Should I upgrade to Leopard from Tiger???

January 2009

When considering Apple's minimum system requirements for Leopard, there is more than just the processor speed. You might think that performance shouldn't be that much different on an 867 MHz PowerBook to those from an 800 MHz PowerBook, but it is more than just processor power.

RAM has a lot of impact - the minimum requirement is 512 MB, and my 867 MHz PowerBook G4 has 768 MB - but there is even more to consider when it comes to Leopard. It is a very graphics heavy operating system, requiring a video card that supports Core Image and Quartz Extreme. Older Macs - even slightly older Macs than the minimum requirements - have older graphics capabilities, and this has a major effect on the stability and usability of Leopard.

I've run OS X 10.5 on a 400 MHz PowerBook G4 and a "Sawtooth" Power Mac G4, and while it worked okay - it certainly was useable for light tasks - there were a lot of graphical glitches, and CoverFlow was incredibly slow and occasionally hung the Finder. (go to article to read more)
Thanks S.Royal