My PowerMac G4/1,25: Upgrade to Tiger or Leopard?

F

floweb

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Hello!

I am a new Mac user. I bought an old Power Mac G4 (MDD) for some bucks a few days ago. Here are some specs:
1x 1,25GHz, 80GB ATA, 64MB ATI graka, 512MB RAM, FW 400, OS X: Panther
And it is the MDD model which was released in 2003.

Now I want to Upgrade Panther, but I don't know which OS X is the best choice for my Power Mac, Tiger or Leopard?
My Mac should have a good performance. I know, Apple officially support my PowerMac, but will it run as fast as Tiger or slower on my machine?

On google I can primarily find some reports how Leopard works on unsupported macs and on them Leo works fine, but not so fast..

greets
floweb
 
WIth that amount of RAM, Tiger would be your best bet. I'm not running Leopard yet, but I've heard from others that it does feel slower than Tiger. Still, you could install it officially since you exceed the minimum requirements (867 Mhz G4 is the minimum), but you'd have to REALLY bump up the RAM.

Also be aware that Leopard dropped support for Classic, even on PowerPC Macs.
 
I've also seen some reports that the Leopard Installer refuses to allow an installation on a G4 that meets the Apple Requirements .... something to do with the G4 having been modded up to Leo's Sys Req's but the Installer just plain refused to allow the go-ahead ... I have also seen a work-around for this too.

I tend to go along with the Tiger train_of_thought. I wouldn't suggest someone bypass Tiger and go straight to the cutting edge as personally I'm really enjoying Tiger still and have no immediate plans to cast the beast aside ... I might even go against my advice and skip to 10.6 when it comes out .... bleedin' edge, I challenge you~
 
i upgraded my Dual 1.25 GHz MDD from 768 MB RAM to 1792 MB prior to upgrading from Tiger to Leopard, and have had no problems with performance.

(three 512's and one 256 Mb chip - and System Profiler shows as 1.75 - wth??)
 
Thanks for your answers!

Well, I will rather choose Tiger. I've heard similar things that 512MB RAM are too little for Leopard. And I don't want to buy more RAM chips...
 
I had 512 MB of RAM on Tiger and it ran OK, but it's cutting it close. It's definitely not something I would consider for Leopard. I recommend 1 GB for Tiger and more than that for Leopard. But for general use 512 MB should be fine in Tiger (I ran with that on my iMac G5 for a good while before adding an extra 1 GB stick).
 
RAM is dirt cheap right now. However, you SHOULD upgrade with matching chips.

I recently upgraded from 2GB RAM to 4 GB RAM---cost was under $100.
 
g/re/p said:
Good point - i keep forgetting that extra 24 MB :D
Click to expand...

I thought that manufacturers of HD's / Disc Media were the only ones rounding off that extra 24mb when displaying disc quota but my ISP also advertises my Broadband Plan as 10GB Download then had the cheek to send me an email warning me I'd exceeded this quota when I still had 240MB to go!

Nit Picking, I know .... :D
 
It's not due to manufacturers "rounding" any numbers, it's due to the difference between base-10 counting and base-2 counting. There is no 1000 when taking exponents of base 2, only 1024 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc.).

When manufacturers say a drive holds 120GB of information, they're using the natual way humans learn to count -- in base-10. In actuality, though, a 120GB drive only holds about 111.65GB of information because a computer doesn't "count" in base-10, it "counts" in base-2. The drive still holds 120,000,000,000 bytes, but 120,000,000,000 in base-2 is something slightly less (because instead of dividing by 1000, you divide by 1024 -- or, 2^10).

http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080619145733AAFOeKd
 
I don't think you understand the difference between GB and MB.
1GB = 1024MB
Therefore to convert 1792mb to GB divide by 1024 and multiply by 1000 (which gives the 1.75GB)
Or more easily, multiply 1792 by 1.024 = 1.75GB

1024kb = MB
1024MB = 1GB
1024GB = 1TB
etc etc
 
Linkinfiles - I don't know where you were going with your number demo, and you were trying to provide some help here, but both your decimal point and your math is a little off.
If you divide 1792 by 1024, then multiply by 1000, you get 1750 (not 1.75)
If you multiply 1792 by 1.024, you get 1835.008, which isn't close to the correct number of GB.
It's always a good plan to try out what you have written down, before offering it as a solution, eh?
ElDiabloConCaca was still correct, as usual...
 
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