06-06-2007, 05:22 PM

Hello everyone,


My sister goes to ivy tech in indiana, and she is majoring in graphic design, and up until now she had no computer.
Recently, we got her a powermac g4, dual 800mhz powerpc g4, 1.5gig ram.
She is used to using photoshop CS on a g5 (imac i think),
And when she used photoshop CS on the g4 powermac,
She said it was just 'okay' and there was a huge lag when using the 'smudge' tool and others in photoshop.
I was thinking she was just being picky, but after using it myself (im no photoshop expert) it did have a little bit of a drag, eventually resulting in the beach-ball loading icon, and eventually, it works.
Now when you have to smudge things pixel by pixel one at a time, im sure it would take a LONG time to do little tasks.
But then i got an idea why it may not be adequate,
Could it be the monitor size and resolution?
We didnt buy her a brand new monitor,
and shes using it with a 17 inch CRT,
Could that be my problem????????
Now that i think about it, the monitors are big in her design lab.

Would buying a new monitor be the answer?
How else could i make this machine better for graphic design in photoshop?


Thanks,
Tanner.

06-06-2007, 09:58 PM

Here are the system requirements:

# Macintosh:
# PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
# Mac OS X v.10.2.4, 10.2.5, 10.2.6, or 10.2.7
# 192 MB of RAM (256 MB recommended)
# 320 MB of available hard-disk space
# Color monitor with 16-bit color or greater video card
# 1,024x768 or greater monitor resolution
# CD-ROM drive

Personally, I would not even try to run photoshop especially many of the filters without at least 1GB RAM

06-06-2007, 11:10 PM

I have and use CS and 3 on my 800mhz G3 iBook with 384 ram and it works fine. I dont really have any lagging issues what so ever. It will slow down when opening the type dialog but it's because of all of the fonts that are housed on the thing. It's running tiger as well, Dashboard is shut off. But other than that I have never had problems with photoshop or illustrator. Granted it's a wee slower than my Powermac G5, it's never experienced any of the slowdowns you mentioned.

06-07-2007, 04:15 AM

We have no problems on our 733Mhz Power Mac G4 with 640Mb RAM.

06-07-2007, 06:10 AM

I guess the RAM portion depends on the size files your using, plus I am really an impatient person

06-07-2007, 06:12 AM

Some filters are going to take a bit longer on a G4 than a G5 but it still should be very useable. Since they are used to the G5 it might seem a bit slow to them especially if they are very picky or impatient.

06-07-2007, 10:15 AM

I'm 99.9% it's not your monitor as long as it's under 8 or so years old.

Where did you buy the G4? If it was used, did it come with the previous user's set up? It may just need a fresh install of OSX if that's the case. Also, check your About This Mac dialog and make sure that all of the RAM is recognized. There's no reason for that computer to be lagging as much as it sounds like.

06-07-2007, 03:25 PM

Well,
The monitor is VERY old, actually 1998.
Im not sure what the resolution is,
I think its 800x600 so thats under the requirements,
We bought the g4 off of ebay but the install was clean and new (We customized the names, area code etc after the installation part of the install)
Everything is recognized,
It is probably not as bad as it sounds,
We are, after all, very impatient people,
But would getting a newer monitor with a higher resolution help?
She does do a lot of high-resolution projects