Apple Upgraded Pro Hardware--PowerBook G4s, Power Mac G5s and Cinema HD Displays

In its Special Event news conference, Apple announced upgrades to its PowerBook G4s and Power Mac G5s. Apple also lowered the prices on its 30" and 23" Cinema HD Displays to $2,499 ($500 less) and $1,299 ($200 less) respectively. The upgrades are excellent technology refreshments and not CPU speed bumps except for the top-end Power Mac G5.

The PowerBook G4s were reduced to just three models since all will get 8x SuperDrive DVD burners but the 15" and 17" model burners also get double-layer support. The big addition is higher resolution screens on the 15" and 17" models. The 15" PowerBook G4 gets the former resolution of the 17" model, i.e. 1440x960 pixels, and the 17" model moves up to a terrific 1680x1050 pixels. They both also now get ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics with 128 DDR video RAM to drive Apple's 30" Cinema HD Display. Unfortunately, the 12" PowerBook G4 still does not get a PC card slot.

Another major improvement is the battery life of the 15" and 17" models, up some 20% to 5.5 hours according to Apple.

The 12", 15" and 17" PowerBook G4s in standard configuration retail for $1,499, $1,999 and $2,499 respectively. There are additional CTO options.

The Power Mac G5s received the most new technology--dual-core CPUs, DDR2 memory, dual gigabit ethernet ports, PCI Express slots, and new graphics cards including an optional workstation graphics card.

The top of the line Power Mac G5 Quad model gets two dual-core G5 CPUs running at 2.5GHz. While the individual cores run slightly slower than the current dual 2.7GHz top model, the new Power Mac G5 is a quad! According to benchmarks using Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Lightwave 3D and a Bioinformatics benchmark posted by Apple, the new dual dual-core Power Mac G5 Quad is faster by 39 to 69% than the dual 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5. The other two Power Mac G4 Duals get single dual-core G5s running at 2.3 and 2.0 GHz.

The Power Macs finally get top-shelf PCI Express expansion slots: two 4x, one 8x and one 16x. The 16x slot is reserved for the graphics card and it has twice the throughput of the previous AGP 8x slot. The other three slots can accommodate any PCI Express graphics card as well so up to eight displays can be used. The top two Power Macs get Nvidia 6600 graphics with 256MB video RAM while the low end gets one with 128MB video RAM. The Nvidia Quadro FX 4500, a workstation-level graphics card, is available as an option on all three new Power Mac G5s. The Power Mac G5 graphics page mentions the Nvidia 7800 GT as an option but it is not listed as such on the online Apple Store. We hope it will be a standalone option when it becomes available.

The latest 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM is used in the new Power Mac G5s. Better yet, the Power Macs can use the better and much more expensive ECC SDRAM for the first time and they can use up to 16GB of it. The new dual gigabit ethernet allows one to connect to two independent super-fast networks. This is ideal for an Xsan environment.

Here is the Technology Overview PDF on the new Power Mac G5s.

The Quad 2.5GHz is $3,299 and the Duals at 2.3 and 2.0GHz are $2,499 and $1,999. The mid and lower-end models are available now and the top-end model will be available in 3-4 weeks.

We ordered a Quad to replace our dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5. In a few weeks we'll post how well it performs. [Bill Fox]