Tiger slower than Panther on 12" iBook G4?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
It certainly seems slower on my 12" iBook G4 with 768MB RAM. I'm seeing the spinning beachball a LOT more than I used to with Panther...



Is this something I will just have to put up with? Are other 12" iBook users finding the same thing? And (please!) is there any chance that a future update might help with this?
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 31
    eekles77eekles77 Posts: 58member
    I also have a 12" iBook G4 with 768MB of RAM and it isn't any slower with Tiger, probably faster.
  • Reply 2 of 31
    youngjohnyoungjohn Posts: 15member
    I have a 12" ibook G4, 640Mb, 30GB, BT, AE.



    After doing an upgrade of tiger over 10.3.9 and finding that everything slowed to slower than a slug on valium, i carefully backed everything up and formated the HD & installed a fresh copy of tiger.

    Since then, i haven't seen the dreaded beachball of doom once.



    (one note of mention though: when transfering your data back to your ibook, DON'T start the ibook in firewire disk mode to do it. I have found that Spotlight does NOT index files that were copied back while the system is not running. - i have since copied all my data back twice now....not a big deal really, but still worth a mention)
  • Reply 3 of 31
    geekdreamsgeekdreams Posts: 280member
    How fast are your processors? I think the newer iBooks (1Ghz+) will run Tiger okay, but the older ones seem to have trouble, even with more than the stock (256MB) RAM.
  • Reply 4 of 31
    Clean install.
  • Reply 5 of 31
    adamclarkadamclark Posts: 20member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by french macuser

    Clean install.



    I did a clean install, not an upgrade, when I installed Tiger. So that shouldn't be the problem.



    And the processor speed is 1.2 GHz. It's not an old machine - just six months old...
  • Reply 6 of 31
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by adamclark

    I did a clean install, not an upgrade, when I installed Tiger. So that shouldn't be the problem.



    And the processor speed is 1.2 GHz. It's not an old machine - just six months old...




    I get the beachball LOTS On my mini - I did the upgrade - I plan to reinstall tiger from scratch when .1 comes out...unless any one knows how to speed this thing up...
  • Reply 7 of 31
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    what's all this reinstalling from scratch crap? i thought i used a Mac OS, not Windows.
  • Reply 8 of 31
    eekles77eekles77 Posts: 58member
    I have the iBook 1GHz, bought it back in July 2004. I decided to do an Upgrade install rather than clean install and have had no problems with it. Runs much better than Panther in all ways.
  • Reply 9 of 31
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by progmac

    what's all this reinstalling from scratch crap? i thought i used a Mac OS, not Windows.



    You're using a computer. Regardless of the OS, sometimes you just have to wipe and reinstall from scratch to get rid of the useless crap left in your old OS install.



    Think of it like changing the oil in your car. If you really want to improve performance, you drain the old oil before putting new in.



    (Kesh ducks thrown tomatoes from those who hate computer <-> car analogies. )
  • Reply 10 of 31
    mikefmikef Posts: 698member
    I did an archive and install on my iBook G4 1GHz and things have been fine. I was very worried about losing performance on this already a little slow notebook, but it seems fine.



    I just wish I had more disk space, but that's coming...
  • Reply 11 of 31
    ensoniqensoniq Posts: 131member
    While I wouldn't say it's "slow", my 1.2 GHz iBook 12" doesn't seem mega-snappy under Tiger. But I'm assuming the 10.4.1 update may fix that a little. (I also did a full reformat/clean install on the iBook.)
  • Reply 12 of 31
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kesh

    You're using a computer. Regardless of the OS, sometimes you just have to wipe and reinstall from scratch to get rid of the useless crap left in your old OS install.



    Think of it like changing the oil in your car. If you really want to improve performance, you drain the old oil before putting new in.



    (Kesh ducks thrown tomatoes from those who hate computer <-> car analogies. )




    yeah i know. but it sucks. can't someone do something about it?
  • Reply 13 of 31
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ensoniq

    While I wouldn't say it's "slow", my 1.2 GHz iBook 12" doesn't seem mega-snappy under Tiger. But I'm assuming the 10.4.1 update may fix that a little. (I also did a full reformat/clean install on the iBook.)



    That would be the graphics cards that sit in the iBooks. I have noticed BIG improvements on my PowerBook with 128MB VRAM. 32MB RAM is not enough - hopefully they upgrade the iBooks soon - iMacs have great graphics now.
  • Reply 14 of 31
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    What the hell do you mean 32 is not enough? I'm not mad at you, just mad if this is true at Apple. So far Apple has been kicking ass making OS X get faster and faster. I paid $2100 for my top of the line PowerBook 12" just last year. I will be pissed if I buy Tiger and it's slower than Panther, at ANYTHING. I am actually buying Tiger this time. I'm getting the Ed price so I figure I should, since I stole Panther.



    Is it a good idea to enable QE 2D with the flag that lets it work on 32 megs? Would that make thing slower or faster?



    And will Tiger be faster or slower, does everyone think, on a PowerBook 12" G4 867mhz, with 640 megs of RAM?



    Thanks for everyone's input!
  • Reply 15 of 31
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    What the hell do you mean 32 is not enough? I'm not mad at you, just mad if this is true at Apple. So far Apple has been kicking ass making OS X get faster and faster. I paid $2100 for my top of the line PowerBook 12" just last year. I will be pissed if I buy Tiger and it's slower than Panther, at ANYTHING. I am actually buying Tiger this time. I'm getting the Ed price so I figure I should, since I stole Panther.



    Is it a good idea to enable QE 2D with the flag that lets it work on 32 megs? Would that make thing slower or faster?



    And will Tiger be faster or slower, does everyone think, on a PowerBook 12" G4 867mhz, with 640 megs of RAM?



    Thanks for everyone's input!




    You've got to remember the 32MB GPU that's in the iBooks is different to the PowerBook cards. They used the same GPU in the eMacs until recently. They now have 64MB. 32MB probably is enough - but the more video RAM the better - GPU processing is really beginning to be used - in both Windows and Mac OS X.



    Also it's not just the amount or VRAM - it's the card. My 600MHz G3 was faster than my granddad's PowerMac 400MHz G4 until he got Mac OS X. His 16MB GPU supported Quartz Extreme and was noticeably faster - even though my iMac had a newer graphics card and also 16MB.
  • Reply 16 of 31
    bitemymacbitemymac Posts: 1,147member
    try turning on QE. QE requirement went up with Tiger. It now requires 512MB SDRAM and 64MB VRAM to activate QE by default. Any machine, portable or desktop below this spec will turn off QE by default.



    You can try hacking the the plist manually or download "extremePCI" hackware to modify the plist to accept 32MB VRAM for QE activation.



    This should help with sluggishness.
  • Reply 17 of 31
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bitemymac

    try turning on QE. QE requirement went up with Tiger. It now requires 512MB SDRAM and 64MB VRAM to activate QE by default. Any machine, portable or desktop below this spec will turn off QE by default.



    You can try hacking the the plist manually or download "extremePCI" hackware to modify the plist to accept 32MB VRAM for QE activation.



    This should help with sluggishness.




    Why did they upgrade the specs needed for Quartz Extreme? Does this mean that cube transition will no longer work on computers that previously did it? I thought QE gave massive speed improvements to basic window moving/resizing. This seems silly - they should have made a new graphics level and kept Extreme on.
  • Reply 18 of 31
    I'm on an iMac 800 Mhz G4 with a GeForce2 32 MB video card, 512 MB RAM. All of the Quartz Extreme processes (cube effect, RSS screensaver, etc.) work fine for me.
  • Reply 19 of 31
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by krgermane

    I'm on an iMac 800 Mhz G4 with a GeForce2 32 MB video card, 512 MB RAM. All of the Quartz Extreme processes (cube effect, RSS screensaver, etc.) work fine for me.



    I did think it would be a little strange to make people's computers slower. Mine has got faster.
  • Reply 20 of 31
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bitemymac

    try turning on QE. QE requirement went up with Tiger. It now requires 512MB SDRAM and 64MB VRAM to activate QE by default. Any machine, portable or desktop below this spec will turn off QE by default.



    You can try hacking the the plist manually or download "extremePCI" hackware to modify the plist to accept 32MB VRAM for QE activation.



    This should help with sluggishness.




    Totaly great...lots of speed recovery - turning something on made stuff faster - shockled the hell outa me!



    now...how can I hack Q2dE so that I can see what I am missing out on?
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