AppUpgrade 5 year old Apple Mac computer Power G5 or buy a new one?

HappySad

Can you help at all???

Want to keep the cost down so considering upgrading instead of buying a new Apple Mac. Want to be able to run new operating system snow leopard on it. http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/specs.html

Currently have...

Machine Model: Power Mac G5
CPU Type: PowerPC 970 (2.2)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.6 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 768 MB

Where do you go to get the parts to upgrade?
What would I need to upgrade? (Motherboard? Processor? Memory? Graphic Card? HardDrive?)

Is is relatively easy for a novice to upgrade? I could point my apple/pc engineer to the cheapest place to buy the parts and he can then do the upgrade for me.


Want to upgrade because I have a new Iphone and our current operating system is too old to get itunes to run with it . It is mainly because my partner wants to return to graphic design & web work from home and needs a more modern operating system with a faster machine.


Any advice welcome.. What have you done & what would you recommend?

Thanks HappySad

Marty_J

Snow Leopard will only work on an Intel Mac, and the Intel and G5 iMacs are quite different internally. iMacs aren't really user serviceable, and they certainly aren't something a novice could tackle. Even opening one up is an ordeal.

What OS are you using at the minute? iTunes 9 will work with OS X 10.4 or 10.5.

HappySad

Thanks Marty J with your apple profile picture I am sure you know a lot about apples.

\Our current G5 box is a tower that can be opened up & upgraded I believe. I come from years old PC support experience (10 years old) and I knew of people then upgrading PCs who know what they were doing.

I have OS 10.3.9

computershack

It can be upgraded but only the graphics, hard drive, memory etc. You cannot alter the processor to an Intel one.

scottishblondie

Snow Leopard had no support for PowerPC CPUs I'm afraid, so the only way to get it is to upgrade to an Intel Mac.

david29dpo

I must admit, i cant see much difference between 10.5 & 10.6. I have a new Imac running 10.6.2 and an old powerbook which is not intel running 10.5.8

kwikbreaks

c45arlo

You could upgrade the Hdd, Graphics and memory but Snow Leopard as already stated will only run on an intel based machine. A memory upgrade is certainly worthwhile and inexpensive.
Another possible upgrade route could possibly be the construction of a "hackingtosh" The insanelymac wiki and forum would be a starting point to see if you have the technical ability if you wish to go down this route and it is possible to build a decent performance machine for around £500-£600 (intel quad 2.33 overclocked to 2.8Ghz/8gb ram/500Gb hdd/1Gb Graphics ddr3/modular psu etc) which will benchmark faster than a current mac pro at £2400!

busenbust

Bite the (Apple) bullet

Marty_J

HappySad wrote: »

Thanks Marty J with your apple profile picture I am sure you know a lot about apples.

\Our current G5 box is a tower that can be opened up & upgraded I believe. I come from years old PC support experience (10 years old) and I knew of people then upgrading PCs who know what they were doing.

I have OS 10.3.9

Sorry, I really need to start putting my glasses on; I thought your post said you had a G5 iMac.

The easiest thing to do is to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5. It's a great OS, and will run on your Mac with no upgrading required.

HappySad

Thanks everyone.

Just found this http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/stats/powermac_g5_2.0_dp.html

It says that I can install upto OS 10.5.8 which I believe is Leopard. I can also upgrade to 8GB memory. Is this correct?

Would this be good enough for my partner to run the following software?

• Adobe Illustrator 10:
• Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.2
• AdoAdobe Photoshop CS: Version: 8.0
• Dreamweaver MX 2004: Version: 7.0.1.2181
• QuarkXPress: Version: 7.0

Without it being too slow? I know when you upgrade OS it can slow a machine down.