panther or tiger?

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I've been using Tiger on my PowerPC G4 tower for quite a while, but it's VERY slow. I've been debating whether to install Panther, hoping I'd get better performance out of the machine, which only boasts a 400MHz processor.

Does anyone still run Panther with similar processor speeds?
Is there a wealth of software still available for it?
Any downfalls of downgrading to Panther?
Will it help with overall performance and speed on an older system like mine?
 
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What are the specs on your G4? I always recommend Tiger over panther, much more stable and typically faster (given enough ram). Some newer apps don't work in 10.3 as well.
 
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400MHz processor
1GB ram

The graphics section of the system profiler has me a little confused. I'll post the copy/paste here. I believe it's AGP graphics, but the way it's listed has a perplexed.


Chipset Model: ATY,Rage128Pro
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-A
VRAM (Total): 16 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

I only have 19 GB of space. I run some apps off a 100GB external drive, as well as use it for backup.
I cannot view online videos from YouTube ( I get a "frame by frame" effect), and even the "genie effect" when minimizing/maximizing is slow. Overall, it's just slow. I'm hoping that maybe a fresh install of Panther will speed it up a bit. I'm aware that not many apps are made today for Panther, nor are most of the popular ones supported by it.
Hope this helps diagnose the problem a bit more. If more system information is needed, let me know.
 
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You won't get that much of a speed bump from 10.3. I would suggest sticking with Tiger. You Tube is somewhat demanding on older macs, but I've been able to get videos playing with minimal frame drops from a 600mhz G3 imac running tiger.

Is your external attached via USB? If your using the built in USB ports, that would cause a slow down running apps since its only USB 1.1

I would go for a fresh install of Tiger first, also check your activity monitor for any processes that might be hogging memory or cpu resources.

Download a copy of xbench and compare results to similar systems to see where your bottleneck is, this always helps me determine how to boost performance on my G4 and G5s.

This isn't the newest machine, at best its a 2001 Gigabit ethernet model. Can't expect miracles.
 
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aluminum MacBook: 2.4GHZ Core 2 Duo, 3GB DDR3 RAM, NVIDEA GeForce 9400M, 250 GB HDD (32GB for Vista)
Yes, DEFIANTLY reinstall Tiger first. I was able to run Tiger on an iMac G3 (400MHZ, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD) fine just about 2 years ago before I sold it. The same goes for any PC as well. I just recently reinstalled XP on an old 500MHZ Celeron that was running so slow I was ready to recycle it, but I reinstalled the OS, and now it runs perfectly fine. Your G4 should run perfectly fine with Tiger and not have YouTube problems either. I was having problems with viewing YouTube videos myself on a Dell about the same age as your G4, and I solved the problem by reinstalling the drivers for the video card. That should make your computer work the way it should, great!
 
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I run three Macs, two with Panther and one with Tiger. Stick with Tiger if you can, but the essence of your problem is called 400 MHz. I have a G3 b/w @ 350 MHz and video playback is awful. I've not put this G3 iMac 600 with Panther through its paces with video yet. Remember though that your G4 was issued with Panther, so the two were matched from the start.

A possibility for you is to spend US$1xx (the price keeps coming down) on a processor upgrade MyOWC at OtherWorldComputing.com. From what you've posted, yours appears to be a AGP Sawtooth?

How long is it since you did any OS maintenance on your G4? OnyX (recommended) or MainMenu will clean up a lot of cache files, repair permissions, run maintenance scripts etc. You may notice a significant improvement thereafter.
 
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Remember though that your G4 was issued with Panther, so the two were matched from the start.
.

Pretty sure the sawtooth (1999-2000) was matched for OS 9.x

10.3 didn't come out until 2003-2004 with the G5s.
 
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Actually, I just finished re-installing Tiger. This time I zeroed out the small hard drive after deleting the old one in Linux (I was playing with an Ubuntu Dapper Live CD).
I'll check out re-installing the graphics drivers.
How would I go about doing that on a Mac?
 
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Actually, I just finished re-installing Tiger. This time I zeroed out the small hard drive after deleting the old one in Linux (I was playing with an Ubuntu Dapper Live CD).
I'll check out re-installing the graphics drivers.
How would I go about doing that on a Mac?

You don't. Video drivers are built into the OS and updated by apple via software update.
 
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Just discovered that by searching the web. I think I should be good.
Thanks for the help.
 

dtravis7


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My take, more and more applications need 10.4 and above. Safari in 10.3 is way behind the times. I know of many sites that will not even load properly and Firefox latest versions are 10.4 and above. I run Tiger here on a 500Mhz G4 Sawtooth and 400 Mhz G4 Yikes! even. The video card on the stock Sawtooth holds it back a bit. I put in a ATI Radeon (first Radeon for Powermacs) and it's much faster now and even is pretty smooth with YouTube Videos. I have 10.3 and 10.4 Dual Boot on my 400 Mhz G4 and they are not that much different in speed.
 
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I had considered putting Linux on it, but found no apps that were close to the ones I have for Tiger. Emulating them would create more problems than I need. From what I've read in this thread so far, the easiest fix would be to buy a new graphics card.
 
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Pretty sure the sawtooth (1999-2000) was matched for OS 9.x 10.3 didn't come out until 2003-2004 with the G5s.
I was wrong, you're right - almost ;D. The AGP Sawtooth was issued with OS 8.6 would you believe (Source: Mactracker). It was Jaguar I was thinking of, and even that wasn't matched to the Sawtooth :[. I'll get my cats right eventually.
 

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