Apple added a ‘new’ PowerMac to their lineup last night, which essentially replaces the old single 1.6Ghz G5 machine with a single 1.8Ghz model. This would seem to answer the cries for a headless G5 machine except that Apple Australia has really dropped the ball on pricing. The US price is $1500, which works out to $2000 in our money, give or take.

Apple Australia is asking $2700.

To compare, the 17″ 1.8Ghz iMac costs $2500. It has the same GeForce FX5200 graphics card, the same 600Mhz FSB speed, the same amount of RAM and HD capacity. So, for $200 more, you LOSE the 17″ LCD panel and gain… well, not a lot. Some PCI slots (not PCI-X, not PCI Express), and an AGP slot. Oh, you’ll also be able to add a second hard drive. Total cost, assuming you don’t have a 17″ monitor, is going to be around $3000 with a CRT, $3200 with an LCD. I can see a lot of people either sticking with the cheaper iMac, or spending the extra on the dual 1.8Ghz PowerMac, which at least offers a separate CPU and an uncrippled FSB speed.

This really looks to me like Apple had some of the old 1.6Ghz boards lying around in their warehouse and threw this model together as a stopgap measure. What a shame.

On the upside, the old 1.6Ghz board ran the FSB at half the CPU’s speed instead of one third (800Mhz vs 600Mhz) so it’s possible that you might be able to hack the 1.8Ghz model to use a 900Mhz FSB like the duallies. I’ll keep my eye out for validation of that theory as I continue saving for a real PowerMac.

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