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Dual 1 GHz PowerMac G4 Announced Today [Updated]


In a virtually silent announcement from Cupertino today the company announced its latest speed-bump to the PowerMac G4 desktop CPUs. As expected, the machines share the same form factor as the previous G4s but now include 800 MHz, 933 MHz or dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors.

Apple PowerMac G4

The original PowerMac G4 500 MHz ran at 3.7 gigaflops, the new dual 1 GHz runs at 15 gigaflops. According to Apple “The first Power Mac to blast through the 1GHz barrier, the new twin-engined G4 runs professional applications like Adobe Photoshop up to 72 percent faster ? and crunches digital video over 300 percent faster ? than a 2GHz Pentium 4-based PC.”

The new NVIDIA GForce4 MX pushes 1.1 billion textured pixels per second – 1.03 billion more textures than a GForce2 MX. The 933 MHz and dual 1 GHz models feature an advanced L3 cache. “The L3 cache uses 2MB of high speed, Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM running at up to 500MHz ? boosting processor function by providing fast access to data and application code at speeds of up to 4 gigabytes per second (GBps).”

The machines list for US$1600 (800 MHz), US$2300 (933 MHz, SuperDrive) and US$3000 (dual 1 GHz) and are available from the Apple Store.

Its nice to see the price drop across the product line, especially US$500 savings on the dual processor system. But since we don’t have the new 400 MHz front side bus or DDR, looks like those features will be hold outs for the G5’s. When will we see those, WWDC in May? MWNY in July? Time will only tell…

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.