Where does a 2GHZ DP G5 fall in the range of G5s?

[Eightbitgamer757]

I am about to come into possession of a clean G5 with what seems like very good specs. Its a DP2.0 with 2GB of ram and an nvidia 6800, not sure if its a gt or gtx or what, Ill include a pic of the specs in the chassis if it helps. Im just wondering if its one of the better G5s or one of the not as good ones. Thanks for any help

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I have this a1047 Powermac G5 . I think of it as very middle of the road in performance. It is not nearly as fast as say, a 2ghz dual core powermac g5 with 16gbs ram but I find it to be a capable machine and while the a1117 specs are beefier, the a1117 shares the same exact software limitations of a 15 year old operating system that your a1047 has - which is no big deal at all IMO. It's unfortunate that it has a max ram ceiling of 4gb but in context of Tiger/Leopard, period software and powermacg4s that preceded it, this is more than plenty for a snappy responsive user experience. PCI is also a solid standard that will work with alot of peripherals and provide backwards compatibility with powermac g4 pci cards so you can easily share or reconfigure when it suits you to do so. I use mine to host Q3A games on my local network, play around with wicknix's lubuntu/macbuntu build, different ppc YT/UA solutions like TFTube etc. With period software, it is a great experience. YT playback works but can be jittery until buffered where playbook smooths out.

I think my favorite powermac G5 is the dualcore 2.0/2.3 models with 16gb memory ceiling. Nice n snappy and air cooled so no LCS to maintain but your A1047 2ghz PCI is no slouch - a very solid power mac g5. Upgrading ram to 4gb and installing a 128 or 256gb SSD are worth the small investment IMO.

 

[Eightbitgamer757]

I'm just not sure what it'll be used for yet, I already have a main PC that I use that has far more storage than this G5. I might use it as a server or host of some sort. I'm not sure yet I don't know alot about setting that stuff up. Am kind of sad to learn it's one of the lower end ones. I am curious how the gpu (GeForce 6800) ranks compared to other gpus you can find in other g5s too.

 

[eyoungren]

I'm just not sure what it'll be used for yet, I already have a main PC that I use that has far more storage than this G5. I might use it as a server or host of some sort. I'm not sure yet I don't know alot about setting that stuff up. Am kind of sad to learn it's one of the lower end ones. I am curious how the gpu (GeForce 6800) ranks compared to other gpus you can find in other g5s too.

While the G5s (any G5 really) do not impact your electric bill like some people claim they do, they do use some power and as a server they are pretty energy inefficient. I'd use a G4 or a G3 before a G5 as a server. If that doesn't bother you then fine, but just something to be aware of.

The G5s are all SATA though, so if you want to drop a large hard drive into the second bay you can do that - provided it's SATA 2 max (or can be jumpered down from SATA 3).

I have a 4TB server drive that was in my Quad G5 for at least two and a half years.

 

[Eightbitgamer757]

While the G5s (any G5 really) do not impact your electric bill like some people claim they do, they do use some power and as a server they are pretty energy inefficient. I'd use a G4 or a G3 before a G5 as a server. If that doesn't bother you then fine, but just something to be aware of.

The G5s are all SATA though, so if you want to drop a large hard drive into the second bay you can do that - provided it's SATA 2 max (or can be jumpered down from SATA 3).

I have a 4TB server drive that was in my Quad G5 for at least two and a half years.

It's not necessarily that I'm picking a g5 out of a lineup, I'm being given it for free as a thank you for fixing an issue my video tech teacher was having with one of his server PCs (just uninstalled the gpu then reinserted it, works fine now). It's an old Mac the school used to use for video students to edit video on. Teacher says they were going to be gotten rid of anyways and he noticed how much I wanted one of those g5s.

Kind of related but are the airport cards compatible between laptop and desktop? I have an old iBook G4 that no longer works that has a perfectly good airport extreme card and it would be nice if they were compatible

 

[MacPro2006VBox]

I have this a1047 Powermac G5 . I think of it as very middle of the road in performance. It is not nearly as fast as say, a 2ghz dual core powermac g5 with 16gbs ram but I find it to be a capable machine and while the a1117 specs are beefier, the a1117 shares the same exact software limitations of a 15 year old operating system that your a1047 has - which is no big deal at all IMO. It's unfortunate that it has a max ram ceiling of 4gb but in context of Tiger/Leopard, period software and powermacg4s that preceded it, this is more than plenty for a snappy responsive user experience. PCI is also a solid standard that will work with alot of peripherals and provide backwards compatibility with powermac g4 pci cards so you can easily share or reconfigure when it suits you to do so. I use mine to host Q3A games on my local network, play around with wicknix's lubuntu/macbuntu build, different ppc YT/UA solutions like TFTube etc. With period software, it is a great experience. YT playback works but can be jittery until buffered where playbook smooths out.

I think my favorite powermac G5 is the dualcore 2.0/2.3 models with 16gb memory ceiling. Nice n snappy and air cooled so no LCS to maintain but your A1047 2ghz PCI is no slouch - a very solid power mac g5. Upgrading ram to 4gb and installing a 128 or 256gb SSD are worth the small investment IMO.

Snow Leopard beta builds are possible but you’ll need a PCI graphics card in order to achieve graphics acceleration, as AGP GPUs aren’t supported. If you have a PCIe G5, then you don’t have to worry about graphics acceleration under 10a96 or 10a190 as those support it out of the box.

 

[B S Magnet]

“Free” is always the nice price, and upcycling is always better than recycling!

I am about to come into possession of a clean G5 with what seems like very good specs. Its a DP2.0 with 2GB of ram and an nvidia 6800, not sure if its a gt or gtx or what, Ill include a pic of the specs in the chassis if it helps. Im just wondering if its one of the better G5s or one of the not as good ones. Thanks for any helpView attachment 1826840

2.0GHz dual processor G5s (in addition to end-run dual-core 2.0GHz) Power Macs exist throughout the G5 line, but depending on the revision, “DP2.0” may mean “top of the line”, “middle of the line”, or “base line”.

This unit is from mid 2005 (after the “G8” in the serial, the “5” means “2005” and the “34” denotes the 34th week of the year). The early/mid 2005 G5s have the DP2.0 as the base model.

What this means here is there are half the usual number of RAM slots (4 instead of 8) found on the mod-line and top-line G5s. Consequently, the max RAM capacity is set at 4GB, not 8GB. In addition, this model uses the PCI standard for expansion slots, unlike the mid-2004 DP2.0 (which was equipped with PCI-X slots; for most intents, this shouldn’t be a major factor when finding PCI expansion cards).

Otherwise, however, the internals are mostly the same as the mid-line 2004 DP2.0 model. I don’t believe, other than the RAM and PCI/PCI-X situation, there are any significant differences between the two. Both use the PPC970fx, which run cooler and more efficiently than the original PPC970 chips from the 2003 models.

As to whether you should get it is entirely up to what your needs are and whether you want a Power Mac G5. If the price is good, one upside is there is plenty of space inside the case for multiple hard drives, in the event you want to run a file server or RAIDs.

But @eyoungren is correct: they aren’t the most energy-efficient Macs (though they are a lot quieter than Xserve G5s, the nearest analogue). If electricity is cheap and clean where you are, then why the heck not. The other downside of any Power Mac G5 is finding working replacement parts, in the event something goes faulty: the second-hand market is out there, but parts tend to come up less often than other later PPC Mac parts. Shipping will always be a factor, given the size of some parts (like the logic board) and heft (CPU/heat sink assemblies).

Kind of related but are the airport cards compatible between laptop and desktop?

As long as it’s the Airport card anyone can add into the slot underneath the iBook keyboard (and not the embedded Airport card nestled deep inside the last-edition iBook G4s), then yes, that Airport card will work in this G5. Reception, however, may not be very strong without the oddball, T-shaped antenna which would have come bundled with G5s which were ordered with Airport already pre-installed.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Snow Leopard beta builds are possible but you’ll need a PCI graphics card in order to achieve graphics acceleration, as AGP GPUs aren’t supported. If you have a PCIe G5, then you don’t have to worry about graphics acceleration under 10a96 or 10a190 as those support it out of the box.

Running Snow leopard on a powermac G5 has never excited me. Im sure it is an impressive feat of big endian vs little endian coercion but nothing I feel the need to do. I have many intel macs that run Snow Leopard and up very well and use them for that purpose.

 

[eyoungren]

It's not necessarily that I'm picking a g5 out of a lineup, I'm being given it for free as a thank you for fixing an issue my video tech teacher was having with one of his server PCs (just uninstalled the gpu then reinserted it, works fine now). It's an old Mac the school used to use for video students to edit video on. Teacher says they were going to be gotten rid of anyways and he noticed how much I wanted one of those g5s.

I understand. I was just trying to make you aware that compared to other Macs, the G5 uses more power. When used as a server that implies being on 24/7. If you are not the person who pays the bills then the person who does may wonder why the energy bill went up a bit.

Power aside, the G5 will function as a server just like any other Mac.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I'm just not sure what it'll be used for yet, I already have a main PC that I use that has far more storage than this G5. I might use it as a server or host of some sort. I'm not sure yet I don't know alot about setting that stuff up. Am kind of sad to learn it's one of the lower end ones. I am curious how the gpu (GeForce 6800) ranks compared to other gpus you can find in other g5s too.

Well, that model literally was released right in the middle of the Powermac g5 lineage, so it IMO is a good choice and neither high end or low end - the middle kid. I would try not to fall into the midset that it is a bad machine because it is not the highest end config. Per your own admission, your main box probably crushes even a quad core pmg5 in real world application, so with that in mind, certainly there are more useful and healthy metrics of its value to you.

Or not and in that case, there is no shame in dropping it on Craigslist for $25 bucks and I bet you someone will pick it up. Maybe something like a Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1 might serve your needs & desires a bit better. They have an almost identical aesthetic, higher performance, four hard drive bays for "server duty" and can be made to run practically the latest tacos (<--tacos LOL, darn autocorrect - meant to say "macOS). Yes, they cost but there is still some real value there. I really like my cMP 1,1 for example - a great box that I daily with el Cap but have a separate SL and Lion installs I can boot into as well, so a versatile box still crushing it 15 years after it was released.

 

[B S Magnet]

Running Snow leopard on a powermac G5 has never excited me. Im sure it is an impressive feat of big endian vs little endian coercion but nothing I feel the need to do. I have many intel macs that run Snow Leopard and up very well and use them for that purpose.

The first two developer versions of Snow Leopard were universal binaries (which, of course, means both big endian for the PowerPC code and little endian for the Intel code).

As someone who’s heavily involved with the Snow Leopard on PowerPC effort, I readily acknowledge how the project isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re someone who enjoys to tinker around with vintage Macs, such as on a mid-2005 Power Mac G5, SL-PPC can be a worthwhile side project to explore — perhaps as a second partition on the main drive running Leopard on the first.

Eventually, if I can figure out how, I hope to assemble and make available a version of SL-PPC which can be installed routinely on a compatible PowerPC Mac (without any special steps) and which includes many of the fixes and improvements we’ve come across along the way.

 

[Macbookprodude]

I have said this once and will say it again. Any PCIe G5 will be better than any one below it - period. The older G5s are not worth the money, and as one stated it works with the PPC Snow Leopard - that should be a reason to consider G5 2.0/2.3 or Quad.

 

[MacPro2006VBox]

I have said this once and will say it again. Any PCIe G5 will be better than any one below it - period. The older G5s are not worth the money, and as one stated it works with the PPC Snow Leopard - that should be a reason to consider G5 2.0/2.3 or Quad.

The older G5 (2.0 DP) can be turned into a Xbox 360 Dev kit if you have the proper graphics card (6800 Ultra)

 

[Eightbitgamer757]

Could anyone give me a sense of where the gpu mine has stands in rankings for a G5 gpu? i think its the normal 6800 but im not sure

 

[Amethyst1]

The 6800 was the top-of-the-line for 2004.

 

[WhoNet]

You can use a bobby pin as your antenna.

 

[bunnspecial]

Could anyone give me a sense of where the gpu mine has stands in rankings for a G5 gpu? i think its the normal 6800 but im not sure

The Geforce 6800 Ultra was one of the best 3 GPUs available for the AGP G5s(I'd consider it about equal to the X800XT, and inferior to the X850XT).

You will know if you have it. It's a massive double height full length card, and outputs to two DVI ports. A lot of other AGP G5 GPUs have one DVI and one ADC port.

 

[Amethyst1]

It's a massive double height full length card,

The 6800 GT is also double-slot and dual dual-link DVI (mhhh…) but is it also full-length?

 

[Eightbitgamer757]

The 6800 GT is also double-slot and dual dual-link DVI (mhhh…) but is it also full-length?

Here is a pic of the inside of it i snapped while taking a look over the internals to make sure everything is there, i know
the front fan/speaker is missing, but there is a spare G5 i can use for parts that isnt functional.

 

[MacPro2006VBox]

The Geforce 6800 Ultra was one of the best 3 GPUs available for the AGP G5s(I'd consider it about equal to the X800XT, and inferior to the X850XT).

You will know if you have it. It's a massive double height full length card, and outputs to two DVI ports. A lot of other AGP G5 GPUs have one DVI and one ADC port.

I honestly wish I had an x850 or the 6800… the FX5200 Ultra sucks for not having dual DVI (it needs that annoying converter to even do that.)

 

[Amethyst1]

I honestly wish I had an x850 or the 6800…

There’s also the retail X800.

 

[B S Magnet]

Here is a pic of the inside of it i snapped while taking a look over the internals to make sure everything is there, i know
the front fan/speaker is missing, but there is a spare one i can use for parts that isnt functional.View attachment 1827389

It could benefit from a complete disassembly (including the main logic board, behind which are going to be channels where years of ventilation dust has collected), a fresh thermal paste for the two CPUs and the heat sinks on the back of the logic board and the also the video card), and a total dusting out of the fans and inside the case, but this appears to be a really nice setup you have there!

If you feel adventurous, @AphoticD went through, shot, and posted pics of his G5 disassembly and clean-out from a few years ago. And of course, there are also the iFixit step-by-step guides.

 

[bunnspecial]

That looks like a 6800 Ultra to me

I honestly wish I had an x850 or the 6800… the FX5200 Ultra sucks for not having dual DVI (it needs that annoying converter to even do that.)

The FX5200 is a crummy card, although I'm willing to overlook its lack of dual DVI(ADC displays do make a nice complement to Macs of this age, even though they are dated now-I use to run 2x Acrylic 23s off of my Quicksilver and later my dual 2.7).

With that said, the genuine Mac edition X850XT is also DVI/ADC. That's the card I have in my dual 2.7, which BTW makes a great set-up that can be faster than a quad if you're doing single threaded tasks. Even though I have a couple of Quads(I'm down to 2 now after giving a couple away), I opted to build the hot dual 2.7 over using a Quad because of one specific single-threaded program and also, more importantly, because I wanted SCSI and it's a lot easier to do that on PCI than PCIe. Unfortunately, I never found a card that would both play nice in the G5(with or without Leopard compatibility, which is an issue with a lot of SCSI cards) and that had an external connector for which I could actually find a cable.

 

[Mercedes33]

I have said this once and will say it again. Any PCIe G5 will be better than any one below it - period. The older G5s are not worth the money, and as one stated it works with the PPC Snow Leopard - that should be a reason to consider G5 2.0/2.3 or Quad.

That’s right. I have a Quad G5 Late 2005 and a Dual agp 2ghz Powermac g5. The G5 Quad is Way faster and quieter.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

I have said this once and will say it again. Any PCIe G5 will be better than any one below it - period. The older G5s are not worth the money, and as one stated it works with the PPC Snow Leopard - that should be a reason to consider G5 2.0/2.3 or Quad.

Try to install M-Audio Revolution 7.1 in QUAD . (Got one long ago, it has MAC OS drivers on disks ). BTW, LSI3041X-R (PCI-X card) easily gives you 4 more sas\sata ports .