Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz review

Photoshop CS (Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time in minutes

*Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX (3.6GHz Intel P4 560, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz)

2.12

Bully Computers Tyrant (3.2GHz Intel P4 Extreme, 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

3.06

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5, 4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

3.22

Apple iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

8.52

We use Adobe Photoshop to evaluate a Mac's performance as an integrated whole -- the CPU, the memory, the hard disk, and the graphics card. We run an automated suite of operations that simultaneously stresses a variety of the machine's subsystems and simulates a real-world Web-production work flow. The suite includes launching the application; converting between colour spaces and bit depths; applying a variety of filters; working with layers, selection areas, and alpha channels; and resizing and compressing images. We time how long it takes to run the suite on 15 files that range from 1.8MB to 49.2MB, in 8- and 16-bit colour.

Video encoding (Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time in minutes

*Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX (3.6GHz Intel P4 560, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz)

4.5

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (dual 2.5GHz Power PC G5, 4096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

5.4

Apple iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

8.4

In order to evaluate a Mac's performance on CPU-intensive operations, we encode and compress a 54-second, 1GB video clip using Sorenson Squeeze 4.0, a multithreaded video-encoding application. We create an MPEG-4 data stream with a target data rate of 1Kbps and apply settings such as streaming hints, 2-pass VBR, and global motion compensation to increase the stress on the CPU.

iTunes (Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time in seconds

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (dual 2.5GHz Power PC G5, 4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

17.9

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.0GHz (dual 2.0GHz Power PC G5, 2048MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

21.8

Apple iMac G5 (1.8GHz PowerPC G5, 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz)

37.3

Apple eMac (1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 333MHz)

46.5

We use Apple iTunes as another indicator of a system's performance. This test times how long it takes to convert a 107MB AIFF audio file to MP3.

Quake III (Longer bars indicate better performance)

Frames per second

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz (ATI Radeon 9800)

319.1

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.0GHz (ATI Radeon 9600 Pro)

292.0

Apple iMac G5 (Nvidia GeForce FX 5200)

72.2

Apple eMac G4 1.25GHz (ATI Radeon 9200)

68.8

To measure 3D gaming performance, we use Quake III Arena for OS X. Although Quake III is an older game, it is still widely used as an industry-standard tool.

System configurations:

Apple eMac
Mac OS X 10.3.3; 1.25GHz PowerPC G4; 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; 32MB ATI Radeon 9200; 80GB 7,200rpm Ultra ATA/100

Apple iMac G5
Mac OS X 10.3.5; 1.8GHz PowerPC G5; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 64MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5200; 80GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.0GHz
Mac OS X 10.2.7; Dual 2.0GHz PowerPC G5; 2048MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro; 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Apple Power Mac G5 dual 2.5GHz
Mac OS X 10.3.5; Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5; 4,096MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB ATI Radeon 9800; 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA

Bully Computers Tyrant
Windows XP Professional SP2; 3.2GHz Intel P4 Extreme; Intel 875P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT (AGP); two WDC WD740GD-00FLX0 74GB 10,000rpm Serial ATA; WDC WD2000JD-00HBB0 200GB Serial ATA 7,200rpm; integrated Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller

Velocity Micro ProMagix PCX
Windows XP Professional; 3.6GHz Intel P4 560; Intel 925X chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (PCIe) ; two WDC WD740GD-00FLX0 74GB 10,000rpm Serial ATA; Hitachi HDS724040KLSA80 400GB Serial ATA 7,200rpm; integrated Intel 82801FR SATA RAID controller

Edited by Matthew Elliott
Additional editing by Tom Espiner