- #2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW INSTALL#
- #2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW UPGRADE#
- #2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW PRO#
If both systems were outfitted with 2GB of memory, the dual 2.5GHz G5 was 11% faster than the Mac mini. Power Mac G5Īpple Mac mini (Mid 2010) - Core 2 Duo 2.40GHzĪpple Power Mac G5 (Early 2005) - PowerPC 970FX 2.5GHz x 2
#2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW UPGRADE#
This isn’t the most fair comparison, but it does give you an idea of how much of an upgrade you’d see as a G5 user if you wanted to replace your aging machine with the most affordable Mac: Mac mini vs. Snow Leopard is faster so that’s another mini advantage. Leopard is the best the G5 will run, while Snow Leopard comes standard with the 2010 Mac mini. And there’s no reason to assume that a G5 owner would have a 2.5” 5400RPM laptop drive in their system so that’s just going to have to be an inherent advantage over the mini. Most G5s would probably have a slower spinning, but potentially faster overall drive by now. I ripped out all but 2GB of memory from the G5 system, but left the 3.5” HDD in place. I tried to level the playing field as much as reasonably possible. Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Apple’s Aperture 2, both OS X benchmark favorites of mine, fully support the Power Mac G5. While many modern OS X applications are now Intel-only, there are a surprising number that will run on PowerPC systems. I updated the OS to 10.5.8 and went about installing applications.
This time around Leopard installed just fine. I went back to something more 2005: a 150GB Raptor.
#2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW INSTALL#
I couldn’t get Leopard to install to the drive without errors. Despite being a SATA drive, the G5 was very unhappy with the new VelociRaptor. I popped in a 600GB VelociRaptor and was quickly reminded that I was using a 5 year old machine. Running at up to 2.7GHz, there was enough IPC on the table for the Power Mac G5 to at least remain competitive with the Core 2 Duo in the new Mac mini. Unlike the Pentium 4, the 970 was a very shallow (9 stage integer pipe) and wide microprocessor (5-way instruction dispatch). The PowerPC 970FX, a 90nm version of the original 970, was a very impressive architecture. I was curious to see where the performance of a high end G5 fit in today’s Mac lineup. I stopped using the G5 during 10.4 (Tiger) and hadn’t tried anything newer, until now. Like all PowerPC Macs, the G5 won’t run anything newer than OS X 10.5 (Leopard). That’s an amazing resale value for a five year old computer based on a seven year old platform. Today you can find slower G5s on eBay or Craigslist for around $400, and faster dual dual-core models going for as much as $800.
Brand new, this system cost $2699 (not including the memory upgrade).
#2011 VS 2010 MAC MINI REVIEW PRO#
While not my original Power Mac, I do still have an early 2005 model with a pair of 2.5GHz PowerPC 970FX processors, 4GB of DDR-400 memory and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card (AGP 8X of course). The Apple IIe was the first Apple I ever owned, and the Power Mac G5 was the first Mac I ever owned.
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