iMac G5 Power PC upgrades

PowerMac G5 PowerPC upgrades

Hi guys,

First time poster looking for some advice on a Mac I inherited from work

It's a PowerMac G5, single core 2ghz Power PC, dating from way back when in 2004. It has a slightly upgraded 2gb of RAM in 4 x 512mb blocks. Hard drive is the original 160gb SATA internal drive, and I also use a 1tb external drive.

Problem is I am finding it very slow to do things like run iTunes, import movies into iMovie, and although it is ok for editing photos, I do a lot of it so would like it quicker!

I am considering upgrading to 4gb of RAM (400mhz), and also buying a new Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATAII 64MB internal Hard Drive.

Question is - am I wasting my money (about £200) to do this when the processor is more likely to be my problem, or will the upgrades have a real impact on the machine's speed?

Thanks a lot

Nic Stevenson said:

Hi guys,

First time poster looking for some advice on a Mac I inherited from work

It's an iMac G5, single core 2ghz Power PC, dating from way back when in 2004. It has a slightly upgraded 2gb of RAM in 4 x 512mb blocks. Hard drive is the original 160gb SATA internal drive, and I also use a 1tb external drive.

Problem is I am finding it very slow to do things like run iTunes, import movies into iMovie, and although it is ok for editing photos, I do a lot of it so would like it quicker!

I am considering upgrading to 4gb of RAM (400mhz), and also buying a new Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATAII 64MB internal Hard Drive.

Question is - am I wasting my money (about £200) to do this when the processor is more likely to be my problem, or will the upgrades have a real impact on the machine's speed?

Thanks a lot

Click to expand...

First let me mention a couple things that were incorrect in your post (just so you know the exact facts):

- this iMac G5 has only 2 ram slots...so it cannot have 4 x 512meg of ram
- the max ram for this computer is 2 megabyte (not 4 meg)...so if it truly has 2 meg of ram in it...then it's in the form a 2 x 1 gig ram sticks

The upgrades most likely won't help. You can't upgrade the ram any further (and even if you could it probably wouldn't help)...and putting in a larger hard drive will give you more storage space, but probably won't improve performance much if any,

My statements above (mostly the max ram level) are based on the fact that you're correctly identifying this computer as an iMac G5. If this computer is actually a Powermac G5...then it could have a higher max ram.

HTH,

- Nick

Ugh - sorry being an idiot, it is a powermac not an imac... I blame lack of sleep and coffee not an inherent lack of brainpower, but suspect it may be the latter really!

Thanks for helping to clarify though Nick!

Nic Stevenson said:

Ugh - sorry being an idiot, it is a powermac not an imac... I blame lack of sleep and coffee not an inherent lack of brainpower, but suspect it may be the latter really!

Click to expand...

Yeah...I thought possibly you had the Macintosh model "type" incorrect. When you said it had 4 x 512meg ram...I figured you were probably right (since you might have actually visually confirmed this).

But basically what I mentioned about the upgrades holds true. Adding more ram probably won't speed things up or speed them up much. A ram upgrade will help if you had a single program that needed more than 2 gig of ram, or if you want to have lots of programs open at once. And the hard drive upgrade will basically just give you more storage space.

Since you currently have 2 gig of ram...upgrading to 4 gig may help a little bit...but it all depends on what you're doing with your computer. It certainly won't be a night/day difference in performance. If all you're doing is e-mail, internet, etc...then a ram upgrade won't make much difference.

- Nick

p.s. By the way...if you do actually have a Powermac G5 with a 2.0ghz processor...it's not a "single core"...it's has a 2.0ghz dual processor.

Save your cash, sell the G5 and go for a Mac Pro!