Apple Power Macintosh G5


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General Technical Information

HOSTNAME MAX
SYSTEM CPU 2 x IBM PowerPC 970FX G5 @2.5 GHz
CACHE (2nd, 1st D/I)
 2 x 512 KB, 32 KB / 64 KB
RAM  8 GB, using 8 x standard DDR400 DIMMs (Max. 8 GB)
DATA BUS WIDTH
 		64 bit
IDE BUS 1 x ATA-100 for DVD drive
2 x Serial ATA for disks
EXPANSION PORTS 1 x AGP
4 x PCI-X 2.0
2 x FW400
1 x FW800
GRAPHICS Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB video RAM, Mac Edition AGP card
HARD DISK DRIVES 500 GB Serial ATA disk
160 GB Serial ATA disk (original system disk)
DVD-ROM DRIVE 8x DVD writer
NETWORK 100 Mbps ethernet onboard
1 Gbps ethernet, Realtek 8169 PCI card
AUDIO
 Onboard soundcard, built in speaker
OS Mac OS X 10.5.8 "Leopard"
Mac OS X 10.4.11 "Tiger"
YEAR 2004
SPEED (not measured) VAX MIPS
POWER CONSUMPTION (MAX. / MEASURED)
 600 / 147 - 293 W (depending on CPU load)
COMMENTS High-end, high quality Mac computer. June 2004 model. The quality of the aluminum case with all details inside is truly impressive.
PRICE '04 (base system, 512MB RAM, 160 GB disk)
 $2,999

History and other comments

In the end of 2008 I decided to purchase this Dual G5 computer second hand, here in Finland (this is where I live). I've always thought that these high-end Macs would make great collectors items even long after Apple drops support for PowerPC Macs in their OS / software releases. The minimum requirements I had for the purchase was that it needs to be in good condition, and have at least 2 processors. There had been quite many single processor G5's for sale second hand, and also iMac G5s, however, I waited for a suitable opportunity to get a proper used Dual G5 system, for a reasonable price. The older single processor systems have one drawback, maximum RAM is limited to 4 GB. This one can use 8 GB and newer ones can take double or four times that amount.

I've compared the performance of this system to the performance of my MacBook Pro, and it turns out that on some benchmarks, and real life software, these two systems perform equally well on CPU intensive tasks. The MacBook Pro is faster on graphics since it has a more advanced graphics chip, but when it comes to CPU performance, you could say that the Power Mac Dual G5 was roughly 3 years ahead of its time, comparing to the entry-level processing power of June 2007 (= MacBook Pro performance, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz).

Inside the box:

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Last updated:  31-5-2009