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As for 3D performance, we recommend Power Mac G5 Quad only with the Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 card if you need professional-grade 3D processing power or if you need to operate two 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays simultaneously. We don't normally benchmark 3D workstations, and our tests are geared toward 3D gaming performance, which is a different animal than 3D graphics development. We're showing our Doom 3 results to demonstrate why you wouldn't want a Power Mac G5 Quad for gaming, since its 49 frames-per-second score on our 1,024x768 resolution test is only a mediocre result. If you require a high-powered 3D development system, chances are you know your specific needs and can spec out a system accordingly. Otherwise, you can get away with one of the more modest, single-slot Nvidia cards Apple offers on its Web site (and you won't have to stomach the Quadro card's $1,650 price tag).
Unfortunately for Apple, the 800-pound Blue Man in the room looms large if you're considering a Mac desktop. The iMac Core Duo systems debuted at Macworld 2006 in the beginning of January, not even a week after Intel announced its new notebook platform. This suggests to us that Apple has the capability to piggyback product releases on Intel's chip announcements. We know that Intel is releasing a new dual-core desktop CPU architecture in the third quarter of 2006, and we also heard Apple CEO Steve Jobs announce that Apple's entire desktop line would make the move to Intel CPUs before the end of the year. It might be fair to speculate, then, that we could see a new Power Mac with an Intel chip it in by July 2006. We recommend considering that possibility strongly before you purchase a $6,000 Power Mac G5 Quad.
If you do make the purchase, at least you'll be protected, for a little while anyway. Apple offers a standard one-year limited warranty that covers defects for a year and offers 90 days of free telephone support. We'd like to see a more robust plan for such an expensive product. The $249, three-year extension to the AppleCare Protection Plan is highly recommended, especially if you use the Mac to make a living. Pros and institutions also have the option of a $2,799 AppleCare Help Desk Support plan, which includes unlimited support, a library of tools, and technician training. In either plan, you get prepaid shipping and the option to take hardware to any Apple Store for diagnosis and shipping. There's also an extensive online knowledge base of articles and discussion boards. Using the phone support is relatively painless, especially compared to some companies'. The techs were knowledgeable, though their solution to poor AirPort reception involved buying an extra AirPort Base Station.
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Adobe Photoshop CS test (in seconds) |
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Apple iTunes 4.7.1.30 MP3 encoding test (in seconds) |
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Sorenson Squeeze 4.0 video encoding test (in seconds) |
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1,024x768, High Quality, with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering |
System configurations:
Alienware Aurora 7500
2.4GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; Nvidia Nforce 4 SLI chipset; 256MB 2 Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX PCIe; (2) Hitachi HDS728080PLA380, 80GB, 7,200rpm, Serial ATA; integrated Nvidia Nforce RAID class controller (RAID 0); Windows XP Professional SP2
Apple iMac G5 2.10GHz
PowerPC G5 2.10GHz; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X600XT PCIe; 250GB Serial ATA hard drive; Macintosh OS 10.4
Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.7GHz
Dual PowerPC G5 2.7GHz; 4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP; 250GB Maxtor Serial ATA hard drive; Macintosh OS 10.4
Apple Power Mac G5 Quad 2.5GHz
Two dual-core PowerPC G5 2.5GHz; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 512MB Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 PCIe; (2) 500GB Hitachi Serial ATA 7,200rpm hard drive; Macintosh OS 10.4.3
Velocity Micro ProMagix Dual Core
3.2GHz (overclocked to 4GHz) Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; Intel 955X chipset; 256MB ATI Radeon X850XT PCIe; (2) WDC WD740GD-00FLX0, 74GB, Serial ATA, 10,000rpm; (1) Hitachi HDS724040KLSA80, 400GB, 7,200rpm Serial ATA; integrated Intel 82801GR/GH Serial ATA RAID Controller (RAID 0); Windows XP Professional SP2
