Upgrades for iMac 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4

I was recently given a new G4 20' iMac. Yes brand new..! I understand the Mac is out dated for todays standards for Mac's, however, I thought it would be great for my 6yr old for web games and iTunes movies. I've upgraded to Lepoard. My issue is video play back. From movie play back, web streaming and simple web basic games it's very choppy. I understand the video card...well stinks so my only option for improvement I guess would be upgrading the RAM. Will this at least solve the issue for what my 6yr old will be using it for? I've read how to install up to 2GB of ram and this would something I can do, however, I don't want to waste the money if it's not going to help. Besides this small upgrade I can do does anyone know any tips and tricks? Thanks!

Machine Model: PowerMac6,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.7.8f

It's not going to help much. The basic problem is that that machine is really old, and video standards (and Flash, and everything else) have moved on substantially.

If you pair the machine with software from that era, it will work great. For non-video web surfing, it should also continue to be fine. The RAM will help performance generally but I don't think it will do much good for streaming or video playback as that's mainly a function of the video card.

One thing that might help with sites like YouTube and Vimeo is switching to HTML5 for video playback rather than Flash.

Thank you for the great information. I wish I would have checked this before installing the 2GB RAM. I'm not out much though for a free Mac. One thing you said caught my interest. How do you switch to HTML5 for video play back. I have went into the options of flash player. This help a lot for non-HD web content. Most things now on the web have a higher resolution though. If I could my I ask how to switch to HTML 5? Thanks again my friend!

NotNerb said:

Thank you for the great information. I wish I would have checked this before installing the 2GB RAM. I'm not out much though for a free Mac. One thing you said caught my interest. How do you switch to HTML5 for video play back. I have went into the options of flash player. This help a lot for non-HD web content. Most things now on the web have a higher resolution though. If I could my I ask how to switch to HTML 5? Thanks again my friend!

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Try Camino. Works wonders for all flash based websites, especially Youtube.

You can manually turn on the preference for HTML5 in YouTube here.

For Vimeo, you set the preference in your account and it remembers it via a cookie. I'm not sure if "casual" (non-account) visitors can set it for HTML5 or not, I think I read somewhere that it's currently the default but I could be wrong about that.