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Power Macintosh G5 Q&A - Revised December 12, 2006
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Please note that the Power Macintosh G4, Power Macintosh G5, and Xserve G5 models all have been discontinued.
What are the major differences between the Power Mac G5 and the Power Mac G4?
There are enormous differences between the Power Macintosh G5 and the Power Macintosh G4 series that the G5 replaced. There are many models in both lines with vastly different capabilities, particularly in the Power Macintosh G4 series, but in general, the Power Macintosh G5 series is substantially faster -- with tremendously faster processors (that cannot be upgraded), faster system architectures, faster motherboard designs, faster RAM with additional capacity, support for faster SATA hard drives, faster and more powerful graphics cards, and more capable -- all with standard SuperDrives (DVD-R/CD-RW or better), FireWire "800", USB 2.0, optical digital audio in/out (SPIDF), and support for optional AirPort Extreme (802.11g) and Bluetooth.
Additionally, the Power Macintosh G5 models exclusively support MacOS X, whereas some models in the Power Macintosh G4 series can boot MacOS 9 and MacOS X. All Power Macintosh G4 and Power Macintosh G5 models are capable of running the MacOS 9/Classic environment "within" MacOS X.
For complete details about the Power Macintosh G5 and the Power Macintosh G4, please refer to the specs page for the model or models of interest.
What are the major differences between the Power Mac G5 and the Xserve G5?
The most immediately noticeable difference between the Power Mac G5 and the Xserve G5 is that the Power Mac G5 uses a tower case designed for desk use and the Xserve G5 uses a "rack mount" case.
There are significant technical similarities between earlier models in the Power Macintosh G5 series and the Xserve G5, but the "Late 2005" Power Macintosh G5 models -- the Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.0), Dual Core (2.3), and "Quad Core" (2.5) -- use a more advanced architecture.
The motherboard in the Xserve G5 is similar to the motherboard used in the discontinued higher-end Power Macintosh G5 models, as each have SATA and PCI-X support, in addition to shared processors, system buses, and similar internal architectures.
However, the Power Macintosh G5 systems with PCI-X support use PC3200 DDR SDRAM and the Xserve G5 uses PC3200 ECC SDRAM. The Power Macintosh G5 officially supports two hard drives and the Xserve supports three "hot plug" drives. Both systems have FireWire "800", USB 2.0, and Gigabit Ethernet, but the Xserve G5 has dual Gigabit Ethernet ports (the "Late 2005" Power Macintosh G5 models have dual Gigabit Ethernet as well).
The Power Macintosh G5 models that support PCI-X have three available slots and the Xserve G5 has two. Finally, the Power Macintosh G5 has support for AirPort Extreme (802.11g) and Bluetooth, whereas the Xserve G5 does not.
For complete details about the Power Macintosh G5 and the Xserve G5, please refer to the specs page for the model or models of interest.
Please refer to the Ultimate Mac Comparison feature to dynamically compare any Power Macintosh G5 model to any other G3 or later Mac.
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