iMac preferences

Hello, I'm relatively new in SL and noticed that there has been some discussion about the best settings for Macs. I have a 2.0 GHZ G5 iMac with 2gb RAM and was wondering if anyone knows the best settings to put in the preferences pane for optimum performance.
Thankyou in advance

Do you know what graphics card you have?

There are no 'perfect' settings for any one user on any one machine. It depends what you want really.

First thing's first, to get your frame-rate (render speed), hit Ctrl-Shift-1 (while logged-in), it brings up a box with lots of statistics in it, but client fps is at the top, hit those keys again to get rid of it.

Now, with those stats open, just go into preferences and fiddle with the graphics settings! You're best to select the "Custom" checkbox and fiddle with settings to get best results. Personally I have detail for things up quite high, with basic/atmospheric shaders turned on, but draw-distance right down, since I rarely see the benefit of a long draw-distance.

However, what you want in terms of visuals versus speed may differ. Let us know and we can make suggestions more to your requirements

Thanks for the advice. I basically did what you said and spent some time just 'fiddling' as I went and came up with a workable set of preferences that seems to work for me.

I have a dualG5 with 2.5Gig of ram.. I still have to turn my setting down a bit.. and I can't maximize my window since I have a 32" HD display and it slows down too much.

I'm getting another mac mini and hoping to get a decent setup for running SL.. is there a certain video card I should have for that?

A Mac Mini isn't likely to run SL very well, if you're planning to upgrade then you're better saving up for an iMac or Mac Pro.

I'm currently using an HDTV though at a resolution of 1280 x 720, apparently the Apple drivers for the NVidia GeForce 8800GT don't support the native resolution of 1366 x 768 =(

However, I was running my old Dual 2.5ghz G5 on the same HDTV prior to getting to my Mac Pro. On the Windlight viewers I could get pretty good graphics performance by setting the slider to medium, then going in the custom options to drop draw-distance down to 64m, and enable basic/atmospheric shaders.