Apple Power machines hardware support is a little stingy

AS WE reported a little over three months ago, here, Apple decided to launch a bid to keep its hardware sales alive. So, the most famous fruit in the world of IT launched a whole architecture revamp.

The new systems feature dual-core PowerPC 970MP processors - the CPUs come with 1MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, but this isn't the only news. The CPUs will be mounted on brand new motherboards which feature PCI Express interconnect and DDR-II support. Also, dual Gigabit Ethernet is promoted to be as good as sliced bread.

Graphics also received a revival: 6600LE and 6660 are the mainstream standard bearers, while you can go "all out" and upgrade the system with the Nvidia QuadroFX 4500, which is currently the most powerful professional pixel pushing solution out there.

We will not go into benchmarking details, because they're not interesting anymore. Comparing a dual core G5 to an old G5 really isn't headline material. Apple is an Intel customer right now, so no more Pentium 4 bashing, okay? Otherwise, Paul Otellini just might lose his well-known short fuse and give all those chips to Dell first. So, what is Apple offering you now? If you shell out $1,999 and convert this to pounds and Euro once systems get across the pond, you get the following components:

dual core 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 processor
512MB of 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable up to 16GB
160GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
Nvidia GeForce 6600 LE with 128MB of GDDR SDRAM
three open PCI Express expansion slots: two four lane slots and one eight lane slot
dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Mighty Mouse and Apple keyboard

So, for $2,000 dollars you get half a gig of RAM and a $100 graphics card. At least graphics card comes with BGA memory - NCQ supporting hard drive is inside - probably the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 - but we have zero information about chipset support.

The second system costs $2,500, but you will not get a 2.5GHz dual core baby.

dual core 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processor
512MB of 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable up to 16GB
250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
Nvidia GeForce 6600 with 256MB of GDDR SDRAM
three open PCI Express expansion slots: two four lane slots and one eight lane slot
dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
16x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Mighty Mouse and Apple Keyboard

If you decide to check the quad processing world, you need to SuperSize and shell out $3m200 dollars for the following:

two dual core 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 processors
512MB of 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable up to 16GB
250GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
Nvidia GeForce 6600 with 256MB of GDDR SDRAM
three open PCI Express expansion slots: two four lane slots and one eight lane slot
dual Gigabit Ethernet ports
16x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Mighty Mouse and Apple Keyboard

So, for $3,200 s you will still get half a gig of memory and a $120 graphic card, but this time the graphics card has 256MB of GDDR memory.

If you wish to upgrade, besides memory and hard drives, you can also plug a GeForce 7800GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory, or a real heavy-weighter and first truly professional graphics card in Apple machine for ages - Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. What is interesting is the fact that every card mentioned above features a Dual-Link DVI interface and fully supports 2500x1600 resolution, as seen on beautiful 30" Apple Cinema Display.

The first two systems are available now, the dual core CPU system will be available in November. But one thing bugs me. With Mac OS X Tiger being such a great OS which requires a gig to run properly - why in the world did Apple decide to scrimp and scrape around $40 and install a sad 512MB of memory?

IT experts will boldy upgrade system memory, but less-hardware-savvy users will be stuck with a lemon which they do not know how to upgrade. This especially goes for Mac Mini and entry-level G5. Systems for $2,500 and $3,200 aren't rounded at $2,499 or $2,999 - where's the price logic there? I personally believe that charging $3250 or $3300 would not make any difference. Especially since we're talking 2x256MB sticks which Apple uses.

Having said all of that, I am going back to run my 200-inch iMac G5 with 2GB of RAM. Not Apple sold ones - sorry guys, but selling slow memory with CAS3 latency in 2005? µ