Mac OS X on different hardware

power applepower apple
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Well, I have by now, tried Mac OS X on many different hardware configurations, and I have compiled this little list of recommendations, based on my experience



First: This applys only to machines with a MINIMUM of 256 MB RAM (OS X really needs that - at least!) and Mac OS X 10.1.X



So here goes:



Not recommendable (very slow!):

233-266 MHz G3 (iMacs and beige Power Macs, PowerBooks)



Partly Usable...slow:

300 MHz G3 (iMacs, beige and blue Power Macs, iBooks, PowerBooks)



Usable..but somewhat slow:

350-500 MHz G3 (Blue Power Macs, iMacs, iBooks, PowerBooks)

350-400 MHz G4 (Power Macs, PowerBook)



Fully Usable...but still a little sluggish in some operations:

600-700 MHz G3 (iMacs, iBook)

450-733 MHz G4 (Single and dual Power Macs, Cube, PowerBooks)



Fully Usable and fast:

Dual 800 MHz Power Mac

867 MHz Power Mac



Fully Usable and VERY fast!:

1+ GHz G4 or any G5 (well, one can always hope )



(also note that I have, of course, not tried every machine, but I have tried a lot, and think I can imagine the general performance on those I haven't tried)



EDIT: Of course OS X is "usable" on any supported machine, but when I say "usable", it means for general application use - just booting, fetching mail and writing a one page letter in Appleworks, doesn't count, sorry )



[ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Power Apple ]</p>
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 53
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    agree with all of those
  • Reply 2 of 53
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    I don't know if my iMac was "very slow" It was slow thought maybe on the slow side of slow. Some things were a tad snappy. Like the genie effect always seemed to go rather smoothly, at least. Made me think that Apple put effort into the superficial things they want to show off in the keynote and then forget about the important stuff like basic hardware support and needed software components.
  • Reply 3 of 53
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    Great list! Thanks! Now I'll have a "real" reference when looking at buying new hardware and upgrading to OS X.
  • Reply 4 of 53
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott H.:

    <strong>I don't know if my iMac was "very slow" It was slow thought maybe on the slow side of slow. Some things were a tad snappy. Like the genie effect always seemed to go rather smoothly, at least. Made me think that Apple put effort into the superficial things they want to show off in the keynote and then forget about the important stuff like basic hardware support and needed software components.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    jeez, the genie effect works for you? on my G4/400 is always stutters with anything that is more than a basic page. nevermind trying to minimize a playing qt movie with a high bitrate. it could take seconds for it to register the click
  • Reply 5 of 53
    logan calelogan cale Posts: 1,281member
    The genie effect rarely works smoothly on my 500 MHz iBook. Even the scale effect jumps and skips. I want a windowshade option!
  • Reply 5 of 53
    corvettecorvette Posts: 561member
    That seems pretty accurate. The RAM thing is no joke, I have 128mb on my iBook 600 and it's verrrrrryyyy bad.
  • Reply 7 of 53
    corvettecorvette Posts: 561member
    dp



    [ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: corvette ]</p>
  • Reply 8 of 53
    power applepower apple Posts: 335member
    For some reason, when I try to edit the post the text is all garbled???



    Anyway...The 333 MHz iMac should be in the same category as the 300 MHz G3 (Partly Usable...slow).



    EDIT: I haven't tried the PowerBook G3/294, so I don't know if it should be in the 233-266 or 300-333 MHz category...anyone care to help?



    [ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Power Apple ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 53
    bluegeckobluegecko Posts: 11member
    Just a note: I have a 500 MHz iBook, and OS X is plenty fast . . . due to the fact that I loaded the sucker with 384 MB RAM. Similarly, even my 266 MHz beige G3 runs quite nicely. But I had to upgrade the graphics card to a Radeon and shove the RAM up to 512 MB. Memory and video cards seems to do wonders for OS X performance far greater than the CPU, which furthers my feeling that Quartz is simply too demanding on today's hardware and that OS X is a memory hog.
  • Reply 10 of 53
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    well, I thik he was reffering to stock hardware rather than whether it is better with new cards and a ton more ram or whatever.





    you could also add a 180Mhz 604e to that list.



    it ran. just really couldn't do anything though



    maybe if it was able to use the 2nd 180Mhz 604e it would be sort of usable
  • Reply 11 of 53
    power applepower apple Posts: 335member
    [quote]Originally posted by BlueGecko:

    <strong>Just a note: I have a 500 MHz iBook, and OS X is plenty fast . . . due to the fact that I loaded the sucker with 384 MB RAM. Similarly, even my 266 MHz beige G3 runs quite nicely. But I had to upgrade the graphics card to a Radeon and shove the RAM up to 512 MB. Memory and video cards seems to do wonders for OS X performance far greater than the CPU, which furthers my feeling that Quartz is simply too demanding on today's hardware and that OS X is a memory hog.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I can't argue with your feelings, I can only try to reason with you



    266 MHz G3 runs quite nicely?...well, maybe for very simple tasks, but not for general application use compared to what you can do with such a machine in Mac OS 9 (Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Mac OS X - I really like it's stability and have played with it since public beta, bought 10.0 the day it came out and used it since 10.1 but let's get real about speed)



    I have tried both an iMac 233 and beige G3 266 with 256 and 384 MB RAM (but no Radeon, however the graphics card doesn't make THAT big a difference in Aqua - I have upgraded a blue/white G3 from Rage128 to Radeon and the difference was mostly notisable in games and video - but 2d seems rather unaccelerated in Mac OS X. Of course, since you went from extremely slow graphics to a fast graphics card, the difference is bigger in your case) but I can't honestly recommend the experience.



    EDIT: your machine with Radeon and 512 MB Ram, would probably climb one step up the ladder and join the "Partly Usable" category



    (edit2: the iMac had 288 MB, not 256 - installed them myself for a friend. btw, don't forget to update firmware when installing a 256 module in a revB (233) iMac - I didn't know at first...grrrr )



    [ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Power Apple ]</p>
  • Reply 12 of 53
    bogiebogie Posts: 407member
    I can't agree with the list, here are my reasons:



    1st - Does not factor in video upgrades which have a huge impact on performance and can be made to Beige G3s and B&Ws.



    2nd - Claims only the highend works very well, simply not true I get very good performance on a couple of non-G4 systems [Beige G3 400 with 384MB and Rage128 and a Pismo] and on what the above list would claim a low end G4 system [PB G4].



    3rd - The list doesn't factor in RAM, and let me tell you 128MB on a 400+ G3 it is slow, but with 384MB+ it is zippy. UNIX loves RAM.
  • Reply 13 of 53
    sizzle chestsizzle chest Posts: 1,133member
    I would classify OSX on my G4-450 (dual) as "Fully Usable and fast" actually, but maybe extra extra extra RAM (in my case 1gb) bumps you up one category.
  • Reply 14 of 53
    power applepower apple Posts: 335member
    [quote]<strong>Originally posted by Bogie:



    I get very good performance on a couple of non-G4 systems [Beige G3 400 with 384MB and Rage128 and a Pismo] and on what the above list would claim a low end G4 system [PB G4].</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well, I simply disagree with you. I set up a PowerBook G4/400 with 384 MB RAM for a friend and installed Mac OS X 10.1 (clean).



    For his needs (Office, Explorer, Mail, iTunes, DVD Player etc.) it was usable - absolutely! but it still felt "somewhat slow"..considering how fast the machine really is.



    (EDIT: actually, DVD Player is not that usable on a PowerBook yet (at least not for my friend), since S-VHS out is not yet properly supported under Mac OS X (hope they fix it real soon!))



    [ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Power Apple ]</p>
  • Reply 15 of 53
    power applepower apple Posts: 335member
    [quote]Originally posted by Bogie:

    <strong>I can't agree with the list, here are my reasons:



    1st - Does not factor in video upgrades which have a huge impact on performance and can be made to Beige G3s and B&Ws.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well, The list assumes the machines are fitted with the standard video. I really can't say how big the difference is on a beige G3



    But a video upgrade does NOT have an overall huge impact on a blue G3 using Mac OS X (except for games and QuickTime, of course).



    my home machine is blue/white G3/400 with Radeon, 576 MB RAM, 40 GB (fast) 7200 rpm HD and 10.1.2, so I speak from experience - but of course I can only speak for myself (btw, I have sold it, but keeps it until my new machine arrives - I'm waiting until MacWorld to place my order (I should mention that I sold it to an organisation that had to spend the money this year, so I'm not cheating anyone, I'm just lucky ) )



    [ 12-28-2001: Message edited by: Power Apple ]</p>
  • Reply 16 of 53
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    I played with the QS 867 at an Apple store and I was surprised how slow the window resizing was. Even on an 867 there was something to complain about with X. I hope we won't all need 1.4ghz + to run X at descent speeds. Think 10.2 will be noticably faster then 10.1.2?
  • Reply 17 of 53
    msleemslee Posts: 143member
    Did you check the RAM at the Apple Store?



    For some reason alot of those machines come stock...they don't pack the RAM in like proper Mac OS X-heads should...



    saddest thing I ever saw..a DP 800 with 128 MBs of RAM at Fry's. I almost wanted to pull the plug on it...
  • Reply 18 of 53
    x704x704 Posts: 276member
    [quote]Originally posted by Power Apple:

    <strong>



    Well, The list assumes the machines are fitted with the standard video. I really can't say how big the difference is on a beige G3



    But a video upgrade does NOT have an overall huge impact on a blue G3 using Mac OS X (except for games and QuickTime, of course).

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    What your not considering is that the Rage II/Pro/LT doesn't have 2D/3D acceleration in OS X. So upgrading to a Radeon will make a big difference since it does have accel. Going from the Rage 128 to a Radeon probably won't yield any performace increase in the finder since their both supported in X & their not the limiting factor.
  • Reply 19 of 53
    bogiebogie Posts: 407member
    Well, as far as general use ... [DVD works excellent on my Pismo 400 with 384], games run reasonable, runs OS X native stuff very fast, now is it going to be as fast as a dual 800? Course not, shouldn't be close, but fact is I think that generally people's perception of usable with OS X are skewed, fact is we didn't complain like this over the fact that 9.1 sucks on a 7200/120 ... and that is just as supported, and performs as bad or worse than OS X 10.1 on a Beige G3 233.



    Oh, and as far as video goes, on a Beige G3 it makes a massive difference.
  • Reply 20 of 53
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    [quote]Originally posted by mslee:

    <strong>Did you check the RAM at the Apple Store?



    For some reason alot of those machines come stock...they don't pack the RAM in like proper Mac OS X-heads should...



    saddest thing I ever saw..a DP 800 with 128 MBs of RAM at Fry's. I almost wanted to pull the plug on it...</strong><hr></blockquote>



    You know, I didn't even think about cvhecking that. Funny tho, I checked the system profiler for the speed but forgot to look down to the ram, lol.



    Still, I hope 10.2 is a lot faster.
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