Anthony Frausto-Robledo EIC (info@architosh.com)

21 Oct 2005

 

The New Power Mac G5s - Initial Thoughts

Apple's latest update has held a few surprises for us who follow the company's every move closely. Surely, we were surprised by the introduction of a true "workstation" graphics card. And we may even have been surprised by the performance jumps. But what really surprised this editor, was the choices made in the line-up itself. Let's review, briefly, the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

Apple's introduction of a quad-processing machine is a boon for the company. Back in 2002, Architosh ran a survey asking if a Quad Mac would appeal to 3d pros, CAD users and scientist. An astoundingly high percentage of respondents to our 3D Pro Mac Hardware Request survey said yes to the idea of a Quad. In fact, 55 percent said they wanted one if performance corresponded to the number of processors in the machine.

From the early test results done over at Luxology, it appears that the new Quads do in fact "double" the speed of the previous duals. Hence, we expect many of the previous users interested in quads to purchase these new machines. In fact, if they don't they are being foolish, because these machines are exactly what they always wanted.

At that time they said yes to a Quad theoretically priced at $4,999USD. Such users should be thrilled to know that they can get that Quad today for less than that. Apple had clearly done a good thing by delivering the Quad, but they messed up by delivering just one of them.

The Bad

Unfortunately, Apple has done a bad thing by the way it has fit these three new choices to their existing price points. It is unfortunate that the mid-range machine is not a quad also. As Rick Berstein commented: "It is really hard to see who that machine would appeal to as it's a real slight performance upgrade over the entry level machine and is $500 more." Agreed. In fact, early Xbench scores for the mid-range 2.3 dual core single chip machine do not point to much of an improvement to previous dual chip single core machines. In fact, there are actually some slower areas of performance, as in thread scores. Architosh will be doing a full report on Xbench and other scores early next week.

It would have been better for Apple to deliver four options; two single dual core chips machines and two quads. There is an unworthy price jump from low to mid, and an unnecessary price gab between mid to high. Some will want to go for the Quad but simply cannot afford it. Others will balk at the $500 increase to go from low to mid for such small performance return.

The Ugly

Unfortunately, things get even worse on the graphics cards front. If you think the price gap is bad at the processor level, take a gander at the graphics card options. Essentially Apple is offering three cards. Two are gamer-level cards and one is a true workstation card.

The price gap between the two gamer cards (Nvidia GeForce 6600 and 6600 LE) is completely reasonable and just $50. However, to go to a more powerful card you end up with just one build-to-order option: a $1700 Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 workstation card add. It's great that Apple is offering this particular card, but what about those workstation card users at the lower end of the spectrum?

One wonders why Apple dropped support of the previous GeForce 6800 GT card. This would have been a better mid-range choice if they truly couldn't get another Quadro card option in the mix. For those who opt out of the $1700 card -- and most will -- they will end up getting a weaker card than previous Power Macs which had the option of a GeForce 6800 GT and several ATI cards.

Apple is still selling one build-to-order older Power Mac, and you can get one of four different cards for it, including the GT card mentioned above. However, that is not why you would purchase that machine.

Closing Comments

Despite what really looks like several minor product definition blunders -- all of which are easily fixable -- Apple's new Quad G5 is still the real news story here. This new monster is clearly worthy of the title of Last PowerPC King of Apple. And it may just be the fastest rendering workstation on the planet dollar for dollar.

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