Is This G3 Enougf For Os X?

[macintoshman]

Specs:

400mhz PPC g3 CPU

512mb RAM

16mb Rage 128 GPU

Dual 20gb HD

OS 9.2

Build in firewire and USB

Extra Slot Fan

No Zip Drive

 

[The Macster]

Yup, definitely - mine's a similar spec and is awesome under Tiger. The only thing I'd recommend is getting a Radeon graphics card, but that's not essential for getting OS X installed and trying it out. I'm assuming yours is a Bluey from the specs, in which case it'll be even faster than mine (though from using mine it's hard to believe that's possible), given that the B&W has a higher bus speed than the Beigey, and you won't have to spend a week messing around with XPostFacto either! Enjoy it, OS X and G3s are great

 

[LSD]

I have Tiger on a 350Mhz B&W with otherwise similar specs. It runs great. It runs great. I was originally expecting "XP on a Pentium 2 in 256MB RAM" style performance but I've been pleasantly surprised at just how well OSX runs on this machine.

 

[madmax_2069]

i have 10.4.10 on my upgraded Beige G3 in my sig and it runs great.

 

[MacJunky]

10.4.10 runs pretty well on even this 300Mhz G3 with 384MB RAM, 40GB HD and AirPort Extreme compatible wifi card.

Old Macs are really underestimated by many people.

 

[macintoshman]

I just added a DVD drive and uped the ram to 768mb! Now I have a Super OS 9 machine, and soon to be a OS X machine.

And yes, it is a bluey.

 

[LCGuy]

It'll run like a dream....i have OS X on a G3/333 with 256 MB of RAM and it goes like the clappers.

 

[bluekatt]

sounds fine just be sure to use jaguar or lower

panther will work but tiger is too finnicky and too demanding

jaguar wil do you just fine

 

[Patrickool93]

Panther and Tiger would be WAY faster on that then Jaguar.

 

[Kallikak]

Panther and Tiger would be WAY faster on that then Jaguar.

That's my experience too

 

[madmax_2069]

jag is uber slow on just about anything.

 

[bluekatt]

jaguar was just fine on a B&W G3 300 mhz with 192 mb ram

 

[davyb]

You guys all seem to be lucky - I have B&W G3 350MHz with 640Mb RAM and I find performance under 10.3.9 sluggish. The internet speeds on the same connection with my Macbook Pro are infinitely faster even though the wirless adapter on th G3 runs at 11Mbs and the USB 1.1 bandidth is still bigger than my internet connection. There should be no difference, I think, so the difference must be in processing speed, the RAM, and s for the Skype video, the graphics card I'm guessing - but the G3 is slower on the net than it used to be under OS9.

It won't run Skype with video at all. It also won't play a lot of streaming video or breaks up half way through.

I have costed out upgrading the RAM to 1 Gb, the graphics card to an ATI radeon, the USB to 2.0, the hard drive to 250Gb and the processor to a 1GHz G4. But if I did all of that I could buy a higher performance Mac Mini for the same price. So I'm tending to think the G3 B&W is simply past it and I should replace it with a Mac Mini.

 

[bluekatt]

or you are so used to the macbook that the G3 looks sluggish in comparison

eithe rupgrade to tiger to see what it does or dowgrade to jaguar which is lighter

 

[madmax_2069]

What Tiger needs to run good on any system is allot of ram and a good video card and a fast HDD. i have PCI extreme (a QE enabler for PCI video cards) running on my AIO and i can say it helps.

i havent had any issues what soever in music streams on my AIO, now video streams can be painful a bit using some codecs.

if you install jag just be warned that support for jag is dropping like dead fly's at a fly killing party,

 

[The Macster]

Yes, if you're used to using the same OS every day but on a MacBook Pro, then of course on the G3 it will feel slow, just like if you drive a Ferrari every day and then try a BMW 330 it will feel slow in comparison to what you're used to, despite being anything but. OS X feels fast on the G3 to me as I don't have any newer Macs (though I did find that the music videos in iTunes (the previews of the ones you can buy) don't seem to play properly). I wouldn't install Jaguar unless you have an extremely small amount of Ram and cannot upgrade it, as if you have plenty of Ram the newer ones will be faster. You don't need to upgrade the CPU to a 1GHz G4, and Ram is cheap - the G3 is fast enough unless you want to use lots of heavy-duty AltiVec-enabled apps (non-AltiVec apps won't see a big speed increase going from G3 to G4 unless you get a much higher clock speed).

 

[davyb]

Yes - I can take the RAM to 1 Gig cheaply enough. So what will enable me to run Skype with video properly and play streaming video and DVDs properly? - a new graphics card? - I can get the ATI Radeon 9200 128Mb card for about £70.00.

I've also found a comptible G3 1 Gig processor that is much cheaper than the Encore G4 - so presumably I'd see all round performance improvement going from 350 MHz to 1 GHz.

 

[The Macster]

It looks as though Skype have built a check into their software that stops you from using the video feature on anything less than an 800 MHz G4 - see here. £70 seems a lot to spend on a graphics card, considering that the entire machine is worth a lot less than that, and a 9200 is a pretty old card anyway (I recently got a 2600 HD with 512 MB Vram for £105 shipped for my new PC, so £70 for a very old card like the 9200 seems a lot anyway). If you really really need the performance increases offered by a 1 GHz G4 CPU and a £70 video card then you probably are better off with a newer machine, but that doesn't mean that the G3 is past it, in fact they are anything but.

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

Yes - I can take the RAM to 1 Gig cheaply enough. So what will enable me to run Skype with video properly and play streaming video and DVDs properly?

DVDs played fine in my B&W at 400MHz with 512MB RAM in OS X. That was in 10.3.x but nothing should really have changed?

Skype requires a beefy CPU, as well as a decent slab of RAM, to work well as it has to transcode the audio stream on the fly, which hammers the CPU. A G4 would accelerate that significantly.

That said 1GB of RAM on a PowerPC OS X machine is a great boost.

- a new graphics card? - I can get the ATI Radeon 9200 128Mb card for about £70.00.

I have a Radeon 9200 128MB Mac Edition in my B&W and it rocks my socks in OS X.

I've also found a comptible G3 1 Gig processor that is much cheaper than the Encore G4 - so presumably I'd see all round performance improvement going from 350 MHz to 1 GHz.

The 1GHz G3 upgrade is a bad road to go down as it slows the machines Front Side Bus to 66MHz from 100MHz. There is a G3 700 or 800 I think for the B&W that far outstrips the 1GHz for performance as it runs at the native 100MHz. The FSB speed dictates how fast everything communicates along the main bus of the computer - from PCI to RAM to hard drives - everything, so dropping 1 3rd of the speed really has a huge impact on overall performance, even if the CPU itself is faster. For OS X a slower G4 is as good as a lot of OS X's core technology is accelerated using Altivec. I have a 500MHz iBook G3 and a 500MHz B&W G4 both with 100MHz Bus and 768MB of RAM and the G4 leaves the iBook in the dust for everything in 10.4.x.

I lucked out because i got the G4/500 for my B&W cheap, but they can be found at lesser speeds for good money. I used to use my B&W for running Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10 before I got the Mac Pro (and CS3) and it did a sterling job. It was a joy to work on.