Since I upgraded to Leopard (OS 10.5.8) my G5, with 11 Gb RAM, seems dreadfully slow. Scanning for fonts using FontAgent Pro is awful. Large publications in InDesign CS4 is very slow. Is this normal? Should I buy a MacBook Pro?
Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Hi,
How much RAM?
So we know more about it...
At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac, then click on More Info, then click on Hardware> and report this upto but not including the Serial#...
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: Power Mac G5 Quad
Machine Model: PowerMac11,2
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 4
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 10 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.7f1
Then click on More Info>Hardware>Graphics/Displays and report like this...
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT:
Chipset Model: GeForce 7800GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCI
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0092
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 2152.2
Displays:
VGA Display:
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Supported
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Display:
Status: No display connected
Leopard/10.5.x needs a fast/big Graphic card to perform well.
Very Important, how much Free Space is on your Hard Drive first of all? Click on the Macintosh HD on the Desktop, then do a Get Info on it.
Hi, thanks for your interest
It appears I have a 465 Gb drive with156 GB available
Here's the hardware info:
Model Name: Power Mac G5
Model Identifier: PowerMac11,2
Processor Name: PowerPC G5 (1.0)
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of CPUs: 2
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 11 GB
Bus Speed: 1 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.7f1
And graphics info:
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE:
Chipset Model: GeForce 6600LE
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: SLOT-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0142
Revision ID: 0x00a4
ROM Revision: 2149
Displays:
Acer P216H:
Resolution: 1600 x 900 @ 60 Hz
Depth: 32-Bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
SDM-HS95P:
Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz
Depth: 32-Bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
OK great, none of that should be a problem! 🙂
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive
Reboot, test again.
If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport in 10.4 & below, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.
Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.
Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...
/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons
When was the last time any disk maintenance was done.
When installing a new OS, files and data can be written all over the place on the hard drive.
Plus, if you haven't done any disk maintenance in the past, your other data files may have been scattered all over the HD over time.
You need some disc maintenance utilities like Micromat TechTool Pro and Alsoft Disk Warrior.
These do things like check for data corruption, data repair and data defragmentation/optimization as well as repair and optimization of Mac OS X's directory files.
If this hasn't been done in a long time, this could, also, be a source of your G5's slowdown, too!
Hi
Thanks for your replies on this and other issues. I've reformatted my drive and reinstalled everything. Mac seems to be running properly now and it seems the original issue might have been to do with fonts. Looking at my system info above, do you think I need a new graphics card? What about a new Mac, specifically a MacBook Pro? I've been thinking about using a laptop as my main machine and hooking it up to an extra monitor.
Thanks
Stu
It's a 128MB video cardsplit between 2 monitors, which immediately limits each to 64MB. This should still be fine, but at the lower end of performance.
I did think that this was something to do with Spotlight, so if you had just updated a large number of files, Spotlight would chew your CPU and disk for hours while it updated it's database. Tiger was worse for this, you REALLY noticed it on a G4, dual too.
Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.0)... Geekbench: 1814/1882
MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.5 17" Late 2011... Geekbench: 10706/11699
But carefully check what kind of adapters will be needed to run another Monitor, & which Monitors will work.
Just downloaded Geekbench and found my G5 has a score of 1746. Does that mean a Macbook Pro with a Geekbench rating of 10706 will run more than five times faster than my G5?
Only if you believe in benchmarks.
Seriously, I would question the five times faster but I would agree it will be faster for most things. That is the thing with benchmarks they only measure certain things not everything.
Allan
Yes, except each step up in the OS slows it down mostly, and 16 GB of RAM in Lion will be about like 4-8 GB on a G5, so, while some things will be 5 times faster & 3 times slower, some other things will be 10 times faster, & others no difference.
CPU bound tasks will maybe be faster, especially if you get Intel software optimised for multiple cores. Most of the time simple use will not be any faster, it may take 0.02s instead of 0.1s. You won't notice it. But when I upgraded to an 8 core Mac Pro some CPU intensive video rendering went from 25 hours to 6-7 minutes. I put it down to better written software, optimised for Intel and multiple cores and faster cores. and more RAM, faster disk.
Do you have any long-running tasks that you wish were faster ?
Since my first Mac in 1986, I've always only upgraded when my current top-end Mac becomes too painful to use. Still have nearly all of them, my SE sometimes sits next to my Mac Pro. I think the Geekbench scores are based on a Mac Plus having a score of 1.0.
Thanks geeks, this is very helpful. I'm running Creative Suite 4 for desktop publishing mostly and Dreamweaver for web design. My computer isn't painfully slow yet. Question: will I have to upgrade my Adobe software to take advantage of Intel?
You'd have to google for that, or search the Adobe forums - I did a quick search of adobe forums using google, and found some posts reporting issues with OS X Lion and CS4. But search and research for yourself and decide if the issues will affect the components that you will use.
You may decide to grab a 2nd hand MacBook Pro running 10.6 and then you may be fine. Again research. Or be prepared to buy an upgrade licence (if one exists) from CS4 to CS5 (or later).
Which apps work with Mac OS X 10.6?...
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/
Lion also does not support 32-bit Intel Core Duo or Core Solo based Macs. Rosetta is no longer available in Lion, which means Lion no longer supports PowerPC applications.
What applications are not compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion"?
G5 deadly slow with Leopard
