hello everybody and welcome to bull technology this is my big and beautiful powermak
g5 this was the last power pc mac that apple ever released as well as the most powerful
so today we'll explore what this 50-pound behemoth is capable of today let's get started
apple has gone through several cpu architectures over the years the original macintosh lineup used
the 68k motorola platform uh in 1994 apple made the switch to ibm's powerpc platform
then in 2006 apple moved to intel's cpus and now finally here we are in the midst of apple's most
recent transition to their own apple silicon i give you this history because i've shown on my
channel that even intel max from 2007 are still perfectly usable today if not slightly outdated
so how much less capable is a later power pc mac such as this power mac well let's find out
let's first look at the specifications of this machine this machine was released in 2005 and it
represents the fastest power mac that apple ever sold it features two dual core g5 cpus
running at 2.5 gigahertz making this the only quad core power mac apple ever made this machine also
features 4 gigabytes of ram though it can support up to 16 gigabytes of ram which was an insane
amount of memory given the age of this computer this computer also features nvidia geforce
6600 graphics and a 250 gigabyte hard disk drive the iteration of os 10 on this machine is the
latest version of mac os supported on the g5 which is mac os 10.5 leopard which came out in 2007.
unlike modern macs this power mac is incredibly upgradable sliding off the side panel reveals
the modular interior and wow is this a beautiful interior or what this big g5 compartment is where
the dual g5s sit and i should mention that they are actually water cooled because of how much
heat they generate behind the front fan we can see our eight ram sockets of which four are currently
populated above this chamber is where the pci slots are and this is where the gpu is sitting
on top of this is where our optical and hard drives are and interestingly enough this machine
uses serial ata hard drives rather than ide hard drives so now that we know what this machine is
made of i say we give it some peripherals for today's video i will be pairing this g5 with
my 23-inch apple cinema display from 2005. i'll also be using this excellent apple pro keyboard
and this terrible apple pro mouse so without further ado let's see what this g5 can do
the g5 boots up surprisingly quickly given the 17 year old hard drive and the leopard desktop
is definitely nostalgic to people such as myself i decided to attach an external hard drive to
test some basic features such as video playback and itunes usage opening several mp3 files into
itunes was no issue for the g5 and playback had no issues it seems that if you want to use these old
systems as itunes machines they have more than enough power for being a music playing computer
playing local video was definitely a mixed bag a 1080p 30 video was a bit much for the g5 system
the video was choppy and the audio was definitely out of sync but 720p30 local video was no problem
for the g5 well i say no problem but while playing hd video the g5's fans sounded like this
yeah perhaps the most important application for any computer user is the web browser and on the
g5 this is where things take a sad turn there are several browsers that are still developed for the
powerpc platform and perhaps the best example of this is 10 for fox which has a special version
compiled for the g5 ten for fox is pretty much a power pc compatible iteration of firefox and users
of older versions of firefox should feel right at home using this browser using 104 fox basic
websites worked pretty well on the g5 wikipedia worked with no issues and the speed was definitely
tolerable for a machine of this vintage the new york times was another web page that
worked with no issues where you will find issues though are in more complex websites twitter for
example just refuses to render in altogether and complains about the outdatedness of your browser
youtube is another serious thorn in the side on the g5 you can actually load in the youtube
home page though it takes several minutes but attempting to actually play any individual youtube
videos results in an error message and again this seemed to consume all of the g5's resources
as this is what the fans sounded like when attempting to load in the youtube homepage
so when it comes to web browsing on the g5 it's really hit or miss email on the g5 is
still possible though using 10 for fox while the standard web version of gmail is not supported the
basic html5 version of gmail does work and you can actually view and compose emails on this system
even google docs works on the g5 well kind of it definitely requires some patience but if
you need to edit or compose a quick document it's definitely possible but what about more
complicated tasks well i downloaded an older version of imovie and attempted to edit some
basic 720p 30 video and surprisingly this machine was able to edit this basic 30 second video reel
with no issues even though the export took over five minutes and again the fans sounded like this
what about gaming well the problem with gaming is that there are very few games that are supported
on this incredibly old version of mac os and there are even fewer games that support power pc
chips in fact i don't have any games that run on the g5 so i guess gaming is almost out of
the question on a g5 system though i imagine games compiled for power pc chips would run pretty well
on this system given its quad core configuration so there you have it is the g5 still usable well
kind of let me just say this if you're looking for a computer to do basic
tasks don't buy a g5 go get yourself an early intel mac it'll be much more capable
quiet and energy efficient than this machine but if you have a g5 or you're looking to pick one up
as a collector's item just know that it's still capable of some modern tasks fan noise and all
i love my g5 and i think it will always have a place in my computer collection it's absolutely
beautifully designed and it represents the last of a forgotten era so long live the power powermak g5
be sure to leave a like a comment and definitely subscribe and thank you all for watching
you