Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Core Duo

The Intel iMac

As I mentioned earlier, since the Intel transition is nowhere near complete, Apple now offers two iMac choices for their customers at the same price point: the iMac G5 and the Intel based platform, simply called the iMac.  Although it is slightly newer, the Intel based iMac uses the exact same externals and mostly the same hardware as the revamped iMac G5.  The only differences really are on the motherboard itself.

Two identical iMacs, two different processors 

The iMac basically uses the same type of Core Duo motherboard that you might find in a notebook complete with Intel's 945 Express chipset, although Apple appears to have used their own wireless adapter.  Unlike a Core Duo notebook, however, the iMac does use a standard 3.5" SATA hard drive. In the case of my test sample, it was a Western Digital WD1600JS drive with a 160GB capacity.  Despite being a desktop drive, it's just as silent as what you'd find in a notebook. 

In fact, the iMac in general is extremely quiet, regardless of whether you have a PowerPC or Intel based model.  Both iMacs were virtually silent during operation, although for whatever reason, the iMac G5's fan would sometimes spin at full speed upon startup.  I never once heard the iMac Core Duo's fan spin up, not even during my CPU intensive H.264 encoding tests. 

The 17" iMac comes with a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor, while the 20" ships with a 2.0GHz processor (compared to 1.9GHz and 2.1GHz in the G5 versions).  Both of these are your standard voltage Core Duo chips, which means that Apple could theoretically offer a smaller form factor desktop with a Low Voltage or Ultra Low Voltage Core Duo/Core Solo in the future.  It's also worth noting that the fastest Core Duo out right now runs at 2.16GHz, so Apple could either upgrade their 20" model or offer an even larger, higher end model in the future.  The Core Duo processor is expected to top out at 2.33GHz towards the end of Q2. 

The only other difference between the iMac and the iMac G5 is the choice of GPU, with the iMac offering the newer ATI Radeon X1600 while the iMac G5 ships with the older Radeon X600 Pro.  They are both PCI Express GPUs, and although I don't go into much detail about the impact of PCI Express on OS X in this article, it is something that I may look into in the future. 

The iMac and the iMac G5 are the first Macs I've used that ship with Apple's Mighty Mouse by default.  It is a pleasant change from Apple's older optical mice. Despite it not being my favorite mouse, it is still a huge improvement over what used to come with these things.