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stevesemac · Jan 2, 2010, 01:24 AM

Just bought another eMac G4 running 10.4.11 with 700mHz and 768mB RAM.
My other older model runs 10.3.9 and has 700mhz and 1gB RAM.
The new one seems really slow and juddery on video such as You Tube and any TV yet much quicker on loading programmes and internet browsing. ( eBay was a real pain on the other one - sometimes it could never finish loading a page)
Is it the RAM causing this and should I swap my 1gb over from the other machine or could there be a memory prob with the video side of things?
On all other things it runs much better and I assumed that is because I have 10.4 along with the more recent Safari /Firefox etc etc
Thanks

imitchellg5 · Jan 2, 2010, 12:58 PM

Well, 700 MHz isn't exactly quick these days... my 867 MHz PowerBook G4 doesn't run YouTube smoothly at all. More RAM could help. Also, how much free space does the HD have on the slower eMac?

Also, 10.3.9 will be quicker anyway on an eMac.

Spheric Harlot · Jan 2, 2010, 01:43 PM

No. 10.4.11 will be much faster - but you have to give it all the RAM you can.

imitchellg5 · Jan 2, 2010, 01:48 PM

Perhaps, but with 768 Mb, it's not going to be a speed demon... 10.3.9 would be smoother.

stevesemac · Jan 2, 2010, 02:01 PM

I have 110gB HD with 98gB free.

mduell · Jan 2, 2010, 02:21 PM

An ancient CPU and OS X is a disaster for Flash (youtube, etc) content. You're not going to solve the problem with more RAM.

imitchellg5 · Jan 2, 2010, 02:21 PM

Well then you're certainly fine on storage then... it's probably just the lack of RAM and CPU then.

MTsett · Jan 9, 2010, 04:40 PM

My Mother has an 800 mhz eMac running 10.4.11 with a full 1Gb of RAM and it runs fine.
Video is a problem across all Macs-Intel or PowerPC.
Although it's exacerbated on Macs with PowerPC processors.
Many things can affect the quality of the streaming video, though.
Yes, Flash is, definitely, an issue on OS X.
Even with a fast connection, slow downs can occur if there a lot of users using the same video site
upstream from you. This is very plausible/reasonable given YouTube's popularity.
Also, there are new video codecs that are not fully compatible either on OS X or on PowerPC.
Most 780p videos will run, relatively, well on PowerPC Macs with better specs, but I find that 1080p videos lag and do become choppy.
I have a 1.25 G4 Desktop Mac running OS 10.4.11 with a newer video card with 2Gbs of RAM installed and while some video is still choppy, I get a much better frame rate than i did.
Most of the popular video sites are a problem, though.
One way to get around choppy streaming video is to wait for the complete video to load then try playing it or downloading it and play through either iTunes or QuickTime.
Not much you can do except consider a new Mac.
This said, my advice would be to stick with 10.4 and increase your RAM to the max.
I believe this eMac can take a total of 2Gbs of RAM.
It wouldn't hurt and there is going to be some performance improvements.

imitchellg5 · Jan 14, 2010, 09:33 AM

Well, YouTube hasn't been very quick to load for many people now, especially since they are cluttering the sites with ads everywhere.

And it doesn't help that Flash for OS X can't figure out how to use system resources.

P · Jan 14, 2010, 11:17 AM

We need to sticky this...

Install ClickToFlash. It redirects most video that usually goes to Flash directly to Quicktime. This improves performance significantly on things like Youtube. Betas of Flash 10.1 are also significantly faster on OS X, even if they still don't use hardware acceleration on the video card.

imitchellg5 · Jan 14, 2010, 12:12 PM

Yeah I recommend ClickToFlash for any internet user. Of course it also gets rid of those annoying Flash ads everywhere