Apple Power Mac G5 - Manual (Page 15)

Leading-Edge Expansion
The Power Mac G5 is packed with leading-edge technologies, making it easy to
expand the capabilities of your system as your projects grow and your workflow
evolves. A removable side panel provides quick access to slots and bays, so you can
add memory, a second hard drive, or an AirPort Extreme Card—all without tools. Ports
on the front and back panels allow you to plug in a variety of industry-standard input
and output devices, including optical digital audio components, high-bandwidth
FireWire devices, and USB 2.0 peripherals.
Up to 8GB of Main Memory
The Power Mac G5 has four or eight DIMM slots that use ultrafast PC2700 or PC3200
DDR SDRAM. This high-performance memory operates at speeds of up to 400MHz for
a throughput of up to 6.4 GBps. Standard configurations come with 256MB or 512MB
of RAM; memory is scalable up to 8GB,
2 so you can add RAM as your application and
workflow requirements increase.
PCI-X Expansion Slots
The use of PCI cards or higher-performance PCI-X cards enables the Power Mac G5 to
perform specialized tasks, such as video acceleration or audio digital signal processing
(DSP). For massive system storage, you can add a Fibre Channel PCI card to connect to
Xserve RAID, Apple’s high-performance storage system.
Systems can be configured with PCI or PCI-X expansion technology: Three 64-bit PCI-X
slots allow you to add one card running at 133MHz and two cards running at 100MHz;
or three 64-bit PCI slots allow you to add three 33MHz cards. PCI-X is designed to sup-
port 3.3V signaling and Universal 33MHz and 66MHz PCI cards.
5
Up to 500GB of Internal Storage
The Power Mac G5 has two Serial ATA hard drive bays for up to 500GB, or half a
terabyte, of fast internal mass storage
3 —ideal for video, audio, and high-resolution
graphics. Built-in software RAID allows you to stripe the two drives for increased
performance or mirror them for high reliability.
What’s more, it’s easy to add storage as your needs grow. Single-drive systems come
with the cabling to connect a second hard drive, and the easy-to-remove side panel
allows you to insert a new drive yourself, completely without tools.
15 Technology and
Performance Overview
Power Mac G5
With the removable side panel, DIMM slots
are easy to access.