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The Placid Casual · Oct 31, 2003, 05:00 AM

Very, very unimpressed...

So unimpressed in fact, that I can only think that the machine was faulty...

It was a 1.6 model with 1 Gig RAM, running Panther, hooked up to a 17" Display, iSight and the BT Keyboard and Mouse.

It was just horrible.

Everything was slower than I expected, much slower for example than on my old dual 867 and the beach ball of death was all too in evidence...

Resizing was horrible, application switching took ages and doing anything intensive caused the machine to bog down massively...

My Ti 867 felt faster for most things.

I can't understand it.

Not a good first impression. While I was in the dealers I tried to fix some permissions, test the disk, hardware test and fsck (they know me well, and as they don't do it themselves, I do stuff like this on their machines when I go in!)... but it was all to no avail. No faults were found, but the thing still didn't seem to be that good at all...

Please tell me that there was probably something wrong with the trial unit?

blackbird_1.0 · Oct 31, 2003, 05:10 AM

well my 1.6 has only 256mb RAM and runs like a champ, personally i wouldn't use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse (they don't come w/G5), sometimes the computers on display get messed up

I Me Mine · Oct 31, 2003, 07:26 AM

TPC - where did you try the machine? What were your impressions of other Macs in there in the past?

I've seen a few poor reports about the 1.6 G5

I'd have thought the 800mhz FSB would have led to great performance?

blackbird_1.0 · Oct 31, 2003, 07:58 AM

um, read the post i posted earlier, the 1.6 is pretty good, i'm running maya ple on it now and its very very responsive

triplezoom · Oct 31, 2003, 09:20 AM

I have a 1.6 with 1.25 GB RAM and it performs like a champ, especially now that Panther is on it. Very very fast machine.

AssassyN · Oct 31, 2003, 10:21 AM

Speed is *always* a matter of opinion. And personally, I felt the G5's (single procs.) should've been faster than they seem. In most typical cases, my Dual 1.25Ghz G4 outperforms a 1.6 G5, ESCP. doing intense multi-tasking thanks to dual procs.

The Placid Casual · Oct 31, 2003, 10:27 AM

As I respect what others are saying about their 1.6s, I can only assume that the machine was indeed not on top form somehow...

Guess I'll have to try another one elsewhere and see if i have the same experience.

Strange though.

Anand · Oct 31, 2003, 05:02 PM

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Very, very unimpressed...

So unimpressed in fact, that I can only think that the machine was faulty...

It was a 1.6 model with 1 Gig RAM, running Panther, hooked up to a 17" Display, iSight and the BT Keyboard and Mouse.

It was just horrible.

Everything was slower than I expected, much slower for example than on my old dual 867 and the beach ball of death was all too in evidence...

Resizing was horrible, application switching took ages and doing anything intensive caused the machine to bog down massively...

My Ti 867 felt faster for most things.

I can't understand it.

Not a good first impression. While I was in the dealers I tried to fix some permissions, test the disk, hardware test and fsck (they know me well, and as they don't do it themselves, I do stuff like this on their machines when I go in!)... but it was all to no avail. No faults were found, but the thing still didn't seem to be that good at all...

Please tell me that there was probably something wrong with the trial unit?

Well, I agee with you. I have the same machine and I am not impressed. It feels just like my 1Ghz tibook. In fact, the tibook feels faster.

jasonsRX7 · Oct 31, 2003, 05:13 PM

I'm extremely pleased with the performance of my 1.6 G5 and 1gb ram. I had an initial problem with Jaguar beachballing a lot, but since I installed Panther, I have not had one single problem at all. It runs beautifully.

I've opened Photoshop and about 15 fairly high res pictures, iTunes with visualizations, and started a capture in iMovie all at the same time and it remained very fast and responsive. Expose was still fluid.

Can't help but think there is something wrong with the systems that aren't responsive just doing light duty work.

Anand · Oct 31, 2003, 07:08 PM

Originally posted by jasonsRX7:
I'm extremely pleased with the performance of my 1.6 G5 and 1gb ram. I had an initial problem with Jaguar beachballing a lot, but since I installed Panther, I have not had one single problem at all. It runs beautifully.

I've opened Photoshop and about 15 fairly high res pictures, iTunes with visualizations, and started a capture in iMovie all at the same time and it remained very fast and responsive. Expose was still fluid.

Can't help but think there is something wrong with the systems that aren't responsive just doing light duty work.

The speed of my machine is fine doing light duty work - although flash is faster on my tibook than on my G5. For many other things, the 1.6 G5 just feels the same as my tibook. I wish it were not the case but it is.

Pidd · Oct 31, 2003, 11:00 PM

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Very, very unimpressed...

So unimpressed in fact, that I can only think that the machine was faulty...

It was a 1.6 model with 1 Gig RAM, running Panther, hooked up to a 17" Display, iSight and the BT Keyboard and Mouse.

It was just horrible.

Everything was slower than I expected, much slower for example than on my old dual 867 and the beach ball of death was all too in evidence...

Resizing was horrible, application switching took ages and doing anything intensive caused the machine to bog down massively...

My Ti 867 felt faster for most things.

I can't understand it.

Not a good first impression. While I was in the dealers I tried to fix some permissions, test the disk, hardware test and fsck (they know me well, and as they don't do it themselves, I do stuff like this on their machines when I go in!)... but it was all to no avail. No faults were found, but the thing still didn't seem to be that good at all...

Please tell me that there was probably something wrong with the trial unit?

Take a look at this article at Apple

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86412

It suggests that if the plastic air deflector is not installed properly in G5 the machine will experience a significant slow down. Maybe this is happening to the machine you have. My G5 1.8 is quite responsive compared to the G4 933 I had before it.

Scottie · Nov 1, 2003, 12:22 AM

Difficult to see the science in your showroom tests of the G5 1.6.

From Macworld's latest tests of the G5s:

"..even the humblest G5 -- the 1.6GHz model -- outperformed the fastest Mac we'd ever tested before, the discontinued dual-1.42GHz Power Mac G4, on our Speedmark 3.2 benchmark, which measures overall performance in a variety of everyday applications."

I think their is a psychological factor at work here too when you look at a new product with very high expectations.

Personally, I'm amazed with the speed and beauty of my new 1.8 - which is not supposed to be that much faster than the 1.6

Cheers!

javascript:smilie('

')

off/lang · Nov 1, 2003, 12:43 AM

Silly question: did you try check top to see if something was hogging the processor? Maybe somebody installed a distributed computing client and configured it poorly...

It is a public computer, after all.

CheesePuff · Nov 1, 2003, 01:57 AM

Originally posted by Pidd:
Take a look at this article at Apple

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86412

It suggests that if the plastic air deflector is not installed properly in G5 the machine will experience a significant slow down. Maybe this is happening to the machine you have. My G5 1.8 is quite responsive compared to the G4 933 I had before it.

Good one - probably only 5% of Power Mac G5 owners know about this. The owner of the 1.6 GHz that's slow should check this out. Hopefully this is the cause.

eggman · Nov 1, 2003, 07:25 AM

Originally posted by Pidd:
Take a look at this article at Apple

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86412

It suggests that if the plastic air deflector is not installed properly in G5 the machine will experience a significant slow down. Maybe this is happening to the machine you have. My G5 1.8 is quite responsive compared to the G4 933 I had before it.

Have you actually been in the vicinity of a G5 with the plastic air deflector misaligned? There's no mistaking it... the fans blast at full speed and it sounds like a wind tunnel.

There are any number of legitimate reasons why a G5 may be acting slow, from CPU-eating tasks running to hardware problems.

But if the plastic air deflector isn't installed properly, yes - it may run slow - but that's *not* the first thing you'll notice. The first thing you'll notice is "Who turned on the leaf blower?"

The Placid Casual · Nov 1, 2003, 01:51 PM

Yep, I ran Top and found nothing out of the ordinary, and also checked the deflector, which was fine.

Thanks to those people who have posted the Ti Book reference, as this is what I used to unscientifically check the G5 against... My Ti 867 was not noticeably slower, and was faster for somethings even without Panther! It just all seems bizarre.

I'm was seriously wondering if it had other issues, but now I'm not so sure...

Going to go back to the store tomorrow and have another play around to check once and for all...!

Keep you all posted.

Anand · Nov 1, 2003, 04:06 PM

Originally posted by CheesePuff:
Good one - probably only 5% of Power Mac G5 owners know about this. The owner of the 1.6 GHz that's slow should check this out. Hopefully this is the cause.

I will check that out. But would this make the fans run like crazy?

cenutrio · Nov 1, 2003, 04:48 PM

I have extensively used my advisor's G5 1.6/768 MB RAM for iMovie projects, and photoshop. It is not a dual G5 but I consider it an extremely good built and fast computer.

It cost $1799, a very good value for non-high core users.

Panter runs great!

iNub · Nov 2, 2003, 12:22 AM

Living in Flint Michigan, I had no chance of using a G5. In fact, I've never even used a G4. Up until yesterday, the fastest Mac I had ever touched was my 500 MHz iBook. But I'm in Orlando Florida right now, and I went to CompUSA. I saw a G5 tower sitting there and almost spooged myself. I didn't know they carried Macs. They really are friggin' beautiful in person. I used it, played with Expose (coolest thing I've ever seen in an OS) and iTunes, it was all quick as lightning. Then, just for shits and giggles, I went into /Applications, cmd+a, cmd+o. It took at most 10 seconds to open everything in the folder. Wow.

Then I walked away and saw that it was the 1.8 model. The 2.0 was on the end of the aisle hooked to a 20" ACD. I played with that. Um, I want one. Now.

CheesePuff · Nov 2, 2003, 12:26 AM

Do an Xbench test on it and post it here, if possible.

michaelb · Nov 2, 2003, 06:06 AM

The entry-levels are often the black sheep of the family. (The first entry-level G4 "Yikes" was a bastard child of the REAL G4 and the old G3.) They probably put slower stock hard drives in them as well as the slower memory.

But store demos are never representative anyway: the machines are often badly configured, played around with by a few hundred people and generally stuffed. Plus your attention is hypersensitive because of the brevity of the visit.

Really though, I don't understand why anyone buying a PowerMac doesn't go the extra distance and get a Dual.

Personally, I'd rather wait for January's iMac redesign than get a G5 1.6.

dennis88 · Nov 2, 2003, 06:53 AM

Here is my powerbook compared with a 1,6ghz g5:
http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge....932&doc2=45546

Both under 10.3

But remember that the g5 has a 7200rpm drive vs 5400rpm drive, so it gains a lot of points out of this.
I didn't know that a single 1,25ghz G4 was so close to a single 1,6ghz G5.

booboo · Nov 2, 2003, 09:04 AM

Originally posted by dennis88:
Here is my powerbook compared with a 1,6ghz g5:
http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge....932&doc2=45546
. . . .
I didn't know that a single 1,25ghz G4 was so close to a single 1,6ghz G5.

I'm shocked . . .

Spliffdaddy · Nov 2, 2003, 09:40 AM

whoa.

Either that's a fast laptop or that's a slow desktop.

dennis88 · Nov 2, 2003, 10:04 AM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
whoa.

Either that's a fast laptop or that's a slow desktop.

My powerbook feels very fast, and everything is zippy.
It's a 1,25ghz 15" powerbook with 1024mb ram and the 5400rpm 80gb HD.
I found many 1,6ghz G5 powermac's with less score than the one I compared to.

dennis88 · Nov 2, 2003, 10:10 AM

Here's my powerbook vs a 1,8ghz G5, and again, remember that the powermac G5 has a faster HD (7200rpm vs 5400rpm) so it get's a lot of points from this.

http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge....932&doc2=45271

Anand · Nov 3, 2003, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by dennis88:
Here is my powerbook compared with a 1,6ghz g5:
http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge....932&doc2=45546

Both under 10.3

But remember that the g5 has a 7200rpm drive vs 5400rpm drive, so it gains a lot of points out of this.
I didn't know that a single 1,25ghz G4 was so close to a single 1,6ghz G5.

That is basically what I feel. The single G5 is a dog, no doubt about it. For $2K is it a complete rip! I wish that Moto had gotten their act together and made a G4 with a fast MB. Just imagine the speed of a 1.8 G4 with a 800 Mhz FSB! Everyone is so is love with the G5 - but in reality both the G5 and Panther for that matter - have been dogs. Don't get me wrong - they are nice dogs that I really, really like but they are not the amazing speed fixes that we have been waiting for.

Why don't other people say this? Well they just spent hard earned money on the machine. Luckily, I did not buy my machine with my own money.

MindFad · Nov 3, 2003, 10:10 AM

Ah, useless Xbench.

murbot · Nov 3, 2003, 10:38 AM

I saw my first G5 in person yesterday, and it was the 1.6 with only 256MB of RAM. I was impressed with the overall feel of it.

Now in the past several months, I have been running a 700MHz G3 iMac and a 867MHz G4 PowerBook (still stuck at 256MB of RAM), so obviously this is more power than my brain is used to seeing in action.

However, every app opened in one bounce, and resizing was very fluid. Sure, I could bog it a bit by opening too much, but it only had the bare minimum 256MB of RAM.

I left there smiling from ear to ear. If the low end felt like that, my duallie will be smokin'.

Tariq-1 · Nov 3, 2003, 12:39 PM

I just took delivery of a Dual 1.25 FW800 G4. In choosing, I spent some time at the Apple Store creating large files in PS and doing some basic manipulations. My unscientific experience was that the sinle G5's were not really perceptibly faster than the G4's they had which included the Dual 1.25, an eMac, an iMac and the 1GHZ ti at the time(ritht when the G5 was released). I then checked out the Xbench scores at xbench.com which collaborated my experience. Particularly, if one looks at the Dual 1.25 G4 vs all but the Dual G5, the G4 beats the 1.6 and is right there with the 1.8 G5. In Fact, my 1.25 dual G4 with 768MB Ram running Panther gives an Xbench score of 159.5. The Single G5's really suffer if you look at their Altivec performance compared to the G4. The deciding factor along with the performance for me was the fact that the Dual 1.25 I bought from the Apple store online as a Refurb was $1399! vs. well over $2000 for a G5 which could give similar performance. Add to this that I can add a cheap SCSI card to use my older SCSI Scanner(an issue with the G5 and it's SCSI card Compatibility) as well as the better internal upgradeablility of the G4(two optical drive bays vs one in the G5), more room for internal hard drives), and the choice was really a no brainer. I suggest anyone contemplating a G5 purchase either go for the Dual 2GHZ OR wait for the revisions in Jan.

Tariq

]

Originally posted by dennis88:
My powerbook feels very fast, and everything is zippy.
It's a 1,25ghz 15" powerbook with 1024mb ram and the 5400rpm 80gb HD.
I found many 1,6ghz G5 powermac's with less score than the one I compared to.

dennis88 · Nov 3, 2003, 01:23 PM

I think that if the G5 gets optimized more for different software, like the G4 is, we will see better results.
In maybe a year, the G5 will show it's real strength, I think.

Cadaver · Nov 4, 2003, 08:40 PM

One of the strengths of the PowerMac G5 (either the architecture, the processor, or a combo of both) is not so much its raw speed (which it has), but its ability to just plow through as many simultaneous tasks you can throw at it. It's a multi-tasking monster.

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 10:47 AM

Anybody see the latest issue of Macworld? They compare the G5 with a set of equally priced wintel machines. The wintel machines beat the G5 in most task although it is close. Again, the thing that stikes me is how bad the single G5 machines are and how good the dual G4 were. I mean the dual G4 is close to a 1.8 Ghz machine. Apple should go all dual on the pro line and single on the consumer line. That is the only thing that will make the pro line a good deal.

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 10:58 AM

Originally posted by dennis88:
My powerbook feels very fast, and everything is zippy.
It's a 1,25ghz 15" powerbook with 1024mb ram and the 5400rpm 80gb HD.
I found many 1,6ghz G5 powermac's with less score than the one I compared to.

I found the fix! I would never have thought this but it changed my G5 totally. I will eat crow on this! Take the door off the G5 and notice the protective plastic tape on the door. Remove this plastic tape and put the door back. The change is dramatic. From what I understand, this tape makes the machine run at reduced speed. I can't believe it. I went from getting 80 fps on flash site to 125 fps! The change is amazing.

Boochie · Nov 5, 2003, 01:18 PM

Does this cause an increase in fan speed or noise levels?

Originally posted by Anand:
I found the fix! I would never have thought this but it changed my G5 totally. I will eat crow on this! Take the door off the G5 and notice the protective plastic tape on the door. Remove this plastic tape and put the door back. The change is dramatic. From what I understand, this tape makes the machine run at reduced speed. I can't believe it. I went from getting 80 fps on flash site to 125 fps! The change is amazing.

roders · 01:29 PM

Umm, took the tape of my door today after hearing about it causing Kernel panics (there's a tech doc on Apples support site, weird) Haven't really noticed an improvement, yet.
If anyone else notices an improvement please post, I'm thinkin of selling my 1.8 and getting a dual or Powerbook (

)
P.S Bumped total Ram up-to 1 gig, no real speed gain (multitasking etc. is better though, obviously)

macfly · Nov 5, 2003, 02:50 PM

where on the door exactly is this tape placed? i have a dual which runs quickly enough but if its a matter of removing tape to make it even quicker, so much ther better!

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 03:16 PM

Originally posted by Boochie:
Does this cause an increase in fan speed or noise levels?

No, I had thought that the fan would run like mad if something was wrong. The only difference is in speed. I can't believe it but the speed change is impressive.

I wonder if my 233 iMac has any tape like that?

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by macfly:
where on the door exactly is this tape placed? i have a dual which runs quickly enough but if its a matter of removing tape to make it even quicker, so much ther better!

Go here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86490

roders · Nov 5, 2003, 03:19 PM

It's on the inside of the removable Aluminium door, if it's there.

macfly · Nov 5, 2003, 03:41 PM

are u sure that there were no other changes you made like reparing permissions or something? it just seems awfully weird that tape would make a difference. the plastic clear window is whats responsible for keeping the wind tunnel fans at bay. if it isnt there the fans go crazy. what would the tape cause to fail? you can run the computer without even having the side panel on in the first place. anyone have any ideas?

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 04:24 PM

Originally posted by macfly:
are u sure that there were no other changes you made like reparing permissions or something? it just seems awfully weird that tape would make a difference. the plastic clear window is whats responsible for keeping the wind tunnel fans at bay. if it isnt there the fans go crazy. what would the tape cause to fail? you can run the computer without even having the side panel on in the first place. anyone have any ideas?

That is what I thought. I can't believe it and it makes no sense. I did just install the securty update but that should not do anything. I have tried everything else to try to speed the machine up.

Tariq-1 · Nov 5, 2003, 05:23 PM

Just a guess here but after updating, the system optimizes itself. Perhaps that fixed some software issue you had previously making the machine faster.

Tariq

Originally posted by Anand:
That is what I thought. I can't believe it and it makes no sense. I did just install the securty update but that should not do anything. I have tried everything else to try to speed the machine up.

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 05:38 PM

Originally posted by Tariq:
Just a guess here but after updating, the system optimizes itself. Perhaps that fixed some software issue you had previously making the machine faster.

Tariq

I doubt it as I have run pre-binding utilities and such soo many times that I doubt that it is that. It's that tape Johnny, its the tape.

jonasmac · Nov 5, 2003, 07:41 PM

At work, I went from a Compaq PIII 667mhz with 256mb RAM, 10gb HD and CD to a....

G5 1.6ghz
1.2 GB RAM
Supah Drive
2-80gb HD
120gb Lacie D2
Logitech MX500
17" Apple Studio Display LCD
Just waiting for Panther to arrive.

I think it's plenty fast.

I told my bosses I'd rather be on a Mac, and they agreed it would be better suited to my work (advertising). God smiled upon me and put it in the hearts of my bosses to HOOK ME UP!!!

--jonas
Happy Camper

eggman · Nov 5, 2003, 09:18 PM

Originally posted by Anand:
It's that tape Johnny, its the tape.

You are out of your mind.

But you amuse me.

Anand · Nov 5, 2003, 10:28 PM

Originally posted by eggman:
You are out of your mind.

But you amuse me.

I swear I have only smoked crack once...or twice...

RooneyX · Nov 5, 2003, 10:53 PM

I think people are expecting too much when a new CPU comes out - like realtime everything!!!

dankim723 · Nov 10, 2003, 10:00 PM

I have had the worst experience with the g5.. first mac... i hate it!!! freezing, crashing and noise!! they had to swap out my power supply within the first 2 weeks then i took back in the shop again for freezing and now they want me to take it back again.. this comp sucks!!! worse than my pc and it's suppost to be 3 times faster.... i thought this would be an enjoyable experience but now im about to report to bbb! this is the worst experience of a computer purchase i have ever had!!! DONT BUY THE G5!!!! It's terrible and the customer service reps are bad also.. they tried to shut me up by sending me more ram but that doesn't fix the problem.. All my MS apps freeze as well as other apps. I'm so over apple at this point and wish i never purchased this computer!!! if anyone has any suggestions to make me a believer again.. please let me know.. also this is funny... i made a complaint on apple.com and this is the email they sent me... seems like they want to keep covering up their flaws... terrible!!

Your post titled "G5 Worst Computer Experience EVER!!!" has been removed from Apple Discussions. Posts including (but not limited to) any of the following are not appropriate:

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Sometimes you have comments or concerns for which there is no technical response. If you need the kind of help that a troubleshooting expert can't provide, you can call Apple's Customer Relations group.

jasonsRX7 · Nov 10, 2003, 10:13 PM

Originally posted by dankim723:
....if anyone has any suggestions to make me a believer again.. please let me know....

Well, the absolute worst thing could be that the whole computer is a dud. It happens, you know, nothing man made is perfect. It could just as easily have been a TV, desk lamp, stereo, or even a car. And you've got to take the same steps with Apple that you would with any of the manufactures of those other items.

I know you're really unhappy, and inconvenienced, but just remember that if the computer really is defective, it's not like you're going to be stuck with it forever, they'll replace it once they've proven that it needs to be replaced.