Thoughts on Dual 2.7 G5

[Cory5412]

Hey everybody!

The surplus store at my university recently started having a few G5s show up after a relatively long service period. Based on some of the prices of other machines that go through surplus, I was pretty sure that any G5s there would go for at least $400, however I was pleased and surprised to find out that the one G5 that is there as of a few days ago is a dual 2.7GHz model with 4gb of memory for $250.

Although I frequently tell everybody that spending money on a G5 is a very bad idea, which in most cases I still think is true, I wanted to do a quick barometer check on what the thoughts were on this kind of pricing, and what kinds of things I might want to look out for with dual 2.7.

My thought here is that I have recently noticed that my need for a lot of raw computing horsepower isn't very significant, but that my desire to run a few pieces of Mac software (which still run on PowerPC/10.5, as of my last check-in) is fairly significant. I would be able to buy a new mini, but those keep going up in price and by that amount of money I'm ready to start looking at a full replacement for my current desktop and monitor (which would mean iMac) and I'm not 100% sure I wanted to do that, or maybe star tlooking at some other "interesting" computing platforms.

One of these interesting computing platforms, of course, was Mac OS X, on either a fairly hefty and powerful PowerPC computer, or a new Intel computer. (I'm not too into the idea of buying a used Mac, unless it's a Mac Pro or it is PowerPC. Intel ushered in an era of everybody getting Macs, and most people who buy Macs get them all dirty and gunky and stuff, and generally if I'm going to buy a new x86 computer, I'm just going to buy a new one.)

Anyway, we have a few G5s at my office and they seem fairly competent for everyday stuff, most of the apps I want would run on a G5, and while Snow Leopard has some *awesome* little enhancements (such as timestamped screenshot file naming.... so awesome,) I would be able to live without those things.

Thoughts?

 

[CJ_Miller]

My dad was just asking me the same question this evening. If you have a fair amount of PPC software, or predict that you will - then go for it! If the G5 is in good condition, this is an excellent price. In my dad's case, he has no Mac software, would hope for Snow Leopard and be looking for current programs, so I recommended that he hold out for an Intel Mac instead.

As a Mac collector with a lot of software and peripherals, I like to have a box or two representative of certain eras, for the sake of compatibility. I need to have some 68k, Nubus, PCI, old-world, new-world. Just the same way as I strive to keep running the fastest reliable OS 9 machines (my MDD G4 and TiBook), I think it is important to run a box which is solid for a frozen PPC X system. Then you can set it up just the way you like, make lots of backups, and always have such a system as long as you need to. Even a few choice PowerPC plugins for After Effects or VST instruments can make all the difference of this being a productive machine for somebody.

As for what to look out for? I suppose that somebody who already has a G5 should address that question. I'd say obvious signs of wear or abuse, cooling problems, missing parts.

Good luck!

 

[beachycove]

The propensity of early liquid cooling G5s to failure does make a dual 2.7 a risky purchase, and this has to be factored into your decision. However, so long as you were able to ensure that it is working presently, and so long as you go on to do a thorough service of the cooling unit early on in ownership, the quoted price looks good.

I just bought a dual G5 (not liquid cooled), and am very content with the performance, which actually compares favourably with a high-end Core 2 Duo iMac for all ordinary tasks.

I could have bought a new machine instead, and thought about it for a long time. No doubt a new i7 iMac, for instance, would have opened documents and scrolled through them and loaded web pages faster than my G5, but the difference between 4 seconds and 1 second opening a Word file, say, is not a significant one in actual use. It is certainly not worth an extra $1800 expense, especially given the rate of depreciation.

The big story here is that G5s have gotten into the "collectable" price range; you can buy one for the same price as a well-preserved IIfx these days. And that, as they say, is really something. What I suspect is going to be the real issue in collecting G5s is case damage, which is really shockingly common in shipped machines, so if you can buy one locally, do so.

 

[Cory5412]

The performance thing is sort of a big issue and also sort of "not" a big issue for me, at the same time. We have a few of the earlier (dual processor, not liquid cooled, AGP graphics) dual 2.3GHz PowerMacs in my office at work, running Leopard, and the story there is that they're usable, most people don't really notice the difference between them and the newer Core2 iMacs we have, but they do seem [to me] to be sitting on the edge of being really modern, and of being "old."

I've sort of gone through a few different phases, when it comes to computer performance. Back in 2006, I had a Pismo as my fastest and best computer, after downgrading from the 1000MHz TiBook in an effort to get something that had a working screen. I upgraded at the time to the 2.16 Core2 iMac, which was a great machine, and then in 2009, I swapped that out for my current ThinkPad, which pairs nicely with the desktop that I use, which is a dell inspiron desktop.

Between these two computers, there is an incredible amount of performance, and yet, I am sort of ready/interested in something different.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but between those times I've played around with some of the Pentium 4s we have at the office. These are business grade Dell OptiPlex machines, a 270 (northwood 3.0 with 1gb of mem) that I bought from surplus and the 280 (Prescott 3.4 with 2gb of ram) that we have in the office. What I realized at that moment was that in the PC industry, there was a moment in about 2005 where midrange to high end computers bought at that time were good enough for just about every daily use. We have dualcore 2.4GHz iMacs in the office with like 4gb of memory, but for what my job entails (the Internet, basically) those Dells would be just great.

I looked at the 270, which I used as a hulubox and then started preparing to use as a development machine for Windows Phone 7, running Visual Studio 2010 -- something msot people would suggest is a bad idea on a Pentium 4 with 1gb of ram. The (un?) surprising fact is that it did just fine for daily stuff. Things took awhile longer to launch but once they were there, it was great.

I don't know if this is because Pentium 4s are actually great at visual studio, or if it's because I just like office/professional grade stuff more than consumer things. I suspect the latter, which is one of the reasons I want a G5 more than a mini. It's a purely aesthetic thing and realistically, a downright stupid thing since the current mini could probably whup the pants off even that dual 2.7 G5. (Which I often herald as being the fastest or second fastest G5, and also one of the only machines not to be beaten in geekbench benchmarks by the original MacBook Air.)

Also, I do all of my photo management with Photoshop CS4 on my PC laptop, so putting CS3 or CS4 on such a Mac, would hypothetically be no problem for me, since I don't really intend to get a newer camera any time soon (which tends to need an upgrade to the Camera Raw extension, which then tends to need a newer version of Photoshop.)

The big difference is that Pentium 4 runs the same Windows 7 and VisualStudio2010 and Ofice2010 and Adobe Creative Suite (5, if I wanted to) as my current laptop and desktop, and that the Mac would get installs of the latest software it can run, and then most likely be stuck there for the rest of its existence with me. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since I am currently on CS4 with the PC anyway, and I can deal with Office 2008's terrible interface, for compatibility with Office2007 and 2010/2011 on my personal and school/work computers.

Additionally, I've realized that most of my actual "work" I can accomplish on my laptop, or with remote computing resources provided by my university, so I was interested in setting up a nice/interesting computer at my home. I will have a little bit of money in the coming year to more or less do whatever I want with, computingwise, if I choose to do anything at all, and it was either this G5, a SunRay thin client or two (and maybe a SPARC system with Solaris to do the actual computing, or flatdell with linux/solaris/opensolaris), or a workstation or gaming PC in order to get my virtualization (or train simulation) on.

At the very least a G5 would be interesting, I'd have a Mac again, it would hold me over until the release of Lion (and the inevitable purchase of a new Mac at that point, ) along with having cheap[ish] ram and disks available for it.

Does that... make sense? With all of that knowledge/rambling, does it still make sense to get it?

Thank you in advance for your advice and thoughts!

 

[Bunsen]

Does that... make sense? With all of that knowledge/rambling, does it still make sense to get it?

Yes, and yes.

 

[beachycove]

You didn't tell us about the the office's dual 2.3GHz machines.... Any chance of getting your hands on one of those? They are known quantities, after all, and have a solid reputation as the most reliable of all the G5 towers.

 

[mac2geezer]

The quoted price for that Dual 2.7 G5 is quite good compared to what they usually go for on eBay. The major issue with the earlier liquid cooled machines, as has been pointed out, is leakage of the cooling system. If you can do a detailed inspection of the CPU area,check for any evidence of past leakage.

I have one of the 2.3 GHz dual core models, the fastest of the air cooled, and it has been great. Performance is very comparable to the 2.16 Core 2 iMac.

Keep in mind that the 2.7 has a slower memory system than some of the later models, but often makes up for it by raw processor speed.

In short, the price is good and if the cooling system is in good shape...go for it.

 

[johnklos]

The propensity of early liquid cooling G5s to failure does make a dual 2.7 a risky purchase

The 2.7 GHz was not an early liquid cooled system - it was one of the last.

PowerPC systems still make plenty of sense depending on what you're doing. A G4 is easily on par with an Atom system, and a G5 can still do respectable amounts of work. In FInal Cut, for instance, a dual 2 GHz G5 can edit 2K ProRes quite reasonably, as an example.

I just set my wife up with a 1.66 GHz PowerPC G4 Mac mini so that I can fix her 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo system which is a little flaky, and she hasn't had any issues with perceived speed. Considering how much she's on YouTube, that's pretty good.

If I had the need, I'd be more than happy with a price of $250 for a dual 2 GHz G5 or faster. It's an excellent price.

 

[Cory5412]

Thank you all for your input!

Yeah, the machines in my office really aren't up for grabs, if we deem them to be unusable, we can ask surplus to come take them from us and then I start hanging out at surplus a lot.

My thought on the matter was "here's an okay looking, very high end G5 for really cheap." At worst, it dies at some point, I take it to the university bookstore, and based on some rumors, I get a Mac Pro for my trouble. At the best, I have a G5 that's usable for what I do today for quite some time. I figure that I could put a backup copy of my photos on it, use it to host my iTunes library, and because it'll be hooked up to my monitor, use it for hulu/netflix. -- And of course keep it around to try out and use a bunch of different Mac software I'd like to have around more often.

Of course, none of this speculation even confirms that it'll still be there when I get back to Flagstaff with enough money to get it and with a way to get it home. (Because, I'm not carying it home.)

My only real possible negative thought about the G5 is that I can't really hook thin clients to it, nor can I really do much modern gaming/virtualization on it, which were some of the things I sort of wanted in my next upgrade.

 

[johnklos]

I figure that I could put a backup copy of my photos on it, use it to host my iTunes library, and because it'll be hooked up to my monitor, use it for hulu/netflix.

Just FYI, Netflix on computers requires Microsoft Silverlight, and while an older version of Silverlight is available for PowerPC Macs, I don't think it's new enough to play Netflix. A new AppleTV would be best for Netflix.

My only real possible negative thought about the G5 is that I can't really hook thin clients to it, nor can I really do much modern gaming/virtualization on it, which were some of the things I sort of wanted in my next upgrade.

Depends on what kind of thin client you want. Of course you can connect serial terminals with any sort of USB serial, but that's hardly that common. But any graphical thin client which works with standard VLC will work with a G5.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I can say having tried that Netflix does not work in any manner with a PPC Mac. The PPC Silverlight is too old to really do anything useful (insert Silverlight joke here).

 

[johnklos]

I can say having tried that Netflix does not work in any manner with a PPC Mac. The PPC Silverlight is too old to really do anything useful (insert Silverlight joke here).

I noticed there's a Wii emulator out there, but it doesn't have a native mode for PowerPC processors. If someone eventually updates it to have a native mode, we could all watch Netflix via Wii emulation...

 

[techknight]

how in the heck did you get a 1.66ghz G4 to play youtube?

I have a 1.9ghz G5 and it doesnt play youtube worth a crap. and my 1.25ghz G4 ibook isnt even watchable. you have to let it download all the way or it gets stuck ont he first frame. and when its done downloading, it plays VERY slowly. put put put put puttttt 2FPS.

 

[johnklos]

how in the heck did you get a 1.66ghz G4 to play youtube?
I have a 1.9ghz G5 and it doesnt play youtube worth a crap. and my 1.25ghz G4 ibook isnt even watchable. you have to let it download all the way or it gets stuck ont he first frame. and when its done downloading, it plays VERY slowly. put put put put puttttt 2FPS.

Hmmm. Yes, YouTube sucks, and even on a dual core Atom it doesn't play at full frame rate. What might help quite a bit is ClickToFlash which is something I recommend for all machines, but which is particularly useful on older and slower machines. It gives you the option of watching most YouTube videos as h.264 which, while CPU intensive in itself, works better than Flash playback on more modest machines. You get the benefit of that PLUS you don't have to worry about your CPU getting tied up with all the extra Flash crap which slows things down everywhere.

In addition to ClickToFlash, you can also get this:

http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/10/27/youtube5-version-2/

It's a Safari plugin which seems to work better with YouTube than ClickToFlash sometimes. I use both - ClickToFlash to not allow Flash to load at all, and the YouTube HTML5 plugin to make YouTube videos work well.

Let us know how it goes!

 

[tom7447]

techknight, that's really odd :/

my 1.25GHz PowerBook G4 (1GB RAM running 10.5. 8) plays YouTube videos (and any Flash video - .flv) just fine, full frame rate, even as they're loading

 

[johnklos]

BTW - I should mention that the latest Flash Player is more efficient than the older ones. A neat trick so that you don't have to install tons of extra Adobe crap is that when you get the Adobe installer, right-click on it and select "Show Package Contents", then open Contents, then Resources, then run the real "Adobe Flash Player.pkg" installer. It takes a fraction of the time, and you don't have extra junk you didn't ask for in your Utilities folder.

 

[Unknown_K]

Sounds to me like you are looking for an excuse to get a cheap G5 Tower, nothing wrong with that if you just want something that runs OSX for a few older PPC apps. My worry would be is the unit 100% functional and how long will it stay that way. I get the feeling you will want an X86 Mac 5 days after getting a G5 so just save your money and buy an Imac when you get around to it.

 

[Cory5412]

I think that is why most people post "should I" threads. Realistically, my laptop alone can do everything I need or want. I was indeed looking for a few more hobby/fun machines. I was not expecting that a G5 could do everything I want to do, even for a long time. Just that today, it also happens to be able to do most of what I need/want to do.

One thing i have heard, and this may just be hearsay, is that apple is honoring an extended repair program for liquid cooled G5s to replace them with Mac pros, so if something did happen, that would be a nice perk. Of course, I am also not doing too badly at the moment, financially, so it would not be the biggest loss ever if I got what I paid for and a $250 G5 tower died at some point.

Also, good to know, re the latest flash player. A few flash heavy tabs can even bring my high end last-generation windows core2duo laptop to it's knees, in addition to the mid 2008 iMacs we have at my office.

Not being a suitable main computer is a risk we all take with hobby machines, and is a risk I would even be taking if I were to do something like get another sun ray client or switch my desktop to solaris instead of buying a Mac.

I guess the question I need to answer for myself is whether or not that g5 (or a new intel Mac, or a new workstation or gaming pc, just as examples) is more worthwhile than my other pet project idea, which is those thin clients.

 

[Unknown_K]

Hobby machines are hobby machines, you are talking about stuff thats old but not old enough to be completely obsolete and that is different. G5's will get cheaper, a working SE/30 will only get more expensive.

Its your money, only you can know what you want to play with. The only thing people here can warn you about is overpaying, or system issues to look out for. And if you think Apple is going to cover any warrenty work on a G5 system these days...... good luck with that.