Next-Generation PCs

Power Mac G5 is Fast, Yet Easy to Support

Any tour of the latest high-end computers wouldn't be complete without a look at the newest topflight offering from Apple, the Power Mac G5. Like most Apple products, the G5 looks great: The perforated metallic surfaces of the Power Mac's case project an industrial elegance that gently reminds you this computer is a workstation, not just another consumer offering. (This may be one of the last high-end Macs with a PowerPC processor that we review in the PC World Test Center; starting in 2006 Apple will switch over to Intel processors.)

Open up the system, and the Power Mac continues to impress: A clear plastic screen covers the innards and directs airflow around the chassis. When you open the cover, a reserve fan kicks in, maintaining thermal control.

Inside, you'll find two water-cooled 2.7-GHz PowerPC G5 processors and a hefty 4GB of RAM (expandable to 8GB). Our test unit came with an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card and a single 250GB Maxtor 7200 hard drive; but the case has room for another drive, which you can link to the first via software-based RAID 0 or RAID 1. Apple also includes the latest Pioneer DVD ± RW drive, which reads and writes double-layer DVDs--discs with a capacity of up to 8.5GB.

How does the Power Mac's video performance rate against that of a first-rate PC? That's a bit like comparing oranges and, well, apples. Differences in software implementations across the two platforms make an exact comparison impossible, but to get a general idea we performed a number of timed tasks using two cross-platform programs, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and video editor Avid Xpress Pro 4.6. We also timed the conversion of AVI files to the QuickTime and TIFF formats using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on the PC and Apple Final Cut Pro 5 on the Power Mac.

The upshot: Although the Power Mac G5 was quicker on a few tests, it generally ran slower than our comparison PC, Xi Computer's MTower 64 AGE-SLI. In tests applying four Photoshop CS2 filters, the Power Mac G5 was marginally faster on one test and 19 percent to 37 percent slower on three others. Similarly, on tests using Avid Xpress Pro, the Power Mac imported and exported large files 41 percent faster on one test, but 58 percent slower on another.

Of course, a by-the-numbers performance comparison with a PC isn't what draws people to the Mac platform.

"They're fast, but also easy to maintain," says Carlos Del Castillo, IT Manager for Cell Signaling Technology, a biotechnology development company in Beverly, Massachusetts, that switched completely to Apple systems two years ago.

"My graphics people all prefer to use Photoshop on the Mac platform," Del Castillo says. Why? "Because on a Mac everything just works." Plus, there's another advantage: "We need only one support tech for 150 machines."