Product Reviews

It has been a long time coming, but finally we have a Mac with a processor - or, in this case, two processors - running at 1GHz. And for all its huffing and puffing about the 'Megahertz Myth' and real-world performance, you can almost hear the collective sigh of relief coming from Apple HQ.

The breaching of the 1GHz barrier is the most significant feature of the new crop of Power Macs, but it's not the only newsworthy addition. The new line-up bumps up processor speeds across the range to 800MHz, 933MHz and 1GHz DP respectively. All models have 256K of on-chip Level 2 cache, while the two high-end machines have Level 3 cache with 2Mb of double data rate (DDR) RAM on each processor, running at a data rate of 500MHz. Apple claims this allows access to data and application code at 4Gbits/sec.

What a card

The two models that sit at the top end of the range also include the Nvidia GeForce 4MX graphics card, complete with 64Mb of DDR RAM. This is quite a scoop for Apple, as Nvidia hadn't actually announced the GeForce 4 as we went to press.

Apple was criticised for only including the GeForce 2MX as standard in the last Power Mac range because most high-end PCs at that time featured the GeForce 3 or a card of a similar standard. Now Apple has stolen a march on PC manufacturers by being the first to include the GeForce 4. However, it's likely the MX will be the less powerful of two versions of the GeForce 4, and that PCs will be manufactured with the more powerful GeForce 4Ti. This means the Mac will once again slip behind PCs in terms of graphics performance, particularly as there are early indications that the GeForce 4MX is similar in performance to the GeForce 2.

The bottom-end Power Mac is the only desktop Mac to feature an ATI graphics card - in this case, the Radeon 7500, which is a less powerful card than the GeForce 2MX. Both the Nvidia and Radeon cards support dual monitors.

The joy of specs

Other than the increase in processor speed and the inclusion of new graphics hardware, there's little to distinguish this Power Mac line-up from its predecessor. This explains why Apple opted for a low-key launch as opposed to the razzmatazz of the iMac's debut at the beginning of January.

Hard drive capacities remain at 40Gb, 60Gb, and 80Gb respectively. The drives haven't changed in any other aspect: they're still 7200rpm devices on an Ultra ATA/66 bus. These specs are looking rather long in the tooth in comparison with many PCs, so we hope this is the last time we see an Ultra ATA/66 bus on a Power Mac.

Standard RAM configuration has been increased to 256Mb on the two lower-end machines and 512Mb on the dual 1GHz Mac. This is a definite improvement over the previous, miserable RAM allocation, but we would have liked to have seen 512Mb in the mid-range machine as well as the top-of-the-line model. As before, the DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive appears in the top two machines, while the 800MHz model has a 12x10x32x CD-RW drive.

Motherboard and enclosure designs are identical to the previous Power Macs - the bus speed remains at 133MHz,

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maximum RAM at 1.5Gb over three slots and there are four free 64-bit PCI slots.

Clock and spiel

Although these new machines represent little more than a speed boost, they do put some important daylight between the iMac and Power Mac ranges in terms of clock speed. We haven't yet been able to fully test the new iMac range, but its specification would suggest that the difference between the 800MHz iMac and the Power Mac range will be greater than the clock speeds suggest. However, this is a difficult message to get across in marketing the machines, and so the speed bumps will unmuddy the waters somewhat.

We took the opportunity to put the dual 1GHz Power Mac through its paces using MacUser's suite of bench tests (see Speed tests, p48). As expected, the new Power Mac is the fastest Mac yet released. However, more interesting are the differences in improvement between tests. For example, despite the new graphics hardware, the improvement in the 2D QuickDraw test over the Power Mac 867MHz was minimal. This suggests that most of the benefit of the GeForce 4MX will be seen by applications that make use of OpenGL, such as 3D modelling programs and games. Other users can save themselves some money by downgrading the graphics card to a Radeon 7500.

Mac OS X ensures that most users will benefit somewhat from having two processors by splitting multiple processes across the two CPUs. This will prove particularly useful when running two or more processor-hungry applications simultaneously. We haven't tested the 933MHz single-processor Power Mac, but we don't expect most individual applications to gain directly from dual processors, so bear this in mind when picking your model.

Bundle of joy

These Power Macs are the first to ship with OS X as the default boot operating system. However, Mac OS 9.2 is also installed and you can reboot into that if you want. This range is also the first to ship with iPhoto in the box, completing the set of Apple's digital hub applications, along with iMovie 2, iDVD 2 and iTunes 2.

In addition, the Power Macs ship with a suite of bonus applications. As well as the usual Internet Explorer and Acrobat Reader 5, there's Art Director's Toolkit, PixelNhance, Snapz Pro 2, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, Pcalc 2, and a 30-day trial of FileMaker Pro 5.5. Together, these applications make up a very generous software bundle of useful applications.

The 1GHz Mac is finally here. Was it worth the wait? The breaching of the 1GHz barrier is without doubt more significant for Apple's marketing efforts than it is for genuine performance improvement. However, it would be a mistake to simply think of these as the first range of Macs to have a 1GHz processor. There are other, smaller developments that help push performance along, such as the inclusion of a Level 3 cache and DDR RAM on the graphics card. Other improvements, such as a faster hard drive bus and DDR RAM across the board, must wait until at least the next revision, though.

More than anything else, this release gives users a clear reason to buy a Power Mac over the new iMac. Both the 933MHz and 1GHz DP Power Macs will significantly outperform the 800MHz iMac and, together with the expansion options and graphics performance, they represent a compelling reason to choose a Power Mac. What's more, they're cheaper than the equivalents in the previous line-up - £300 less in the case of the 1GHz machine. If you've been waiting to buy a new machine until you can have that magic 1GHz rating, rejoice - the time is now.

PRICE: Power Mac G4 800MHz £1149 (£1350 inc VAT), Power Mac G4 933MHz £1699 (£1996 inc VAT), Power Mac G4 DP 1GHz £2199 (£2584 inc VAT)