Dual 2.5-GHz Power Mac G5

Supersonic speed and good looks to boot

On the surface, the latest revision of the Power Mac G5 looks exactly like previous models. But as soon as you open the case, your eye will be drawn to the big silver-colored box that sits below the hard drives.

You’re not crazy if you think it looks like a radiator—that’s what it is. Apple has introduced liquid cooling to help keep the dual 2.5-GHz processors on its top-of-the-line machine cool. When the processors start to heat up, coolant begins circulating, picks up heat from the processors, and returns to the “radiator” where cooler air drawn in by two of the four internal fans cools the liquid again. The heat picked up by the coolant is blown out the back of the G5. No joke—a friend thought I had a space heater running when he felt the heat rolling up from under my desk.

Sexy, innovative design is great, but it’s raw speed that really makes you love this machine. In Photoshop, Gaussian blurs are applied virtually instantaneously. Images are rotated before you let up on the mouse button. I was able to slow it down when I had it make contact sheets of a folder containing 55 images from my D70. The total size of the folder was 147 MB and it took 2 minutes, 4 seconds to make the 12-image contact sheets. My 1.25-GHz G4 PowerBook took 3:07 to complete the same test. The G5 took just 2:01 to convert 13 iTunes files to ACC (compared to 6:53 for the PowerBook). The one that really made my jaw drop was converting a 161-MB QuickTime movie to MPEG-2. On the PowerBook, the one-pass conversion took 20:01; the G5 smoked it in 5:53! In short, if you feel the need for speed, this machine will deliver.

PRICE: from $2,999
FOR: X
FROM: Apple Computer, Inc.
PHONE: 800-692-7753
WEB: www.apple.com/powermac
RATING: 5.0