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The Power Mac G5s draw their power from IBM PowerPC 970 chips running at up to 2GHz with a high speed 1GHz bus and optimised Altivec velocity engine. With a maximum 8GB of RAM, the G5 is, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, 'the world's fastest personal computer.

Add to that new PCI-X expansion slots, FireWire 800, USB 2.0, Serial ATA drives and AGP 8X Pro graphics and you have a mchine that is sure to make every Mac user drool.

The new Power Mac line-up comprises three models. Entry-level is a single processor 1.6GHz with an 800Mhz frontside bus, 512K of level 2 cache, 256MB of DDR333 128-bit SDRAM (max. 4GB), an 80GB hard drive, SuperDrive (CD and DVD read-writer), three standard PCI slots and nVidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics with 64MB of DDR video RAM for £1,549. The mid-range model is a single processor 1.8GHz with a 900MHz frontside bus, 512K of L2 cache, 512MB of DDR400 128-bit SDRAM (max. 8GB), a 160GB hard drive, SuperDrive, three PCI-X slots and nVidia GeForce FX 5200 graphics with 64MB of

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DDR video RAM for £1,849. And top of the range is a dual processor 2GHz machine with a 1GHz frontside bus, 512K of L2 cache per processor, 512MB of DDR400 128-bit RAM (max. 8GB), a 160GB hard drive, SuperDrive, three PCI-X slots and ATI Radeon 9600 Pro graphics with 64MB of DDR video RAM for £2,299. All three machines have one FireWire 800 and two FireWire 400 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, built-in Gigabit Ethernet and optical digital audio and analog audio in and out.

Where the G5 really delivers however is in that 64-bit processor, which can handle a vastly greater mount of data and instruction at any one time than its 32-bit predecessors. Add Mac OS X 10.3 to that - an operating system optimised for dual 64-bit processors - and, if Apple has got it right, the new Power Macs should reassert the company's position as the provider desktop performance, particularly where speed really matters - audio, video and graphics.

The machines also have a completely redesigned and entirely aluminium casing, faced front and back with a grille to allow air to circulate in its four separate thermal zones driven by nine fans. Despite which these fan-tastic G5s are twice as quiet as previous Power Mac G4 models.

'The 64-bit revolution has begun and the personal computer will never be the same again,' said Jobs. 'The new Power Mac G5 combines the world?s first 64-bit desktop processor, the industry's first 1GHz front-side bus, and up to 8GB of memory to beat the fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based systems in industry-standard benchmarks and real-world professional applications.'