PowerMac G5 Revision in Jan 2004?

[MacRumors]

AppleInsider reports (http://www.appleinsider.com/news.php?id=239) that Apple is planning to release PowerMac G5 revisions by the end of January.

According to the rumor site, currently testing PowerMacs range from single 2.0GHz to dual 2.5GHz G5s and that IBM has had G5 chips at up to 2.5GHz in sampling since March.

IBM briefly leaked (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/03/20030305162803.shtml) a press release in March claiming the PowerPC 970 will reach speeds between 1.8GHz and 2.5GHz. Further confirmation of this initial target speed (2.5GHz) can be seen in this IBM Presentation (PDF), Page 23 (http://www.atumtech.com/testssss/12.pdf) dated from Feb 2003.

MacRumors has also heard whispers that the low end PowerMac for the next revision will come in at a single 2.0GHz G5, possibly verifying Appleinsider's information.

[andybouchard]

Slow down Apple! I don't want my 1.8 G5 to be old and slow already! :(

[hobbes3113]

I would be first in line for an updated g5...

[.a]

yes!
and this dual 2.5ghz g5 will be my next computer!
.a

[pbooktebo]

I'm curious to know what other Rev A-Rev B difference there might be, any thoughts? It seems like they always find and fix a few areas that make life a bit smoother for the end-user.

[onemilkid]

So my road-map is right on target.

Dual 2 GHz released an my birthday (June 23rd 2003)

Dual 2,5 GHz released on January 6th (MacExpo)

And Dual 3 GHz (PPC980) on my next birthday (June 23rd 2004 - WWDC 04)

Then I'll be all over this baby, hope it'll work moneywise. I'm a poor student, makin' some money with graphic design.

[ennerseed]

now maybe Apple can run their G5 ad in the UK again. -oh yeah and it would be cool to have yadda yadda…

[matthew24]

:) :D ;) :p :cool: :rolleyes:

[Silencio]

Such a refreshing change to see such improved performance in such shorter timeframes.

I hope the forthcoming low-end and midrange machines are more compelling than the current ones. The high end dual 2.0 blows them away for not much more money. Would be great to see a midrange dual or a less expensive starting price on the low-end model.

[TomSmithMacEd]

Wow, and I just bought a g4 emac I could've waited and got a 1.6 g5 at a lower price. Ohh well I cannot complain. I'm still on a mac!

[Ambrose Chapel]

it seems like the G5s just came out, with all the shipping delays..but yeah i guess jan will be the typical 6 month Power Mac revision. think they'll have a different airport/bluetooth solution than the add on plug things? faster superdrive? hopefully the low end will get the same tech as the other 2 models...

[Oirectine]

If this is true, will that mean the G5 will really truly definitely be the "world's fastest personal computer"? Has Intel/AMD released any faster procs lately? All I can think of is that P4 "Extreme Edition"...

Maybe soon those banned adverts in the UK will be legal:rolleyes:

[dornball]

great news!
i'm all for apple making huge leaps in speed for each 6-month-revision, .5GHz each time......not bad.

though i can't help thinking how it will look for apple to have its powermac at 2.5 GHz, and its other pro line model, the powerbook, at roughly half that speed (1.25-1.33 GHz).

any thoughts?

-dornball

[dongmin]

Originally posted by Silencio
I hope the forthcoming low-end and midrange machines are more compelling than the current ones. The high end dual 2.0 blows them away for not much more money. Would be great to see a midrange dual or a less expensive starting price on the low-end model.

I thought the 1.8ghz G5s were pretty good machines. It has the same architecture as the dual 2.0 ghz, no?

I suspect that they'll put the 2.0 ghz G5 in the current 1.8 ghz architecture. The middle should be a dual 2.2 ghz. And the top end a dual 2.5 ghz with 1.25 ghz bus!!! Glad I waited. Will we see the Radeon 9800 standard in the top end? What other improvements are possible? Built-in bluetooth to go along with the wireless mouse/keyboard? An added PCI slot?

New displays too, please!

[sethypoo]

Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

But still, a single 2.0 Ghz would be nice, just in March or something.

Again, not so fast Apple!

[mactastic]

They are working as fast as they can to get a g5 powerbook. Probably won't happen until the next die shrink though.

As for G5 updates, a 25% proccessor speed jump is nice! I wonder how long it will be before the high end iMac, and maybe even the eMac go G5.... Or whether we are in for a major shakeup in products, what with all the cube-shaped iMac rumors, and longstanding gripes about the eMac.

[Dahl]

Originally posted by Ambrose Chapel
it seems like the G5s just came out, with all the shipping delays..but yeah i guess jan will be the typical 6 month Power Mac revision. think they'll have a different airport/bluetooth solution than the add on plug things? faster superdrive? hopefully the low end will get the same tech as the other 2 models...
I guess I shouldn't unhappy about this, but I'm a little bummed, if it turns out to be true. I just got my G5 dual 2.0.

What Apple needs to update is their displays!

[Dippo]

If this is true, then I definately will have to get a dual 3Ghz next summer for my birthday. That would be so great :)

[mrsebastian]

for all those that just waited 2 months to get their g5s, don't worry there'll be a two month waiting period again. with other words it'll be summer by the time you can actually get the revised, at which point the next revision will be announced.

[m01ety]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Again, not so fast Apple!

You must be kidding me. You want to halt technological development so you can feel good about your recent purchase? :rolleyes:

Keep it rollin', Apple. Keep it rollin'.,

[whoami]

for all of you people crying that you just bought your dual 2ghz.... :p
c'mon, you guys know apple's upgrade cycle. i'm glad i stuck with my gut and am waiting for rev. b.!!!

[cr2sh]

Originally posted by sethypoo
People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

A single 2.0GHz as opposed to a single 1.6GHz... over a 5 month period? That doesn't seem like too fast of a leap to me... It makes sense, an update every ~6months or so would give us another jump in about july... end of summer kinda, at 3GHz.

Seriously though, this type of jump really emphasizes how much the rest of the Apple lineup is sucking right now. The desktops would be 2.5GHz g5 compared to the 1.33GHz G4 laptop... come on Apple. Give us our g5 powerbook!

Also, there's no way we'll have a 2month wait debacle again.. apple learned their lesson.. look at all the recent releases for proof.

[Photorun]

It's sooo bizarre people would want to hobble Apple's advances so they could feel good about their machines. If Apple DOESN'T throw all they got at rapidly advancing thier speeds peecees will keep up and their weenies will keep on whining about unfair tests. This isn't badmitten, this is war! Apple needs faster computers yesterday, bring 'em on!

And sure I'll be bummed my 2.0 DP G5 not only isn't the fastest, but for all we know the 2.0 DP G5 will be the low end and a grand less than what I paid, but it's for a good cause... that being Apple!

[jouster]

Also, The Register claims that there will soon be G5 blades:

http://www.theregister.com/content/61/33953.html

FWIW

[Stella]

No Apple shouldn't slow down.

Apple must remain competitive and that means bringing out faster machines.

People who have G5s on order can cancel.

Those who have already purchased one, well, should realize apple aren't going to stand still just to make them feel they have the fastest machine in the Apple Range.


Originally posted by sethypoo
Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

But still, a single 2.0 Ghz would be nice, just in March or something.

Again, not so fast Apple!

[ksz]

Originally posted by m01ety
You must be kidding me. You want to halt technological development so you can feel good about your recent purchase?
There was a time not so long ago when Apple just couldn't seem to keep up with the rate of progress in the PC world. Now Apple seems to be on a path to outpacing the competition in both hardware and software. This is a good thing...a very long overdue good thing. However, recent purchasers of the latest and greatest will feel a bit let down if their latest and greatest becomes yesterday's technology too quickly. That's human nature, but it does NOT mean that your Dual 2GHz machine is suddenly any slower...you waited for a 2GHz processor and you got it. If it does the job for you, be happy and wait 3 years for the 8 GHz model. Motto: buy what you need today and skip the incremental speed bumps; upgrade again when there is a substantially newer model.

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

But still, a single 2.0 Ghz would be nice, just in March or something.

Again, not so fast Apple!

Make no mistake... if Apple has your money, and your system is running, they don't care about how peeved you are.

:-(

[chabig]

Though i can't help thinking how it will look for apple to have its powermac at 2.5 GHz, and its other pro line model, the powerbook, at roughly half that speed.

Yes, the Powerbook may be half as fast as the G5 tower, but it's more than twice as portable. ;)

[rikers_mailbox]

With these updates coming so quickly, I hope Apple can keep up the pace beyond the 2.5 or 3.0 ghz G5s. Otherwise they'll be dead in the water.

I wonder what Apple/IBM has up their sleeve when Steve says "the PowerPC roadmap -- which you might have heard about already -- is really good, I can't talk about it, but it's _really good_ what's coming."

a dual 8 ghz G6? :D

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by mrsebastian
for all those that just waited 2 months to get their g5s, don't worry there'll be a two month waiting period again. with other words it'll be summer by the time you can actually get the revised, at which point the next revision will be announced.

A processor speed bump is easy to produce. They will not be waiting 2 months for a simple processor switch. This is IBM, friends... they've had this part for 9 months now. It's not like Apple is re-tooling the G5 radically to a G6 this time...

My guess is a speed bump to dual 2.5 as everyone has suggested. I also think the 9800 will become a standard part on the high end. I also believe they will be bumping the Bus Speed to 1.25 Ghz, which might require a new chip revision on the mobo, but I wouldn't know.

I would expect a month delay for iMacs, since they are changing enclosures.

[andybouchard]

I know, I know, If apple has the technology to upgrade these G5's then they should do it. Its not like I didn't expect my 1.8 to be one of the most powerful computers for very much longer anyway...

[crees!]

Geez, whine a little bit more. If you don't want your G5 system then pipe down and give it to me. I'll give it a nice home.

BTW, what does that do to my 1.25Ghz PB? Does that make it OLD and SLOW. Hell the ******* no. Grow up a bit.

[i_wolf]

I definately think that apple will update their line up in January. However i also believe that as is typical with most apple launches there will be a delay time until you can actaully get your hands on one of the units... more than likely i would imagine that it will be feb until people can actually get their hands on a machine at all.
Which to be honest wouldn't sway me in any way getting a machine now. By the time the new machines come out there will be 3GHz machines in the pipe for the WWDC. There is always something faster, just thankfully this time Apple is on the faster!
Incidentally, those bench's we see for dual 2Ghz are just gonna go up and up.... any of you guys seen the results for the IBM XLC and XLF recompiled code.... most cases it produces code that runs 200 -300% faster than GCC compiler code. Which most apps includingt SPEC were compiled with.
I wouldn't worry about your dual 2GHz not being the fastest any more...... it may not be the fastest mac in a couple of months, but hell it will still be giving the fastest pc's a walloping.

[andybouchard]

Originally posted by crees!
Geez, whine a little bit more. If you don't want your G5 system then pipe down and give it to me. I'll give it a nice home.

BTW, what does that do to my 1.25Ghz PB? Does that make it OLD and SLOW. Hell the ******* no. Grow up a bit.

Whoa! calm down buddy! Nobody is whinning or complaining! Like i said before, if Apple has the technology to upgrade then by all means do it! I wasn't saying apple should halt production of new upgraded machines for a few more months just so I could have the second most powerful apple computer for that much longer, I was just saying its a bummer that the computer cycle goes so fast that the top of the line you bought 2 months ago is suddenly not top of the line anymore, and cheaper! (most importantly), but hey, i knew that when i bought it...

[greenstork]

Originally posted by dornball
great news!
i'm all for apple making huge leaps in speed for each 6-month-revision, .5GHz each time......not bad.

though i can't help thinking how it will look for apple to have its powermac at 2.5 GHz, and its other pro line model, the powerbook, at roughly half that speed (1.25-1.33 GHz).

any thoughts?

-dornball

You mean, like Intel Pentium's? ;)

[maxvamp]

Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

I still have a G4 733 that is serving me fine. This was my first Mac purchase, and with this thing, I have to say how impressed I am that this machine is still totally usable after **almost** three years of ownership. This is not a claim that I have been able to make with PCs I have owned in the past. If Apple slowed down now, they would be right back where the were 6 months ago. They need to outpace Intel for a while, and make themselves the clear winner.

As a sign of good faith to all those afraid that these new machines will render their old ones useless, I will offer to be a Martyr and take all of those obsolete dual 2GHz machines, that people will be throwing away.... when the new dual 3 GHz come out that is. <grin>

I am just glad that I didn't just buy 1100 dual G5s to build a supercomputer or something like it....I would have to settle for being 3rd fastest supercomputer instead of 2nd or THE fastest when those pesky 3Ghz boxes come out..... :D

Max

[greenstork]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

But still, a single 2.0 Ghz would be nice, just in March or something.

Again, not so fast Apple!

I'll just chalk this up to a off morning, you are kidding right? Apple should slow down developemnt, why? So people can have slower computers, why exactly?

If the ony reason is so that current owners can feel better about their purchases, I have to disagree with you. Apple is a business that sells computers. Keyword=sells. Without constant innovation and upgrades, Apple will look like the company that almost tanked in the early 90's.

[dieselg4]

When and if they do introduce the faster chips, its quite possible the dual 2.5 would be higher in price than that the current dual 2.0. Anybody remember whne the Dual G4/500 sawtooth was introduced at $3499? I'm thinking we could see this at MWSF:
Dual G5 2.5 $3499
Dual G5 2.25 $2999
Single G5 2.0 $2499
Single G5 1.8 $1999

Then things get a littel sketchy . . .

G5 iMac 1.8 (17") 1799 512/80/Super
G5 iMac 1.6 (17") 1599 512/60/combo?
G5 iMac 1.6 (15"?) 1399 256/60/combo

This is where things get sketchier still . . .

eMac? Who knows . . . Left in the dust, or maybe an AIO flat enclosure like the 20th anniverary mac, with slot loading side-mounted drive, with Built-In 15 or 17" LCD? G4 1.25 & 1.33 & DDR

Unfortunately for Powerbook, I don't think anything will happen with these guys @ MWSF. Maybe they all get bumped to 1.25, 1.33, and 1.42/1.5 (if moto has them) Maybe they they get a transmeta crusoe? Haha Just kidding on that part!

[ITR 81]

I wonder if this means a Dual 3.5GHz will be out by end of the yr 2004 or Jan or 2005? At this rate by middle of 2005 Mac will be running a dual 4GHz. To me Apple needs to do this to compete with the whinee PC users.

[greenstork]

Originally posted by Dahl
I guess I shouldn't unhappy about this, but I'm a little bummed, if it turns out to be true. I just got my G5 dual 2.0.

What Apple needs to update is their displays!

When you bought your computer, Steve Jobs told you it would be 50% faster in a year, did you think he was lying? Be bummed all you want, but you brought it on yourself with full knowledge of the future product line.

[tortoise]

AMD is supposed to have a new set of Opterons in the 2.4 GHz range available in a month or two. I don't know what Intel is doing, but AMD has a fairly aggressive roadmap for their AMD64 chipsets and processors.

From a pure performance standpoint, the AMD64 chips are the biggest competitor to the PPC970 (and future) chips, and the AMD chips are somewhat faster in the general case. Unless you are running an application that can really use Altivec (and most can't), the Opterons are generally a bit faster than the PPC970s. We have huge mostly integer codes that run insanely fast on Opterons, though that doesn't keep us from using MacOS X workstations. An Opteron with Altivec (instead of the not as nice SSE2) would be untouchable.

The real loser in all this is Intel. The Opteron is a wicked good chip, and clock for clock does very well against the PPC970. The Itanium is going the way of a the i860 as far as I can tell.

[Hawthorne]

1. Rumors of a new G5 iMac enclosure (Cube^2) with no attached monitor.

2. The only product Apple makes that *doesn't* reflect the current snow/brushed metal mania and is still stuck in Graphite mode is...

Apple Monitors.

Veddy Interestink.

[Dahl]

Originally posted by greenstork
When you bought your computer, Steve Jobs told you it would be 50% faster in a year, did you think he was lying? Be bummed all you want, but you brought it on yourself with full knowledge of the future product line.
Dude, I know how the biz works. It's just from my personal point of view, of couse Apple should push as hard as possible. When Apple succeed with new products all Apple users benefit. Besides if I need too, I'll just trade in my dual, no big deal.

I still want new displays though...

[rotorblade]

Jobs never said, "Before the end of next summer". Where did that come from?

What he said was, "What about the future? We're at 2GHz today. IBM and Apple, are today announcing, that within 12 months, we'll be at 3 Ghz."

"today" and "within".

So within 12 months of the day he announced the G5, Apple is supposed to be at 3Ghz. That in my book, unless the calendar has changed, means on or before 23 June, 2004.

Will they deliver? Probably not. Still. No reason to state something he never said.

[DGFan]

Originally posted by Oirectine
If this is true, will that mean the G5 will really truly definitely be the "world's fastest personal computer"? Has Intel/AMD released any faster procs lately? All I can think of is that P4 "Extreme Edition"...



Shouldn't P5/Prescott or whatever be out by then?

[jncrow]

So does that put is with a G7 in about middle of 2006. That would build one screaming cluster...

[arn]

Originally posted by rotorblade
Jobs never said, "Before the end of next summer". Where did that come from?

What he said was, "What about the future? We're at 2GHz today. IBM and Apple, are today announcing, that within 12 months, we'll be at 3 Ghz."
......
No reason to state something he never said.

He said it at Apple Expo Paris (http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/09/16/liveupdate/index.php?redirect=1068635671000)

"We've committed before the end of next summer" to get the Power Mac G5 to 3GHz.

[Dont Hurt Me]

meanwhile motorola has announced g4's at 1.3 ghz:rolleyes: this really hits home as to who has been holding back apple and adding to the confusing model lines, this makes a nice big window to place the g5 imac and they dont have to worry about sales being taken from the pro towers. a dual 2.5,a dual 2.0, and a single 2.0. very sweet indeed. :)

[starflyer 59]

If this does happen, then they need to put the 1.6 G5 in the iMac. There is no reason for it to be sitting there with a G4 that is half the speed. I would also be willing to bet that G5 Powerbooks would be out by the end of summer if a 3Ghz Powermac is announced.

Things are looking mighty nice!

[iPC]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Maybe Apple should slow down their updates to this. People who waited 2 months plus to get one might be a little peeved at the fact their 1.6, 1.8, or dual 2.0 is already getting old.

But still, a single 2.0 Ghz would be nice, just in March or something.

Again, not so fast Apple!
I take it you are unaware of the standard upgrade cycles in the wintel world?

6 months is nearly an eternity to wait for new stuff... much less 8 or 10.

Face it, when you buy something, it should be out of date relatively soon. Either due to upgrades in what you bought, or the competition moving forward.

We don't want the stagnation that was the first few G4 releases! :rolleyes:

[vannote]

Originally posted by rikers_mailbox
With these updates coming so quickly, I hope Apple can keep up the pace beyond the 2.5 or 3.0 ghz G5s. Otherwise they'll be dead in the water.

I wonder what Apple/IBM has up their sleeve when Steve says "the PowerPC roadmap -- which you might have heard about already -- is really good, I can't talk about it, but it's _really good_ what's coming."

a dual 8 ghz G6? :D

These IBM processors are based on IBM's own PowerPC designs for it's own high-end servers, Power4, Power5, etc...

Considering IBM is waging it's own performance wars with other HPC (High Performance Computing) hardware vendors, they wont let these processor designs get stagnant for a heartbeat.

[simply258]

If the Power Mac line will range from 2 - 2.5 .. i guess the 1.6 and 1.8 G5's will be allocated to the iMacs ..

[Falleron]

Well, I am in the market for a new G5 early next year. I hope they get as close to 3Ghz as possible by early new year. Most likely it will be a 2.5Ghz. I hope they do include a slightly better graphics cards as standard.

[MacDuff]

Originally posted by Stella
No Apple shouldn't slow down.

Apple must remain competitive and that means bringing out faster machines.

People who have G5s on order can cancel.

Those who have already purchased one, well, should realize apple aren't going to stand still just to make them feel they have the fastest machine in the Apple Range.

I couldn't agree with you more Stella! Apple does NOT want to fall behind the race again. It's not in the business of sitting on its hands. And we all know that when we buy a computer, the evolution of technology doesn't just stop for our sake. That's just the way it is. To quote 'Bruce Horsby.'

[3-22]

First you complain about the creeping G4 speed bumps... Then the G5 comes out and may exceed 2GHz in a couple month... And you still complain!

:p

I'm just kidding, I bought a dual G5 and I'm sure I will be weeping when I see the new models. But that's the way computers go, espeically the way it goes when you have a good chip manufacturer. Apple needs to keep the megahertz rising if they want to continue to claim "the fastest personal computer"

[rotorblade]

Originally posted by arn
He said it at Apple Expo Paris (http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/09/16/liveupdate/index.php?redirect=1068635671000)

"We've committed before the end of next summer" to get the Power Mac G5 to 3GHz.

He's singing a different tune now huh?

Figures!

Thanks Arn!

[singletrack]

Originally posted by dornball
great news!
i'm all for apple making huge leaps in speed for each 6-month-revision, .5GHz each time......not bad.

though i can't help thinking how it will look for apple to have its powermac at 2.5 GHz, and its other pro line model, the powerbook, at roughly half that speed (1.25-1.33 GHz).

any thoughts?

-dornball

Nothing wrong with that. Compare Centrino laptops with Desktops.

[anthonymoody]

Originally posted by maxvamp
I still have a G4 733 that is serving me fine. This was my first Mac purchase, and with this thing, I have to say how impressed I am that this machine is still totally usable after **almost** three years of ownership. This is not a claim that I have been able to make with PCs I have owned in the past.


I wonder what you tried to do with your peecee that made it not totally usable after three years? I have a Dell laptop that is many years old, can't remember how many but much older than 3...it has a 300Mhz PII in it. I've made two upgrades to it. The first took it to 640MB RAM, the second to Windows XP. While I don't do any video editing on it (not my thing), it works fine for modest Photoshop elements work, not to mention surfing, email, and Office. The equivalent model in the Dell line now ships with a 2.6GHz PIV [btw for the multiple comments in this thread about PC chip speeds in notebooks vs desktops...wrong - the fastest laptop chips are about 3/4 the clock speed of the fastest desktop chips, at 2.6Ghz vs 3.2Ghz]...that's over 8x the clock speed of mine (not to mention other enhancements like drive speeds, bus speeds and RAM speeds. Yet, the little laptop is totally usable. I keep looking for an excuse to get a new one, but I can't b/c the thing just flat out works.

Seriously, I'm not trying to start a PC v Mac argument. I'm a Mac fan too. I'm just wondering what you experienced in this regard that makes you say this about your PC ownership experience?

My guess is that if you'd updated to XP - which is an extremely stable, usable OS (even if it falls short of X in the usability dept), your older PCs would still be quite usable.

Just my $.02

TM

[pgwalsh]

Originally posted by Frobozz


My guess is a speed bump to dual 2.5 as everyone has suggested. I also think the 9800 will become a standard part on the high end. I also believe they will be bumping the Bus Speed to 1.25 Ghz, which might require a new chip revision on the mobo, but I wouldn't know. Great to see the speed bumps... I think this will put some minds at ease knowing there wont be any drastic changes to the Mac platform because they're unable to keep up with the PC.

I wouldn't count on the top model including the Radeon 9800 unless there's a newer or better Radeon in the pipeline. I imagine Apple does well on those upgrades and that helps the bottom-line.

I'm wondering if Rev b will have faster RAM or an 8x dvd player. Will there be any architecture improvements? I imagine there will be some fine-tuning.

[manu chao]

Originally posted by tortoise
AMD is supposed to have a new set of Opterons in the 2.4 GHz range available in a month or two. I don't know what Intel is doing, but AMD has a fairly aggressive roadmap for their AMD64 chipsets and processors.

From a pure performance standpoint, the AMD64 chips are the biggest competitor to the PPC970 (and future) chips...

I completely agree with you about the Opteron, but is it really true that Intel only went from 3 to 3.2Ghz from April till November 03?
(I am not particular good at remembering numbers or dates, but it should be about that.)

[ksz]

Originally posted by singletrack
Nothing wrong with that. Compare Centrino laptops with Desktops.
From a pure gigahertz perspective this is true. The fastest Centrinos are 1.7 GHz last I checked, though speed bumps are due soon. Compared to 3+ GHz P4 desktops the Centrinos seem slow, but that is not necessarily the case. Centrinos are a whole new microprocessor -- the Pentium M, which borrows more from the Pentium III design than the deep pipeline Pentium 4s. Centrinos and P4s cannot be compared on the basis of clock speed alone, and even Intel has come to admit this.

Centrinos perform very well in relation to their P4 cousins. I don't have references to comprehensive benchmarks, but here's a comparison between Centrino, Pentium 4M, and Pentium IIIM processors:

http://www.techtv.com/products/jump/0,23009,3420532,00.html

[vannote]

Originally posted by jouster
Also, The Register claims that there will soon be G5 blades:

http://www.theregister.com/content/61/33953.html

FWIW

After reviewing the document at:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-53431

I feel this is also the about time you will be seeing G5 Xserve's. IBM is packing multiple 970's in less than 1U.

I would say IBM will stick with Linux for it's products and Apple will supply basically the same machine in a nice Apple wrapper (running OS X of course).

[anthonymoody]

Also remember that Centrino's are not the only chips put into PC laptops. Many use versions of the PIV, which clock up to 2.6Ghz in laptop form...

TM

[Mac Dummy]

I'm waiting for the 3 Ghz towers later in 2004 before I even attempt to upgrade. For now my 1 Ghz 12" powerbook is fine.:)

[jamilecrire]

Originally posted by cr2sh
A single 2.0GHz as opposed to a single 1.6GHz... over a 5 month period? That doesn't seem like too fast of a leap to me... It makes sense, an update every ~6months or so would give us another jump in about july... end of summer kinda, at 3GHz.

Seriously though, this type of jump really emphasizes how much the rest of the Apple lineup is sucking right now. The desktops would be 2.5GHz g5 compared to the 1.33GHz G4 laptop... come on Apple. Give us our g5 powerbook!

Also, there's no way we'll have a 2month wait debacle again.. apple learned their lesson.. look at all the recent releases for proof.

Lol, I have a QS 733 and have yet to see a reason to upgrade. It's faster than hell running 10.2 and I have a 22" display. 10.1 was painful but that was a long time ago. I have a G3 900MHz iBook and love it to death as well. I'll wait for the 15" powerbook issues to get worked out and I may get one of them.

I guess the speed is really dependent on the applications you plan on running. Since most of my work is web development, text files really don't need much more than 100MHz anyway (unless you are running Dreamweaver, damn that is one bloated POS, nice syntax highlighting however).

[pbrennen]

just a quick question... has the 970 been offered for sale branded as the "powerpc 970" from ibm? back before the g5, the release of this was supposed to be a potential yardstick for predicting the release of the g5.

edit: i see it's being offered in the "BladeCenter". are these things shipping yet?

[kgforce]

I'm ready for a new G5!! My faithful B&W G3/400 (upgraded to G4/500) is getting long in the tooth. I've upgraded it about as much as possible (ATI Radeon 7000 PCI, UltraATA100/133 Controller Card and ATA/133 Hard Drives.)

I'm sure that even a lowly 1.6GHz G5 would be a vast improvement over what I have now. But I'm holding out for a dual 2.5Ghz G5 (or thereabouts). Whatever they come out with in January will be mine!

[ITR 81]

I'm betting by the time the dual 3GHz appears the first G5 PB's will be appearing as well probably running at 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 GHz.

Anyway I look at this by end of summer 2005 Apple will have a Dual 4 GHz and by the time LongHorn comes out the Dual 4.5GHz will be out with a Dual 5GHz coming out shortly there after.

I know I'm thinking ahead but I can dream=)

[nighthawk]

IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 (Type 8842) - Product overview
...The BladeCenter supports installation of up to 14 hot-swap BladeCenter JS20 blades within 7 U of rack space. Each JS20 blade contains two PowerPC 970 processors for a total of 28 processors for each BladeCenter. Redundant components round out the system to provide the high-availability levels needed for today's enterprise server applications... This new offering includes two standard 1.6GHz processors with a standard 800MHz front-side bus (FSB)...

So IBM is packing the equivelent of 4 1.6 GHz 970 CPUs in a single 1U rack mount space. That sounds pretty encouraging for the XServe.

What do you think would get better performance: Dual 2.0 GHz or Quad 1.6 GHz?

[dongmin]

Originally posted by simply258
If the Power Mac line will range from 2 - 2.5 .. i guess the 1.6 and 1.8 G5's will be allocated to the iMacs ..

Wouldn't get your hopes up...just yet. Putting the G5 in the iMacs won't be a simple matter of swapping chips. The dome (or cube) will require some pretty heavy re-engineering to fit in a G5. I don't think there is room in the current form factor for the massive heat sink and fans that are needed for the G5.

I know, I know. Some of you will maintain that the G5 doesn't run much hotter than the G4 and you'll quote the IBM press release that they sent out 13 months ago. But the power dissipation figures at that point were just estimates. We don't know what the actual power usage is, epecially with the new architecture. What we do know is that Apple has publicly stated that the G5 in its current form is too hot to run in their PowerBooks (and by extension the iMac). I trust Apple's engineers more than you guys quoting your outdated press releases. If the heat issues weren't such a big deal, they would've put out a G5 powerbook by now.

[Sailfish]

Guess I'm going to get the Dual 3 Ghz G5 next summer and a pair of those Infaband cards they use on the Big Mac to hook it up with my Dual 2 Ghz G5.

Look out VA I'm building my own supercluster!

To much power, what can one do with it all but give it away to Seti and Folding?

Well it's a hobby I guess...

[tortoise]

Originally posted by dongmin
Wouldn't get your hopes up...just yet. Putting the G5 in the iMacs won't be a simple matter of swapping chips. The dome (or cube) will require some pretty heavy re-engineering to fit in a G5. I don't think there is room in the current form factor for the massive heat sink and fans that are needed for the G5.


There is also heat generated by the other chipsets and memory, particularly with the high bus speeds and fast memory the G5 uses. Throw in the GPU and you have a heat management issue. It isn't just the CPU that generates significant heat any more; a lot of board components require heat sinks and even fans these days. They may have to wait until the 90nm process parts start rolling off the line before they can do "heat dissipation challenged" designs.

[ewoh24]

This is all great news...I love it, but I have to say I too am a little concerned by the rapid pace of innovation, Not because I think it's a bad thing, or I want bragging rights, it's that I just spent $1799 for my 867Mhz PB and now there are apps coming out that have minimum requirements of 700Mhz (like Everquest for Mac). How much longer, at this pace, before I can't run new apps on my PB? Thats the natural evolution of things, but my machine is less than 4 months old! Will it be obsolete in a year?

[greenstork]

Originally posted by anthonymoody
I wonder what you tried to do with your peecee that made it not totally usable after three years? I have a Dell laptop that is many years old, can't remember how many but much older than 3...it has a 300Mhz PII in it. I've made two upgrades to it. The first took it to 640MB RAM, the second to Windows XP. While I don't do any video editing on it (not my thing), it works fine for modest Photoshop elements work, not to mention surfing, email, and Office. The equivalent model in the Dell line now ships with a 2.6GHz PIV [btw for the multiple comments in this thread about PC chip speeds in notebooks vs desktops...wrong - the fastest laptop chips are about 3/4 the clock speed of the fastest desktop chips, at 2.6Ghz vs 3.2Ghz]...that's over 8x the clock speed of mine (not to mention other enhancements like drive speeds, bus speeds and RAM speeds. Yet, the little laptop is totally usable. I keep looking for an excuse to get a new one, but I can't b/c the thing just flat out works.

Seriously, I'm not trying to start a PC v Mac argument. I'm a Mac fan too. I'm just wondering what you experienced in this regard that makes you say this about your PC ownership experience?

My guess is that if you'd updated to XP - which is an extremely stable, usable OS (even if it falls short of X in the usability dept), your older PCs would still be quite usable.

Just my $.02

TM

If you're going to correct someone, at least know what the heck you're talking about. The 1.7 GHz Intel Pentium M is much faster (and cooler) that their stodgy 2.6 GHz P4.

[IndyGopher]

Originally posted by rotorblade
He's singing a different tune now huh?

Figures!

Thanks Arn!
Yup. Damn that Steve Jobs... I bet he sneaks into IBM's labs and screws with their designs just to make it take longer to reach 3GHz.

The only TUNE he's singing is whatever timeframe IBM hands him. He got a little over-anxious, said they'd be out in a year, and someone from IBM pulled him aside and told him to relax the time-frame a bit. There's no way you can pin a delay in a SPEED BUMP on him.

[Edot]

There could be a downside to updating computers too fast. People see that the processor speeds are jumping 500MHz every 6 months and the upgraders who have been putting of purchases will wait even longer because they don't want to be out $1,000 in a couple of months. 3-4 months between speed bumps is not Apple's former update cycle. Remember these machines did not start shipping in quantity until late September-early October. Feb-March would be the expected upgrade cycle. I am not saying that releasing faster CPU's is a bad thing, but they better watch out or they won't see all of these people with old machines upgrading so rapidly. I don't know if the $1,000 loss would be worth having the dual g5 a few months early. That is if they even have a dual 2GHz model in the next revision. I guess it is too late:( :D

[pimentoLoaf]

I just shipped my 8 month old 2.4ghz PC off to my brother (who doesn't like Macs) -- I'll miss the speed, though working with the endlessly crashing WindowsXP was more than excreable.

My 1.33ghz is fast enough, but when running multiple apps with FCE (FinalCut Express), or rendering 3d images with Carrara Studio, it always helps to have the fastest processor.

Wouldn't be in the market for something merely chugging about at 3ghz. If Apple could cobble together a 4, 5, or more ghz desktop by January 2005...

[howard]

how upgradable are powermacs?...can you guys with the 1.6s and 1.8s through in a 2.5 when they come out?

[coolfactor]

This isn't badmitten, this is war!

I was wondering why American's pronounce "badminton" as "badmitten".. cuz they spell it that way! Sorry, off topic.

I think Apple needs to keep pushing forward with the development of their systems, but also keep upping the ante on the overall user experience. I just purchased a 1GHz eMac, and it's no faster than my 500Mhz iBook in terms of performance and productivity. That was a shocker to me. Maybe the extra 512MB RAM that I'm getting will make a difference.

[dieselg4]

Originally posted by howard
how upgradable are powermacs?...can you guys with the 1.6s and 1.8s through in a 2.5 when they come out?

A guy at CompUSA told me they were not, saying somehting about the CPU and the Board being built speciically for each other. Whether or not he knew what he wwas talking about is anohter matter.

[howard]

Originally posted by dieselg4
A guy at CompUSA told me they were not, saying somehting about the CPU and the Board being built speciically for each other. Whether or not he knew what he wwas talking about is anohter matter.

with apple now cranking out the cpus a little quicker it would be nice for powermac owners to actually be able to upgrade w/o buying a whole new system....seem ridiculous if you can't do that.

Originally posted by coolfactor
I think Apple needs to keep pushing forward with the development of their systems, but also keep upping the ante on the overall user experience. I just purchased a 1GHz eMac, and it's no faster than my 500Mhz iBook in terms of performance and productivity. That was a shocker to me. Maybe the extra 512MB RAM that I'm getting will make a difference.

how much are you using your computer?...maybe with general word/email stuff your not going to notice a big difference...but between my friends 500mhz and my 700mhz ibook there was a huge difference with things like photoshop and audio recording

[Trimix]

Originally posted by cr2sh
A single 2.0GHz as opposed to a single 1.6GHz... over a 5 month period? That doesn't seem like too fast of a leap to me... It makes sense, an update every ~6months or so would give us another jump in about july... end of summer kinda, at 3GHz.

Seriously though, this type of jump really emphasizes how much the rest of the Apple lineup is sucking right now. The desktops would be 2.5GHz g5 compared to the 1.33GHz G4 laptop... come on Apple. Give us our g5 powerbook!

Also, there's no way we'll have a 2month wait debacle again.. apple learned their lesson.. look at all the recent releases for proof.

How about some i-mac 1.6 G5 ??
:D

[sparky76]

Remember what Steve said about Longhorn catching up with Jaguar in 2006. We should be 3 releases ahead by then. Wouldn't it be nice to be that far ahead in hardware too, by then?

My 1GHz PB 17" may be fast enough for me but it is never fast enough. We all want more.

Think about it - more power should mean more games (as well as more bragging rights).

[ZildjianKX]

Feel bad for all the people who shelled out all that money on DP 2 GHz G5s... hurts to be on the bleeding edge...

[Foxer]

Originally posted by Edot
There could be a downside to updating computers too fast. People see that the processor speeds are jumping 500MHz every 6 months and the upgraders who have been putting of purchases will wait even longer because they don't want to be out $1,000 in a couple of months. 3-4 months between speed bumps is not Apple's former update cycle. Remember these machines did not start shipping in quantity until late September-early October. Feb-March would be the expected upgrade cycle.

Of course, if the new ave of G5 are announced in Jan, they won't be avialable until April or so, so the pattern holds, and you get us Mac Geeks excited twice (at annoucnement and at shipping) and in tizzy in between.

[macrumors12345]

Originally posted by pbooktebo
I'm curious to know what other Rev A-Rev B difference there might be, any thoughts? It seems like they always find and fix a few areas that make life a bit smoother for the end-user.

Rev B probably won't have the weird chirpy power supply. ;-)

Don't get me wrong though, I love my Dual 2 Ghz G5. :)

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by ksz

Centrinos perform very well in relation to their P4 cousins. I don't have references to comprehensive benchmarks, but here's a comparison between Centrino, Pentium 4M, and Pentium IIIM processors:



The funny thing is there has been rumors of major political battles between the desktop and laptop chip units because of performance. A major mag (Think it was PC mag) has suggested that the Pentium M could make a nice desktop CPU. This sent an unsettling shockwave through Intel and specifically the desktop CPU BU. Up til now the gold child of Intel has always been the desktop CPU BU and along comes the mobile processor group to upstage them with better performance per clock and suddenly the Pentium M gets all the limelight and rightly so. It really is a sweet chip. I'm going to be highly interested in seeing how this plays out in the long run.

[SiliconAddict]

*does a collective three stooges slap across the face of everyone that wants Apple to slow down*

Do you guys think Intel is going to slow down? How about AMD? I can guarantee you the Opteron 64 has just taken a deep breath and is getting ready for a wind sprint. Apple HAS to stay on its game to stay, at minimum, abreast of the competition. See the thing is you guys don’t realize that THIS is what Apple should have been doing since day one. This quarterly product updates are the norm. Its Moto that was keeping this from happening. Way to go IBM! :D

The big question in my mind is: Will all those G5’s already out there be upgradeable to the latest and greatest? More specifically will the BigMac be upgradeable. I can bet they are licking their chops at solidifying 3rd place or maybe even, dare I think it, move into second place. Hmmm how many TF is the 2nd place slot running at? :confused:

[billyboy]

Steve Jobs said his priority in the near future is to cater for existing Mac owners (design types) who havent upgraded for 4 or 5 years because of lack of funds and static progress with Powermacs. Sounds like no excuse for holding back over the next year for them. And if Macs are inline or dare one think, slightly ahead of PCs, switchers hung up on size of processor will have one less reason not to try a Mac too.

[ksz]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
The funny thing is there has been rumors of major political battles between the desktop and laptop chip units because of performance. A major mag (Think it was PC mag) has suggested that the Pentium M could make a nice desktop CPU. This sent an unsettling shockwave through Intel and specifically the desktop CPU BU. Up til now the gold child of Intel has always been the desktop CPU BU and along comes the mobile processor group to upstage them with better performance per clock and suddenly the Pentium M gets all the limelight and rightly so.
Competition from within! Intel always has multiple generations of devices in development concurrently. The development lifecycles are offset or staggered from each other so that product releases are serialized. Although the next generation Centrino might be in development somewhere else, the original Centrino I believe was developed by Intel's R&D team in Israel.

Technically, Centrino does not refer to processor alone. A laptop wearing the Centrino logo must have both the Pentium-M processor and the associated chipset which features 802.11b. Intel should be releasing the 54g version of the Centrino chipset very soon.

The performance to power consumption ratio of the Pentium-M is unequaled today.

[ZildjianKX]

I just wish powerbooks would progress as fast... the Powermacs are kicking the powerbooks ass MAJORLY.

[yamabushi]

If the max speed is only 2.5GHz in 1Q 2004 I will be disappointed. :( I want to see Macs so fast that benchmark test results will be beyond debate. Sorry but 2.5 is just a ho-hum upgrade. 3.0 in January would be a spectacular upgrade, even if IBM could only make future improvements of 500MHz every six months. I hope we see faster speeds than 2.5 in January but I won't hold my breath.:rolleyes:

[Gyroscope]

Two reasons,Apple is still making G4 based Mac's are: stockpile of older unsold G4 CPUs that are now passed down to consumer in latest revisions of eMacs and iBooks and contractual obligation to Motorola for "new" 7457's. As soon as G5 production ramps up to the level that entire Mac product line can receive steady supply of these babies, it's gonna(must) be an end for G4.
Outside portables, right now,its almost a crime to keep selling G4's (eMac,iMac,Xserve)( 5 years old CPU design & system bus ) for that kind of money. I am so glad that news on IBM cpu front are this good.. Maybe for the first time since early 90's Apple will have something it hasn't had for long time. Rock solid hardware combined with rock solid software.

[Macco]

Originally posted by Foxer
Of course, if the new ave of G5 are announced in Jan, they won't be avialable until April or so, so the pattern holds, and you get us Mac Geeks excited twice (at annoucnement and at shipping) and in tizzy in between.

Nah, I doubt it. The original G5 Power Macs shipped so late because Apple underestimated demand, and because they weren't quite ready to go out the door yet. The new Power Macs probably won't be too different structurally than the current ones, and I don't think that Apple would make the same mistake twice.

[ksz]

Originally posted by i_wolf
Incidentally, those bench's we see for dual 2Ghz are just gonna go up and up.... any of you guys seen the results for the IBM XLC and XLF recompiled code.... most cases it produces code that runs 200 -300% faster than GCC compiler code. Which most apps includingt SPEC were compiled with.
Now this is good news! IBM has a beta version of their XL C/C++ compiler for download here:

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/awdtools/vacpp/features/vacpp-mac.html

From the brief description provided, this compiler appears to be designed specifically around the G5. If that's true, the code it generates may or may not exhibit the same gains on G4 and G3 processors (assuming the code runs on those processors; it would be silly if it didn't). Code optimization can be achieved by generating more efficient machine code through unrolling loops, register optimization, etc., and by taking advantage of special features of the chip. For example, code can be compiled in a way that leads to fewer mispredicted branches, takes advantage of parallel execution units, uses any new processor instructions, exploits AltiVec, etc.

If preliminary results do show gains of 200 to 300 percent by recompiling with XL C/C++, that's a very significant development! Even a 2.5 GHz or 3 GHz processor will not perform 200 to 300 percent faster than the 2 GHz processor! However, I believe Cocoa development is only supported with Objective C...

[PretendPCuser]

I'll be upgrading (whenever) from a pair of G4 4oo Mhz machines (doesn't even add up to 1 Ghz!) so whatever G5, G6 will seem just silly. I'll be laughing for the next month afterwards.

Thoughts:
I don't think Apple would make 3 different motherboards for the different machines...i realize that they all run at different bus speeds and some have PCI-X, there has to be a way to modularize these things so the main board doesn't become unexpandable. Or possibly the CPU upgrades will have to use a multiplier like the old 7500 I have sitting around here somewhere.

Dual 2.5 would shred, and single G5 2Ghz would be great at $1999. Wonder what MacMall and the rest of those peeps will be selling the Rev. A for...guesses?

$1799 with 512Mb Ram, Free Printer, MYOB Accounting, InDesign, Office for $199 and your very own web designer!!!

:D

[RichardCarletta]

and possibby have 3 GHZ Powermacs by this summer . However, I have a question for you . How fast does the fastest personal computer realy need to run to make people happy ? Does a 64 bit mac or pc really need to run any faster than 8 GHZ ? In a few years , will desktop computers really need to run faster than that ? Can computers for the home user top at say 8 GHZ and will that be good enough for the buying public ? or will they insist on speeds like 800 GHZ ?
900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 GHZ ?

[i_wolf]

AMD is supposed to have a new set of Opterons in the 2.4 GHz range available in a month or two. I don't know what Intel is doing, but AMD has a fairly aggressive roadmap for their AMD64 chipsets and processors. From a pure performance standpoint, the AMD64 chips are the biggest competitor to the PPC970 (and future) chips, and the AMD chips are somewhat faster in the general case. Unless you are running an application that can really use Altivec (and most can't), the Opterons are generally a bit faster than the PPC970s. We have huge mostly integer codes that run insanely fast on Opterons, though that doesn't keep us from using MacOS X workstations. An Opteron with Altivec (instead of the not as nice SSE2) would be untouchable. The real loser in all this is Intel. The Opteron is a wicked good chip, and clock for clock does very well against the PPC970. The Itanium is going the way of a the i860 as far as I can tell.

First things first, that AMD at 2.4 is not likely to surface until January or Febuary at the earliest. Reason being that AMD currently have absolutely no need to release a faster clocked speed opteron, the current 2GHz version blows the pants off the Xeon equivalent.
I do completely disagree with the comment about the opteron being equal or nearly more powerful per clock than the G5. Realise, that the Opteron is running completely optimized code at the moment. The opteron is essentially your Athlon XP with on die memory controller and SSE2 and x86-64 , its fpu and integer units remail completely unchanged from the Athlon XP as does the vast majority of its architecture. As things go presently it is running at optimal situation in 32 bit mode. Code already is compiled with Athlon in mind, in other words Athlon 64 takes automatic advantage of, and it can take advantage of SSE2 optimizations in Pentium 4 optimized code.
Now, here we have the G5, completely radical departure from the G4, shares bugger all in common with it bar the Altivec unit, still very different to unit found on G4. What a LOT of people keep forgetting is that current 32 bit mode results for Athon 64 or Opteron is as good as it gets in 32 bit mode, you won't eek out much more performance improvement from current results. Even GCC generates great code for Athlon 64 since its based on Athlon, it can also autovectorise SSE2 intructions. Which gives an automatic perf boost when applicable.
G5, on the other hand is so new that current GCC compiler does not in ANY way work the processor at full potential. It breaks from prior PPC design in such a way that current code we see is only using chip at probably 50% efficiency. GCC isn't great in any way shape or form at parallelising code to work the dual int, dual fpu units in parallel. Essentially GCC 3.3 in most cases only works the chip at 50% of its peek theoretical performance. This has been discussed to death in arstechnica forums and i keep mentioning it here :). So baring in mind that we have a processor that is neck and neck with Opteron of same GHz, running at peak performance in 32 bit mode, would suggest to me that the 970 is a far superior performing chip. It was designed to be from the start.
Ok how do i back this up.....
Now IBM has released a compiler that generates "proper" code for the G5 / 970 / Power 4 and that works the different units in parallel. Results as i keep saying in tests done independently by people like you me and joe bloggs have shown that it does generate nearly 200% faster results and 300% faster results in some cases even by a simple recompile. Also be aware that Altivec is not used in abundance at the moment, bar apple developed applications. IBM have already stated that this compiler is very early and still in beta. They are working with Apple to improve GCC also to get GCC to work the dual units that are currently being squandered. Furthermore the compiler doesn't work with all apple code at the moment but IBM have already stated that this situation will improve. With regard to Altivec IBM are planning that the next revision of this compiler will be capable of autovectorising for Alitvec like the GCC currently does for AMD and Intel processors. This would provide a MASSIVE performance improvement alone in a lot of programs.
Now consider that the Power 4 at 1.5 GHz currently has much much higher SPEC int and SPEC float results that dwarf the Opteron and Xeon. Now consider that a 970 should be achieving results similar at the same GHz, obviously slightly less because of the difference in cache sizes and lack of L3 cache... but not the massive difference that there currently is between 1.5 power 4 and 2 Ghz 970. As far as i know the Power 4 was run with an older version of IBM's XLC and XLF. This would most likely account for the fact that there is such a gulf in performance between the Power 4 at 1.5 and the 2Ghz 970 which is essentiall the Power 4 with less cache and multi core functionality removed with the addition of Alitvec.
Now..... what will be interesting.... IBM are releasing their own 970 Blades soon as already mentioned on the front page of this site. They will be running at up to 2.5 Ghz. More than likely they will use a similar motherboard to that found on the current Apple G5. However you can bet your bottom dollar that they won't make the same dumb mistake as apple and will compile their SPEC results with the proper compiler which won't cripple the chip as current GCC does, even in its "optimized" version.
It will make apple look really incompetant if they have a 2GHz G5 and IBM have a 2GHz 970 Blade and the spec int and fpus scores of the blade blow the G5 out of the water because they are using a compatible compiler.
I reckon that what Apple need to do more than anything to keep in the performance race is to adopt the IBM compiler and recompile their SPEC results to actually do themselves a favour. Whats the point in having a fantastic chip, fantastic technology if you don't take advantage of it....
Only thing that does sound good is that apparantly IBM are concerned also with the way GCC produces current G5 executable code and they are working with Apple at heavy optimization of the compiler and at getting GCC to autovectorise as well.
Source for all this info and arguments... good folks over at arstechnica forums.
For those of you here with a dual G5 and a dual Opteron.... i suggest you go over to ars forum and get the IBM compiler.... give yourself a nice surprise and watch the huge performance you get when you recompile. I already tried doing a few tests myself on a mates dual G5 with XLF -O5 , and a dual 246 Opteron with ICC 7.1 (funny the intel compiler generates the fastest code for this) at work.(g5 configured with 1 gig ram, opteron configured with 2 gig ram) Easily the G5 / 970 ate the opteron for lunch in a lot of cases twice as fast if not more and this was without any vectorisation in the code, just raw FPU and raw int power doing Math functions for cryptology. Its a math routine that does a run with integer based keys and then with floating based keys. When the same code was compiled with GCC and compared with the Opteron running ICC at highest optimization level the Opteron was marginally faster. But as already mentioned the 970 ate it for breakfast even in integer (which really surprised us) by a large margin and destroyed it in floating point scaler, when the same identical code was recompiled with XLC and XLF.
Why dont a few other guys here try this out and see what you find out ;) and see if it works for some of you as well as it turned out when i tested!
As for Apple needing a speed boost, hell no... i reckon AMD and INTEL need incredible speed boosts if they even want to stay in the same ballpark as this chip when its running XLC or XLF compiled code and actually running code with a compiler which can compile code that is compatible with its design.....

[Gyroscope]

Originally posted by RichardCarletta
and possibby have 3 GHZ Powermacs by this summer . However, I have a question for you . How fast does the fastest personal computer realy need to run to make people happy ? Does a 64 bit mac or pc really need to run any faster than 8 GHZ ? In a few years , will desktop computers really need to run faster than that ? Can computers for the home user top at say 8 GHZ and will that be good enough for the buying public ? or will they insist on speeds like 800 GHZ ?
900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 GHZ ?


Well Richard, for current applications probably not :). Bare in mind that increase in speed(features) extends scope of computer application. New kind of software is written and all new set of possibilities opened, redefined eg. the way we use computers. AI? maybe.
So yeah if u think that we are gonna be typing text in wp or move mouse around in the very same way we are doing today then guess your question would make any sense.

[mvc]

Originally posted by RichardCarletta
…or will they insist on speeds like…
900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 GHZ ?

I'll need that sort of speed to run my big-bang simulator screen saver, y'know, the one that can predict the future by tracing the motion of every particle in the universe in real time.

[tomdavies]

Originally posted by ZildjianKX
Feel bad for all the people who shelled out all that money on DP 2 GHz G5s... hurts to be on the bleeding edge...

Nah -- I'm one of those people, and it's great to be on a platform with a future.

Believe it or not, the existence of faster computers does not make yours slower!

Tom

[MrMacMan]

Originally posted by yamabushi
If the max speed is only 2.5GHz in 1Q 2004 I will be disappointed. :( I want to see Macs so fast that benchmark test results will be beyond debate. Sorry but 2.5 is just a ho-hum upgrade. 3.0 in January would be a spectacular upgrade, even if IBM could only make future improvements of 500MHz every six months. I hope we see faster speeds than 2.5 in January but I won't hold my breath.:rolleyes:

Hold your breath, heck hold your tounge.

Have you seen what motorola has done to us?

How long did it take up to hit 1 GHZ... and then finally break it? :o


Are you disappointed with apple's prediction for a 1 GHZ increase?

Dealing with apple's past record... that is pretty damn good.

[wdlove]

I know that the prevailing wisdom has been to wait for a rev. B G5. So now we don't have long to wait. By then the compatability issues should be ironed out. The old rule works best, to purchase a machine when you need one. The 20th anniversary should even make it a better time to purchase.

[tortoise]

Originally posted by i_wolf
I do completely disagree with the comment about the opteron being equal or nearly more powerful per clock than the G5. Realise, that the Opteron is running completely optimized code at the moment. The opteron is essentially your Athlon XP with on die memory controller and SSE2 and x86-64 , its fpu and integer units remail completely unchanged from the Athlon XP as does the vast majority of its architecture.

This is incorrect on several accounts. First off, the AMD64 ISA differs in substantial ways from the ia32 ISA. Athlon XP is ia32 compatible, and has no mode that resembles amd64. The Opteron very cleverly retains opcode compatibility with ia32, but is essentially a 64-bit RISC-y chip in its native instruction set. Registers on amd64 are all GP (unlike ia32), and there are a lot more of them, which is very important for code optimization. (Ironically, on modern CPUs, CISC opcodes are easier to optimize on silicon for performance.)

Second, nothing is optimized for the Opteron. All the benchmarks you are seeing is the Opteron running in ia32 emulation mode, not amd64 mode. While there is GCC compiler support, there is still a lot of room left for fully exploiting the new amd64 ISA, which behaves like RISC but uses CISC-like opcodes. That the Opteron can school high-end ia32 native CPUs speaks volumes about its capabilities.

If you actually follow some of the early benchmarks of the Opteron that are being done in amd64 mode, it is significantly faster in amd64 mode than in ia32 mode. But there is still substantial work to be done before any Opteron compiler is vaguely optimal, especially since AMD doesn't produce a compiler (unlike Intel, whose compiler schools GCC in terms of the code it produces for ia32).

I'll clue you in that the difference between GCC and IBM in the typical case is about the same as the difference between GCC and Intel in the typical case. The difference is big enough to make it worth while for production code compiles, but not so big that it HAS to be part of the tool chain. We are talking <50% improvement in all non-toy cases. But at least the PPC970 has a highly optimized compiler for it; the Opteron does not. That said, the Opterons are still a touch faster than the PPC970 or Power4 on our codes.

You should also note that the early Opterons had slower memory than the G5s; something that is changing now though. This, Altivec (which I rarely use), and the lack of optimized amd64 compilers, are the only true advantages the G5 has in benchmarks. Nobody has really properly benchmarked the Opteron yet. Native mode support is still very sketchy and limited. That it is competitive in ia32 mode is impressive.

It sounds to me like you've read a lot of marketing whatnot, but haven't really considered it much beyond this. For a narrow range of floating point apps, the PPC/Power architecture is better, but for other types of apps that use limited FP (like ours), the Opteron is faster. And for most codes, they are close enough that it doesn't really matter. And yes, this is using the IBM compilers. I like PPC970 systems, but the reality is that it is neck and neck with Opteron and nothing more even with the IBM compilers. I'm curious to see what an Opteron optimized compiler can do.

Only tangentially related, the one thing that really blows goats about OS X (there is always SOMETHING -- I love OS X) is that there is still no true 64-bit option for it; it is a 32-bit OS even on G5s. I have large memory applications which have to run Linux on Opterons because we need a true LP64 operating system and LP64 LinuxPPC is still sketchy on G5 hardware (never mind that it is the fastest machine for our code, including Power and PPC options). FreeBSD is 64-bit clean, so it must be for backward compatibility purposes that they keep OS X 10.3 32-bit.

[pgwalsh]

Oh noooooooooo... here we go again with overly long posts about optimization and compilers etc etc... :p

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by pgwalsh
I'm wondering if Rev b will have faster RAM or an 8x dvd player. Will there be any architecture improvements? I imagine there will be some fine-tuning.

Yeah, I agree. They'll probably make some tweaks. The easiest things to update have to be optical drives, hard drives, and graphics cards... assuming economics don't factor in (profit margin.) It would REALLY be nice to burn a DVD at 8 speed. My 1x DVD burner, although incredibly useful, is dog-ass slow.

[ZildjianKX]

As someone mentioned before I'm sure, as soon as they're announced, be prepared to wait months to get one...

I wish Apple wouldn't announce things until they're ready to ship.

[Dahl]

About the DVD burrners, read this:
Sony claims a startling 24x write speed for the PSX DVD burner, which is fast enough to write a one-hour TV program to DVD in only two and a half minutes. If the drive lives up to its promise, it will leapfrog two or three generations of DVD drives, as the fastest DVD writers available now run at a comparatively anaemic 4x speed.
More here:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/coolgear/av/story/0,2000023510,20279416,00.htm

[mvc]

Originally posted by pgwalsh
Oh noooooooooo... here we go again with overly long posts about optimization and compilers etc etc... :p

Yeah, the ubergeeks need to optimise their postings :p

[pgwalsh]

Originally posted by Frobozz
Yeah, I agree. They'll probably make some tweaks. The easiest things to update have to be optical drives, hard drives, and graphics cards... assuming economics don't factor in (profit margin.) It would REALLY be nice to burn a DVD at 8 speed. My 1x DVD burner, although incredibly useful, is dog-ass slow. You know I have a dvd 8x burner on my pc and it supposed to work with the mac too, but I have a G3... anyway I can't find any 8X media for it.

Originally posted by mvc
Yeah, the ubergeeks need to optimise their postings :p
hahaha

[ksz]

Originally posted by pgwalsh
You know I have a dvd 8x burner on my pc and it supposed to work with the mac too, but I have a G3... anyway I can't find any 8X media for it.
If you have the Plextor or TDK 8x DVD writer you can burn at 8x speed using 4x-rated discs. Check their website for details.

[Sol]

Originally posted by ZildjianKX
Feel bad for all the people who shelled out all that money on DP 2 GHz G5s... hurts to be on the bleeding edge...

The DP 2 GHz G5 PowerMac is still the best choice of the three models. This is the only dual processor model and is thus likely to benefit the most from future updates to the operating system and applications. It also comes with the high-end PCI slots and 8GB capacity for RAM which are not guaranteed in the rumoured 'low-end' single 2 GHz G5 Powermac.

My prediction for the next PowerMac updates is that there will only be one single processor model and the other two will be duals. The low-end PowerMac would not be a dual because that would take sales away from a mid-range dual model... unless the high-end comes with four processors, which would be over-kill.

[gwuMACaddict]

Originally posted by tomdavies

Believe it or not, the existence of faster computers does not make yours slower!



hahaha
excellent point. people complaining that they wont have the fastest computer on the block are ridiculous. if apple is continually making revisions and creating a better product then its good for everbody.

[Golem]

Originally posted by RichardCarletta
and possibby have 3 GHZ Powermacs by this summer . However, I have a question for you . How fast does the fastest personal computer realy need to run to make people happy ?

Well for me my 450mhz cube 3? years ago was the first computer that felt fast enough for most applications. Ie office,mail pretty much anything that mostly involves typing. But for now their will allways be certain applications that demand more,mainly games:)

I am currently running a 1.6G5 and the longest application I have to wait for would take about 2.5 minutes to do its stuff. The same task took 4 hours on a SE 30 10+ years ago:) Still I will happily lay out a 30-50% premium to resell my 1.6 and update to a single 2.4? a year from now.

[ITR 81]

I'm just wondering when a 64bit OS11 will be coming out?? I could see them releasing a 64bit OS in maybe another yr or so. I'm sure they are trying to get everyone on the G5 platform before going full 64bit. I wonder if they will still make updates for the older OS's atleast for few yrs so folks won't have buy new hardware. By then I will have two G5's but I will still have my G4PB and I would atleast like to keep it updated for few more yrs after the 64bit OS is introduced.

[edenwaith]

In a Homeric fashion... "mmmm....3 GHz G5...gahhhhh...."

Unfortunately, I did not have the money this year to get a new computer, and I'd like to since my current computer is over 3 years old now. But it looks that if I keep waiting a little while longer, it might end up being a very good thing if I have to save up for another year and end up with an even more powerful computer.

About the only addition I'd like to see to the PM G5 is more space for hard drives. In my current PM G4, it can normally only hold 2 hard drives, and I'd like to be able to put in another drive so I can back up my drives instead of having to go and buy an external HD (however, I do use my iPod to back up my most important files).

If the MacWorld Expo is held in January, I wouldn't be surprised if there is no G5 announcement. There have been years where there was no new PM announcement, and by the end of January there were newer models out. But considering the wealth of Apple goodies which have come out in the past several months, I don't feel bad at all. Lots of great stuff coming out lately.

Now, an update to AppleWorks, now THAT would be an announcement.

[RichardCarletta]

Ok i am a bit from the old school of personal computers ( IBM XT , Apple II , Commodore 64 , ect. in other words when some of you were in diapers or a glint in your father's eye ) Now in the 80's there was talk of making faster processors , ram , chips , ect by making them out of Gallium Arsonide . Would such a process help speedup today's processors and chips ? I know it is made by the ten thousands of tanks of it cheaply. Has any development continued with it today or is it an abandoned idea because silicon is literally " dirt cheap " ? :confused:

[tduality]

Originally posted by mvc
I'll need that sort of speed to run my big-bang simulator screen saver, y'know, the one that can predict the future by tracing the motion of every particle in the universe in real time.

Sorry, quantum mechanics rules that out. Not even Apple can circumvent the laws of QM. Or can they? Naahh...:D

[tduality]

Originally posted by ewoh24
This is all great news...I love it, but I have to say I too am a little concerned by the rapid pace of innovation, Not because I think it's a bad thing, or I want bragging rights, it's that I just spent $1799 for my 867Mhz PB and now there are apps coming out that have minimum requirements of 700Mhz (like Everquest for Mac). How much longer, at this pace, before I can't run new apps on my PB? Thats the natural evolution of things, but my machine is less than 4 months old! Will it be obsolete in a year?

It won't. All of the major updates of OS X made my PM G4 400 faster. Applications got faster. Maybe the speed improvements of OS X hit a ceiling now but I'm sure most applications will still run fine in the foreseeable future. You might be out of luck with gaming, though.

[i_wolf]

his is incorrect on several accounts. First off, the AMD64 ISA differs in substantial ways from the ia32 ISA. Athlon XP is ia32 compatible, and has no mode that resembles amd64. The Opteron very cleverly retains opcode compatibility with ia32, but is essentially a 64-bit RISC-y chip in its native instruction set. Registers on amd64 are all GP (unlike ia32), and there are a lot more of them, which is very important for code optimization. (Ironically, on modern CPUs, CISC opcodes are easier to optimize on silicon for performance.)

This is incorrect on several significant points. :P

First of all like it or not, simple Fact, Opteron is heavily based on AMD Athlon XP architecture. Thats not necessarily a bad thing since the Athlon XP is a great chip, but trying to argue otherwise is a bit pointless.
One only has to look at the exhaustive reviews that have been posted EVERYWHERE, to acknowledge that the Opteron is essentially based on an Athlon XP. Its fpu unit has remained completed unchanged as has its integer unit. Most of the internal pathway, the number of instructions it will handle in flight, hell even the internal pathways are pretty much identical. Adding more General purpose registers is correct however essentially to take proper advantage the chip must be in 64 bit mode. Like the G5 there is not 64 bit os currently.
I hope idon't sound condescending but why not head over to arstechnica and read the dissection of the AMD 64 architecture or anandtech etc....

Anyway, basing a processor on an older design and proven design like the athlon means that the athlon 64 is able to take advantage of optimized code. Incidentally there is extremely advanced Athlon optimization available in GCC..... 3d now, extended 3d now, SSE, SSE2 & x86-64 (if athlon 64) etc... before we say anything about the code being optimized for its internal pathways which again it does do. Funnily enough the Athlon does better with the Intel compiler than with the GCC.... but again this compiler does optimize code for it, generates SSE and SSE2 code automatically where possible, and does a great job of unrolling code to prevent branch mis predictions etc...
Simple fact is in 32 bit mode, the Opteron IS as optimized as it will get presently. The very fact that the Athlon has to remain ISA x86 compatible will always be a limiting factor. Also the Opteron can take advantage of years of optimizing for the Athlon arch in compilers.

Regardless the results speak for themselves. The G5 is far more heavily removed from its "predecessor" G4 than the Athlon 64 is from the Athlon XP.

Any in depth review i have seen has said that the G5/970 is so far removed from previous PPC architecture that running older uncompiled legacy software it will only be running at 50% best case scenario of its peak. Even when recompiled with GCC 3.3 most case scenario the chip is only running 50% its potential. A recompile with XLC and XLF definately substantiates this.
Also the G5 was designed to have lots of instructions flying around in flight (ignore apple marketing speak), and to have its units running in parallel. That was the design decission and this pretty much leaves the older PPC design decisions behind. However as arstechnica pointed out in their analysis of the chip, this is brilliant, great for performance , when software and compilers catch up. The present GCC 3.3 does NOT optimize the code properly for the internal pathways etc... How else can you explain a 300% increase in performace when moving to the XLC and XLF compilers...... there has to be something more to it than minimising branch misprediction. Indeed this would certainly point out and highlight arstechnica's theory that initial compilers would only be using 50% efficiency of the chip in best case scenario and that code would have to be compiled with a compatible compiler before the performance of the chip could be unlocked...... I would reckon from my own testing that this is very much the case. In heavy integer and floating point mathematical work i was seeing practically 200% improvement if not more by moving to XLC and XLF compiler. Others in the thread that i linked to have found identical results.

Can you honestly tell me that presently the Athlon 64 is running at only 50% of its potential....no it runs pretty much close to its peak 4.5 GFlops. When all instruction units of 970 are filled (which requires a compatible compiler.... not GCC!) it runs at peak 8GFlops, but presently with most GCC compiled code it only runs peak 4GFlops, again this information has been sourced from ars forums.

I use a dual Opteron 2 Ghz in work thats about nearly 1 month old. We actually compared results with the 970 G5 and were blown away. while merely competitive and neck and neck with GCC compiled code it blew the Opteron away when we re ran with XLF compiled code.

why dont you test for yourself and see if it does anything for you like maybe doubling your results! ;). remember this doesn't contain any SIMD autovectoring ...yet! ;) But as you already mentioned you don't need Altivec for your code etc....

Im too lazy to go look for your post and find the remark about Altivec being of little use for hte majority of code... but i just wanted to say that i completely disagree.
A huge amount of people who buy macs are creative professionals who work with graphics, music, film etc... for these apps Altivec makes a massive difference where used.
If you are working with science based code like BLAST alitvec makes a huge difference again. Unfortunately for Apple they never managed to get an autovectorising compiler out like intel and amd had. but again this is changing. An autovectoring compiler would use Alitvec where ever possible ... so even an app that you wouldn't expect to make use of alitvec at all, might show a slight 3 -5% performance increase.

Kind Regards
i_wolf

P.S. when i have been comparing processors so far i have been comparing in 32 bit mode for both. I do agree that there is some work to be done optimizing for 64 bit mode athlon 64, the same as there would be for 64 bit mode G5. But thats another analysis thread! and presently there is no pure 64 bit os for either, bar linux for x86-64. ..... rumors of a G5 64 bit gentoo have been heard mentioned though ;)

[CmdrLaForge]

Originally posted by i_wolf
This is incorrect on several significant points. :P

First of all......... is no pure 64 bit os for either, bar linux for x86-64. ..... rumors of a G5 64 bit gentoo have been heard mentioned though ;)

Wow. A lot of very long posts here :-)

But anyway. All the comparisons I read so far in any Mac or PC magazine stated, that when compared in real speed - meaning real Apps like Photoshop, Quake ... - the G5 is not slower and not faster than the fastest PC machines. And thats what counts. At least for me.

[mvc]

Originally posted by tduality
Sorry, quantum mechanics rules that out. Not even Apple can circumvent the laws of QM. Or can they? Naahh...:D

Ahh I was wondering if someone would drag Schroedinger's poor confused cat into this.

But, observe, since Steve Jobs reality distortion field is clearly a singularity, the ordinary laws of the universe no longer apply within his personal event horizon, and therefore nothing is impossible for Apple as long as he is around!

And that is the sole reason why I still expect a G5 powerbook in January.

[mvc]

Originally posted by i_wolf
A lot of stuff…

i_wolf, I really think you need to get out more and try using up your 10,000 words a day in face-to-face conversation. I hear chicks dig guys who can talk ;)

[Falleron]

Originally posted by mvc
i_wolf, I really think you need to get out more and try using up your 10,000 words a day in face-to-face conversation. I hear chicks dig guys who can talk ;)
No need to get personal...

[i_wolf]

mvc: dude there are many aspects of my life and interests that i have. computing happens to be one of them. i come here because its a tech/computer forum where i would imagine like minded people reside. when im out with mates we take footie, films, women etc... If i want to do that il talk to my mates. if i want to talk comp il come in here. whats the problem.. what have i said that has offended you?? All i have done is mention a few facts.... which would explain why in some apps we are seeing double the perf of nearest competetive pc, while in other apps we are neck and neck. Is this forum the wrong place to discuss this, if so can you recommend a more appropriate place.

Commander laforve : yeh you are right a lot of mags bench's show neck and neck with the fastest. but they are legacy apps, and seamingly not even tapping the full potential of chip. seeing as a recompile with compatible compiler is showing double the results with the same code, i would imagine that future apps and even current apps if they were recompiled with compatible compiler to take advantage of the chip they are running on would show significant perf boost to leave a large gap between the 970 and the nearest competing x86.
But if anything its a testiment to IBM how fast their 970 is that even now on crippled GCC3.3 code that their 970 is neck and neck with the fastest optimized x86 out there. It just means that perf wise we got a LOT to look forward to from the same chip! Wouldn't it be interesting to see comparisons between the same processors and systems in a year from now on future editions of current software! ;)

Falleron: thanks for standing up for me there. much appreciated.

[cr2sh]

Originally posted by Falleron
No need to get personal...

I think it was a joke guys... btw, chicks who dig guys who talk, also dig guys who are overly sensitive. :)

My Powerbook 1GHz is grindingly slow... it really bugs me to click FILE in dreamweaver.. and having to sit and wait for it to pop-up... ugh, we need g5 powerbooks.

As for a g5 iMac.. sure sure, but let's get our priorities lined up first.

Powermac, Powerbook, xserve, then it doesnt matter... I'm willing to pay for cutting edge.. just give me something that's sharp! :)

[Frobozz]

10 people have voted this story as negative?! How is this negative? I suppose we should have a "believable, unbelievable" from now on...

[encro]

Originally posted by cr2sh
My Powerbook 1GHz is grindingly slow... it really bugs me to click FILE in dreamweaver.. and having to sit and wait for it to pop-up... ugh, we need g5 powerbooks.

Sorry I thought you said "Dreamweaver is the friggin' slowest web design app I have ever used in my entire life on my rocket 1GHz laptop!" which would be a closer approximation of true :p


--
Motorola = Disappointment since 1983.

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by yamabushi
If the max speed is only 2.5GHz in 1Q 2004 I will be disappointed. :( I want to see Macs so fast that benchmark test results will be beyond debate. Sorry but 2.5 is just a ho-hum upgrade. 3.0 in January would be a spectacular upgrade, even if IBM could only make future improvements of 500MHz every six months. I hope we see faster speeds than 2.5 in January but I won't hold my breath.:rolleyes:

Oh, come on... :-) We've been getting 100 to 250 MHz upgrades (or less) for the past 3 years. Granted, the more MHz you start with, the more you need to grow proportionally... but just the fact that IBM and Apple can boost a machine that is already on par with any PC even faster is great.

You do bring up an interesting point, however. I think Apple may have an Ace up it's sleeve. Perhaps that can pull out a 2.8 GHz part for some uber configuration?

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by encro
Sorry I thought you said "Dreamweaver is the friggin' slowest web design app I have ever used in my entire life on my rocket 1GHz laptop!" which would be a closer approximation of true :p


--
Motorola = Disappointment since 1983.

Amen! Dreamweaver is slow on both PC and Mac... it might be the most sluggish high profile commercial app I have ever used. Seriously. I'm not trying to bash it, it's just true from my perspective.

[pgwalsh]

Originally posted by Frobozz
Amen! Dreamweaver is slow on both PC and Mac... it might be the most sluggish high profile commercial app I have ever used. Seriously. I'm not trying to bash it, it's just true from my perspective. Well GoLive is right there with it and I was thinking of switching to dreamweaver because GoLive was so slow... well I'll probably still swith.. :rolleyes:

[rotorblade]

Originally posted by IndyGopher
Yup. Damn that Steve Jobs... I bet he sneaks into IBM's labs and screws with their designs just to make it take longer to reach 3GHz.

The only TUNE he's singing is whatever timeframe IBM hands him. He got a little over-anxious, said they'd be out in a year, and someone from IBM pulled him aside and told him to relax the time-frame a bit. There's no way you can pin a delay in a SPEED BUMP on him.

Just stating the facts. At WWDC, Jobs said, "IBM and Apple are today announcing......" As he didn't say "Apple is today announcing...", I take that to mean he said it with IBM's concurrence. Now the timeframe has changed. Just calling 'em as I see 'em.

[iPC]

Originally posted by nighthawk
So IBM is packing the equivelent of 4 1.6 GHz 970 CPUs in a single 1U rack mount space. That sounds pretty encouraging for the XServe.

What do you think would get better performance: Dual 2.0 GHz or Quad 1.6 GHz?
Quad... of course it depends on what you are using it for (database stuff I would presume).

[iPC]

Originally posted by dieselg4
A guy at CompUSA told me they were not, saying somehting about the CPU and the Board being built speciically for each other. Whether or not he knew what he wwas talking about is anohter matter.
He did. System bus is running 1/2 speed of the proc.

This is a good way of explaining the relative cost of a G5 system versus P4 sytems.

[BOOMBA]

Originally posted by coolfactor
I was wondering why American's pronounce "badminton" as "badmitten".. cuz they spell it that way! Sorry, off topic.

I think Apple needs to keep pushing forward with the development of their systems, but also keep upping the ante on the overall user experience. I just purchased a 1GHz eMac, and it's no faster than my 500Mhz iBook in terms of performance and productivity. That was a shocker to me. Maybe the extra 512MB RAM that I'm getting will make a difference.

coolfactor is right!
But then, coolfactor is ALWAYS right!
He is SOOO COOL!

[edenwaith]

Originally posted by mvc
Ahh I was wondering if someone would drag Schroedinger's poor confused cat into this.


Now, what if we throw in Pavlov's dog into the same box with Schroedinger's cat...would they both be dead, or just one of them?

[mvc]

Originally posted by i_wolf
mvc: dude there are many aspects of my life and interests that i have. computing happens to be one of them. i come here because its a tech/computer forum where i would imagine like minded people reside. when im out with mates we take footie, films, women etc... If i want to do that il talk to my mates. if i want to talk comp il come in here. whats the problem.. what have i said that has offended you?? All i have done is mention a few facts....


Relax, its a joke, I am glad you have a life, so do I, but you have to admit your posts take a lot of reading - perhaps splitting it into more paragraphs would help. It's not like you are the only one, but when two techos start a major argument and begin quoting each other furiously, the posts tend to become enormous and unreadable, which benefits no-one's argument or those others who read the board.

Thats my opinion, but maybe it's just the graphic designer in me crying out for "more white space!"
:p


Edit - the Graphic designer in me fixng sum speling mistaks

[mvc]

Originally posted by edenwaith
Now, what if we throw in Pavlov's dog into the same box with Schroedinger's cat...would they both be dead, or just one of them?

Ha - well they would both be dead if the box was under the tree that fell in the forest while nobody was listening. :p

[FlamDrag]

Originally posted by tomdavies

Believe it or not, the existence of faster computers does not make yours slower!

Tom

So true, so true.

[mvc]

Originally posted by tomdavies
Believe it or not, the existence of faster computers does not make yours slower!

But it can lead to Gigahertz Envy.

A faster processor is like viagra for my soft ware. ;)

[GregA]

Originally posted by Frobozz
10 people have voted this story as negative?! How is this negative? I suppose we should have a "believable, unbelievable" from now on... It would be good to have "believable, unbelievable" as well as "good, bad". 2 distinct ways of responding to rumors of an Apple TV or whatever.

[GregA]

Originally posted by IndyGopher
The only TUNE he's singing is whatever timeframe IBM hands him. He got a little over-anxious, said they'd be out in a year, and someone from IBM pulled him aside and told him to relax the time-frame a bit. There's no way you can pin a delay in a SPEED BUMP on him.I'm sure that could have happened, but if he is the head of Apple then he kinda represents where Apple is going.

But rather than imply Steve should have my values - how would he react if Apple has a subcontractor (X) building iMacs and they promise January, then turn around and say they're late because some other group (Y) hasn't given them the widgets they need - who's he going to blame X or Y?

(Sorry :) - this may be a little personal - my ISP was down for a while and said I shouldn't complain to them because it was their wholesaler's fault. Not good enough.)

[cr2sh]

Originally posted by encro
my rocket 1GHz laptop!" which would be a closer approximation of true :p

I guess its all about perspective. From the cockpit of my rocketship.. things look pretty darn slow. :)

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by .a
yes!
and this dual 2.5ghz g5 will be my next computer!
.a

likewise!

[themadchemist]

Originally posted by vannote
These IBM processors are based on IBM's own PowerPC designs for it's own high-end servers, Power4, Power5, etc...

Considering IBM is waging it's own performance wars with other HPC (High Performance Computing) hardware vendors, they wont let these processor designs get stagnant for a heartbeat.

speaking of which...

That may be why we haven't seen updated Xserves. In fact, I worry that there might not be more Xserves any time soon. With IBM's server leaning, I think there would be some toe-stepping if the two ended up competing in the server market with IBM's processors.

I wonder if there is some sort of implicit understanding regarding Apple's position in that market, and if the incredible cluster power of the PowerMac G5's was not irksome to IBM (thus prompting them to respond with PPC970 blades).

[pianojoe]

Originally posted by RichardCarletta
How fast does the fastest personal computer realy need to run to make people happy ?

I want my Mac to scroll thru a long HTML page in Dreamweaver the same speed my Atari 1040ST scrolled thru a lengthy text file in Tempus, back in 1986. We're talking 68000, 1MB RAM, 8MHz.

[kaneda]

"IBM plans to boost the 970's clock speed to 2.4GHz in mid-2004, around the same time that the blades will support the AIX operating system. The company is also planning to add new 10G bit per second (bps) Ethernet connections and 4G bps Fibre Channel interfaces later in 2004, Benck said."


http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/11/14/ibm/index.php?redirect=1068795989000


I thought Steve said 3.0 ghz mid of 2004???

[wdlove]

Originally posted by kaneda
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/11/14/ibm/index.php?redirect=1068795989000


I thought Steve said 3.0 ghz mid of 2004???

We can always hope that the article is about the server only. I don't think that Steve would have set of goal and not follow through.

[yamabushi]

Originally posted by Frobozz
Oh, come on... :-) We've been getting 100 to 250 MHz upgrades (or less) for the past 3 years.
That's why we could use a large boost right now to catch up to where we ought to be. We've been starved for years and need a feast to fatten up again. You do bring up an interesting point, however. I think Apple may have an Ace up it's sleeve. Perhaps that can pull out a 2.8 GHz part for some uber configuration? I would be very happy to see 2.8GHz. I might even stop my whining for more power for several months.:D

[joesporleder]

Has anyone heard of a rumor that as early as this Monday, that the Current middle range G5, the 1.8Ghz one, will become a dual processor machine? Perhaps the line up would be a dual 2Ghz, a dual 1.8Ghz mid range and 1.8Ghz entry level? I heard this from a poster on a MacOS X list hosted by themacintoshguy.com, they claimed to hear it from a dealer.

[yamabushi]

That would be a welcome surprise. It would be really great if the low end 1.6 was dropped and the current single 1.8 took it's place.

[lpb2h]

The big question for a lot of people who are holding off on leaping to the G5 is whether the January models will have significant bug fixes (fixing noise problems, etc.), or just be a processor upgrade (like the dual 1.8).

[alpha mac G4]

Hello there, I have a question I plan to buy a 1.8Mhz DP G5 but Im hearing that they are going to come out with a 3Mhz buy the summer.Should I wait for the 3Mhz model or what any help would be greatly appreciated.

[daveL]

Originally posted by yamabushi
That would be a welcome surprise. It would be really great if the low end 1.6 was dropped and the current single 1.8 took it's place.
There is no current single 1.8. It was discontinued when the dual 1.8 came out.

[daveL]

Originally posted by alpha mac G4
Hello there, I have a question I plan to buy a 1.8Mhz DP G5 but Im hearing that they are going to come out with a 3Mhz buy the summer.Should I wait for the 3Mhz model or what any help would be greatly appreciated.
I believe the current conjecture is 3 GHz in September or October, based on the 980 processor.

[wdlove]

Originally posted by daveL
I believe the current conjecture is 3 GHz in September or October, based on the 980 processor.

Will the 980 based processor still be called a G5? How will the 980 differ from the 970? It seems like they are changing the processor quite quickly. Is there a problem with the 970 processor?

[daveL]

Originally posted by wdlove
Will the 980 based processor still be called a G5? How will the 980 differ from the 970? It seems like they are changing the processor quite quickly. Is there a problem with the 970 processor?
No, there's no problem with the 970. The 970 was derived from the IBM Power4 processor. The 980 will be derived from the IBM Power5 processor. And so it goes. I have no idea what Apple will call it; the name is immaterial, to me. Look back in the archives for a few threads on the 980.

[plinkoman]

Originally posted by alpha mac G4
Hello there, I have a question I plan to buy a 1.8Mhz DP G5 but Im hearing that they are going to come out with a 3Mhz buy the summer.Should I wait for the 3Mhz model or what any help would be greatly appreciated.

unless you need a new computer now, you might as well wait. 1.8-3.0 is quite a jump in the relatively short amount of time untill the end of next summer. with that said, waiting now may be wise, but you can't wait forever as the tech is always getting better.

[plinkoman]

Originally posted by daveL
No, there's no problem with the 970. The 970 was derived from the IBM Power4 processor. The 980 will be derived from the IBM Power5 processor. And so it goes. I have no idea what Apple will call it; the name is immaterial, to me. Look back in the archives for a few threads on the 980.

though only a year after the G5 came out making it seem kind of odd, i think they will call it the G6. there was enough difference in the chip to make it called the power5 isntead of power4+ or something to that extent, so it would seem logical. plus, it would be a great way to differentiate the pro and consumer lines, G6 in the pro's and G5's in the consumer's. finally a choice for consumer machines that neither eats into sales of the pro line, nor is painfully slow so as not to, and not worth buying in the first place.