With four PowerPC G5 processors to treat the tasks you throw at it , it ’s no wonder the Power Mac G5 Quad posted the firm Speedmark account ever . But the margin in that benchmark test may not be as enceinte as some expected .
Still , Macworld Lab examination of the final — and most promise — of Apple ’s raw three-fold - core mac revealed sinewy carrying into action from the 2.5GHz Quad automobile , specially in tasks that take reward of all four processors .
The Power Mac G5 Quad is a dual - processor , double - core machine , sporting two 2.5GHz G5 processing units on both of its chips . It gasconade a frontside bus speed of 1.25GHz per processor and 2 MB of on - fleck L2 cache per processor . It ’s the last of the late Power Mac revisions to ship — you’re able to look at the benchmarks and reviews for the three-fold - core 2GHz and 2.3GHz Power Macs here .
Our examination found that the Quad do well when using applications that take full advantage of its processing power . Note the results from our Maxon Cinema 4D XL and Apple Compressor 2.0 test below to see how solidly the Power Mac G5 Quad out - muscle its double - heart and soul similitude . Running those applications , this computer screams — and we ’re not just bring up to the loud fans that kick in pretty often .
Quad-Core Power Mac Tested
sound event inbold . Reference organization initalics .
Speedmark 4 scores are comparative to those of a 1.25GHz Mac miniskirt , which is assigned a scotch of 100 . Adobe Photoshop , Cinema 4D XL , iMovie , and iTunes scores are in minutes : second . All scheme were running Mac OS X 10.4.3 with 512 Mbit of random access memory , with processor performance set to Highest in the Energy Saver preference pane . We converted 45 minute of AAC audio files to MP3 using iTunes ’ High Quality setting . We used Unreal Tournament 2004 ’s Antalus Botmatch average - frames - per - second score ; we quiz at a solution of 1,024 by 768 pixels at the Maximum setting . The Photoshop Suite tryout is a band of 14 scripted project using a 50 M filing cabinet . Photoshop ’s memory was arrange to 70 per centum and story was prepare to Minimum . To compare Speedmark 4 scores for various Mac systems , visit our Apple Hardware Guide .—Macworld Lab examination by James Galbraith and Jerry Jung
In a more universal - use of goods and services benchmark such as Speedmark 4 , which we use to test overall system performance on every Mac example from minis on up , the doubling of processor CORE does n’t give way carrying out gains in all of its included tasks . Take the iMovie render test , where the Power Mac G5 Quad turned in the same performance as a treble - core 2.3GHz machine . That ’s because an iMovie render is a well example of a job that does n’t care how many cores you have churning away .
Astute reader may mark that the Speedmark lashings for our dual core reference system in the above table have gotten higher since we published their reviews . We always use the tardy version of Mac OS X when running Speedmark — OS X 10.4.3 ship after we completed our bench mark for those models . Usually , incremental OS update do n’t touch scores much ; however , this a la mode update proved to be an exception . Though startup , e - mail and Web internet browser test all got a bit of boost out of the update , the 500 MiB folder duplication task saw the biggest benefit , get 25 percent quicker after update to OS X 10.4.3 .
We ’ll mail our review of the Power Mac G5 Quad just as presently as it ’s complete . you could compare these benchmark results to other cargo ships Macs by visiting our Apple Hardware Guide .
