It's no slouch, but to buy one like the model we're testing, you'll need $4,198. The basic dual 2-GHz Power Mac goes for $2,999 and comes with just 512MB of memory, an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card, no wireless card, no Bluetooth and that same 160GB hard drive.
Of course, speed costs - and in these days of tight IT budgets, that matters. To paraphrase Oldsmobile, this is not your father's Power Mac. To say that the latest and greatest G5 screams does a disservice to the word.
(If you want more technical details about the architecture, Apple has them online in PDF format.) In addition to those two superfast G5 processors and the redesigned system architecture underlying the new machine, our G5 came loaded with 2GB of DDR400 SDRAM, the top-of-the-line ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card, an 802.11g AirPort wireless card, built-in Bluetooth wireless hardware and a 160GB hard drive. But that loaner is about as tricked out as a desktop computer from Apple can get. Once in place, that supercomputer is expected to rank among the top 10 fastest supercomputers deployed at academic institutions and among the fastest in the world in terms of speed and processing power.Īlas, when Apple Computer offered Computerworld a chance to review the dual 2-GHz G5, it sent us just one. (It was supposed to have been on store shelves last month.) Though various explanations for the delays abound, one thing is certain: The top-of-the-line Power Mac is fast enough that Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University promptly spent $5.2 million on 1,100 of them for a supercomputer it hopes to have up and running by next week (see story). Unveiled in June by Apple Computer Inc., the new dual 2-GHz Power Mac G5 is only now hitting the market.