IBM 750FX Processors

[MacRumors]

Catfish_Man submitted this last night - IBM's latest G3 processor (Oct, 2001) (http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/newsletter/oct2001/new-prod1.html) which is the most likely chip in the upcoming iMacs:

Manufactured in IBM's advanced 0.13 micron copper process with Silicon-on-Insulator and Low-K Dielectric technology, the 750FX will be offered at frequencies up to 1 GHz.<P.

Though the article states it would only begin "sampling" in Jan 2002.

[Onyxx]

Half a megabyte of internal cache sounds pretty good to me. And with a powerdraw that low is it possible we may be seeing this chip in the ibooks? As I type this here on my pismo as Final Cut Pro renders in the back ground, I find myself hoping that this may be the case. Sounds like a very solid and fast chip especially one that is to be aimed at an introductory level.

[elgruga]

Sounds good - low price, low power - but will they have 1 GHZ batches ready for Apple soon?

It would be a great chip for the iMac for another year, until it has to move to G4.
Also for the iBook for the next year of sales.

25% faster than a similar G3 of same HZ is what I am reading - plus its faster by virtue of 1 GHZ anyway.

Might make OSX bearable on the iBook......!

[Xapplimatic]

"OS X bearable on the iBook"... PLEASE.. I use an older iBook 466 and OS 10.1.2 runs just fine 99% of the time. OK, so the menus snap up a measurable .01 seconds slower.. big deal. Most of the people B-otching about OS X on G3s are either running really old G3s such as 166s or 233s or they are failing to give the OS adequate memory. Most complainers are running at <256 MB of RAM. Try boosting your memory a bit and see if there's so much to really complain about speed wise.

[Ramble]

they made a 166 G3?!?

[dantec]

they are only samplying in January. Will we see iMacs in Macworld Tokyo???

I don't think so... Is the Sahara G3?

[EddieFFL]

I have an iBook 500 w/ 384 ram, and OSX 10.1.2... And yes OSX is slow. It is bearable, no doubt about that, but you can't help but always be consious of the overall "lagness". It is not remotely close to as snappy as it is on OS 9, and it is quite understandable. Xapplimatic, be realistic, of course it is slow in OSX - Just not unbearably so. I can't wait to get a real G4 tower again...=)

[dantec]

And it is pretty snappy in OS 10.1. 10.0.4 was unbearable...

The secret was... after I got 10.1 I did a clean install, and made a swap partition. But my iBooks color is not down to thousands (unlike what the Apple support web-site recommends).

[dantec]

I only have 192mb of Ram in my iBook...

It runs Quake better than in OS 9 (maybe it loses a little FPS, but I don't have to adjust VM, and allocate the app's memory size). But it does struggle to run Alice... ;( But that's why I have my Quicksilver :)

[Catfish_Man]

...a G3 233 (beige desktop) w/ 384MBs of RAM, 30GB 7200rpm HD (the old one broke), and OSX.12/9.22.
I have had 3 pages loading in IE over my cable modem, a file rendering in Bryce 5, mail open, an AIM chat going, system prefs open, and preview open. It lagged , but was still somewhat useable. This is a 4 year old system running 6 apps at once (including rendering) and still being somewhat useable (and it didn't use any virtual memory either). Obviously a nice new machine would be better, but I don't know what everyone's complaining about.

[dantec]

Consider yourself... lucky...

You beige tower has been sent down from god...:eek:

-or-

maybe moto made a mistake with the processors specs, and rated it at 233 instead of 1.5 ghz...:confused:

[mischief]

He's right, Beige G3's had some real ugly issues. However you have yours configured, it's the magic combo.

[networkman]

where does the future lie for the chip now that imac has a g4?

maybe for the ibook?

are g3's also used in appliances and other stuff?

[Catfish_Man]

...it's still capable of getting stuff done, it doesn't mean it's at all fun to use while it's doing it. It has gone "not useable" a couple of times when I was running a lot less. "Not useable" in this case, means that moving windows or opening menus is impossible because it's lagging so much.

[G4scott]

Since Apple just updated their iBooks, don't expect new chips in them any time soon :(

[Wes]

Some printers have already begun to use G3s. I read it in Macworld UK