Speeding up my sawtooth
- Thread starter Carlo
- Start date
TheBattman
I'd rather be fishin'
Quite honestly, if I haven't booted into OS9 in quite a while, I start to get fairly comfortable with the speed and function of OSX.
BUT...If I find a need to boot into 9 (as I did just this afternoon), then BOY does 10.1.5 seem SLOW! Nine just seems to plain fly compared to X.
What is the bottleneck? I am truly puzzled as to the huge difference in perceived performance between the two on the same machine.
PowerMac G4 450 AGP
1.1GB ram
OS X 10.1.5
OS 9.2.2
20GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200RPM
40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200RPM
BUT...If I find a need to boot into 9 (as I did just this afternoon), then BOY does 10.1.5 seem SLOW! Nine just seems to plain fly compared to X.
What is the bottleneck? I am truly puzzled as to the huge difference in perceived performance between the two on the same machine.
PowerMac G4 450 AGP
1.1GB ram
OS X 10.1.5
OS 9.2.2
20GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200RPM
40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 7200RPM
I find a decent amount of difference between my ATI-128 and my ATI-Radeon. They run side by side monitors on the same machine, so casual speed comparison is fairly easy. 
You could get a nice PCI vid card that will be useful in your next machine, whenever you got that, as an option in addition to the AGP card that will come with the box.
Anyway, your mileage may vary, so don't hold me to anything if a new vid card doesn't change things for you.
The difference in perceived speed is ... real. X uses a double buffered display which refreshes with the same priority as any other task. This means that things don't get displayed until MacosX is certain what it's gonna display. 9 will draw and let you watch. Also, 9 stops everything it's doing to update the display. If this takes a while, you're waiting until it's done before you do anything else. So depending on what you're doing, either could be faster. But for 9-heads, X seems to draw things slower because they're used to seeing the computer hurry up and try to fill in everything immediately; meanwhile they're not taking advantage of the free processor in X while the display updates more casually.
I think a phat vid card with at least 32 M of ram would help. In the meantime, just realize that X is faster than 9 if you happen to work like it thinks. I do. I love X, and 9 can suck it. Suck it good. I tend to crash or hang 9 within 10 minutes of going into it, or at least getting it into a tizzy where it's busy completing one thing I asked while I'm trying to start another task. Maybe I just expect too much. ;-) It's not X, not by a long shot.
You could get a nice PCI vid card that will be useful in your next machine, whenever you got that, as an option in addition to the AGP card that will come with the box.
Anyway, your mileage may vary, so don't hold me to anything if a new vid card doesn't change things for you.
The difference in perceived speed is ... real. X uses a double buffered display which refreshes with the same priority as any other task. This means that things don't get displayed until MacosX is certain what it's gonna display. 9 will draw and let you watch. Also, 9 stops everything it's doing to update the display. If this takes a while, you're waiting until it's done before you do anything else. So depending on what you're doing, either could be faster. But for 9-heads, X seems to draw things slower because they're used to seeing the computer hurry up and try to fill in everything immediately; meanwhile they're not taking advantage of the free processor in X while the display updates more casually.
I think a phat vid card with at least 32 M of ram would help. In the meantime, just realize that X is faster than 9 if you happen to work like it thinks. I do. I love X, and 9 can suck it. Suck it good. I tend to crash or hang 9 within 10 minutes of going into it, or at least getting it into a tizzy where it's busy completing one thing I asked while I'm trying to start another task. Maybe I just expect too much. ;-) It's not X, not by a long shot.
TheBattman
I'd rather be fishin'
OC a Sawtooth G4...have fun....soldering/desoldering those tiny points just doesn't appeal to me, especially when I cannot afford to buy a replacement if I mess up.
Let us know how it turns out (would be really cool if you posted progress pictures!)
Let us know how it turns out (would be really cool if you posted progress pictures!)
ElDiabloConCaca
U.S.D.A. Prime
You don't need to be entering YOUR password, you need to enter the root password -- it's the password you picked for the root user when you first installed and configured OS X. It's probably been a while, and it's a commonly forgotten password because of that reason.
You can reset the root password by booting from the 10.1 CD and selecting "Reset Password" from the menubar under one of the menus when the install dialog box pops up.
sudo does not require root password. If you type sudo, it will only work if you are an administrator. It will ask you for YOUR password to validate you before letting you do stuff via sudo.
sudo runs processes as root. The phrase "enabling the root account" is misleading. By default OS X leaves root's password untypable, so you can't log in as root. It's all there though, it has to be, or the system wouldn't run.
sudo whoami
requires you to be an admin, requires your password, and then will tell you it's root, because, for that process at that moment, it was.
root is the name of the root user. Administrator is an attribute of any user. It means that you can obtain root power. The account you set up when you installed is not the root user, it's just an admin. Except for 10.0 where the setup duplicated your password to root's password.
And after all that, I'm gonna say, buy 10.2, get a phat video card, and maybe bore RAM and a faster HD, and that's how you speed up your sawtooth. Post your results here.
sudo runs processes as root. The phrase "enabling the root account" is misleading. By default OS X leaves root's password untypable, so you can't log in as root. It's all there though, it has to be, or the system wouldn't run.
sudo whoami
requires you to be an admin, requires your password, and then will tell you it's root, because, for that process at that moment, it was.
root is the name of the root user. Administrator is an attribute of any user. It means that you can obtain root power. The account you set up when you installed is not the root user, it's just an admin. Except for 10.0 where the setup duplicated your password to root's password.
And after all that, I'm gonna say, buy 10.2, get a phat video card, and maybe bore RAM and a faster HD, and that's how you speed up your sawtooth. Post your results here.
TheBattman
I'd rather be fishin'
that link poops out....doens't respond.
karavite
Registered
Carlo, if you are still on this thread (that seems to have taken many strange turns) then I am the person you have been looking for.!
I also have a G4 450 sawtooth and just TWO HOURS AGO I replaced my Rage 128 cards (dual monitors - AGP and PCI) with a ATI Radeon 8500 today and the first thing I noticed was windows moved perfectly now and I am running two monitors on one card. I also can run that screen saver "Marine Aquarium" (looks like real fishes) on both monitors and it is smooth as silk where it was very jerky with the older ATI cards. I wish I had more graphics, games and video apps to play with! Also, I bought this card for $168 from www.enpc.com - I had no problems.
Resizing is still as awful as ever, but with a Radeon card and 10.2 with Quartz extreme, it seems our UI's will repond as fast as they did in OS 9.
There is still some life in your G4 450 - all you need is a video card! I will hang on to mine for a while too, but there is a 1 GB processor upgrade due out soon from PowerLogix - though it is $700. When it comes down to 200 - 300, then I might consider it.
I also have a G4 450 sawtooth and just TWO HOURS AGO I replaced my Rage 128 cards (dual monitors - AGP and PCI) with a ATI Radeon 8500 today and the first thing I noticed was windows moved perfectly now and I am running two monitors on one card. I also can run that screen saver "Marine Aquarium" (looks like real fishes) on both monitors and it is smooth as silk where it was very jerky with the older ATI cards. I wish I had more graphics, games and video apps to play with! Also, I bought this card for $168 from www.enpc.com - I had no problems.
Resizing is still as awful as ever, but with a Radeon card and 10.2 with Quartz extreme, it seems our UI's will repond as fast as they did in OS 9.
There is still some life in your G4 450 - all you need is a video card! I will hang on to mine for a while too, but there is a 1 GB processor upgrade due out soon from PowerLogix - though it is $700. When it comes down to 200 - 300, then I might consider it.