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Would my iMac G4 benefit from Leopard?

Jessica Lares

Jessica Lares

macrumors G3
Original poster
Oct 31, 2009
9,612
1,062
Near Dallas, Texas, USA
I have a 1.25 GHz iMac G4 and would like an opinion on whether or not Leopard would be worthwhile to put on it...

The DVD portion of the drive doesn't seem to work (CD does though?), so I'd be using FireWire to transfer it.

It's pretty much the basic setup, but with 768MB RAM. Like I said in another thread, we use it for iLife, Photoshop, and YouTube for the most part.

My 1.8 Power Mac G5 only has a 512MB stick in it, but a 300GB hard drive. Leopard runs great on it. But I know that G4s are a tad slower and the drive is smaller so I thought I'd ask first.

Thanks.
 
if you think a particular leopard feature will help you then go for it, else just leave well alone.

Upping to leopard isn't going to give you a supercomputer and most likely won't fix the ODD issue either.
 
Before you update to Leopard you will want to get more ram for sure, I dont know how you cope with 512mb on the G5!
Pick up 2 x 1gb sticks on ebay for the iMac, chuck leopard on it and it becomes a fairly capable machine.
Mine is actually the Mrs' kitchen machine for looking at recipies and music ect. I upgraded the HDD to a 250 and its perfect.
HDD upgrade was tricky though!
 
RAM is the gridlock. You have to have at least 1 GB for running LEopard properly.

My Powerbook with Leopard installed is struggling with 786 MB of RAM. It's slow but usable, esecially for university projects. CS2 runs pretty well on it.
 
I run Leopard on my 1.25Ghz iMac G4. It runs fairly well. The problem with the optical drive not reading DVDs is common on G3/G4 era drives as they age. The only fix is to replace the drive with a new one. If you can replace the stock hard drive with a new one. The stock ones are slow, even for their time.
 
Tiger is a far better OS for any G4 and single CPU G5 models. Leopard will significantly reduce CPU power on them.
 

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To replace the hard drive and one of the ram sticks you need to fully open the iMac's dome. When putting it back together, make sure you reapply heatsink compound to the two points inside or it'll overheat. Also when you're in it, you should replace the PRAM battery. The original ones are nearing the end of their life.
 
Intell said:
To replace the hard drive and one of the ram sticks you need to fully open the iMac's dome. When putting it back together, make sure you reapply heatsink compound to the two points inside or it'll overheat. Also when you're in it, you should replace the PRAM battery. The original ones are nearing the end of their life.
Click to expand...

The computer wasn't used that much to begin with. It was just for Photoshop by very few people for the years that it was sitting in the classroom. But okay, I'll look into that too.
 
The issue with questions like this is that what other people think has little to no relevance for your personal needs and preferences. You need to try things out for yourself to get any real grasp on how it works for you.

You mention that you use apps that need Leopard so that makes your choice for you right there.

For the people saying there is a big difference in performance.. this is not my experience at all. Leopard performs a tad faster on my 1.8 GHz G4 and about the same on my 1 GHz. This is what I mean.. everyones experience is different because everyone is a different user with different uses and habits.

Letting other peoples experience and opinions do all your thinking for you is a mistake because it has almost no relevance to you.
 
zen.state said:
The issue with questions like this is that what other people think has little to no relevance for your personal needs and preferences. You need to try things out for yourself to get any real grasp on how it works for you.

You mention that you use apps that need Leopard so that makes your choice for you right there.

For the people saying there is a big difference in performance.. this is not my experience at all. Leopard performs a tad faster on my 1.8 GHz G4 and about the same on my 1 GHz. This is what I mean.. everyones experience is different because everyone is a different user with different uses and habits.

Letting other peoples experience and opinions do all your thinking for you is a mistake because it has almost no relevance to you.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm sure that there are other people who use their PowerPCs in the same way that I do, which is why I asked. And I have no clue what the difference between G3, G4, and G5. All I do know is that my iBook runs Tiger pretty sluggish, my G4 is really, really smooth, and my G5 is amazingly smooth, little smoother than one of my Intel machines even.

And yes, my G5 runs perfectly fine with just 512MB. But the RAID drives make a difference. They are also brand new drives and probably a new stick of RAM. These machines were also well kept and barely used for anything besides Photoshop and Final Cut every couple of days for a few hours, so they're pretty much still mint besides the optical drives being faulty.

And in saying that, I think I'll just go ahead and upgrade the hard drive first and add the extra RAM if needed.
 
I guess it depends on what apps you plan on running on the G4 that are Leopard only.

For me, I'd probably want to use an iMac of this vintage as an iTunes server. The latest iTunes requires Leopard (or higher) to run. So for me, it would be a no-brainer to upgrade.

Of course, your usage may differ.
 
Whargoul said:
I'm sorry, facts are not opinions. Thats why I provided proof.
Click to expand...

My 550mhz Powerbook G4 benches Leopard as being faster in the CPU tests. As does my 1.5Ghz eMac. But my 1.5Ghz Cube shows Tiger just barely faster. And Panther beats them all.
 
Intell said:
My 550mhz Powerbook G4 benches Leopard as being faster in the CPU tests. As does my 1.5Ghz eMac. But my 1.5Ghz Cube shows Tiger just barely faster. And Panther beats them all.
Click to expand...
Mac OS X peaked at Panther IMO. Since then it started getting slower, more resource intensive, and the new "features" that were added were pretty give or take with the exception of Time Machine.

As for my experience with Leopard on an iMac G4. I have 2 1ghz 17" models and one runs each OS. Leopard is slower I think, but the newer software options are well worth it.
 
92jlee said:
Before you update to Leopard you will want to get more ram for sure, I dont know how you cope with 512mb on the G5!
Pick up 2 x 1gb sticks on ebay for the iMac, chuck leopard on it and it becomes a fairly capable machine.
Mine is actually the Mrs' kitchen machine for looking at recipies and music ect. I upgraded the HDD to a 250 and its perfect.
HDD upgrade was tricky though!
Click to expand...

In some cases, I think 512 MB of RAM can be okay for Leopard. I ran Leopard on my G4 iBook with that, and I could even stream YouTube without lagging. But I guess I'm an exception, so you would still probably need an upgrade. If you still have your Tiger install disks around, you could always try it out and then upgrade if you have to. But since your G4 probably won't run as well on that, and since Leopard costs a larger amount of money, I suggest buying the RAM upgrade first.
 
Whargoul said:
I'm sorry, facts are not opinions. Thats why I provided proof.
Click to expand...

You proved nothing other than the results within your little window of experience. To think it speaks for everyone is naive. As I mentioned earlier in this thread my 1.8 GHz G4 performs a bit faster running Leopard.

Your "facts" are your own and you are also naive enough once again to think some silly benchmark represents the real world experience.
 
I wouldn't do anything until you upgrade your RAM. You'll see a nice speed improvement going to 1gb. Then leopard might be worth running. Especially if you have software that requires it.
 
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