?? Leopard on a G5 Quad ??

[eofeapr]

Hello to all.

I'm new to MAC, was given an older IMAC,,, I like it, it's different, maybe a lil slow at times,,, but I do like the simplicity...

That said I am curious to know if OSX installs itself in either 32 bit or 64 bit depending on your hardware. For instance, the new MAC PRO is a hefty machine I assume to be 64 bit capable,,, but what about the G5 ??

I'm curious because I cannot afford the MAC PRO and felt I might graduate from th IMAC to a pre-owned G5 , preferably a quad core system for use with Final Cut Pro and am hoping it will be 64 bit...

thnx in advance
Joe

 

[TheStu]

The G5 was, if I recall correctly, a 64bit processor, so Leopard should utilize it's 64bit codebase. It is a bit of a hybrid OS, since it can be run on both 32bit and 64bit systems without any end-user configuration, but it knows what to install as 64 bit and what not to.

And although even some of the lowliest Core Duos would beat most of the Quad-G5s in benchmarks, the 4 cores do help when you are multi-tasking. Especially if you load up on the RAM.

 

[eofeapr]

Well thank you there Diamond Member

I appreciate the advice.

joe

 

[umrigar]

Quad Core specs here:
http://everymac.com/systems/ap...ermac_g5_quad_2.5.html

This system has two PowerPC 970MP "G5" processors each with two independent 2.5 GHz processor "cores" (four "cores" total). It also includes dual optimized AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processing units (one per core), four double-precision FPUs (two per core), and on chip level 2 cache on each core.

Like all PowerPC "G5" processors, the PowerPC 970MP "G5" has 64-bit data paths and registers with native support for 32-bit application code. Apple also reports that each core of the 970MP has a "parallel data structure supporting up to 215 simultaneous in-flight instructions, [and] simultaneous issue of up to 10 out-of-order operations." Each core likewise has a "dual-pipeline Velocity Engine for 128-bit single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) processing [and] advanced three-stage branch-prediction logic."

How fast are the "Dual" and "Quad" Power Mac G5 models compared to earlier ones?

According to Apple, the top of the line Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5) is 88% faster than the previous top of the line model, the Power Macintosh G5/2.7 DP (PCI-X). Using the Linpack Benchmark, the "Quad" model produced 21.0 Gigaflops of computational power, compared to 11.1 Gigaflops for the previous model.