I feel the need, the Need for Speed

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Last seen: 14 years 7 months ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 14:45
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I feel the need, the Need for Speed

I have a flower power imac 600mhz g3 wit 640mb ram, and well i want to tweak this thing to no end to get more speed from it.

The main thing is i want to watch divx videos on this (my gamecube running at 400mhz could do it). Under macosx, the problem is that vlc crashes, mplayer osx crashes, and quicktime is too slow. I am running Tiger 10.4.11 but alot of the video players want altivec for acceleration which this mac dont have. I could just run linux and be done with it but i want to give osx a chance.

Any good speed tweaks for OSX for older machines and any tips on compiling mplayer for console.

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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Joined: Jan 20 2005 - 16:03
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640mb of RAM? You've got a 51

640mb of RAM? You've got a 512mb and a 128mb stick in there? Maybe I'm behind in the times, this is the first time I've heard of a 512mb stick working in a CRT iMac. Which brand and configuration of 512mb SDRAM is it?

Oh, I just went and checked the LowEndMac profiles and see that they all could do 512mb sticks. Was this always the case? I wonder where I got the idea that they were limited to 256mb sticks.

How about getting that RAM in there to be two matching 512 sticks. That might help a little.

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Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 14:45
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Price

when i got that kingston 512mb stick i paid about 20 dollars on geeks.com well last time i looked it was 60$ for the same stick (prices fluctuate alot). Plus im cheap.

Is there any tweaks to OSX to push the system a little faster i know there got to be some things, anything i can remove. i would like to be able to compile Mplayer for this MAC and use it under X. I just dont have experience compiling in OSX.

P.S. well i found a 512mb stick from samsung for 17.99@geeks.com so i might get it if it still is available next week.

P.P.S still doesnt mean i dont want to tweak, no matter what i want to tweak it.

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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Joined: Jan 20 2005 - 16:03
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I'd get a guarantee from them

I'd get a guarantee from them that the RAM will work in your iMac. My experience with iMac DV's is they're very particular about RAM. What I'd probably do is buy two identical sticks and then sell the one you already have on eBay or somewhere. Identical is always the best. I'm not saying that more RAM is going to make that much of a difference on this issue, though. Wait for others to chime in first. I really don't know. I just recently tried to play a couple of Divx movies on a 500mhz iMac DV and gave up when it wouldn't happen. I figured that divx is just too far beyond the reach of a G3 processor.

Well I'll be darned. I went and pulled a Simpletech 512mb stick out of one of my PC's and stuck it in that same iMac DV and the bugger booted up fast and fine. This was a stick of 512mb I had tried in a Digital Audio and two Quicksilvers with no success. Memory compatibility is such a mystery.

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crashes - bad ram?

My daughter is still using her old upgraded-to-600Mhz iMac DV and VLC plays most anything she throws at it, divx and mp4 mostly. No Chance of playing H.264 but we've got none of that around anyhow.

I'd try some different RAM in there, flaky RAM may seem to work OK but will ...uh... flake out when stressed.

dan k

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Joined: Jan 19 2005 - 23:30
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Re: 640mb of RAM? You've got a 51

640mb of RAM? You've got a 512mb and a 128mb stick in there? Maybe I'm behind in the times, this is the first time I've heard of a 512mb stick working in a CRT iMac. Which brand and configuration of 512mb SDRAM is it?

Oh, I just went and checked the LowEndMac profiles and see that they all could do 512mb sticks. Was this always the case? I wonder where I got the idea that they were limited to 256mb sticks.

How about getting that RAM in there to be two matching 512 sticks. That might help a little.

ive seen a g3 imac running 1gb of ram before. only once in my life though.

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Joined: Oct 13 2005 - 08:23
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1GB RAM

All the slot-loading iMacs will take up to 1GB RAM, using two sticks of 512MB each.

The sticks must be low-density, with chips on both sides of the stick. If you use high-density sticks the machine will either not boot up ("Bad RAM" tone), boot but only see half the value of the sticks, or boot but not see the high-density stick.

With 512MB PC133 RAM being as expensive as it currently is, however, your investment in RAM will dwarf the value of the iMac.

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