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Power Mac G5/Dual 2GHz

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At a Glance

  • Apple Power Mac G5/Dual 2GHz

Compared with their predecessors, the Power Mac G5 Dual models offer an array of new workstation-class capabilities, including impressive improvements in graphics, advanced networking, enormous memory capacity, and state-of-the-art expansion slots. Between the two models, the 2GHz machine, even with video card and hard drive upgrades, is a slightly better bargain.

At a Glance

  • Apple adds a dual-core processor -- two processing units on a single chip -- to its Power Mac line. The new desktops also add PCI Express, a high-performance interface that's particularly appealing to video pros. (To that end, the Power Mac line offers several video card build-to-order options above the Nvidia GeForce 6600 LE that comes standard on this model.) Also new: a double-layer SuperDrive, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and faster DDR2 RAM.

    Pros

    • Solid performance
    • PCI Express slots
    • Huge memory capacity

    Cons

    • No backward compatibility with PCI or PCI-X cards
    • No improvement in performance compared with dual-processor model
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