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Post Your Mac Setup: Past & Present (Part 18)

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macnerd93

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
192
United Kingdom
The G5 arrived :)

So my G5 arrived earlier today and its one stunning machine. Its pretty fast to be honest, the way people were talking about it, I was expecting it to be extremely slow, but if I could compare its speed I would say Leopard on it runs about as fast as my '07 MacBook or '07 Mac mini. So its pretty smooth, just nothing like current intel "i" series Macs.

Either way I only paid £49 for it plus free shipping so it was an awesome deal.

Specs
PowerPC G5 Dual 1.8
1.25GB RAM to be upgraded to 4GB
500GB Seagate
320GB Hitachi
Nvidia FX5200 64mb vram
Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard


The G5 by Ryan J. Nicholson, on Flickr
 
Apple fanboy

Apple fanboy

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Feb 21, 2012
57,003
56,027
Behind the Lens, UK
macnerd93 said:
So my G5 arrived earlier today and its one stunning machine. Its pretty fast to be honest, the way people were talking about it, I was expecting it to be extremely slow, but if I could compare its speed I would say Leopard on it runs about as fast as my '07 MacBook or '07 Mac mini. So its pretty smooth, just nothing like current intel "i" series Macs.

Either way I only paid £49 for it plus free shipping so it was an awesome deal.
Click to expand...

But what are you planning to do on it that you can't on your iMac?
 
macnerd93

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
192
United Kingdom
Apple fanboy said:
But what are you planning to do on it that you can't on your iMac?
Click to expand...

LOL :) Its just a secondary desk machine. It runs sim city 4, something my iMac can't and never will unless I downgrade to snow leopard with abysmal rosetta performance. As well as running an old version of SPSS I use for my Criminology degree, well it beats running it in Windows LOL.

The irony is, it actually boots up faster than the iMac and doing a few load tests with the same files it was about 40 seconds quicker burning a DVD in Toast Titanium 8 as opposed to the iMac in Toast 11. It also loaded a large .psd file in Photoshop CS2 way faster than the iMac in CS6.

I refuse to believe PowerPC is dead, crippled and now a hobbyist thing. If Apple wanted to support it the G5's are extremely capable machines this one seems pretty fast. PowerPC though has been deliberately flawed to make them useless, so people upgrade. I suppose the only plus side of this, is that they are now dirt cheap.

I ought to do a fair test and install it with Panther and do some comparisons of how it performs against my iMac with older software equivalents.
 
Last edited:
R

roberthallin

macrumors member
Oct 25, 2009
92
27
Stockholm, Sweden
Sorry about the horrible quality. Anyways: MBP Early 2011 2.2ghz and a bunch of other stuff surrounding it.
 

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JoeG4

JoeG4

macrumors 68030
Jan 11, 2002
2,873
538
@ MacNerd, I came across my dual 2ghz G5 by chance as well. It's my primary machine, and with a 7200rpm drive pretty quick. I imagine it'd be much faster with an SSD ;)

However, H.264 video crawls on it, and because there are no PPC video card drivers out there that support hardware h.264 decoding, it always will. The version of iPhoto that still works on PPC macs is glitchy, there isn't any Chrome and the newest version of webkit is a hobbyist alpha build - same with firefox.

Most things work great, especially stuff you could do with these machines when they came out (like video work, burning disks, etc). But web 2.0 sites suck :( Because the JIT compilers on the browsers are a little sketchy at times (TenFourFox has the best)

So yea, it's a mixed bag.

On one hand they are still surprisingly capable machines. On the other, I can't wait to switch this out with a newer intel box :) For now the MBA 13" is the most powerful machine I own. XD
 
E

el-John-o

macrumors 68000
Nov 29, 2010
1,590
768
Missouri
macnerd93 said:
So my G5 arrived earlier today and its one stunning machine. Its pretty fast to be honest, the way people were talking about it, I was expecting it to be extremely slow, but if I could compare its speed I would say Leopard on it runs about as fast as my '07 MacBook or '07 Mac mini. So its pretty smooth, just nothing like current intel "i" series Macs.

Either way I only paid £49 for it plus free shipping so it was an awesome deal.

Specs
PowerPC G5 Dual 1.8
1.25GB RAM to be upgraded to 4GB
500GB Seagate
320GB Hitachi
Nvidia FX5200 64mb vram
Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard
Click to expand...

That acrylic display is one of Apples most gorgeous creations. IMO, that 'era' (G4 iMac, the G4 PowerMac, Acrylic cinema display) were the best looking Apple computers. If I could buy a 27" LED IPS display designed like the old Acrylic displays I would! Even a 23"! (Though I love the physical size and screen real estate of the 27" LED Cinema)

Currently I have a 23" display as a second monitor, I've really considered getting an Acrylic cinema 23" to replace it.
 
macnerd93

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
192
United Kingdom
JoeG4 said:
@ MacNerd, I came across my dual 2ghz G5 by chance as well. It's my primary machine, and with a 7200rpm drive pretty quick. I imagine it'd be much faster with an SSD ;)

However, H.264 video crawls on it, and because there are no PPC video card drivers out there that support hardware h.264 decoding, it always will. The version of iPhoto that still works on PPC macs is glitchy, there isn't any Chrome and the newest version of webkit is a hobbyist alpha build - same with firefox.

Most things work great, especially stuff you could do with these machines when they came out (like video work, burning disks, etc). But web 2.0 sites suck :( Because the JIT compilers on the browsers are a little sketchy at times (TenFourFox has the best)

So yea, it's a mixed bag.

On one hand they are still surprisingly capable machines. On the other, I can't wait to switch this out with a newer intel box :) For now the MBA 13" is the most powerful machine I own. XD
Click to expand...

Totally agree, although I do find it quite interesting scouring around for versions of old software. I have also found the nightly builds of webkit in a Safari shell optimised for powerPC, seems to work better than TenFourFox and it still looks like safari.
 
Drew017

Drew017

macrumors 65816
May 29, 2011
1,254
11
East coast, USA
NbinHD said:
Nice, im thinking of the same combo. Is their enough room for the Air on the Micke? Is the Micke strong, and got enough space?
Click to expand...

The air doesn't take too much space, and since there is a tray you can pull out there is quite a bit of room. As for it being sturdy, I've never had a problem ;)
 
A

andrewfx

macrumors newbie
Aug 11, 2008
26
0
My new monitor came today!

Still after a pair of monitors (if I can fit them on my desk!) and a 61 key midi controller too.

544436_10200258044187717_1846375093_n.jpg
 
GermanyChris

GermanyChris

macrumors 601
Jul 3, 2011
4,185
5
Here
macnerd93 said:
So my G5 arrived earlier today and its one stunning machine. Its pretty fast to be honest, the way people were talking about it, I was expecting it to be extremely slow, but if I could compare its speed I would say Leopard on it runs about as fast as my '07 MacBook or '07 Mac mini. So its pretty smooth, just nothing like current intel "i" series Macs.

Either way I only paid £49 for it plus free shipping so it was an awesome deal.

Specs
PowerPC G5 Dual 1.8
1.25GB RAM to be upgraded to 4GB
500GB Seagate
320GB Hitachi
Nvidia FX5200 64mb vram
Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard

[url=http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8329/8447100229_2e617aa77f.jpg]Image[/url]
The G5 by Ryan J. Nicholson, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Don't believe everything you read, particularly about PowerPC
 
macnerd93

macnerd93

macrumors 6502a
Nov 28, 2009
712
192
United Kingdom
GermanyChris said:
Don't believe everything you read, particularly about PowerPC
Click to expand...

well I have two older G4 Power Macs and a 1.42Ghz eMac and they were pretty slow, I mean they run smooth doing basic tasks, but anything to do with video editing and it was pretty much a no, no. The G5 though will come in useful for Logic Studio though I plan on doing vinyl transfers from my deck. Really like using the G5
 
GermanyChris

GermanyChris

macrumors 601
Jul 3, 2011
4,185
5
Here
macnerd93 said:
well I have two older G4 Power Macs and a 1.42Ghz eMac and they were pretty slow, I mean they run smooth doing basic tasks, but anything to do with video editing and it was pretty much a no, no. The G5 though will come in useful for Logic Studio though I plan on doing vinyl transfers from my deck. Really like using the G5
Click to expand...

I shall restate don't believe everything you read about PowerPC..
 
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