Macworld Review: Power Mac G4/800, G4/933, and Dual-1GHz

Although Mac users understand the megahertz myth–that a PowerPC G4 chip equipped with Velocity Engine can run rings around a PC powered by a Pentium processor at the same clock speed–we always want our Macs to be faster. And we definitely want Macs that break the gigahertz barrier–psychologically as well as for the increased performance they deliver. With Apple’s latest tweaks to its desktop lineup, Mac users can finally get there–twice over, no less–and at a breakthrough price. The surprise is that Apple’s other new Power Macs are just as impressive, in their own ways.

Meat and Potatoes

The composition of the new Power Mac G4 desktop line is fairly simple, with few changes–beyond processor-speed increases and new graphics cards–from last summer’s lineup:

An 800MHz model ($1,599) with 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, a 24x10x40x CD-RW drive, and an ATI Radeon 7500 graphics card;

A 933MHz model ($2,299) with 256MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, a SuperDrive, an 8x4x24x CD-RW drive that can also burn DVD-R discs at 2x, and an Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics card; and

A dual-processor model ($2,999) with two 1GHz chips, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a SuperDrive, and an Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics card.

This review is continued at Macworld.com.