Power Mac G5 Operating system reccomendations

Hi again!

After getting my power mac connected to my monitor I have found out that it is running Panther and I want to upgrade but I have heard that Leopard is a bit sluggish on some G5's so would Tiger be a better option?

My Specs are:
1.8 DP
1.5GB Ram
GeForce FX5200 ultra (64MB)
160GB Hard Drive
Airport Extreme

Thanks for any help!

We have quite a few folks here that run Leopard on their G5 machines. I believe most will agree that maxing out the memory will give better performance. Having said that, I'm sure since Tiger has a smaller footprint and needs less resources that it will run better.

The problem you'll run into is finding a retail copy of Tiger or Leopard at a decent price. Both still sell for around $100 here in the US - that is if you can find a good retail copy.

If you're looking for the snappiest OS, go with Tiger. If you need the most up-to-date OS, get Leopard. I'd recommend Leopard merely because a lot of applications have dropped, or are soon going to drop, Tiger support.

And further to what MacDude121 says, Apple dropped Tiger support mid 2010. Go for Leopard and make sure you purchase the black full retail install DVD and not some grey system specific discs.

Thanks for your advice! Seems like Tiger is also a lot of money over here too around £40 - £50 on eBay from what I've seen!

Going to go for Leopard still expensive though at £100 ish will be more future proof though I hope!

OS 10.5 "Leopard" is your best choice with your computer. As far as "what you heard" about Leopard being sluggish. Nah. G5's will run fine with leopard. "Sluggish" only applies if you were talking about some older Powermac G4's. Leopard runs ok on the faster G4's...so not really any problems on a G5.

Good luck,

- Nick

And as far as older G4's go, ran Leopard very well on a 1.25DP MDD with 2GB memory so you will be fine.