I have wanted to purchase a new computer for the last eight months and finally took the plunge. I have made the transition from an iMac revision b, 466mhz 160mb ram, to a new Power Mac Dual G4 533mhz with an ATi Radeon graphics card. The G4 feels much faster than the iMac.

Even though this was a build-to-order configuration ordered through the Apple Store, the system was built, processed, and shipped to me in five days. I was amazed that it was build so quickly since Apple had quoted a build time of ten days, which probably was just to cover them if something went wrong.

Regarding the hardware on the new towers, though the case is the same, the innards are quite different. The tower now sports 4 pci slots, capable of faster transfer rates; an agp 4x graphics slot, faster than the earlier 2x implementation; an 8x4x32 Sony CD-RW drive, which can be replaced with a DVD-ROM drive through the BTO option in the Apple Store at no extra charge; no internal FireWire connector; no sound in port; and a 133mhz system bus to boost performance. Additionally the system comes with a usb A-B cable, FireWire A-B cable (ex.to connect your digital videocamera to the Mac), and a usb cable extender which lengthens the keyboard’s cable length to about 6 feet.

The dual 533 processors on this computer help it to deal with virtually anything you can throw at it. This is, without a doubt, the fastest computer, PCs included, that I have ever used without question. I use the computer for browsing the web, email, text applications, heavy gaming, web design, programming (C++), and graphic design.
A friend of mine and I put together a test of computing horsepower which accurately shows a computer’s power in Photoshop. Some people think that Photoshop tests are incredibly biased, but Photoshop is what I use, and therefore this information is very relevant to people interested in graphic design.

The instructions for doing this test are:
1. Create a new document in Photoshop with dimensions15x15 centimeters at 500 dots per inch and use an empty white background. Make the the image is RGB.
2. Select Gaussian Blur from the Blur submenu found in the Filter menu.
3. Deselect the preview checkbox.
4. Set the radius to 250 pixels.
5. Time how long it takes to complete the filter.

Here are the results for machines that my friend and I have tested.
Pentium II 450mhz: 49.2 seconds
Pentium III 750mhz: 29.2 seconds
Athlon 800mhz: 28.1 seconds
G4 400mhz: 22.5 seconds
G4 500mhz: 19.1 seconds
G4 dual processor 500mhz: 9.3 seconds
G4 dual processor 533mhz: 8.7 seconds

I realize that this test does not relate to many people contemplating the purchase of new computer, so I will post the framerates I got when I ran the demo 1 and demo 2 timedemos in Quake 3 Arena, version 1.17. Tests were run with resolution set to 1024x768 and bitdepth to 32. Additionally all other options were set to maximum quality.
Demo 1: 55fps
Demo 2: 52fps

I feel that this proves that this computer is a more than viable gaming machine, allowing anyone from a casual to an active gamer to experience all the games they try in their full glory.

The CD-RW included in the G4 is the Sony CRX-140E. This drive is compatible with Toast and also works great with the software Apple provides to burn cds, Disc Burner for Macintosh file backups, and iTunes for burning audio cds.

The computer has been incredibly stable, running for days at a time without being restarted. I expect the speed and stability will only improve once Mac OS X is released, as the new operating system takes full advantage of both processors and is built off of very stable, BSD underpinnings.

I wish that Apple had added an option for a DVD/CD-RW combo drive so computer users could enjoy the benefits of both a DVD and CD-RW in one drive, instead of having to choose one over the other.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2208
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor: PowerPC G4
Processor speed: 501-600
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30