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jackieonasses

macrumors 6502a
Mar 3, 2004
929
0
the great OKLAHOMA....
rdhatfield3 said:
Just wondering what the least powerful mac is that apple will say supports tiger (assuming ram is aplenty).
Do you mean "supported" as in Core Image and all of the "goodies"? Or just run? Every g4 will run Tiger, even my 450mhz cube. I bet that will be the last major upgrade it will see. I only really see the g3 ibook lappy's to be the lowest of the low.


kyle
 

tersono

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2005
1,999
1
UK
Tiger will run happily on a Blue and White G3 or later - I was running an early build on a G3-400 with 512mb and it worked pretty well.

Basically the system requirements are G3 or better, built-in USB and Firewire (unlike Panther, which required b/i USB only).
 

Chaszmyr

macrumors 601
Aug 9, 2002
4,267
86
One thing to note, right now Tiger requires a DVD-ROM, but it is unclear whether or not that will be the case with the retail version.
 

rdhatfield3

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 19, 2004
47
0
Searcy, AR
tersono said:
b/i USB only).


Not sure what b/i means? I'm Wondering if it will run (and when i say run i mean, won't bog the machine down, b/c as it is it runs pretty nice for the age) on my 400 Mhz iMac G3 w/320 MB ram and 2x AGP with 8mb vram.
 

tersono

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2005
1,999
1
UK
rdhatfield3 said:
Not sure what b/i means? I'm Wondering if it will run (and when i say run i mean, won't bog the machine down, b/c as it is it runs pretty nice for the age) on my 400 Mhz iMac G3 w/320 MB ram and 2x AGP with 8mb vram.

b/i = built-in (as opposed to add-on cards etc).

If I recall correctly, the 400mhz iMac had firewire, so you should be fine.

I ran some of the earlier Tiger builds on a Blue & White G3-400 with the stock video card and 512mb ram and it ran perfectly happily. Tiger should give similar performance to Panther on your machine - maybe even marginally better - although I'd recommend more RAM if your iMac will handle it. 512mb seems to be the 'comfort zone'.
 

wordmunger

macrumors 603
Sep 3, 2003
5,124
3
North Carolina
tersono said:
b/i = built-in (as opposed to add-on cards etc).

If I recall correctly, the 400mhz iMac had firewire, so you should be fine.

I ran some of the earlier Tiger builds on a Blue & White G3-400 with the stock video card and 512mb ram and it ran perfectly happily. Tiger should give similar performance to Panther on your machine - maybe even marginally better - although I'd recommend more RAM if your iMac will handle it. 512mb seems to be the 'comfort zone'.

Do you know the memory minimum? I've got a cube running as a music server -- it doesn't need to be "snappy," so I'd rather not bother upgrading the RAM if it's not essential.
 

tersono

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2005
1,999
1
UK
wordmunger said:
Do you know the memory minimum? I've got a cube running as a music server -- it doesn't need to be "snappy," so I'd rather not bother upgrading the RAM if it's not essential.

The specs say 128mb. :p

If Panther's okay on there, you'll be fine.
 

BWhaler

macrumors 68040
Jan 8, 2003
3,788
6,244
Historically, OSX has required a G3 that had USB or later. I guess Tiger will be in that ballpark since Apple needs to support its older established base since it is dramatically bigger than those who have purchased machines in the past few machines. (A sad side effective of the low "market share" numbers.)

With that said, parts of Tiger will not be available to folks with older machines. I guess that is the compromise Apple has to make, and a gentle way of inspiring folks to upgrade.
 

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
My guess as to a reasonable cutoff for Macs capable of running Tiger:

10 GB hard disk
Built-in DVD-ROM (Tiger will only be distributed on DVD, I'd guess, since it's so large)

The supported systems would thus be:
2001 iBook G3 or later with built-in DVD-ROM drive (yes, that's right - iBooks will be the only G3-class systems supported)
Any G4 with built-in DVD-ROM drive
Any G5
 

tersono

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2005
1,999
1
UK
wrldwzrd89 said:
My guess as to a reasonable cutoff for Macs capable of running Tiger:

10 GB hard disk
Built-in DVD-ROM (Tiger will only be distributed on DVD, I'd guess, since it's so large)

The supported systems would thus be:
2001 iBook G3 or later with built-in DVD-ROM drive (yes, that's right - iBooks will be the only G3-class systems supported)
Any G4 with built-in DVD-ROM drive
Any G5

Your guess is rather a long way off.
 

wrldwzrd89

macrumors G5
Jun 6, 2003
12,110
77
Solon, OH
tersono said:
Your guess is rather a long way off.
Do you say this because someone has run a pre-release version of Tiger on an earlier system than the ones I included? If that's true, then take my list of systems as my recommended minimum (not Apple's recommendation nor the absolute minimum Apple supports).
 

Mitthrawnuruodo

Moderator emeritus
Mar 10, 2004
14,453
1,115
Bergen, Norway
wrldwzrd89 said:
The supported systems would thus be:
2001 iBook G3 or later with built-in DVD-ROM drive (yes, that's right - iBooks will be the only G3-class systems supported)
So you say it will run on a iBook G3, but not on a PowerBook G3 Firewire (i.e. Pismo) with a G3@400MHz with DVD-ROM and 2 Firewire and 2 USB ports built in...?

Why...?
 

musicpyrite

macrumors 68000
Jan 6, 2004
1,639
0
Cape Cod
wrldwzrd89 said:
My guess as to a reasonable cutoff for Macs capable of running Tiger:

10 GB hard disk
Built-in DVD-ROM (Tiger will only be distributed on DVD, I'd guess, since it's so large)

The supported systems would thus be:
2001 iBook G3 or later with built-in DVD-ROM drive (yes, that's right - iBooks will be the only G3-class systems supported)
Any G4 with built-in DVD-ROM drive
Any G5
Just FYI but I've gotten a Beta version of Tiger to run on a 400 MHz G3 iMac DV with Firewire and a DVD-ROM, and a separate 400 MHz G3 iMac with Firewire with only a CD-ROM if I recall correctly. (though Tiger was booting off an external FW 400 drive both times)
 

aswitcher

macrumors 603
Oct 8, 2003
5,338
14
Canberra OZ
musicpyrite said:
Just FYI but I've gotten a Beta version of Tiger to run on a 400 MHz G3 iMac DV with Firewire and a DVD-ROM, and a separate 400 MHz G3 iMac with Firewire with only a CD-ROM if I recall correctly. (though Tiger was booting off an external FW 400 drive both times)


Thats pretty low speced. How much ram does it actually function usefully with as a minimuim?
 

FredAkbar

macrumors 6502a
Jan 18, 2003
660
0
San Francisco, CA
We always hear about OS X getting faster with each release, but is there a certain level of computer (say 400 MHz G3 or lower) where it would actually get slower? My mom's computer is a 400 MHz iMac DV, currently running Panther (kind of slow but I guess it's okay). Would Tiger be more likely to run faster or slower on it? It currently has only 256 MB of RAM but I'm looking to increase it to 512.
 

musicpyrite

macrumors 68000
Jan 6, 2004
1,639
0
Cape Cod
aswitcher said:
Thats pretty low speced. How much ram does it actually function usefully with as a minimuim?

It's hard for me to answer a question like "how 'useful' is it?"

Well, define useful. All those two computers are used for are interweb browsing, email, TurboTax, Word and Excel. Don't even think about Garageband, iPhoto, iDVD, Azureus/Limewire/AnythingJava, epically with the slow internal disk speed of the G3 iMacs. Typing in Word or in iChat was fine, but the computer started to lag when when I got 3 or more applications open like Netscape, Word and Terminal/iChat. The DVD-ROM iMac had 192 MB RAM and the CD-ROM iMac had 256, and there was a small, but noticeable between the 256 MB iMac and the 192.

And this is coming from someone who has 256 MB RAM installed on their main machine.
 
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