Refurb iMac G5 strangeness? Need opinions/help.

[tag]

So after buying my iMac G4 20" 1.25Ghz, my mother wanted a Mac so I ended up getting her a refurbished iMac G5 20" 2.0GHz system from apple.com. After a small setback a few days ago with a bad RAM problem, everything is up and running, and now I am encountering a few things that are bugging me.

Now I can only really compare the iMac G5 to my G4 and my powerbook so here goes maybe someone will know why these things are happening.

First is the screen. It seems a little, well fuzzy is the best way to describe it. Overall it looks good, but when I play a video or focus and stare at the background I notice it being a bit fuzzy. I downloaded an HD video from apple.com (Toby Mac music Video Gone). It plays flawlessly on my G4 and looks perfectly super crisp, and the background and screen is awsome and crisp on the G4 as well. But on the G5 its doesn't have quite the quality, its just not as crisp. Does the iMac G5 have a different type of LCD? I would assume that the G5 should look the same or better, not worse.

Second is the Superdrive... EDIT NOTE: My mistake on this one, I was comparing two files when copying that were so similar in name I mistook one for the other, the speeds are fine.

Finally I solved this problem, but I'm typing it here to see if I should be concerned about it, despite it seeming fixed. - When I booted the G5 iMac up for the first time, it hung at the initilizing screen(the grey circle ball thingy screen with the apple on it, before the blue loading strip screen). So I was going to reinstall Tiger anyway, so I popped in the Install DVD and went to Erase and Install the OS, but it took about 5 minutes for the Installer to even recognize the approx. 250GB Harddrive, but when it finally did I could install on it. So now it boots fine and all so I assume there is no need to worry, hopefully.

So any words of wisdom or comments would be nice. I figure I'll give apple a call but its hard to really get across the screen problem without looking at it, but I hate dragging it to the apple store (4 hours out of my day), so any ideas would be great. Thanks.

 

[mad jew]

First is the screen. It seems a little, well fuzzy is the best way to describe it. Overall it looks good, but when I play a video or focus and stare at the background I notice it being a bit fuzzy. I downloaded an HD video from apple.com (Toby Mac music Video Gone). It plays flawlessly on my G4 and looks perfectly super crisp, and the background and screen is awsome and crisp on the G4 as well. But on the G5 its doesn't have quite the quality, its just not as crisp. Does the iMac G5 have a different type of LCD? I would assume that the G5 should look the same or better, not worse.

Is the resolution set to the maximum? Which colour profile are you using? Both of these can be checked in the System Preferences, under Displays.

 

[tag]

Is the resolution set to the maximum? Which colour profile are you using? Both of these can be checked in the System Preferences, under Displays.

Yeah sorry, I forgot to mention settings. It has the exact same settings as the G4. The G5 is set up at max resolution of 1680x1050, and is using Millions of colors and the Default Display Profile for iMacs, and the processor is running at highest. Just to note, maybe a better word instead of fuzzy, is grainy. Its a bit grainy.

 

[mad jew]

There are some funky settings for the display in the PRAM and they may be corrupt for one reason or another so a reset may help. I doubt it though. It's worth a try though, if you can be bothered. I'll be surprised if it affects anything. The other option is to create a new account and see if that too is grainy.

I can't think why the screen would be grainy.

 

[tag]

Ok this was really quite weird. I reset the PRAM, and when the computer booted back up, right before the background was displayed, various pixels in various places flashed with a rainbow of colors. Now that freaked me out.

I reset again and this time the flashing of random rainbow pixels on the screen happened after the background came on. I've never noticed that happen on any of my other Macs after a PRAM reset, so maybe that has something to do with the problem? (Honestly though I don't know if this was happening before I tried reseting the PRAM) I think I may be envisioning an apple store visit in my future.

Sadly the PRAM reset didn't help the graininess of the screen.

I guess I'll give creating another account a shot a bit later, I don't want to clutter up the system with needless accounts, though I see plus/minus buttons on the account screen so I assume I can just delete it when I'm done and it won't leave behind anything.

 

[mad jew]

I assume I can just delete it when I'm done and it won't leave behind anything.

Yeah, so long as you're in an Administrator account it's easy to delete other accounts.

That's weird about the PRAM reset too. Maybe it's a loose connection between the GPU and the logic board... Who knows, I think you're right in taking it to Apple. Very bizarre behaviour.