USED MAC G5 QUAD PRO
When Apple made the switch to Intel, every model until the first Mac Pro had lower Geekbench 2 scores than the Power Mac G5 Quad. Where the 2.7 GHz dual processor model has a Geekbench 2 score of 2259, the 2.3 GHz dual-core model benchmarks just 8% slower, while the G5 Quad “killed it” with a score of 3316. The entry-level machine runs at 2.0 GHz, the midrange at 2.3 GHz, and the top-end has two dual-core CPUs running at 2.5 GHz, making it hands down the most powerful PowerPC Mac ever. IBM improved the G5 with a dual-core chip, and the October 2005 models all use it.
The Final Generation: Dual-Core Processors Once again, every new model had dual processors.
USED MAC G5 QUAD PLUS
In June 2004, the entry-level Power Mac ran at 1.8 GHz, while the top-end model hit 2.5 GHz – a 33% higher clock speed plus a second processor! All models introduced in June 2004 had dual processors.Īpple pushed forward, as did IBM, the manufacturer of the G5 CPU, and in April 2005, Apple announced the third Power Mac G5 generation with speeds ranging from 2.0 GHz to 2.7 GHz, which was the highest clock speed any PowerPC Mac ever achieved, although Apple did so by overclocking a 2.5 GHz CPU to 2.7 GHz. It can be cheaper to buy a used PCI G4 for its power supply than buying the power supply separately. In the first generation, it was a single-processor machine.Īll G5 Power Macs prior to the Late 2005 models use the same power supply, which can get dusty, overheat, and die. In each generation except for the last one, Apple included a low-end Power Mac G5 with old-fashioned PCI expansion slots and a 4 GB memory ceiling – still twice as high as the Power Mac G4. And where the last Power Mac G4 supports up to 2 GB of memory, the PCI-X G5 models can handle a whopping 8 GB.Ĭuriously, all Power Mac G5 models use Ultra ATA/100 for their optical drives rather than SATA.įor expansion, the Power Mac G5 uses USB 2.0 instead of the lazily slow USB 1.1 found in all G4 Power Macs, and it has a USB port and a FireWire 400 port up front for easy access, as well as a headphone jack. Where the G4 uses regular 33 MHz 64-bit PCI expansion slots, the 1.8 and 2.0 GHz G5 models embrace PCI-X and have 100 and 133 MHz 64-bit slots. The 1.5 GB/s SATA drive bus is 50% faster than Ultra ATA/100 in the G4. And the G5 is a 64-bit CPU, the first to find its way into a personal computer. The G5 has a Level 1 cache with 64 KB for instructions and 32 KB for data as well as a 512 KB Level 2 cache on the CPU, with no need for Level 3 since the memory bus is so fast. The G4 has a 64 KB Level 1 cache and a 256 KB Level 2 as part of the CPU plus a 2 MB Level 3 cache. The top-end G5 clock speed is 40% faster. The dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5, Apple’s new top-end model, eclipses that with a score of 1692 – 38% higher than the G4!Ī number of factors contribute to this improvement. That top-end Power Mac G4 achieves a Geekbench 2 score of 1224. This compares favorably with the fastest Power Mac G4 ever, the dual 1.42 GHz FireWire 800 model that had been introduced that January. The first Power Mac G5s arrived in June 2003 with speed ranging from 1.6 to 2.0 GHz. It came five months before that, but that didn’t keep Apple from introducing one last generation of G5 Macs in late 2005. After all, we pretty much assumed the Intel transition wouldn’t take place until June 2006. Now it was poised to follow the road more traveled.Īpple didn’t quit introducing new PowerPC models right away. Apple had long touted the advantages of its PowerPC RISC CPUs against Intel’s x86 architecture.
In June 2005, Apple shook the Macintosh world by announcing that it would switch from PowerPC chips to Intel x86 CPUs “within a year”. The ultimate Power Mac was the G5 Quad, which had two 2.5 GHz dual-core CPUs and arrived in October 2005.
The first Power Macs arrived on Ma– the Power Mac 6100, 7100, and 8100 running the PowerPC 601 CPU at speeds of 60, 66, and 80 MHz respectively. The PowerPC platform had a long life at Apple.