Click to enlarge

Today Apple has updated their line of Power Mac towers, incorporating many of the features revealed at Macworld like Firewire 800 and Airport Extreme, as well as giving every segment a significant speed bump. Also revealed in the new computers is the impending release of ATI fastest new video card, the Radeon 9700 Pro, which can now be ordered with the computer for $350 more than the baseline card (same as the GeForce4 Ti).

The Power Macs now come in three flavors: 1GHz, Dual 1.2GHz, and Dual 1.42GHz machines. They are priced at: $1499, $1999, and $2699, respectively. Each also now come with one Firewire 800 port as well as the original two Firewire 400 connections. The machines feature 802.11g (Airport Extreme) as well as Bluetooth capability built-in (as a BTO option) for connecting to compatible devices like phones. The faster machines have speedier RAM (333MHz 2700 SDRAM) as well as 167MHz buses. The 1.42GHz Dual even gets 2MB L3 cache per processor, while the other two have 1MB.

The Radeon 9700 Pro has no official release date listed, except for an "Available Soon" note in the build-to-order dropdown. As expected, ATI has placed an ADC as well as DVI connections on the card for Apple. A DVI-to-VGA converter will be included for those wanted to power a normal CRT monitor as well.

Stay tuned to IMG for much more on these machines as information becomes available. We'll attempt to track one down, especially once the 9700 is available, for gaming benchmarks.

Apple PowerMac

Apple

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.