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Upgrade Graphic Card or G5?

Beaniecheese

Beaniecheese

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 29, 2009
15
0
I currently have a G5 Power Mac Dual 1.8Ghz with 3GB Ram and 9600 Pro Graphic Card.

It will cost me about £180 to upgrade to 4GB Ram with the Geforce 7800 GS Graphic Card.

or

Sell my G5 and upgrade to a G5 Dual 2.5 or 2.7Ghz for about the same £180 cost.

If anyone knows which one will best please let me know.
 
I use my G5 for Photoshop, Illu and Indesign mostly for freelance work in CS3. Also I play WoW and I'm looking forward to SC2 in the near future.
 
robbieduncan said:
Somewhat, although a better GPU would probably help there. But then I was careful with my selected quote not to include WoW. My suggestion was based on the majority of uses listed...
Click to expand...

Yeah I noticed you missed out the WoW factor.

Does the GPU not help render images faster, which would help with Photoshop?

I know I have a long history with Macs as you can see with my new sig, but I've never bothered upgrading anything until I got my iBook [Which I forgot to add to my list, lolz], so my G5 has had a little pampering.

My G5 runs pretty well, however rendering large images can be a bind. So I thought the best graphic card on the market would help with that.

Would be interesting to see a test between the G5 1.8Ghz with Geforce 7800 GS and a G5 2.5Ghz with standard graphic card.
 
Beaniecheese said:
Does the GPU not help render images faster, which would help with Photoshop?.
Click to expand...

The GPU only renders the image for applications using an API that uses the card (basically meaning OpenGL on OSX). Photoshop does not so a faster GPU does nothing for it (well ignoring the very small number of GPU accelerated functions added to CS4).
 
robbieduncan said:
The GPU only renders the image for applications using an API that uses the card. Photoshop does not so a faster GPU does nothing for it.
Click to expand...

I'm glad I started the thread, thank you so much for your time and knowledge.

I won't bother with the GPU, I'll look at getting the G5 Power Mac 2.5 or 2.7Ghz Dual or even the 2.5Ghz Quad.

Am I correct in thinking that the 2.7Ghz is quickest with single apps and the Quad is quicker when multitasking?
 
Beaniecheese said:
Am I correct in thinking that the 2.7Ghz is quickest with single apps and the Quad is quicker when multitasking?
Click to expand...

Depends on the application. Aperture for example is multi-threaded so can spread itself across multiple CPUs/cores. On my MBP for example it can happily sit with both CPU cores maxed on it's own. Photoshop on the other hand is less good and this (some filters are multi-threaded, others are not).
 
Yes. ALthough they will not be taking up as much processor time, they still take a sizable chunk of the processor cycles - depends on how many you have open.
 
Wait a second !!!

Beaniecheese said:
I'm glad I started the thread, thank you so much for your time and knowledge.

I won't bother with the GPU, I'll look at getting the G5 Power Mac 2.5 or 2.7Ghz Dual or even the 2.5Ghz Quad.

Am I correct in thinking that the 2.7Ghz is quickest with single apps and the Quad is quicker when multitasking?
Click to expand...

Hmmm.... if you know the G5's as well as I do, belive me there is only one machine you really want to consider: That is the G5 Dual Core, late model with 2,3 Gig and PCI-E graphic bus. This is the fastest model with air cooling, but with the dual core and the PCI-E bus and faster memory bus.

The models you mentioned above are the early AGP models that have horrible graphic card options. On top of that they are the ones with the liquid cooling from Delphy. At all costs stay away from them unless you want to loose the machines because of cooling leaks!

Out of my experience with upgrading past and current macs, I felt the 10K Raptor start up drive did the most speedup for me..

Good luck with your nice G5 project !!
:apple:
 
I'm running a time bomb right now (2.5 quad), but I like it. I haven't played any games on it - in fact, I don't want to put games on it as I would not get any work done. :D

I personally do not know what would be better - my 2.5 quad with a 7800GT or a 2.7 with higher-end AGP card... WoW, I assume, is a single-threaded process more then anything....
 
The 2,5 Quad also runs on a dry heat sink and uses the faster bus and memory. So that definetely is the cream pie of G5s. It beats the 2,7 water cooled in single thread apps because of the higher memory band width. It naturally beats it in multi thread enabled apps anyway.
 
gugucom said:
The 2,5 Quad also runs on a dry heat sink and uses the faster bus and memory. So that definetely is the cream pie of G5s. It beats the 2,7 water cooled in single thread apps because of the higher memory band width. It naturally beats it in multi thread enabled apps anyway.
Click to expand...

:eek: I could have SWORE that my G5 quad was liquid-cooled. Late 2005 Quad G5... If this is the case, I'll finally stop feeling guilty about leaving it on while rendering.
 
Dr.Pants said:
:eek: I could have SWORE that my G5 quad was liquid-cooled. Late 2005 Quad G5... If this is the case, I'll finally stop feeling guilty about leaving it on while rendering.
Click to expand...

You swear correctly. Both the first dual processor 2.5 and 2.7 PCI-X and the later dual processor dual core 2.5 (quad) PCIe G5s are liquid cooled. Basically anything 2.3 or below is not, anything above, is. This is why I bought a DP 2.3 myself.
 
Apologies all round. I used to own a dual core and may have read somewhere that the quad used the same heat sink. I have now conducted a google search and come across reports of quad owners who lost their machines due to coolant leaks. Dr.Pants is right. I should have be less assertive. A bit egg on the face. :eek:
 
No problem, we all do it from time-to-time. Personally, I was holding out on hope for a moment. :p

However, a project I want to do is replace the water-cooling system with an air-based system. I haven't found a guide to crack open the huge heatsink, but I would like to look at it... If sockets for IBM processors are like that of Intel and AMD ones, there should be a standard for attaching a heatsink. And I know that the quad 2.5 Powerstation (Linux machine) is air cooled - potentially, it could be a simple upgrade. Potentially, the heatsink connections are proprietary, thus not-so-much-fun.

But it works. I'm not going to fool around with the heatsinks until there is a problem or I get a MacPro. If there was a guide on their replacement on the internet somewhere *sigh*
 
So if I can't get my hands on a quad, the next best would be the DC 2.3Ghz or the DP 2.7Ghz?
 
gugucom said:
The DC 2,3 should make you happier considering the reliability. Performance wise the 2,7 DP should be slightly ahead.
Click to expand...

Just read this test by barefeats...
http://www.barefeats.com/threeway.html

In a nut shell the conclusion is as follows:

I'm puzzled as to why the G5/2.5GHz Power Mac beat the G5/2.7GHz Power Mac in EVERY graphics intensive test.

One reader did some calculations with front side bus versus memory bus ratios. It appears the G5/2.5 does memory transfers 12% faster than the G5/2.7. In other words, the G5/2.7's poor FSB/memory ratio causes it to waste time. Since graphics intensive applications require frequent transfers of the memory contents across the system bus to the graphics processor, that could explain why only graphics intensive apps are adversely affected by the poor ratio.​

I'm getting more confused by the minute!

So it looks like a 2.5Ghz Quad or 2.5Ghz Dual or even the 2.3Ghz DC?
 
Save up and by a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo 9400M..

It'll run circles around G5s, dual or otherwise..
 
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