Weird Sawtooth G4 Performance Issues...

[sambapati87]

Hello all,

Just got a Sawtooth G4 - specs are as follows

500mhz

1GB RAM

Leopard 10.5.4 / MacOS 9.1 on the same 120gb drive.

stock 16mb rage 128 pro DVI

For whatever reason, the system plays back DV video at full 30fps in OS 9, but chokes to 2-5fps under Leopard. Also, the "flurry" screen saver is embarassingly slow.

Now, my 400mhz iMac running Tiger has no problem with either of these tasks, and it has 8mb of VRAM and clearly a slower processor (as well as hard drive...)

What gives? Does leopard refuse to utilize the processor for video playback and try to throw it on the (underspec'ed) Rage while OS 9 uses the G4 proc?

 

[Franklinstein]

Leopard may be part of your issue, as it's more processor-intensive than its predecessors. It's not even officially supposed to run on less than an 867MHz G4, if that's any indication. Perhaps you could try installing Tiger on another drive/partition to see if that is your problem.

The iMac, while it has a slower processor and less VRAM, uses AGP video. Your Sawtooth uses a 66MHz PCI video card (if it has AGP, it's not a Sawtooth) which is markedly slower, regardless of the fact that the two chipsets are virtually identical (both are ATI RAGE 128-based chips).

If you're using uncompressed DV, then there's nothing for the G4 to do: it's really just a matter of taking the data from the disk, to memory, then to the display.

If it were MPEGs, there would be something for the AltiVec engine to decode, and the story would be different.

But yeah, I'd guess that Leopard is most of the problem.

 

[Christopher]

Yes it's Leopard's fault all the way. My Dual 450MHz chokes with video in leopard. Tiger, works fine.

 

[paws]

Your Sawtooth uses a 66MHz PCI video card (if it has AGP, it's not a Sawtooth) which is markedly slower, regardless of the fact that the two chipsets are virtually identical (both are ATI RAGE 128-based chips).

I thought Sawtooth had AGP and Yikes! was PCI? I've always thought of my 400MHz/AGP G4 as a Sawtooth, anyways.

 

[Franklinstein]

Man, you are totally right, paws. IGNORE ME! I guess I forgot "Yikes!". Maybe because it's an exclamation?

But yeah, since my brain no workie today (I'm moving again and doing internet stuff to stay sane and procrastinate a bit), we'll just totally disregard anything I said about the graphics subsystems and totally blame Leopard on this one.

My neurons fire well enough to keep that idea straight, anyway: Leopard is a hog, as others have noted (strength in numbers!), so I'd downgrade, especially considering your hardware. It's likely that you'll notice a HUGE improvement with Tiger. Or, just keep to OS 9 for all of your DV needs. Whichever works.

 

[sambapati87]

Thanks for the help guys,

Don't really have a NEED for DV, at least on this Mac, just curious. I wanted to use leopard because of built in screen sharing as I'm running the mac headless. (Yea, I know I could install VNC on Tiger but this works so seamlessly).

And yep - I had to do an open firmware hack to convince the Leopard DVD it was installing on a faster mac }

 

[ealex79]

[] ]'>

Leopard has no grafics acceleration for that card. That's all.

Put another compatible card in the sawtooth and you'll be more happy with it.

 

[sambapati87]

[] ]'>
Leopard has no grafics acceleration for that card. That's all.

Put another compatible card in the sawtooth and you'll be more happy with it.

Yea I know -- its kind of embarassing. But as a server w/Screen Sharing it's running really really well.

 

[Bolle]

so why do you want to whatch video on a server?

get a card that has core image support and you may be ok with video. Id get a geforce 5200 and flash it to mac. its teh cheapest card taht has CI support in leopard. tho youd have to get another -PCI- card for 9 as it has never seen a 5200 in its lifetime

 

[Misterlister]

[] ]'>
Leopard has no grafics acceleration for that card. That's all.

Put another compatible card in the sawtooth and you'll be more happy with it.

Alternatively, if you have access to a Tiger install, you can use the Rage128 kexts from it. Just don't forget to chown/chmod them after installing.

 

[Rodus]

The problem here is you are using a new OS with high overheads on a very old CPU and clapped out graphics card. Tiger should give you a much smoother ride.

 

[madmax_2069]

having that Rage Pro 128 isnt helping things either. i would at least recomend a geforce 2 card and above, but you will still be pushing it. but since that has AGP 2x a 6200 Wang AGP card (flashed of course) would perk things up a bunch. if you was to get a better video card and max the ram out then leo should run ok on your system, but that will leave you with the CPU being the holdback

the rage pro 128 didnt have that great of support in OS X anyway let alone in leopard.

my DA G4 533 with geforce2 AGP and 768 runs leopard just fine but still not ideal (just a tad bit slower then tiger in some spots, and faster in others), but i think that would almost be the minimum. a dual cpu would be ideal if your running leo on a older g4, plus all of the ram you can fit into it will help it out allot as well.

i want to find a dual 533 for my DA then leo should run better then what it does now.