Upgrading Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 Ram/Video Card/Hard Drives

Hi there,
Ok so I am an avid Mac user, but have neglected one of my machines lately. This old Power Mac G5 just pushed the 3 year mark and I had a bunch of repairs done to it (New Logic Board, Hard Drive, Power Supply) before the Apple Care ran out. I used to do all of my editing and stuff on it but haven't had time this past year so it has just sat here and not gotten any use. I felt as if it was time to get back in the game so I picked up another Apple 20" monitor, some M-Audio studio monitors, a 11" Wacom, but feel the machine is too outdated to do anything.
Ok first off, I am looking to upgrade from the four 256 sticks (1GB) that I have in my computer with some 2 2GB kits (1GB x 2) (4GB total) and have been looking at the ram that Crucial suggests for this machine (8 Slots). Is there anything that I should look for in ram that will help me get through all of my 3D motion design faster (HD Final Cut too). I don't know a lot about ram when it comes to buffers and such, just how to buy compatible ram. Any suggestions?
Second I am looking to upgrade my video card. I currently have the GeForce FX 5200 with 64 MB of VRAM, which is completely unacceptable. I am looking for a card that can handle all of my motion work along with rendering in Final Cut, something with 256MB of VRAM or more.. I want something that has 2 DVI connections so I don't need an adapter like I currently do with this card to hook up both Apple displays. Suggestions?
Lastly I am looking to up my storage space on this beast. I currently have a brand new 160GB main HDD (Courtesy Apple Care) and a 250GB Maxtor internally. I would really like to have at least a TB of storage. My question is wether I should just keep the 160 for the main boot up drive and apps along with minimum documents to keep the speeds faster, and get a 500 internal and 500 exclosure, or get two 500's for internal?

Hi-
With RAM, fancy isn't necessary, compatible is. Buffers aren't supported, so stick with the recommended memory. Memory should be 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMMs that are 2.5 volt, unbuffered, 8-byte, nonparity, and DDR400-compliant (PC3200).
Important: DIMMs with any of the following features are not supported in the Power Mac G5 computer: registers or buffers, PLLs, ECC, parity, or EDO RAM.
For two DVI outputs, and the power to run your software, the only choices are the Geforce 6800GT and the Geforce 6800 Ultra. For a bit less money, but requires an ADC to DVI adapter for second DVI, the Radeon X800XT will help with the softwares needs. These benchmarks will help you see the performance of the cards.
For storage, the 160gb will work for OS and applications, but you might as well add two 500gb-750gb drives. The new, enterprise drives have great performance, and though larger, will most probably work faster as a startup drive than the 160gb drive. These benchmarks are from a Mac Pro test, but the results illustrate the speed of the larger drives.
The Western Digital SE16 series, or the Seagate ES series offer excellent performance and reliability. See Storage Reviews. For a 1tb drive, see this article.
Of course, whatever you install, add enough external for full backup capabilities.

Similar Messages

Power Mac G5 dual 2.7's...Hard drive HELP!!

I have a powermac G5, dual 2.7's, and i currently have the stock 400gb drive in it. I do alot of design work and video editing and need a large second drive. My two concerns are the interface and the maximum size.
1) Interface: I know it needs to be SATA (Serial ATA), but does the throughput matter (1.5 vs 3.0gb/s)
2) When i bought the computer, the systems were said to max out at 800 total gigabytes (2x400gb drives). Is this because they didnt have anything bigger to put in them or because the system will not allow more than 800 total gb to be installed internally? I am looking at either a 400 or 500 gb drive, so i need to know if the 500 is even gonna work (since that puts my total storage up to 900gb)?
Thanks

The throughput doesn't matter.
You're right. That was because the largest drives they were shipping were 400 GB. The 500 will work.

Power Mac G5, Dual 1.8GHz - Sluggish Video

Hey Guys.
I purchased a used Power Mac G5 couple months back. Its a Dual 1.8GHz, 2.5GB Ram, 160GB Hdd, Geforce FX5200 64Meg AGP.
Ive noticed sense i got the machine that when watching video's on youtube or any type of high resolution video's, the playback is choppy. Even scrolling through webpages seems a bit choppy. With just standard applications the machine runs great and its nice and quick. Its just the video play back that is kind of hauting me. Now this may be a stupid question but will i notice a difference if i were to purchase another higher grade video card? Or is my machine not powerful enough for HD playback? Do i need more ram? Anyways thanks in advance for any type of advice.
-Jess

The 5200 is the weakest of the G5 AGP cards, and almost any other card would be an improvement.
Bear in mind that there are two flavors of AGP card, well three, really. There are Mac OEM cards like many of the Radeon 9600 and 9800 cards, many of which have one DVI and one ADC connector, or the GeForce 6800 GT and Ultra cards, which are considerably better than the 9600 Radeons and somewhat better than the 9800's. That being said, the second flavor is the PC AGP cards flashed to Mac ROM. Some fly, some don't fly so well. The third flavor is the PC AGP cards not flashed with Mac ROM, which are, in a word, unusable on a Mac.
With respect to Flash content, I will say that at least with Flash Player 10, you can expect with a GeForce 6800 Ultra OEM card to see sluggish playback in some cases, mainly because of CPU loading from the Flash plugin. In most cases, the 6800 Ultra is a pretty peppy card, but if things are loading the CPU, it can't help you much. With respect to scrolling and things like that, the better cards generally handle things pretty fluidly, but again, if there is a Flash or Java script running somewhere, like in an advertisement, things can get sluggish because of CPU loading.
One thing I would do is get a larger drive in there. A SATA-1 or SATA-2 drive should work just fine; a SATA-3 drive will undoubtedly need a jumper to bring it back to SATA-1 speeds.

Power Mac G4 Won't Boot after Installing 2nd Hard Drive and Additional RAM

Hello. I am using a Power Mac G4 (PCI graphics) that I bought a few weeks ago. It was working perfectly fine until I tried to add an additional hard drive and add more RAM to the machine. After I closed the case and plugged it back in, it won't start up at all. No sound, no lights, nothing spinning, nothing. I removed the added hard drive and RAM, but it still refuses to start. I don't know what happened. Hopefully it's not a logic board failure or anything else equally bad.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The PowerMac G4 PCI forum is over here:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=586
I'll ask a moderator to move your thread. Try replacing the clock battery, and hitting the CUDAS switch.

Power Mac G4 - 933 - maxium size of second internal hard drive

I have a Power Mac G4 933 Mhz with an existing 60 Gb internal hard drive. I am trying to determine definitively the largest sized internal hard drive I can add in addition to my existing 60 Gb drive.
There are a variety of articles saying 120 Gb is the max, I called Apple Support and they said 80Gb and some places say it can support well beyond 200 Gb.
Any guidance is appreciated.
Thanks.

Just to verify my previous post, I am running a Seagate 250GB IDE drive on the internal bus in a 1GHz DP QS with the 4.3.3f2 Firmware and have had zero issues with this set-up.
The drive shows the full 250GB capacity (actually 232.89GB after its formatted).
Its possible that only the 2002 QS (800, 933, 1.0DP) have this ability, as I have not read about any of the ealier QS machines (733, 867, and 800DP) capable of doing this. I believe the 933 QS is ok, so if your firmware reads right, your probably be in luck.
freddythefreeloader, please let us know if you have any success with this. Thanks.
G4 MDD 1.25GHz DP FW800-ATI 9800 128MB-2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) G4 Gigabit Ethernet 1.5GHz OWC-ATI 9000 OEM 64MB-1.5GB RAM-Pioneer DVR111D

I have a power mac g5 and it don't have a hard drive

what do i have to do

Install a hard drive, buy a retail version of OS X appropriate for the computer (OS X 10.5x is likely best) and install the OS on the newly installed hard drive.
You will need a SATA rev 2 or possible SATA rev 3 hard drive of less than 2.2 TB capacity.
Use Western Digital Blue or Black and Hitachi 7k drives.
Western Digital Velociraptors are also good.
SATA rev. 2 drives by WD and Hitachi are plug and play.
SATA rev. 3 drives from WD are fine with jumper on pins 5&6.
Hitachi SATA rev. 3 7200K drives are plug and play.
Do not exceed 2.2 TB in a single volume.
Avoid Seagate and ALL green or 5400 RPM drives.
Best to not risk SATA rev. 3 SSDs. There have been reports of non-use for a couple of popular drives by OCZ, Crucial, Corsair......
Sandforce controlled SATA rev 2 SSDs are fine.
Only retail OS X discs can be used.
They are scarce and can be expensive:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=mac+os+x++retail+10.5&_sacat=0&_odkw=mac+os+ x+leopard+retail+10.5&_osacat=0

Upgrading Power Mac G4, dual 450 Mhz, to use Logic Express 8

I am actually confessing to being a windows studying pc engineer, but am also interested in macs.
My sister has just purchased the G4, 450 Mhz, (dual) i am confused on a few things and am trying to help her!
Basically can anyone help?
The problem is, does dual mean, that there's two processors (i am going to open it later when shes home from work and actually look!) and also, the 450 mhz, is dual, so is that 450 x 2 or just 450? I have looked about this site, and have noticed there is not much room to up the processor speed, but the goal is to get her processor speed up to a minimum of 1.25 Ghz.
Also, she wants to create her own music on a small budget, so cannot afford Logic Pro 7, it is installed on her machine but she has no key? (the guy she bought it from didnt say it needed one!)
So she now purchased Logic Express 8, but when trying to use it, the message is saying to the effect of not large enough processor speed. She has installed it on top of Logic 7, so both are now on there, will that matter?
Is the processor slot the same for the larger Mhz upgrades? if so, which are the best processors to use?
We have all the ram, she bought 1.5 GB, and large hdds, it is just this problem now, and she was in tears last night, due to the fact, every time she asks someone, she gets one step closer, gets hopeful, to find another hitch!
I am really sure i can get it workable for her, but need some apple expertise guys, sorry i know you dont appreciate windows users much, and i would own a mac, just when i can afford one!
All help much appreciated.
semmi

Hi-
Welcome to Discussions!
Sounds like you are dealing with a Gigabit Ethernet model of G4, equipped with dual 450mhz processors. It was a monster in it's day, and still has good use left in it. Problem is, 450mhz, even dual, isn't much by current software requirements.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermacg4/stats/powermac_g4_450dp.html
As for Logic- version 7 would be usable on the machine as is. There is no problem with installing version 8 on the same system. It would be nice for her to be able to get the proper "key" to be able to use v.7. It would definitely be worth pursuing the issue with the seller.
And, as you know, to use v.8, you need more processor. Processors are a relatively easy upgrade. There are many options available, as well. One of the best buys (performance for the money) are 7455 based single processor upgrades from OWC or Fastmac:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEG42M1500/
http://store.fastmac.com/advancedsearchresult.php?keywords=agp
The following are all compatible with the dual 450 G4:
http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgrades.cfm?model=158&type=Processor&TI=4655&sh oupgrds=Show+Upgrades
You can check an installation video from the following:
http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm

Power Mac 7200/120 won't boot off new hard drive. Says HD "not supported"

I just recently came into possession of a PowerMac 7200/120. The only thing it came with is a boot cd with Mac OS 8.1. It booted fine off the cd with only the date/time issues of a dead PRAM battery, but when I tried to boot the internal HD on its own, it was a no-go. Flashing ?. When I tried to verify the HD, the software would not even find the HD. Not even listed on the program. You can't initialize what isn't there, so I ordered a new HD from an online vendor. I replaced it according to the directions on the Apple .pdf file I googled. I also reset the logic board and replaced the PRAM battery. Upon booting after all this ... still flashing ?. I run the same verification process as before and I actually DO see this HD listed, but it says it is "not supported" and doesn't allow me to initialize it. It's virtually the same quantum fireball HD with the Apple logo as the old one I just took out, just a different GB size. Connections and slots are all the same. Is this just not the right HD for my computer? Is there something I need to download? I just rebuilt a Performa 6300cd with ZERO issues.

Ok ... a couple of mistakes on my part which of course could change EVERYTHING. I'm embarassed with the amount of mistakes in my own question. A couple of forgetful omissions on my part ...
#1. The drive DID start up just fine upon first switching out the HD. Original software on HD was 8.1, but as I needed to run older programs not compatible with 8.1, I initialized and installed 7.5.3 clean. (I know ... HUGE omission here, but be kind as I've been working on multiple computers and it has been a couple months since I did this). It worked fine after download. After coming back to this computer a couple of months later, I get the flashing ? again (like before the HD switch).
#2.The HD the online vendor sent me was not the one I ordered, but ended up being a carbon copy of the one I took out except the GB size (which was actually larger than the one I ordered). Didn't physically count the pins, but it plugged in fine. Everything fit.
#3. I also forgot to mention that while the CD drive worked, the floppy either spat my disks out at me or asked to initialize them. These were the same floppies that I took out of my Performa literally a minute earlier (which worked).
#4. The 8.1 cd is a mistake on my part again. Turns out it's the black-faced 7.5.3 cd (7200, 7500, 7600, 8500, and 9500 series). Got confused with the 8.1 drive.
UPDATE
The strangest thing ... I just booted up off the cd and it's now reading the HD. I ejected the cd and booted it up on its own ... and it works just fine. I did NOTHING since I asked the question. In fact, I just booted the computer back up in response to your response.
Before I delved into these boards and bothered to ask for help ... I had opened it up, cleared out a TON of dust bunnies with my can o' air, pressed the CUDA? chip, and then replaced the PRAM battery. Restarted holding down cmd-opt-p-r until it chimed again and it was still a flashing ?. You could hear it clicking as if trying to start the drive up at regular intervals. I restarted the computer well over 10 times hoping it was just something jammed up in the HD (though just bought) and it was the same flashing ?. And now today ... did nothing and it boots up just fine. I check the drive setup lite and it now shows macintoshHD there (instead of unsupported drive - original showed nothing at all).
Does it take time for the PRAM battery or logic board to reset? Did it just needed a thorough internal cleaning? Or should I chalk this up as just being a really old comp?
I really don't want to go delving back into it now that it's working to check the SCSI terminations, jumpers, etc. I'm going to assume those are ok now it's booting.

Power Mac G5 wont install 10.5 on new hard drive

I recently got a Pmac g5 from my uncle. His hard drive died and he had no further use for it. I bought a new drive and have a disk for Leopard, but when I try to load from the disk it doesnt seem to work. it just defaults back to the ? folder. The disk works because it loads fine on my G3 iMac, and I dont know how to check to see if the hard drive is recognized (250 GB Maxor formatted for this computer). I've reset PRAM and all that stuff, but with no luck. Any help as to why it wont work?

Well Option Boot won't see the Hard Drive ubtil we fornat it HFS+, but whyit isn't seeing the Install Disc is our problem.
Does the G3 iMac haveFirewire?
If so wee could use the G3's Optical drive with the G3 in Target Mode, & Option Boot the G5.

Which Hard Drives work in Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42

I would like to upgrade my Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42 and add another hard drive but I'm not sure which type will work. I read in support docs that the machine supports ATA drives. Does this mean ATA-100, Ultra- ATA, SATA or something else? I'm not positive on all the differences or what is supported. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

The fastest drives currently available are the ones that will be sold as sATA drives, because they are the newest. Those same drives will be sold with SCSI and pATA interfaces, and often with Fiber Channel interfaces. If you want the fastest transfer speeds of anything, choose Fiber Channel.
The advertised transfer rates of today's drives sound very impressive. But the bottleneck in today's drives is not the transfer rate. It is the bit density and the spin rate (RPM). A good 10,000 RPM drive (any interface) can produce a burst of data off the platters at about 50 MegaBytes a second. Then there will be a pause as it syncs up to read the next block.
The drive can be written to at a slightly faster rate, but we typically read four times as often as we write (over a large sample of typical tasks), so the payback of really fast writes to the drive cache is diminished.
sATA's major advantage is that it is Cheaper to manufacture. When that cost savings starts to be passed along to me, I will recommend it. Today you are paying extra for specs you will not see in daily use. What they are selling is Hype.
Would you pay more for a car because it has the motor mounts for the supercharged engine?
PS. Your Mac is exempt from the 128 MB limit:
86178- Macintosh: Using 128 GB or Larger ATA Hard Drives
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8 PCI (4 RAM Slots) - want to upgrade to 8GB?

My computer is a Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8 PCI (4 RAM Slots)
Is there any way I can break out of the 4GB RAM limit into the world of 8GB RAM without having to buy a newer computer. I need to open a large 4.5GB TGA file in After Effects (48000 pixels x 36000 pixels).
Failing that, is there an application like RAM doubler I could use temporarily to get me though this job?
Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8 PCI (4 RAM Slots) Mac OS X (10.4.10) Currently have 4GB RAM installed

If there is not enough RAM, OSX will use space on the disk drive, so the amount of RAM should not limit the file size an application can handle, but speed will be reduced. 32-bit addressing can restrict the use of huge files, but there are ways that applications can get around it (at the expense of lower speed).
If After Effects has a file size limit, extra RAM will not help A later version (maybe using 64-bit mode) may handle larger files. 64-bit applications can be written to run in Tiger on G5s, but will be easier to write when Leopard is released.
You may be able to use some other application, such as Photo Shop, or Graphics Converter, to extract part of the TGA file, or reduce its size by changing its resolution, so you can use the result in After Effects.

Cannot upgrade my Power Mac G5 Dual Processor (CPU type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)) to Mac OS 10.4 - anybody knows how to do this

Trying desperately to upgrade my Power Mac G5 Dual Processor to Mac OS X.4 - what kind of upgrade is needed? How may I proceed?

Hello Jens,
Might be easier to get Leo/10.5.x
Tiger Requirements...
To use Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, your Macintosh needs:
    * A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
    * Built-in FireWire
    * At least 256 MB of RAM (I recommend 1GB minimum)
    * DVD drive (DVD-ROM), Combo (CD-RW/DVD-ROM) or SuperDrive (DVD-R) for installation
    * At least 3 GB of free disk space; 4 GB if you install the XCode 2 Developer Tools (I recommend 20GB minimum)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1514
See Tom's, (Texas Mac Man), great info on where/how to find/get Tiger...
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15305521#15305521
old: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9755670&#9755670
Or Ali Brown's great info on where/how to find/get Tiger...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10381710#10381710
Leopard requirements/10.5.x...
    * Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
minimum system requirements
    * 512MB of memory (I say 1.5GB for PPC at least, 2-3GB minimum for IntelMacs)
    * DVD drive for installation
    * 9GB of available disk space (I say 30GB at least)
You have to call Apple & likely ask for a Product Specialist to get it, if they still have it! Helps to tell them you have an iPad/iPhone & you can't run 10.6.

I have a Apple Power Mac G5 Dual 2.3 GHz/6GB RAM/500GB HDD/Superdrive PowerPC Desktop and just bought an Airport Extreme card for it. The card is recognized but will not see the in-house network. This is a pre-intel computer. Do I need an antennae?

I have an Apple Power Mac G5 Dual 2.3 GHz/6GB RAM/500GB HDD/Superdrive PowerPC Desktop and just bought an Airport Extreme card for it. The card is recognized but will not see the in-house network. This is a pre-intel computer. Do I need an additional antennae? If so, which one because my research is confusing me about what is supposed to work with this computer.

Please check out the following Apple Support article to see if your particular Power Mac model supports an external Wi-Fi antenna.

I have a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.3 running 10.5.8, I understand that I can not upgrade to Lion, so what will happen to my Mobile me, which I can not live with out?

I have a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.3 running 10.5.8, I understand that I can not upgrade to Lion, so what will happen to my Mobile me, which I can not live with out? Also will I be able to get Icloud to work?

Hi Mary, the other so called "Features" of iClound will not work for like Syncing, but eMail will.
MobileMe & dot Mac will still work last I heard.
iCloud Mail setup, even in 10.4/10.5…
Don't delete your old account yet. Just setup a new one in Mail>Preferences>Accounts, little plus icon. Choose IMAP as account type, not ,mac or MobileMe.
IMAP (Incoming Mail Server) information:
          ▪          Server name: imap.mail.me.com
          ▪          SSL Required: Yes
          ▪          Port: 993
          ▪          Username: [email protected] (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
          ▪          Password: Your iCloud password
SMTP (outgoing mail server) information:
          ▪          Server name: smtp.mail.me.com
          ▪          SSL Required: Yes
          ▪          Port: 587
          ▪          SMTP Authentication Required: Yes
          ▪          Username: [email protected] (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
          ▪          Password: Your iCloud password

Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5 - Move Hard Drive to another G5??

Hi,
I'm using a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5 w/ OS 10.5.8 with my Pro Tools 7.4.2 HD3 rig, 2 internal hard drives and tons of external FW hard drives. It's being hinky with me (every time I reboot/restart the Mac, I have to take the side cover off or it won't boot; wierdest problem ever), and being that I don't want to plunk down thousands of dollars on a new Mac and all new Pro Tools equipment, I'm hunting E-Bay for an exact duplicate of my Mac, of which there are plenty. Since PowerPC architecture is long dead, they are dirt cheap. No reason not to have a spare.
My questions are:
If I buy another Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5 machine, and swap the hard drive it comes with, and use my already functional hard drive (with the OS, Pro Tools and all related plug-ins installed), and move over my Pro Tools cards and 8 GB of RAM to the new(er) machine, will it boot up and work without me having to reformat/reinstall everything?
I also see numerous Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7 machines out there as well. What are the chances of doing the same as question 1 with this? I know the processor is different, but would my already formatted and functional hard drive care? I don't think this will work, but I have to ask.
If Question 2 is even possible, would upgrading to a Dual 2.7 even be worth it as far as noticeable speed improvement? Superior Drummer, EZ Drummer and EZ Keys are all real time plug-ins that need the Mac's processor/memory to work. They don't use the Pro Tools cards to work. So, would getting that extra 200 Mhz of processor power even matter?
The reason I ask is that reinstalling the OS and Pro Tools is not the issue; 4 hours and it's done. BUT, reinstalling Superior Drummer, EZ Drummer,and EZ Keys, along with the mountain of expansion packs, will literally take several days of work. If I could just plop my old hard drives and 8GB of RAM into a newly purchased G5 Dual 2.5 or 2.7, and not go through that, it would be AWESOME.
Thanks for any feedback on this.

Just got done making the transfer to the "new" Dual 2.7 G5 I bought off E-Bay. (yes, on Christmas Eve, because....well.... I have no life). Worked dead, solid perfect!!! I'm grinning from ear to ear right now.
I had to reset some pref's in Pro Tools (not an issue), Just got done running Pro Tools through its paces, and it works perfectly. All plug ins run (had to re-authorize Superior Drummer and some related plugins because it detected the change in system serial #, again not an issue). Other than that, it worked like it always has. I loaded every third party plug-in I could find, and every third party program I could find, and so far everything works without any issues. Only exception is Team Viewer locks up when I try to close it (have to Force Quit), but I couldn't care less right now. I use that twice a year if that, and just to have someone help me remotely.
Thanks for the info and help. This made my Holidays.

Upgrading Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 Ram/Video Card/Hard Drives

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