[laieboy]

Was given a free a quad core G5 2.5 GHz. Not sure what I can use it for besides storing my audio and movie files. Any suggestions on what I could use it for?

[cgc]

I guess the first question is what do you need to get done? If you can't answer that then we can't help.

Using a quad-core G5 as a file server isn't a very efficient use of it since it consumes so much power (and is noisy). Ref: Apple

[Waragainstsleep]

Not too noisy, just hot and yes very very demanding power-wise. I think they had 1KW PSUs if memory serves. If you don't have need of it, its a very expensive way of serving files. I would sell it and spend the cash on a used Mac Mini or a NAS unit if you need a file server for iTunes etc.

[CharlesS]

Not only is it power inefficient, but the liquid cooling system on those is failure-prone. I'd assume that putting it in a situation like a file server where it'd be running constantly all the time without ever going to sleep would noticeably decrease its lifespan.

[Doc HM]

I scored a brand new still in its box Quad Core G5 a while back. I fired it up. About a second later there was a huge BANG as the power supply let go.

Lasted less than 30 seconds from unpacking to scrap.

ebay it and put the money towards a second hand MacPro

[Lateralus]

^Sour grapes much?

[angelmb]

Given the OP signature, I would just sell it and donate the money to help those in need.

[mduell]

Space heater?

[Lateralus]

Why does everybody continue to spread the myth that G5s were exceptionally power inefficient? A Quad idles at 185w. A dual-Quad 2009 Mac Pro idles at 146w.

And, since we're on the subject...

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

Why does everybody continue to spread the myth that G5s were exceptionally power inefficient?

I dunno, maybe because they never could manage to get it into a laptop?

Or maybe because they couldn't even manage to get it into a desktop without using liquid cooling?

Or maybe because by the specs you just posted, they ate even more power than Apple's current 8-core monster spaceheaters?

[Lateralus]

1) The 970FX's thermal envelope was practical for laptop usage, hence my link. I think it's fairly obvious at this point that Apple kept a distance from the best they could get from PowerPC in order to more easily sell the Intel transition.

2) The G5 went liquid cooled for the sake of noise, nothing more. The Pentium 4s of the time were equally power hungry, if not more so, and did just fine with standard fare, tiny-by-comparison PC heatsinks and a fan.

3) Core count has displaced clock speed as the benchmark by which processor evolution is judged, so it's inappropriate to compare two processors designed 4 years apart by TDP relative to core count.

[Thinine]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

I scored a brand new still in its box Quad Core G5 a while back. I fired it up. About a second later there was a huge BANG as the power supply let go.

Lasted less than 30 seconds from unpacking to scrap.

ebay it and put the money towards a second hand MacPro

This was a known issue. I don't know if it's still in effect, but Apple did have an extended service program to replace these power supplies.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

1) The 970FX's thermal envelope was practical for laptop usage, hence my link. I think it's fairly obvious at this point that Apple kept a distance from the best they could get from PowerPC in order to more easily sell the Intel transition.

You really think Apple would keep their entire notebook line in a holding pattern for three whole years? Yeah, right!

2) The G5 went liquid cooled for the sake of noise, nothing more. The Pentium 4s of the time were equally power hungry, if not more so, and did just fine with standard fare, tiny-by-comparison PC heatsinks and a fan.

The Pentium 4s may have run hotter overall, but since they were physically larger, the heat was spread out over a larger area and the heat density was therefore lower. The high heat density of the 2.5 dual G5s used in the quad were what required the liquid cooling.

Apple went on record stating that the heat density was the cause, btw.

3) Core count has displaced clock speed as the benchmark by which processor evolution is judged, so it's inappropriate to compare two processors designed 4 years apart by TDP relative to core count.

Then why did you do it?

[Lateralus]

1) Again - RTFL.

2) "The Pentium 4s may have run hotter overall" and in the case of a desktop machine that's going to be heavy cooled regardless to cut down on noise, this is all that matters.

3) Because if I'd chosen the 4-core Mac Pro of that era as my point of comparison, you and everybody else would have jumped, which you wound up doing anyways.

I wish more people would realize that the bullshit factory we lovingly call the RDF is three dimensional, and is occasionally used for evil; not everything Apple prosthelytizes is true.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

2) "The Pentium 4s may have run hotter overall" and in the case of a desktop machine that's going to be heavy cooled regardless to cut down on noise, this is all that matters.

No, it's not. The total power dissipation was about the same as the 130 nm CPUs used in the machines it replaced, but they didn't use liquid cooling. Total power dissipation is not the factor here — it's power density. It doesn't matter that the total power dissipation of the chip is lower if the power density is way higher for some individual part of the chip. This was the case with the high-clocked dual-core G5s.

Think about it this way: The heating system of an office building puts out a lot more heat than a single matchstick. Yet the match is on fire, and the office building isn't, thanks to the fact that the matchstick has all its heat concentrated in a very small place.

[P]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

1) Again - RTFL.

Your link talks only about cooling, not average power draw (that I could see), but even given that, the numbers are off for a potential laptop chip. Their example chip draws 39W for the CPU only - not including the power-hungry northbridge, which is included in the CPU power budget these days. Comparable chips on the Intel side, the Dothan and Banias versions of the Pentium M, peaked at 24.5W (go to ark.intel.com and search for those codenames if you need verification). 39W is too much - and Wikipedia's number is 48W rather than 39W. Power draw scales linearly with clockspeed, which puts a 25W 970FX at around 1.3 GHz - less than the G4 it would replace. I'm sure you could do something by undervolting it (power draw scales as the square of the voltage, so a small decrease can go a long way), and the Wikipedia numbers hint at that, but I'm not sure it would be much faster than the G4 it would have replaced.

The second problem is the average power draw. The 970FX does not have the same power saving features as e.g. the Pentium M, meaning that it will run hotter when idle and wear the battery quicker. This for a chip that would barely be faster than the G4 on average loads.

I think that a Power5-based "G6" with modern power-saving features could have been a great chip, but in the end, Apple didn't want to pay for the development on such a chip. Intel made them a better offer, and they went with it.

[Waragainstsleep]

The Intel transition was all about running Windows on Macs and helping people to switch. IBMs cores, heat and clocks were nowhere near as far behind as Apple made out when they switched over, it was indeed the RDF. The 970FX wasn't around for the duration of the G5, the first ones were plain 970s which were not appropriate for laptops at all.
In order to put a 970FX in a laptop however, Apple would likely have had to clock it down below the speeds of the G4 predecessors which I don't think they wanted to do. Intel was the only CPU player who had the power to force the architecture over clock speed issue home with the public. A 1.3GHz G5 laptop would not have sold well and for certain tasks would not have performed well either. HD video for example needed certain clock speeds regardless of architecture back then since there was no offloading of HD decoding to the GPUs.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

The Intel transition was all about running Windows on Macs and helping people to switch. IBMs cores, heat and clocks were nowhere near as far behind as Apple made out when they switched over, it was indeed the RDF. The 970FX wasn't around for the duration of the G5, the first ones were plain 970s which were not appropriate for laptops at all.
In order to put a 970FX in a laptop however, Apple would likely have had to clock it down below the speeds of the G4 predecessors which I don't think they wanted to do. Intel was the only CPU player who had the power to force the architecture over clock speed issue home with the public. A 1.3GHz G5 laptop would not have sold well and for certain tasks would not have performed well either. HD video for example needed certain clock speeds regardless of architecture back then since there was no offloading of HD decoding to the GPUs.

So was it about running Windows and garnering switchers, or was it about the processors?

Because Apple's line back in the day is exactly what you echo in the second half of your post:

The portion of computers sold as laptops is rising sharply.
We need to continue making competitive laptops.
IBM ain't cutting it for laptops (enter "bang per watt" song and dance).

I think that enabling Boot Camp and sensible virtualization was a side effect that they had to live with, and that turned out to be extremely beneficial, but I doubt that it was the driving force. In fact, I remember a lot of trepidation about being able to run Windows eventually, and the effect it might have on the development of Mac-native software.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

Why does everybody continue to spread the myth that G5s were exceptionally power inefficient?

Myth? It didn't get much integer math done for the power it consumed. It was a fp monster.

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

1) The 970FX's thermal envelope was practical for laptop usage, hence my link.

39W plus chipset is exceptionally high for a laptop - the only Intel chips in that regime are the Extreme ones Apple doesn't use. What's the idle power? Likely quite high given the PowerMac's idle consumption; not good in a laptop.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by mduell 

39W plus chipset is exceptionally high for a laptop - the only Intel chips in that regime are the Extreme ones Apple doesn't use.

The notebook cpus Apple uses have a TDP of 35W (with the exception of those used in the Air), so it's in the same ballpark. As far as I understand, the problem is two-fold: (1) hot spots and (2) the poor power management.

[laieboy]

Thanks for all the response! I'm planning to put it up on the local craigslist and put the money towards an iPad 2.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

1) Again - RTFL.

2) "The Pentium 4s may have run hotter overall" and in the case of a desktop machine that's going to be heavy cooled regardless to cut down on noise, this is all that matters.

3) Because if I'd chosen the 4-core Mac Pro of that era as my point of comparison, you and everybody else would have jumped, which you wound up doing anyways.

I wish more people would realize that the bullshit factory we lovingly call the RDF is three dimensional, and is occasionally used for evil; not everything Apple prosthelytizes is true.

The OP was considering using this as a file server for movies and files. This isn't a debate as to whether the G5 was a great CPU. I don't care and probably nobody else cares. It was good in it's day and is still decent, but it's one of the last CPUs I'd suggest using as a file server. This is akin to discussing whether or not hammer X is a great hammer, prolly is, but a screwdriver is better suited to the the task at hand (maybe not the best analogy but I need a beer).

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

So was it about running Windows and garnering switchers, or was it about the processors?

Because Apple's line back in the day is exactly what you echo in the second half of your post:

The portion of computers sold as laptops is rising sharply.
We need to continue making competitive laptops.
IBM ain't cutting it for laptops (enter "bang per watt" song and dance).

I think that enabling Boot Camp and sensible virtualization was a side effect that they had to live with, and that turned out to be extremely beneficial, but I doubt that it was the driving force. In fact, I remember a lot of trepidation about being able to run Windows eventually, and the effect it might have on the development of Mac-native software.

You're quite right, I got sidetracked and forgot to finish my post. I was going to add that the PPC based chips which arrived just after the Intel switch were quite impressive. I vaguely recall rumours of one running 5 or 6GHz without excessive cooling required, not sure how true that was though. Either way IBMs next announcements might have dented the RDF a bit but no-one was paying much attention. We might have had some seriously quick PowerBook G6s if Apple had stuck a little longer with PPC. Had they switched earlier, they reasons they gave would have made a lot more sense, as it was I think the ability to run Windows was a masterful planned tactic and most of the worrying about it came from outside of the Apple boardroom.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by P 

I think that a Power5-based "G6" with modern power-saving features could have been a great chip, but in the end, Apple didn't want to pay for the development on such a chip. Intel made them a better offer, and they went with it.

Wasn't really Apple's decision: IBM wouldn't do it. It didn't make financial sense for them to spend several hundred million dollars developing a chip for a company which would only sell between 2–2.5 million machines a year. At the time of the Intel switch IBM was getting out of the personal computer business and going back to what they do best, selling to business.

To put this in perspective, between the PS3, the Wii and the X-Box 360, IBM has sold over 190 million chips to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Cooling issues aside, it's actually fine for every day use. I still have my dual 2 GHz G5. I used it to run some nav software when the other machine's running X-Plane. You could look into throwing Linux on it, but PPC Linux is very hit and miss for support.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

You're quite right, I got sidetracked and forgot to finish my post. I was going to add that the PPC based chips which arrived just after the Intel switch were quite impressive. I vaguely recall rumours of one running 5 or 6GHz without excessive cooling required, not sure how true that was though. Either way IBMs next announcements might have dented the RDF a bit but no-one was paying much attention.

Those were extremely stripped down processors for very specific and limited purposes, though - great for computationally intensive research analysis (which was one area where they were used), but marginally useful for general computing devices.

[P]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

The notebook cpus Apple uses have a TDP of 35W (with the exception of those used in the Air), so it's in the same ballpark.

Yes, but that is 35W including the Northbridge - the 39W is only the CPU. Back when the mobile Intel chips had a separate Northbridge, it ran to about 10W in itself.

[OreoCookie]

@P
You have a point and I'm on board with the conclusion anyway that the G5 was not an adequate solution for laptops. I just thought that one very important point which did not get enough attention was the lack of power management within the cpu.