At a Glance
Expert's Rating
Pros
- FireWire 800
- Huge memory and hard-drive capacity
- Appreciably faster than any other Mac
- 8x SuperDrive
- Gigabit Ethernet
- PCI-X
Cons
- Relatively pricey
- Extremely large size
Our Verdict
Featuring a liquid cooling system, the dual-2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 is the top of the line of the second round of Power Mac G5 models, which were introduced in June 2004.
For the graphics and media pros the Power Mac G5 line is designed for, we think the clear speed advantage of the dual-2.5GHz model makes it well worth its $2,999 price tag. But if your budget is tight, you can live with a little less than maximum performance, and you don’t foresee any need for PCI-X or more than 4GB of memory, then our recommendation is the $1,999 base model. It’s only a little slower than Apple’s midrange offering, and even after you add some RAM and maybe a larger hard drive, you’ll still save several hundred dollars.