We're still waiting.īut if you have one of the lesser Power Macs - and I use lesser here only to denote speed - and you're up to your eyeballs in digital video, big graphics files or processor-intensive data crunching, you'll want to consider the new Power Macs. You may recall that he had predicted in 2003 that 3-GHz G5 chips would be out in 2004. The latest update leaves the Power Mac still 10% shy of where Apple CEO Steve Jobs thought it would be last year. That machine at that refurb price is a real deal. In fact, Apple still has that model for $2,699 (while supplies last), and you can sometimes pick up refurbished versions on Apple's Web site for $2,299. Needless to say, if you bought a dual 2.5-GHz Power Mac, you should keep it and use it for as long as you can. At a time when processors are measured in gigahertz, a 200-MHz increase is a modest jump in speed. I understand the gnashing of teeth on a number of Mac-related message boards and forums about the lack of Power Mac updates in the past year - and the relatively minor processor bump in the latest release. Hmm.īetter yet, the new Power Macs were preloaded with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which wouldn't even be officially on store shelves until the next day.Ī short time later, at a cost of $2,999 plus tax - the same price as the old dual 2.5-GHz models - I headed home to see how the latest and fastest Power Mac would handle.ĭon't get me wrong. Apple Cinema Displays should I so choose. In fact, with that ATI card, I could one day hook up one of the 30-in. The dual 2-GHz model at home was plenty fast enough for my use.Īfter first finding a potential buyer for said dual 2-GHz Power Mac, I mentally toted up and compared hardware specs on my way to the store: A 700-MHz processor bump over my old Power Mac a 16X SuperDrive that burns dual-layer DVDs holding twice the data of single-layer discs a larger, 250GB hard drive and a better video card, the ATI Radeon 9650. I was impressed last fall when I finally got my hands on a dual 2.5-GHz Power Mac from Apple (see story), but I held off buying one at the time. Actually, wandered isn't the right word, as I made a beeline for the store after work with the goal of bringing home one of those new dual 2.7s. The test was run with the default runs of 0.5KB through 8192KB transfer sizes with the total length being 256MB.īenchmark Results: The ATTO benchmark on the Windows platform shows a little better performance with reads hitting 112MB/s and writes at 108MB/s and probably represents the best case scenario for performance.Lured by the siren song of speed, I wandered into a local Apple Store late last week, my interest piqued by the new dual 2.7-GHz Power Mac G5s that Apple Computer Inc. It measures raw transfer rates for both reads and writes and places the data into graphs that can be very easily interpreted. ATTO measures transfers across a specific volume length. ATTO v2.47ĪTTO is one of the oldest drive benchmarks still being used today and is still very relevant in the SSD world.

This is a freeware utility though they do accept donations so as always we’ll give the developer a plug and ask that users of this software donate to recognize their hard work on the product.īenchmark Results: The benchmark shows reads topping at 107.8MB/s and writes at 97.53MB/s which is not bad for an external HDD but leaves a lot of room for more on the USB 3.0 interface. To check out performance, we used a popular OS X utility called Xbench which performs a number of benchmarks but we focused in on the disk performance. In OS X, we took a peek at the data shown in Apple’s Disk Utility application and it shows up as an external USB drive with 1TB of capacity and the drive name defaulted to “Untitled” upon first load which is common for Mac OS. It’s not visibly apparent that a light even resides there when it’s not lit making the exterior a little more austere. It shines through the plastic so it’s not very bright but clearly visible. There is a blue light that signifies read/write operation under the logo, near the back of the drive. There’s little to set up other than to plug in the supplied USB 3.0 cable which supplies power as well as being the data conduit.

Xbench mac