Apple had some trouble shipping the Power Mac G5 series on time (the company bumped educational institutions to the top of the list as the new school year approached), but now all three versions (1.6GHz, 1.8GHz, and 2GHz) are widely available. The 2GHz model has two 64-bit processors, ushering 64-bit computing into the personal computing arena ahead of the PC.

As usual, Apple packed our review unit (a dual-processor, 2GHz rig) with a few extra components. Drop our unit’s 2GB of RAM to 512MB ($1,050 at the Apple Store), switch the ATI Radeon 9800 ($300) with an ATI Radeon 9600, and remove Apple’s AirPort Extreme Card ($99) and Bluetooth Card ($50), and you’re looking at an affordable $2,999 computer instead of our $4,498 beast. Apple also sent a $1,299 20-inch Apple Cinema Display.

Specifications. At 20.1 inches tall, the Power Mac G5 towers over the 17-inch tall Power Mac G4. The extra room doesn’t mean additional expansion possibilities, though. In fact, the Power Mac G5 has only three PCI slots to the older model’s four. On the upside, two of the slots are PCI-X 100MHz, and the third is a PCI-X 133MHz, which supports up to 1GBps transfer speeds.

That’s not to say that the Power Mac G5 doesn’t have any upgrade options. The mainboard has an AGP 8X slot, which means you can keep your system’s graphics up to snuff when that Radeon card loses the spring in its step. You can also beef up the memory without any trouble. The mainboard includes eight easy-to-reach 184-pin DIMM slots (a set of four by each processor) and supports up to 8GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. Keep in mind that you’ll need to buy DIMMs in identical pairs, ....


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