Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Worth a gander? G5 tower 1.8Ghz

Yeah, I don't really know how much a G5 would go for, even in alleged great condition. Was thinking of just changing the card for light usage and to tinker with. :eek:
 
why not type "Powermac G5" in ebay. click on "ended auctions", then "sort by price - low to high". There you can see what G5 model has what price range.

everymac.com also gives prices for used ones with each spec-sheet. Real prices are a bit lower though.
 
Cox Orange said:
why not type "Powermac G5" in ebay. click on "ended auctions", then "sort by price - low to high". There you can see what G5 model has what price range.

everymac.com also gives prices for used ones with each spec-sheet. Real prices are a bit lower though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. :)
 
eBay and Craigslist prices are much lower than that, even with that being a dual core G5. Shop around before you pull the trigger if that's what you've decided on.
 
Unless you NEED the expansion slots/dual internal hard drives, don't bother. A dual G5 will be larger, louder, suck way more power, and in most cases be slower than a Core2Duo Mac Mini. The air-cooled G5s are pretty reliable, but there's little justification to deliberately spend that kind of money on one.

Unless you MUST have a PPC machine, I'd take a pass on virtually all of them now. The software support is disappearing, and only the last couple iterations are fast enough to be competitive with what you can get for the same $$ on an Intel chip. Meanwhile, the super-fast ones have the LCS systems that will almost certainly fail, it's only a question of when (the original ones, for example, were only warrantied from the OEM to last for one year, thus why Apple ended up replacing a ton of them under AppleCare etc)
 
I bought a G5 dual 1.8 in December for $200 CDN on eBay. That was certainly the most I would have paid. As Sysiphus says, I bought it for the drive space, as I had several large hard drives sitting around doing nothing and wanted to put them to use for long-term storage, but easy access. I wouldn't really consider doing any serious work on it. I probably turn it on once a week or so, to move completed projects from my main computer to storage on the G5.
 
mike457 said:
I bought a G5 dual 1.8 in December for $200 CDN on eBay. That was certainly the most I would have paid.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I sold my mint-condition dual 1.8 a couple months ago for ~320USD, and was ecstatic to get that much.
 
A PowerPC system of say G4 500MHz or higher can still easily fill many low key roles in the modern world. My Sawtooth G4 is as much of a work horse if not more than my MacBook C2D. The MacBook is faster but the G4 being a tower it can take 24/7 workloads at 100% CPU use much better.

I personally never touch anything with a G5 chip. They are all too unstable and live too short a life normally. You can buy 2x G4 towers for the same or less than a G5 and when used properly in combination by spreading work over both you can easily be just as productive if not more. G4 towers (other than the odd MDD) live forever and are built like tanks.

Example of using hardware in combination..

I mostly keep my MacBook docked at my desk with the lid closed and connected to my 24" LCD. I use the built in screen sharing in 10.6 (in 10.5+ also) and one of the 4 spaces on my desktop to control the G4 via VNC. Since I have a direct gigabit ethernet connection between the two Macs the VNC is very fast and responsive/usable. I then use just that one app (Screen Sharing) to run between 4-7 apps on my G4 that would normally be background apps anyway. ie. Transmission, IM, WheatherDock, iTunes (music server), misc video and audio rippers and other random apps. So along with being my file server it also fills all those other roles. Although it might be just a G4 CPU it's a 1.8GHz with 2GB RAM so it can do some decent crunching. I have used many PowerPC systems in combination in the past and always had great results.

In the end my MacBook is free to scream away at whatever I am actively doing because it doesn't have to do all the crap the G4 is taking care of.

I still use my G4 as my sole gaming machine as I only play games from the 1998-2005 era and they are all PowerPC only. The MacBook also has the crappy GMA 950 GPU.
 
Last edited:
first see what apps you must use, if any of these are intel, pass on the G5. If not, then examine if your needs may need intel (x86) in the future. If you do, pass on the G5.. if not, grab it and hang on, cos they are great boxes. :)

sweet!
:apple:
 
zen.state said:
(...) ie. Transmission, IM, WheatherDock, iTunes (music server), misc video and audio rippers and other random apps. So along with being my file server it also fills all those other roles. Although it might be just a G4 CPU it's a 1.8GHz with 2GB RAM so it can do some decent crunching. I have used many PowerPC systems in combination in the past and always had great results.

In the end my MacBook is free to scream away at whatever I am actively doing because it doesn't have to do all the crap the G4 is taking care of. (...)
Click to expand...
Ok, comparing a G4 with a third party CPU-upgrade of 1,8GHz with any G4 might be not really fair ;)
But anyway, wouldn't it be more fitting, regarding the ressources that both have, to just change the whole arround? I mean let the more Powerful MacBook do all these Tasks and use the G4 for lets say surfing on the internet (or whatever you meant with "screaming away"? (I am asking because I do not know and am just guessing, given the geekbench numbers. I know benchmarks do not say much about most reallife scenarios and I am not a benchmark ho... :)

I guess if someone used a G4 with 500MHz for video converting, he would see the beachball for days. My 1,33GHz G4 ibook still needs half a day to convert 1 hour of DV footage with h.264.

Btw I am using my old iMac G3 for gaming, too and for photoshop (under 10.2 :D ), because I was too "cheap" to buy a newer version of photoshop for how rarely I use it.

VanneDC said:
first see what apps you must use, if any of these are intel, pass on the G5. If not, then examine if your needs may need intel (x86) in the future. If you do, pass on the G5.. if not, grab it and hang on, cos they are great boxes. :)

sweet!
:apple:
Click to expand...

But not a 1,8GHz for 440USD. I would not pay more than 180!
 
I wouldn't go with it. Considering the G5 is 8 years old and can only run Leopard which is now 2 OS's old and outdated.
 
t0rr3s said:
Yeah, I don't really know how much a G5 would go for, even in alleged great condition. Was thinking of just changing the card for light usage and to tinker with. :eek:
Click to expand...

As others have said, $440 for a 1.8 GHz G5 is bad value. Look very carefully at used or even new Intel Mac Minis and even iMacs before choosing a G5. The G5 migh offer an advantage on certain multithreaded applications, and has the expansion slots. But apart from that the Intel Macs are the way to go.
 
Cox Orange said:
Ok, comparing a G4 with a third party CPU-upgrade of 1,8GHz with any G4 might be not really fair ;)
But anyway, wouldn't it be more fitting, regarding the ressources that both have, to just change the whole arround? I mean let the more Powerful MacBook do all these Tasks and use the G4 for lets say surfing on the internet (or whatever you meant with "screaming away"? (I am asking because I do not know and am just guessing, given the geekbench numbers. I know benchmarks do not say much about most reallife scenarios and I am not a benchmark ho... :)

I guess if someone used a G4 with 500MHz for video converting, he would see the beachball for days. My 1,33GHz G4 ibook still needs half a day to convert 1 hour of DV footage with h.264.
Click to expand...

Since the MacBook is a laptop I don't like to constantly stress it. I don't just use it for web and such but any work I need a good amount of power for that needs to be done soon. I do a lot of mid range graphic arts as well as most of my h.264 encoding on it also.

All those apps I run on the G4 are background type apps. Things like bit torrent need to run 24/7 and I sleep the MacBook at night. When it comes to video ripping and the like I also use the G4 a lot because it's all personal stuff and it will be done when it's done. The 1.8GHz can rip DivX in 2-3x faster than realtime and h.264 in about twice the realtime.

The G4 is more than powerful enough for all those things. When it comes to the tasks I am actively using for real work or just web/mail I would rather have the faster one free to use. That way I can do the things I need to do or get done now faster and the G4 crunches away at a decent clip with 24/7 and background apps. The G4 also handles all the Time Machine backups for both Macs.

To put my 2 Mac combo in a metaphoric sense.. if both the Macs were soldiers the G4 is the grunt workhorse infantryman with enough power and ability to go it alone and the MacBook is the special ops guy sent in to have his back or do what the G4 can't. That might seem silly but I am just trying to help you understand my logic. :)
 
I guess after reading the comments I won't be picking up the set after all. My reservations mainly stem from comments against the longevity of the G5, even as a box to tinker with. The price advertised didn't help either. ;)

Today I found this>

Dual 2 Ghz PowerMac G5
4.5GB DDR SDRAM
GeForce FX 6600 128MB
500GB Hard disk
DVD RW Drive
Apple 22" LCD display
Apple keyboard

all for USD$520.

Seems like the powermac g5's are really coming for me! :eek: :p
 
t0rr3s said:
I guess after reading the comments I won't be picking up the set after all. My reservations mainly stem from comments against the longevity of the G5, even as a box to tinker with. The price advertised didn't help either. ;)

Today I found this>

Dual 2 Ghz PowerMac G5
4.5GB DDR SDRAM
GeForce FX 6600 128MB
500GB Hard disk
DVD RW Drive
Apple 22" LCD display
Apple keyboard

all for USD$520.

Seems like the powermac g5's are really coming for me! :eek: :p
Click to expand...

Seems like you are destined to get a G5 :) But that's really more money than I would spend to tinker around. Compare what you could buy in the $500+ price range and I think a PPC mac is a bad choice.
 
I love my PowerMac G5 so much, that I am going to purchase a Mac Pro 1,1. Currently my G5 is my main Mac, and it is handing tasks so far that I can throw at it. I am going to purchase a 20" Apple Display aluminum for this computer.

Getting the Mac Pro mainly for Lion support, and to start writing some Objective C code for a certain portable Apple device :p

My G5 will be setup across the room as a secondary computer for when the Mac Pro is doing encoding (or I will use the G5 to encode, and use the Mac Pro, etc)
 
zen.state said:
>whole post<
Click to expand...
ok, now I get your point and concept. Thanks for explaining it more detailed!

t0rr3s said:
...USD$520....
Click to expand...

Are G5s realy that expensive over there? you can get a 2x2,3GHz G5 for about 420USD (300EUR) on german ebay :confused:

I would recommend, you study the specs on everymac.com (open several tabs for comparing the specs more detailed or use the comparison function on everymac.com for a quick overlook/comparison).

There are 4!!! Generations of 2x2GHz G5s and the last one would be the most worthy of them it has PCIe instead of PCI-X and AGP. (Though I would go for a 2,3GHz if I still wanted one or a Quad 2,5GHz if I'd like to play the game of "to leak or not to leak").
There are also 2 generations of the 2x2,3GHz model! (second with PCIe, etc.).
Stay away from the 2x2,5GHz since it is liquid cooled and the most prominent to fail (still not sure whether they were just more often sold or really more crappy than the other two liquid cooled models 2x2,7 and 4x2,5GHz. I am not sure because they keep counting on the internet but do not say how many percent failed of the models sold, they only say how many percent of all models that came to service.

BUT! If you not need a certain powerpc programm, but want to add cards than go for the Mac Pro or if you just like the older Macs than buy a PowerMac G4/G5, but care for the price.

Others might/should correct me, though. every solution has its plus and trade offs.
 
I disagree with anyone saying that PPC machines are useless by today's standards. I use my iBook G4 daily for many tasks, and my eMac is an awesome little machine. Sure, they are slow at times, but IMO, they are still worth using. ;)
 
adcx64 said:
I disagree with anyone saying that PPC machines are useless by today's standards. I use my iBook G4 daily for many tasks, and my eMac is an awesome little machine. Sure, they are slow at times, but IMO, they are still worth using. ;)
Click to expand...

It's sad how many people have computers that go far beyond the power they need. They somehow think they need a MacBook Pro or air or whatever other new Intel Mac for web/youtube etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back