Power Mac G5 2.3 or 2.5? (new vs. old)

evolvnyc

evolvnyc

Well-known member
So can someone reccomend my new G5 purchase? I'm confused, the new G5 dual 2.3 is more expensive ($200) then the previous G5 dual 2.5... The major differences: 2.5 takes up to 8 gb while 2.3 takes 16gb, 8x vs. 16x dvd drive, and the bus speed is slightly faster on 2.3... but wouldn't a 2.5 still be faster, lets say if they both have 4 gb ram? does the bus matter that much? are there other thins to consider? I'm usually the first to say "buy the newest"

You can compare them here:
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/families/powermac_g5/?WTReferer=http://www.macmall.com/&wt.mc_id=9584
 
the newer one you also get a 16x DL super drive, better stock video card, and a free mighty mouse....
 
will any of these effect performance speed enough to compensate for the 2.3 to 2.5 difference though?
 
The new dual is a dual-core design, vs the older single-core-DP design. Presumably the SMP efficiency could be better with a dual-core chip, since the bus between the chips could probably be faster, and the distance is shorter. I am not sure that there is really much of a speed difference. You might want to see if you can find some folks posting XBench benchmarks for the new duals.
 
A couple additional, and equally benefitial things to note about the new machines is:
PCIe - underdeveloped right now - but much much faster way to expand to more SATA storage (not yet available), speed benefits w/ AJA/Blackmagic cards (some of which are available) - as well as the faster throughput to the video card.
L2 Cache - the 1MB L2 cache vs. the old 512k is a big difference as well in performance - probably part of the reason in some of the benchmark tests dual core 2.0s outperform dual chip 2.3s.

I would say - if you *must* setup a SATA storage solution right now (really affordable way to expand your storage capacity) then think about the 2.5.
If not, the dual-core 2.3 is the way to go because you a faster machine with only a slightly slower clock speed.
 
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