update OS to Tiger or Leopard? on "silver doors" G4

[twodogsdad]

Hello,
My first post here.

I want to upgrade my OS from 10.3.9. (I lost my install disks.) I'm trying to decide if I should upgrade to 10.4 or 10.5. and I'm looking for some recommendations regarding performance. Specifically, which OS, if either, would be a better choice.

Thanks,

Cal

 

[cricketbird]

ibook G4

I don't know what a "silver doors" G4 is, but I have an iBook G4 and 10.5 seems zippier to me than 10.4 did. Sorry - no benchmarks or anything fancy. I spend a lot of time in MS Office and upgraded to the new version of that around the same time, so that may be some of the "zip", but the finder feels zippier too.

CB

 

[nick9191]

What speed processor? RAM?

Also this is the silver doors G4 he meant, aka the MDD or Mirror Door Drive http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/PowerMac_G4_MDD.jpg

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

What speed processor? RAM?

Also this is the silver doors G4 he meant, aka the MDD or Mirror Door Drive http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/PowerMac_G4_MDD.jpg

uummm......ALL of the G4 towers after the Sawtooths had the silver case, so how u know which one he has ? Oh, do tell

 

[twodogsdad]

Ooops. Yes, it is the Mirror Doors model. It is a dual 1.25 GHz G4 with 1.25 GB ram.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Ooops. Yes, it is the Mirror Doors model. It is a dual 1.25 GHz G4 with 1.25 GB ram.

Leopard will run very good on that. Try upgrading to 2gb of ram too and everything will be a lot smoother with more apps running at the same time.

 

[twodogsdad]

Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.

Cal

 

[Earl Urly]

Mostly all G4s running with more than one processor (including dual 500 MHz and 867s) will run Leopard at a fast enough clip to be fairly acceptable. Helps even more to have a Core Image compatible video card so Leopard can offload a lot of the graphics work to the GPU.

 

[Chaos123x]

My Powerbook G4's run leopard faster than Tiger (except booting)

 

[twodogsdad]

... Helps even more to have a Core Image compatible video card so Leopard can offload a lot of the graphics work to the GPU.

About the graphics card... My computer has the Apple dual monitor, of which I'm currently only using one but plan on adding another, option. I've pasted my info below from my system profiler.

Will this configuration not work as well as buying a new graphics card? I don't do any gaming to speak of. But I occasionally run modeling and simulations for work but I mostly like having my machine run well.

Thanks.

ATY,RV250:

Type: display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 64 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4966
Revision ID: 0x0001
ROM Revision: 113-99702-131

Display:

Type: display
Display Type: CRT
VRAM (In Use): 64 MB
Resolution: 1440 x 900 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes

ATY,Pheonix_B:

Status: No display connected

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

With only a 64mb video card, adding a 2nd monitor would split that in 2, giving each only 32mb......at that would lead to very crappy gui performance under leopard 4 sure.....

 

[Earl Urly]

That's an ATI Radeon 9000, it won't support Core Image; you need something like the ATI 9600 / 9800 they're selling at OWC, but if you don't want to spend $200+ then you may have to find a good PC card to flash.

When you have a Core Image compatible card under Tiger or Leopard much of the graphic updating in any window or application that follows Apple's rules is offloaded to the GPU, allowing more cycles available on the CPU; end effect is your Mac 'feels' faster

 

[twodogsdad]

Thanks

Thanks for all the help. I ended up buying a copy of 10.5.4 and I'll look into a new graphics card. I'll post if I come across anything interesting.

thanks again to all of you.

Cal