G5 specs leaked: good time to switch!

[nagromme]

I can't BELIEVE the specs are as good as this, but unless Apple.com was hacked, somone made an internal mistake and briefly posted specs for 970-based PowerMac G5s... which are probably coming Monday. The story is all over the Web already. Actual benchmarks and pricing are a mystery still, but:

1.6 Ghz, 1.8 Ghz, and DUAL 2.0 Ghz!

I'd have expected 2.0 MAYBE by the end of the year! And Ghz-for-Ghz, a G5 (970) is much faster than a G4, which in turn is faster than a Pentium 4. Add in a whole new high-speed architecture around that, and I can well believe Apple's claim at the top of the page:

"The world's fastest personal computer."

Other leaked specs:

Up to 1Ghz system bus
Up to 8GB DDR SDRAM (thus, 64-bit)
Fast Serial ATA HDs
AGP 8x Pro, with ATI and nVidia options
Three PCI or PCI-X slots (or? not sure what that means. Maybe PCI-X is only in the top model.)
3 USB 2.0 ports (plus hubs in keyboard and displays as usual, I assume)
3 Firewire ports, one is FW800
Optional Bluetooth and 802.11g (of course)
Optical AND analog audio I/O (wow... so digital surround sound standard across the whole line?)

Better than any rumor predicted!

[maradong]

hm...
isn t this topic TABOO ?
we don t want to make some problems, do we ?

[maradong]

Originally posted by nagromme
Up to 8GB DDR SDRAM (thus, 64-bit) [/B]
not necessarely...
32 bit systems can manage 4 gb in normal mode as a max. hence there are some techs that allow to allocated p to 16 gig of ram if i remember well..

[nagromme]

The specs were real--and the machines test out VERY fast. The top Mac is faster than a Dell dual Xeon by double in common apps, and costs $1000 less. That's a "best case" from Apple, but it makes the point.

There are new cheaper G4 towers too! ($1299 single, or $1599 dual 1.25 Ghz.)