Power Mac G4 - Four-slot Models

Four-slot Models

A new line with a revamped motherboard but the familiar "Graphite" case debuted on January 9, 2001. It was essentially a future Quicksilver inside an older case. Motorola had added a seventh pipeline stage in the new PowerPC G4 design to achieve faster clock frequencies. New features included a fourth PCI slot, a 133 MHz system bus, an improved 4X AGP slot, and a new "digital audio" Tripath Class T amplifier sound system, giving the series its name "Power Mac Digital Audio". The models were offered in 466 MHz, 533 MHz, dual 533 MHz, 667 MHz and 733 MHz configurations, the latter two using a newer PowerPC 7450 processor. The number of RAM slots were reduced to three, accommodating up to 1.5 GiB of PC133 SDRAM.

The 733 MHz model was the first personal computer to include a built-in DVD-R or Apple-branded SuperDrive, the rest of the line became the first Macs to ship with CD-RW drives. This was also the first series of Macs to include an nVidia graphics card, the venerable GeForce 2MX.

At Macworld Expo New York on July 18, 2001, a new line debuted featuring a cosmetically redesigned case known as "Quicksilver", but only minor technical changes. It was available in 733 MHz, 867 MHz and dual 800 MHz configurations. The 733 MHz model was notable for not having a level three cache.

The design was updated on January 28, 2002 with 800 MHz, 933 MHz and dual 1 GHz configurations, becoming the first Mac to reach 1 GHz. Again, the low end 800 MHz model did not include any level three cache. The graphics in this series were provided by an nVidia GeForce4 MX card. Some of these models have ATA controllers with 48 bit LBA for hard drives larger than 128 GB. This later series is commonly known as Quicksilver 2002.