Why is OSX Tiger so much slower than OSX Jaquar?

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Level 1

5 points

Why is OSX Tiger so much slower than OSX Jaquar?

I recently did some hard drive shuffling on my trusty Blueberry G3 (with Sonnet G4 processor and 640 megs RAM), removing the original 6GB drive and replacing it with a 120GB drive. I also have a second 40GB drive. Both drives are 7200RPM. As part of the improvements I decided to upgrade to OSX Tiger from Jaguar 10.2.8. I installed the full retail version of 10.4.8. and placed it on the 40GB drive (drive #2), leaving Jaguar on the 120GB drive (drive #1).

I reset the System Preferences so the computer would boot from OSX 10.4.8 on drive #2, and restarted the computer. It took at least 5 minutes for the computer to even boot up, and afterwards every application ran at a pace that can only be described as glacial. I tried restarting several times with identical results.

Fearing I had killed my Mac, I then reset the System Preferences to boot from drive #1 in OSX 10.2.8. The computer booted up quickly and everything worked great. Switched back to Tiger, and once again things ran at a snails pace.

What is going on? According to the requirements to run Tiger I seem to be fine, with plenty of RAM and an adequate processor. Is the fact that an earlier version of an OS is still lurking on the system causing the problem? I could delete Jaguar, but I no longer have the discs for that OS so I'd be unable to reinstall if things are still slow. And I have a few old OS9 apps that I'd like to be able to run in OS9 rather than Classic. So keeping Jaquar available would be preferred.

Any help/insights will be greatly appreciated!

G3 Blueberry w/G4 processor Mac OS X (10.4.8)

G5 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Mar 15, 2007 1:05 PM

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Answer 1

scapesuiter

Level 7

27,670 points

Mar 15, 2007 3:26 PM in response to tomellis

If you had a hard drive that was 6 GB and replace it with a drive that's larger, don't you have to install Mac OS X on a partition that resides completely within the first 8 GB of the larger hard drive?

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Answer 2

Mar 15, 2007 3:39 PM in response to tomellis

I'd be suspicious of the processor upgrade. Just because 10.2 was fine with it, does not mean that 10.4 should care to run well on it.
Just a guess mind you.
As another post mentioned, you may want to consider re-formatting the 40GB drive into a 8 GB partition and a 32 GB partition and install 10.4 on the 8GB partition.

Jeff

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Answer 3

Mar 15, 2007 4:45 PM in response to Jeff Kelleher

you may want to consider re-formatting the 40GB drive into a 8 GB partition and a 32 GB partition and install 10.4 on the 8GB partition.

That would probably make things worse, rather than better, since the OS would be limited to whatever space is left from that 8GB for Virtual Memory - especially considering that you're only working with 640 MB RAM to begin with.

Apple - Mac OS X - Upgrade - System Requirements
Note: Mac OS X does not support processor upgrade cards. The amount of disk space required depends on your computer and the way you are installing Mac OS X.

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Answer 4

Mar 15, 2007 6:21 PM in response to Mike-N-nahyunil

"That would probably make things worse, rather than better, since the OS would be limited to whatever space is left from that 8GB for Virtual Memory - especially considering that you're only working with 640 MB RAM to begin with."

Point taken, but
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25249

does mention making an 8 GB partition on certain models. It does mention that your Mac may not boot properly, rather than run slowly, as the OP is asking about. OTOH 640 MB is reasonable for an old iMac for browsing and email. And, if one removes all excess apps and foreign language fonts from an 8 GB install partition, I'd expect it to run reasonably well.

So, I'd say the OP is in a grey area that he'll just need to futz around and see what makes it work.

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Answer 5

tomellis Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 16, 2007 9:27 AM in response to Jeff Kelleher

Thanks for the input! It sounds like it comes down to two possibilities, the processor or the partitions (or lack thereof) on the hard drive. I am not that knowledgeable about the workings of computers and neither possibility had occurred to me.

I'm surprised that the processor may be at fault. After installing it the computer ran noticeably faster on most apps. But that was with Jaquar, so perhaps the Tiger OS isn't compatible. I still have the original processor so I can test that theory.

I think I may try partitioning the hard drive first. My computer model doesn't seem to be on the list of Macs with issues with the drive size, but it's of the right generation and did have the smaller drive to start with. So I will copy the contents of drive #2 to drive #1, and then partition drive #2 and install Tiger on the newly partitioned drive in the smaller (8 GB) partition.

I'll report later today once I have a chance to make the changes.

G3 Blueberry w/G4 processor Mac OS X (10.4.8)

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Answer 6

scapesuiter

Level 7

27,670 points

Mar 16, 2007 4:01 PM in response to tomellis

Just a tip for partitioning: since the Mac OS X needs to reside completely within the first 8 GB of the larger-than-original hard drive, make that partition a hair smaller than 8 GB, like 7.8 or something like that. I know of people who used exactly 8 GB and weren't successful installing.

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Answer 7

Wade Peeler

Level 6

10,906 points

Mar 16, 2007 4:10 PM in response to tomellis

My 2.0GHz Core Duo iMac ran Tiger pretty slow with 512MB of RAM. After installing 2GB, it's now very responsive. I personally don't think that anything less than 1GB of RAM is enough for smooth operation of Tiger.

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