuff so worth it. All the years spent trying to make the damn browser faster and now I am not the only one who benefits from it because I can pass it along to anyone who wants to use it.

And that makes it better for everyone.


Ouch!

Pagewrecker! One undo. So sorry for you man!

It could be worse, I escaped Publisher.....

 

[Dronecatcher]

It could be worse, I escaped Publisher.....

How about being the graphics department for a multi-million £ company solely using Corel Draw on PC?
My first task of each day was to uninstall it then re-install it, sometimes twice, before it could even open a file it had worked on the previous day. This went on for a fortnight until my boss decided in my favour to switch to CS5.

 

[eyoungren]

It could be worse, I escaped Publisher.....

OMG, maybe we should take up a collection for you!
[doublepost=1464700339][/doublepost]

How about being the graphics department for a multi-million £ company solely using Corel Draw on PC?
My first task of each day was to uninstall it then re-install it, sometimes twice, before it could even open a file it had worked on the previous day. This went on for a fortnight until my boss decided in my favour to switch to CS5.

I've heard stories about Corel Draw, but never actually used it myself.

Way back in late 2004 my boss hired help for me. Girl had just moved to Phoenix and her resume was all Corel Draw at some newspaper.

I was in the middle of converting us from PC/Pagemaker 7 to Mac/QuarkXPress 6 at the time so I laid out to her how our file structure was and what was expected of her regarding QXP. No one had told me that she had zero QXP experience so I spoke to her as if she knew what the hell I was talking about.

She went to lunch and my boss gets a phone call that she isn't coming back!!!!

She was expecting to be working in Corel Draw and I guess realized she had no idea what was going on.

Worked out for the best though because the woman that was hired after her was the best and worked with me until September 2008. We are still friends in fact, even though she moved out of state.

 

[Dronecatcher]

She went to lunch and my boss gets a phone call that she isn't coming back!!!!

That's funny
Corel Draw can be made to work like Quark etc but it's native behaviour is to have all assets contained in a single (large) file.
When it behaves itself it's very versatile, intuitive and quick but when it gets buggy it's horrific - amongst the many nervous breakdown inducing disasters I endured, the funniest (with hindsight) was when one installation could only export jpegs before 12 noon! It would then work again next day until 12.

 

[stewart1981]

How about being the graphics department for a multi-million £ company solely using Corel Draw on PC?
My first task of each day was to uninstall it then re-install it, sometimes twice, before it could even open a file it had worked on the previous day. This went on for a fortnight until my boss decided in my favour to switch to CS5.

There is no need to be offensive ! We still have that for certain work, thankfully while it is on my PC I have opened it once and I plan to keep it like that!
[doublepost=1464705017][/doublepost]

OMG, maybe we should take up a collection for you!
[doublepost=1464700339][/doublepost]
I've heard stories about Corel Draw, but never actually used it myself.

Way back in late 2004 my boss hired help for me. Girl had just moved to Phoenix and her resume was all Corel Draw at some newspaper.

I was in the middle of converting us from PC/Pagemaker 7 to Mac/QuarkXPress 6 at the time so I laid out to her how our file structure was and what was expected of her regarding QXP. No one had told me that she had zero QXP experience so I spoke to her as if she knew what the hell I was talking about.

She went to lunch and my boss gets a phone call that she isn't coming back!!!!

She was expecting to be working in Corel Draw and I guess realized she had no idea what was going on.

Worked out for the best though because the woman that was hired after her was the best and worked with me until September 2008. We are still friends in fact, even though she moved out of state.

I wish we would just shift over but the music editor has used PageMaker since the early 90's and now won't touch anything else. By the time he plans to retire at 70 even InDesign could be obsolete!

Donations are all received happily for the insolvency fund for musicians, better known as me!

 

[eyoungren]

I wish we would just shift over but the music editor has used PageMaker since the early 90's and now won't touch anything else. By the time he plans to retire at 70 even InDesign could be obsolete!

Donations are all received happily for the insolvency fund for musicians, better known as me!

Totally get that. It's amazing how the design industry (and I speak in totality, not just graphic design) which is heavily driven by change has so many practicioners that are opposed to change themselves. One designer once sent me a PDF produced in XPress 4.11. She claimed she would NEVER upgrade to anything else.

I have no great love for InDesign, but at a certain point I told myself that I needed to learn this tool if I wanted to remain relevant. So, I compromised and switched my department to it so that I was forced to learn it on a daily basis (because I had to use it) - but got on the job paid training for it.

Getting our editor to move from PM7 to IDCS2 was the last step. She was a Quark user first, but our shop used PM when she came on. She eventually moved over but it took awhile. None of which affected us as far as what program to use but as long as she remained on PM7 I had to keep an old compatibility process functioning.

In my personal life, I do hate change, but if I want to survive and remain relevant in my job (even when I hit 70) I HAVE to keep up. I HAVE to be open to change in both tools and process. This industry moves too fast to be stuck in the past.

Beyond that though…I want to know what's next! What are the trends and what's shaping the industry. Change or die.

 

[128keaton]

Totally get that. It's amazing how the design industry (and I speak in totality, not just graphic design) which is heavily driven by change has so many practicioners that are opposed to change themselves. One designer once sent me a PDF produced in XPress 4.11. She claimed she would NEVER upgrade to anything else.

I have no great love for InDesign, but at a certain point I told myself that I needed to learn this tool if I wanted to remain relevant. So, I compromised and switched my department to it so that I was forced to learn it on a daily basis (because I had to use it) - but got on the job paid training for it.

Getting our editor to move from PM7 to IDCS2 was the last step. She was a Quark user first, but our shop used PM when she came on. She eventually moved over but it took awhile. None of which affected us as far as what program to use but as long as she remained on PM7 I had to keep an old compatibility process functioning.

In my personal life, I do hate change, but if I want to survive and remain relevant in my job (even when I hit 70) I HAVE to keep up. I HAVE to be open to change in both tools and process. This industry moves too fast to be stuck in the past.

Beyond that though…I want to know what's next! What are the trends and what's shaping the industry. Change or die.

I like how you like change, and being latest/greatest, but you are using a QS

 

[eyoungren]

I like how you like change, and being latest/greatest, but you are using a QS

Did you miss this part…

In my personal life, I do hate change,…

As a professional who enjoys what I do I seek what makes my job easier and better. That involves change. At home…different story.

 

[128keaton]

Did you miss this part…



As a professional who enjoys what I do I seek what makes my job easier and better. That involves change. At home…different story.

Just poking fun. Your Quicksilver is rather QWIK

 

[eyoungren]

Just poking fun. Your Quicksilver is rather QWIK

LOL!

I'm still wondering when it is that someone figures out what my avatar means…

 

[128keaton]

LOL!

I'm still wondering when it is that someone figures out what my avatar means…

Oh its an S , for Stupid FAST.

No, its like the quicktime logo, with an s. QS

 

[WalnutSpice]

I've noticed with my G5 running with 3GB RAM, dual 1.8GHz CPU and the stock 64MB GPU that if I upgrade the GPU I'll have very similar performance on the G5 with my 2009 MacBook running a Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz with 4GB RAM and an SSD.
So if you have a G5 with a 1.8GHz dual CPU, a 128MB or better card w/ quartz extreme, 4GB RAM and maybe an SSD, you'll have amazing performance at the level of 2009 era core 2 duo laptops. But although the speed is there, you'll find a lack of support if you're not used to the PowerPC platform

 

[Dronecatcher]

I've noticed with my G5 running with 3GB RAM, dual 1.8GHz CPU and the stock 64MB GPU that if I upgrade the GPU I'll have very similar performance on the G5 with my 2009 MacBook running a Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz with 4GB RAM and an SSD.

What tasks are you finding a similar performance in?
I ran a 1.83Ghz C2D iMac alongside my first DP 2.3 G5 - the G5 felt superior in every way but once a task required some hard CPU action, the iMac left it in the dust - I'm talking about Garageband, ripping a DVD, converting video.
I agree with the stock 64Mb GPU being a poor fit for a G5 though - you see a difference going to a 128Mb card but higher cards add nothing extra.