Dual G5 Power Macs Reach 2.5GHz
In anticipation of this month's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple has unleashed a new line of Power Mac G5 desktops PCs. Each model is equipped with dual 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors with speeds up to 2.5GHz, an independent 1.25GHz front-side bus and a memory capacity of 8GB.
The top tier Power Macs are chilled out by an "advanced" liquid cooling system.
According to Apple, the Power Mac G5 line offers expansion with dual 1.5Gbps serial ATA interfaces, PCI-X interface technology and AGP 8X Pro graphics from either NVDIA or ATI.
The new Macs can only be described as "wired." Apple's architects threw in a slew of options including: Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire 800 and FireWire 400 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, optical digital audio input and output, built-in support for 54Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless networking, and an optional Bluetooth module.
Each Power Mac system will ship with Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.3, called Panther.
"Our professional customers, across many creative and scientific markets, have been impressed with the extraordinary performance of the dual processor Power Mac G5 running Apple's Unix-based Mac OS X," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "This new Power Mac G5 line has dual processors in every model to deliver even higher performance for our pro customers who need it."
The company's internal benchmarks place the performance of its Power Macs ahead of rival Intel hardware.
A statement on Apple's Web site claims, "When compared head-to-head against PCs in a large series of Photoshop tests, the dual 2.5GHz, dual 2GHz, and dual 1.8GHz Power Mac G5 systems ran the 45 filters 98%, 82%, and 66% faster, respectively, than the 3.4GHz Pentium 4-based system, and 75%, 63%, and 48% faster than the dual 3.2GHz Xeon-based system."
Apple began shipping the G5 in August 2003, when it made a handful of systems with single processor configurations available. Apple delivered dual 2.0GHz Power Mac G5s shortly thereafter.
The refreshed Power Mac G5s will hit shelves at the Apple Store and at resellers in July, with prices starting at $1,999 USD.