Customer Reviews

Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop M9555LL/A Single 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me say first that I love Macintosh. I do not always appreciate the antics of the marketing department at Apple Computer.

As a content creator, I frequently need PCI slots for the specialized cards that allow high quality audio and video i/o, so I am looking only at Power Macintosh computers (not iBook, Powerbook, iMac, eMac, etc.).

I find myself greedy for speed and lacking in cash. So, there must be a compromise between cost and speed, not just ordering up the latest and fastest CPU with all of the options. The most important speed in a media computer is disk i/o. Without the ability to read and write fast, video (HD) and audio (DAW) will glitch. The CPU has only a small effect on disk i/o. The controler and bus have a HUGE effect on disk i/o speed. With a dedicated disk controller card in a PCI-X slot, SATA or Ultra-SCSI (SCSI320) RAID arrays perform very well. They are not as fast in a PCI slot.

In the 2003 version of the Power Macintosh G5 1.8GHz single CPU tower, the motherboard has EIGHT RAM SLOTS and PCI-X slots. The 2004 version of this tower has FOUR RAM SLOTS and PCI (not PCI-X). To get the extra RAM slots and PCI-X, a buyer must upgrade to the 2.0 GHz DUAL CPU model, at considerable extra expense.

Users keep their minitowers longer than any other kind of Macintosh, because of the larger RAM capacity and upgrade sockets, so wouldn't you want to get the most future-proof versions of those sockets, that being PCI-X? I do.

I give this tower 3 stars of 5, because it's basically a good machine, that is intentionally crippled. It will run OSX just fine, and will do things that a G5 iMac will also do, at a considerable price premium. Nice aluminum tower!

Even though its the "baseline" G5 system, featuring only one of Apples powerPC G5 chips, it flies! Compared to my previous Athlon XP 3200+ machine, I am computing at least twice as fast, OS X is amazing, so easy to use with photoshop and after effects! I love my new PowerMac G5 single 1.8GHz