New PowerMacs Released [Archive]

MacArtist

Aug 13, 2002, 09:03 AM

barkmonster

Aug 13, 2002, 09:03 AM

They're still slightly overcharing in the UK but I've been able to click on any of the models and check out the configure to order options.

The second optical drive bay can contain a DVD/CDRW for an extra £200 (must be typo).

The first one has either a DVD/CDRW or DVD-R/CDRW as before.

The Radeon 9000 is an £80 BTO option.

ALL graphics cards now have DVI/ADC connectors so you can run dual LCDs on any model now without having to burn hundreds on the GeForce4 Ti.

They have a 1Mb L3 cache on not only the entry level but the dual Ghz model too, this could mean the high end model is not only 25% faster than the mid range but with the larger cache it will scream in comparison.

I do wonder if having a smaller L3 would make much difference on the low end and mid range though.

I just hope I can afford one of these as an end of life deal sometime next year when I've finally got the money together. The highend model looks pretty good to me.

Beej

Aug 13, 2002, 09:03 AM

So the old dual 1 GHz was 72% faster than a P4 2 GHz
And the new Dual 1.25 Ghz is 90% faster than a P4 2.53
(According to Apple's PS tests ;))

CTYankee

Aug 13, 2002, 09:03 AM

Anyone know if the display offer is still valid? The link that says "Dual Offer" gives me an error page. If they still offer the discount for the 17" display that may push me more towards the new dual 1Ghz and not the old one.

Though the dual 867 is tempting at the price. Too bad it does not have the superdrive. Though I can see why. If it did I would not even be thinking about the Dual 1ghz.

gopher

Aug 13, 2002, 09:03 AM

http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:06 AM

Still no USB 2...or Firewire 2 :(

jelloshotsrule

Aug 13, 2002, 09:07 AM

the thing's ugly... that doesn't matter much except that macs are usually the best looking machines.

if it's true ddr, sweet. but the system bus on the low end and the slower ddr makes it just slightly less attractive. still a powerful dual machine for pretty cheap though...

Horne

Aug 13, 2002, 09:07 AM

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 09:10 AM

The venting on the front looks mad..... but check out the rear of the machine..... :p :p :p

Beej

Aug 13, 2002, 09:11 AM

...and I'm spent.

I'm going ot bed a very happy man! Mmm... dual 1.25 G4... *drool*

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:12 AM

well, it's ugly from the outside, but it has a blue Motherboard ,)

mymemory

Aug 13, 2002, 09:12 AM

Well, Apple is betting to the enclosure of course.

The best choice is the low end or mayyyyyyyyybe the dual 1Ghz.

What I'm really specting is the new line of flat panel displays.

iamspooky

Aug 13, 2002, 09:13 AM

Dual 1GHz PowerPC G4
256K L2 cache
& 1MB L3 cache/processor
167MHz System Bus
256MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM

Yea, sure apple, this photoshop test is optimized for the G4.

Why did they decrease the L3 cache to only 1MB ??

Wasn't the L3 cache very important for overall performance??

I don't think these specs amount to jack....

ALOHA!!

Chaszmyr

Aug 13, 2002, 09:13 AM

The new dual 1ghz are faster than the old dual 1ghz... and the 1.25 ghz is atleast 6 weeks away... I am going dual 1ghz!

mcrain

Aug 13, 2002, 09:13 AM

There were rumors about the heat sink being a huge aluminum block inside the case...

Check out the "inside the new powermac" tour. It's enormous, and there is a big fan just to the side of it to bleed off heat.

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:14 AM

...Apple seems to completely go from Apple Garamond to Myriad...all the Headlines use Apple's new font :)

blogo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:16 AM

it uses ata 100 now

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 09:19 AM

Originally posted by TheT
...Apple seems to completely go from Apple Garamond to Myriad...all the Headlines use Apple's new font :)

It's being happening for a while, although AG is still lurking.....;) I quite like Myriad, as a general rule, San-Serif fonts are much cleaner and more modern than serif fonts......

I'd have used Univers 55 and 65 bold personally... but each to their own.... :p

The Dual 1.25 certainly has the specs to be the Daddy..... if I was buying right at this time... I'd buy one.... ;)

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:19 AM

This is gonna be one hot and loud machine... (did you ever hear the Xserve?!)

gropo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:21 AM

Audio In is BACK!

http://a528.g.akamai.net/7/528/51/22946ba8f374d7/www.apple.com/powermac/images/expansion_calloutc08092002.gif

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:23 AM

Yeah, it was a big mistake to take the Audio in away... at least they learn from their mistakes

jayscheuerle

Aug 13, 2002, 09:23 AM

Just how much longer are they going to make me hold onto this beige G3? Hopes go on the back-burner 'til MWSF....

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 09:23 AM

Originally posted by Beej
So the old dual 1 GHz was 72% faster than a P4 2 GHz
And the new Dual 1.25 Ghz is 90% faster than a P4 2.53
(According to Apple's PS tests ;))

Yeah, Apple's PS tests are crap. When I see one of those up on the SPEC website then I'll take Apple's claims with more than a grain of salt. P4's will be up at 3GHz by the end of the year, Athlon is at 1.8 with Hammer coming soon. And Itanium2 has a slower clock but thoroughly spanks the G4 in FP. When are we going to get something that makes your heart beat fast again like when the IIfx or the Quadras were released.

I posted before about how those cases are booty and I still think they're booty. That drive bay is the ugliest thing I've seen in a long time. Even Sun's machines look better than that and that's saying a lot. If I were Mr. Ives, I'd hang my head in shame over those enclosures. He'd been doing such a great job with the portable line and the iMac line (after the whole iBook that looked like a toilet seat fiasco). Hell, bring back the enclosure from my NeXTcube Turbo. It's years and years old and looks better than that.

Okay, enough ranting. Anyway, I am very curious about the system bus implementation on these puppies. I'd love to see some benchmarks. I'll probably keep the iBook though and wait for the IBM chip.

blogo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:24 AM

Originally posted by gropo
Audio In is BACK!

http://a528.g.akamai.net/7/528/51/22946ba8f374d7/www.apple.com/powermac/images/expansion_calloutc08092002.gif

And with that midi thing in the system utilities, they are starting to focus on musicians again

soosy

Aug 13, 2002, 09:25 AM

I've been bothered ever since they removed the eject key from the drives in the last powermac rev. I actually had a problem on a quicksilver where the drive wouldn't open even though nothing was in it! The drive even failed to show up in System Profiler!. It was extremely annoying 'cause I couldn't even boot off a system cd -- even using all the tricks to open the drive on startup wouldn't work. Running disk utility and fixing drive errors finally let the drive be recognized again. This was in 10.1.5.

Anyway... how do you think you'll control which optical drive to eject with one keyboard key?

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:27 AM

Originally posted by MacArtist

Just to let you know, the d1GHz and d1.25GHz now have the fastest true system bus at 167MHz. The XPs and P4 are at 133, XPs have 133x2 DDR and the P4 are at 133x4 RDRAM. If the new G4 is a true DDR implementation, unlike the Xserve hack, it'll be awsome.

Big deal! these busses are only SDR and therefore they only provide 1.4Gb/s of throughput. All that fancy DDR Ram won't do much because their maximum 2.1Gb/s (266Mhz) and 2.7Gb/s (333Mhz) throughputs don't even get nearly saturated. If you check their website, only the dual 867Mhz and 1Ghz systems are immediately available, while the 1.25Ghz ones are available in 2 months!

I am definately disappointed--not so much in apple, but in motorola for being such ******** retards. I mean, 7 frickin' months for a 20% speed increase? what kind of processes are they working on? .25micron? *sigh*
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Jam

Aug 13, 2002, 09:28 AM

So, those are just vents on the front?
I was really hoping for front panel jacks for firewire at least...

and, i have to agree that screwing a piece of chrome to the front doesn't do ANYTHING for the looks... It's like screwing a chrome tip onto your car's exhaust, it just looks stupid. i can't believe that this design made it out the front door...

BUTm not to be all down, the specs are decent, i know we're always hoping for more, but I think it's technically a solid upgrade.

gopher

Aug 13, 2002, 09:30 AM

Originally posted by soosy
I've been bothered ever since they removed the eject key from the drives in the last powermac rev. I actually had a problem on a quicksilver where the drive wouldn't open even though nothing was in it! The drive even failed to show up in System Profiler!. It was extremely annoying 'cause I couldn't even boot off a system cd -- even using all the tricks to open the drive on startup wouldn't work. Running disk utility and fixing drive errors finally let the drive be recognized again. This was in 10.1.5.

Anyway... how do you think you'll control which optical drive to eject with one keyboard key?

F12 key also ejects...and for that matter, both eject and close at the same time when I have an external drive on my Flat Panel iMac. There are open firmware methods of ejecting disks, and of course you can restart the computer holding down the mouse button to eject disks as well.

GPTurismo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:30 AM

I am sticking with my dual 800 for a while.

Even tho I might get a geforce 4 for it if they ever go down in price O:-)

Also PS is a code nightmare. It still runs in carbon so it can't take full advantage of the hardware and os....

Maybe a new processor line next year?

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:31 AM

Originally posted by soosy

Anyway... how do you think you'll control which optical drive to eject with one keyboard key?

I had a Quicksilver G4 with an extra external Firewire-Burner, and everytime I pressed that button, both drives ejected the CDs...REALLY annoying :/

And another thing... didn't they discontinue the black keyboards and mice? Why do they still have that one-button-crap-mouse?

gropo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:32 AM

Originally posted by iGAV
I'd have used Univers 55 and 65 bold personally... but each to their own.... :p Please tell me you're kidding... Univers is such a "Kindergarten Goofy Playtime" font! Look at the lower-case 'C' for god's sake! The stroke is so uneven! Myriad kicks its ass!

Oh lord, did I really instigate a font flamewar? ;D

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:32 AM

I hope for apple's sake that they get those IBM G5s out soon. If this is the future of the G4, I'm sticking with windoze.

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 09:33 AM

Originally posted by topicolo

Big deal! these busses are only SDR and therefore they only provide 1.4Gb/s of throughput........:

STOP SPECULATING !!! YOU FONT KNOW THAT.

Seriously, can anyone offer REAL proof one way or the other ?

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 09:35 AM

From the Apple Architechture page :

The resulting throughput between main memory and the system controller is up to 2.7GBps, more than double the throughput from the previous dual 1GHz Power Mac G4. DDR-SDRAM also increases systemwide memory bandwidth to the processors and all other elements of the system

THAT sounds like true DDR, no ?

shakespeare

Aug 13, 2002, 09:36 AM

It's so ugly! I'm so upset! The Quicksilver was so gorgeous.....

GAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Damn it all!

I don't even want one!

Sigh.... maybe it will go away.... my bad feelings about it, that is.... what do you guys think of the new look?

But then again, the Quicktime VR of the new system with the monitor is actually not so bad....

Sigh, okay, I can live with it

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 09:36 AM

Did anyone else get a 'server too busy' error? I thought this site just moved to another server to prevent that? An dnow, at 6:35 AM, it is too busy? And the those pop-under-ads...please arn, get something else, I'll even buy one of those mugs and pay shipping to europe ;)

robguz

Aug 13, 2002, 09:38 AM

This has to be the ugliest tower in years. Just garish and hideous. I hope they look better in person and I'll see today at the Apple Store.

Low end=much better deal than before.
High end = rip off. Maybe $3300 wouldn't be so bad if it shipped now, but it won't be here until mid October. It will be competing with dual P4 3Ghz PCs which will be much cheaper. $800 for maybe 25% faster? No thanks, get yourself a low end ibook for that or max out the RAM.

The middle end remains to be seen. Refurb DP Ghz have been available for $2400 for a while, so $2500 when the Ghz chip has been out for 8 months isn't that impressive. Not really sure it's worth the premium over the 867 unless the faster bus speed makes a big difference.

The good news is that there are more drive options-you can now get a superdrive on the low end and a combo drive on the high. But why can't you get a nice CDRW. I will never watch DVDs on my tower, and the CD burning speeds on the combo and superdrive are way too slow. At least give the option for a 40X CDRW even if it's no cheaper than the combo drive.

All in all a mixed bag. The high end is still too slow and expensive and it will only feel more outdated 2 months from now when it ships!

jelloshotsrule

Aug 13, 2002, 09:39 AM

Originally posted by TheT
Did anyone else get a 'server too busy' error? I thought this site just moved to another server to prevent that? An dnow, at 6:35 AM, it is too busy? And the those pop-under-ads...please arn, get something else, I'll even buy one of those mugs and pay shipping to europe ;)

so stop talking about it and buy one.

if it's true ddr, then it could be a really great boost.

funny thing is, i feel that with a lack of a big press announcement, it's harder for me to think of it as any sort of big jump..... hmm

theaz

Aug 13, 2002, 09:39 AM

hmm, its funny. I had thought that the enclosure looked pretty nice. Guess I'm in the minority.

soosy

Aug 13, 2002, 09:42 AM

Hey, I just noticed the headphone jack on the front next to the power button. Yay!

Now if we can usb/firewire on the front, eject buttons back on the drives and a power on key back on the keyboard. ;)

And yay for the audio in on the back as well.

Sunny day

Aug 13, 2002, 09:44 AM

New powermacs. Codename Hannibal.

legacyb4

Aug 13, 2002, 09:44 AM

Ugly? Man, that thing is pretty sweet looking and I haven't seen it live yet...

Then again, I like the new Nissan Z, the prototype of the to-be Skyline GT-R, and even the current generation of the Skyline GT-R R34... ;-)

Cheers.

Originally posted by shakespeare
It's so ugly! I'm so upset! The Quicksilver was so gorgeous.....

GAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Damn it all!

I don't even want one!

Sigh.... maybe it will go away.... my bad feelings about it, that is.... what do you guys think of the new look?

But then again, the Quicktime VR of the new system with the monitor is actually not so bad....

Sigh, okay, I can live with it

giovanni

Aug 13, 2002, 09:44 AM

look, we all know that if the architecture does mimic the Xserve (as Apple states) then this implemtation of DDR does not give any, absolutely ZERO, performance improvement. Again, I wonder what the real improvement is of going from a 133Mhz bus to 167Mhz. We'll see soon some tests

soosy

Aug 13, 2002, 09:45 AM

I realized 4-5 years ago that the high-end is always overpriced... or at least not as much bang for the buck. Which made me get a cheap iMac, which is a little extreme the other way. I'm ready for a powermac again.

awrc

Aug 13, 2002, 09:46 AM

Just to throw in my 0.02 of worthless speculation on whether it's "true" DDR or not. It's fairly commonplace in the PC/Athlon market for a drop in cache size and an increase in cache speed to go hand in hand. The L3 cache has dropped from 2MB to 1MB - perhaps this is to counter the increase in cost that arises from taking the L3 cache up to full DDR 333 speed.

Geert

Aug 13, 2002, 09:46 AM

Originally posted by arn

polls temporarily disabled.

arn

oh god, thank you!

Perhaps predictable, but great anyhow.

srobert

Aug 13, 2002, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by soosy
Anyway... how do you think you'll control which optical drive to eject with one keyboard key?

Shift - Eject ?

creativeczar

Aug 13, 2002, 09:48 AM

Disappointed. The small speed increase and marginal price change are good reasons to wait until January. Not sure how Apple plans to move these machines in a sluggish economy.

maluscanis

Aug 13, 2002, 09:49 AM

Just curious - what's the difference between the headphone jack and the pro speakers jack? I recall reading an article that stated the Mac didn't support 5.1 surround sound and that only a sound card (which doesn't have drivers) can remedy the problem. Any comments.

The Bender

Aug 13, 2002, 09:49 AM

From the Apple website:

"To harness all this power required the new system controller designed for Xserve as well as its L3 cache and DDR memory."

That doesn't sound like 'true' DDR. Rather confusing grammar, too.

ConradG4

Aug 13, 2002, 09:51 AM

If you haven't already look at the school and government savings!

-Conrad:D

gropo

Aug 13, 2002, 09:52 AM

Originally posted by maluscanis
Just curious - what's the difference between the headphone jack and the pro speakers jack?The Digital Audio jack is smaller than a 1/8" phone jack and doesn't carry analog signal...

withnail21

Aug 13, 2002, 09:56 AM

Has any one else noticed that the new macs are nearly 6kgs heaver than the old ones? That's one HEAVY machine. I guess it's down to the new heatsink.

lem0nayde

Aug 13, 2002, 09:56 AM

Didn't the leaked photos clearly show only one processor on the motherboard? They were dead-accurate otherwise....I wonder why.

Also, the sudden appearance of holes all over the system and that huge cooling unit seem strange. The dual systems never needed it before, why now?

Could these changes maybe be a hint of the future, even though they are currently stuck in speed-bump hell?

p.s. - I'd have to see it in person...but the front panel has a nice composition from head-on. The back panel is kind of nice in a funky chewed-up way too.

p.p.s. - whoever said Univers is a child's font is a FOOL. Univers is one of the most beautiful, versatile fonts in existence. Look around you on T.V. and in print - it is everywhere. Although the Univers black and extra black do fall apart a bit, I will give you that much.

Porkepik

Aug 13, 2002, 10:00 AM

I was about to switch from PC (it was for september) i guess i am lucky that i had to wait but now it kinda complicate my choices,

I was going for an 800 with superdrive or (less likely) the 933 also with superdrive. But now i have to choose between the dual 867 and dual 1Ghz , So i wanted to know if the 167 Mhz bus will do a lot of difference for a non-professional user. I intend to edit some personnal videos and burn dvd to send to my parents who are living on the other side of the ocean. There is a substancial price difference between the 2 configs (more than before +- 1000 $cad) with the taxes but i want to keep this computer for a long time. I will certainly see a big improvement on the speed of the computer (I have currently a 3 years old pentium 3 500Mhz, 100Mhz FSB)with either config, so do you think a dual 867 would be enough for the 3 years to come(about the time i keep a computer).

Thanks:)

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 10:02 AM

Originally posted by gropo
Please tell me you're kidding... Univers is such a "Kindergarten Goofy Playtime" font! Look at the lower-case 'C' for god's sake! The stroke is so uneven! Myriad kicks its ass!

Oh lord, did I really instigate a font flamewar? ;D

No flamewar........ designers don't have flamewars... we indulge in heated debates......

http://www.designbeef.com/

As for univers...... 55 and 65 bold, in capitals only.... is IMHO a great headline font, Myriads okay, but doesn't work at smaller point sizes, the same way as univers doesn't...... ultimately though it's down to personal opinion and taste, and my taste says that univers is rather nice...... ;) :p

Univers certainly isn't kiddy though..... clean and contemporary........ ;) :D

So what's you favourite font??? or maybe we should have a font thread before a mod comes and kicks are ar*e..... :p :p :p

So back to topic.......

I want to see performance specs for the 1.25Ghz...... especially in DV and Compositing work.....

Oh legacyb4 the prototype for the next generation Skyline is wild isn't it..... ;) :)

jelloshotsrule

Aug 13, 2002, 10:04 AM

Originally posted by ConradG4
If you haven't already look at the school and government savings!

am i missing something? isn't it pretty much the same as it's always been? about 100 on bottom, up to 200 on the top version?

or are you referring to the old 867 that's there for 1250...?

srobert

Aug 13, 2002, 10:08 AM

Originally posted by Porkepik
do you think a dual 867 would be enough for the 3 years to come(about the time i keep a computer).

Si tu peux te le permettre, tu ferais mieux d'attendre 2 chèques de paie ou 3 et amasser le 1000$ de plus pour le nouveau bus et acheter le double 1GHZ.

ImAlwaysRight

Aug 13, 2002, 10:08 AM

Originally posted by Chaszmyr
The new dual 1ghz are faster than the old dual 1ghz... and the 1.25 ghz is atleast 6 weeks away... I am going dual 1ghz!
My sentiments exactly. I'm not going to wait until October for the 1.25 GHz. The only thing that is making me think twice is the reduction to 1GB L3 cache/processor on the dual 1ghz. If you look at the Photoshop and Final Cut perfomance stats at the powermac pages you'll notice the 1.0GHz seems closer in speed to the 867MHz dual than the 1.25GHz dual. I would imagine that to be because 2GB vs 1GB L3 cache makes a bigger difference than 166MHz bus vs. 133MHz bus. Anyway, I figure I'll go with the dual 1GHz NOW and then can upgrade the processors when faster ones come out in a year or two.

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:08 AM

All right guys, this DDR thing is really important to me.. can someone give me a straight answer ?

They say it took CUES from the Xserve, we dont know if it's the same chipset, and the wording seems to indicate that the DDR speed is throughout. There HAS to be a definate way to know this...

groovebuster

Aug 13, 2002, 10:08 AM

Shrek

Aug 13, 2002, 10:10 AM

Well, way 2 go Apple. Though I must say the prices on these suckers need to go down some, especially on the high-end. If I wanted a PowerMac (I'm more interested in an iMac) I wouldn't buy one of these suckers until I see some major price drops. 'Nuf said.

Sayer

Aug 13, 2002, 10:11 AM

Okay so the new Power Macs are almost what we were expecting. No 1.4 Ghz, no FireWire 2, who knows which CPU model num.

Frankly Apple seems to be in one of its awkward hardware phases. The eMac intro'd after the iMac LCD for less $ and after saying the CRT was dead was really weird. If Apple had intro'd it before the iMac that'd prolly have lessened the blow.

Instead no one was buying the iMac AFTER the eMac came out. Frankly I think the eMac is a HUGE computer and proves why the iMac never went to 17" CRT - it would have been HUGE.

Now the iMac has a 17" wide screen (weird shape, even larger computer overall), the 15" still isn't selling against the much cheaper and larger screen eMac. Is anyone at Apple paying attention?

The new Power Mac is pretty good overall if not spectacular on any one detail other than PC2700 DDR RAM (which may be more of a crutch than speed boost).

No 8x AGP, no FireWire 2, no BlueTooth built in. No new AirPort (even tho it exists).

I would get the middle new G4 since I am coming up from a G4/450! Anything would be a boost to me. The eMac is simply way too large to be reasonable and the iMac is a bit over priced compared to the eMac but would be a better replacement for my Wife's iMac.

Don't even get me started on the 14" iBook. It looks larger than the TiBook, and is rather oddly bleak on top, just a silver panel with a keyboard plopped in the middle. Wintel laptops have all manner of details all over the place, the 14" iBook looks like a mockup in person.

We certainly are living in interesing times being a Mac user. At least we get Jaguar pre-loaded on the new G4s so you whiners can't complaign about the $20 surcharge to upgrade. New hardware also ships with upgrade CDs as well so neener neener neener you whiners.

Man, what a year this was for Apple.

blogo

Aug 13, 2002, 10:13 AM

Notice that on the Quake 3 fps test, the low end mac is a dual 967mhz ;)

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:15 AM

Originally posted by groovebuster

No it doesn't! In the Specs it says:

"Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput"

It's just the known hack from the Xserve, but using a bus with 167MHz instead of 133MHz. The little DP has probably exactly the same motherboard as the Xserve. That means it is even slower than an old DP1000 in real life performance. A dark day for the Apple users...

I'm not sure about that, 1.3 Gbs Data thruput, but it DOESNT say that for memory, plus there are implications other places that it's DDR to chipset to CPU

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:17 AM

This is that part that gives me hope:

DDR-SDRAM also increases systemwide memory bandwidth to the processors and all other elements of the system.

arn

Aug 13, 2002, 10:19 AM

Originally posted by TheT
Did anyone else get a 'server too busy' error? I thought this site just moved to another server to prevent that? An dnow, at 6:35 AM, it is too busy? And the those pop-under-ads...please arn, get something else, I'll even buy one of those mugs and pay shipping to europe ;)

Acutally, the server move was to a different provider.

The actual server upgrade will happen later this week (Thurs) and should be minimal downtime.

There will be a no-ad contributer version available shortly...

arn

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 10:20 AM

Originally posted by cyberfunk
From the Apple Architechture page :

The resulting throughput between main memory and the system controller is up to 2.7GBps, more than double the throughput from the previous dual 1GHz Power Mac G4. DDR-SDRAM also increases systemwide memory bandwidth to the processors and all other elements of the system

THAT sounds like true DDR, no ?

As much as I hate to flame you cyberfunk, you don't seem to know what you're talking about at ALL. All that crap that you posted is ONLY the memory bus! 333Mhz DDR produces 2.7GB/s throughput but 166Mhz SDR is half that! do the calculations. 100Mhz gives 800MB/s, 133Mhz gives 1.067MB/s, 166Mhz gives 1.328MB/s (ok, so I screwed up with the calcuations, but 1.4Gb/s is still closer to Apple's number than your claim of the memory bus as the fsb), etc. For proof check it out here (http://www.simmtester.com/page/news/showpubnews.asp?num=50)
while Apple's proof of the 1.3GB/s throughput is here (http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)

" Up to 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache per processor, with up to 4.6GBps throughput
Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput
256MB or 512MB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM main memory supporting up to 2.7GBps throughput"

Maybe you should do some actual research before accusing people of speculating

Sayer

Aug 13, 2002, 10:25 AM

For people whininh about the price of the top end G4 well you are obviously not the targeted market. Get an eMac or iMac then.

The top end G4 has 512 meg. of RAM already installed. A 120 Gig HD, SuperDrive, and two of the fastest G4s running with 2 Meg. of L3 cache EACH.

That all adds up to a lot of $ when you are Apple. Watch out and don't buy more ram from Apple, many they stick it to you on price. Even CompUSA is more reasonable (esp. for DDR RAM).

For reference most Compaqs and DELL cheapy PeeCees come with 20 Gig HDs and 128 Meg SDRAM (no DDR for you). They don't have dual ATA channels, they generally don't have dual head graphics cards either. Even an iMac or eMac has better specs out of the box than many of the cheapy PeeCees (FireWire, high speed Ethernet built in, SuperDrives).

The new top end G4 is close to workstation levels and is priced for PROs who do real work all day on one, not play around with downloaded DVDs and FPS games and download illegal music on their parents cable modem.

If you have problems with the price, then its most definately not for YOU.

Knox

Aug 13, 2002, 10:28 AM

Originally posted by lem0nayde
Also, the sudden appearance of holes all over the system and that huge cooling unit seem strange. The dual systems never needed it before, why now?

I suspect it might have something to do with the fact you can put 2 optical drives and 4 hard drives in it now - if you fill it up it's going to generate quite a bit of heat, even ignoring the cpus themselves.

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 10:28 AM

Originally posted by topicolo

As much as I hate to flame you cyberfunk, you don't seem to know what you're talking about at ALL.

Maybe you should do some actual research before accusing people of speculating

Mac rumors readers are so nice, you keep responding to him saving me hours throughout the day. Thanks

InternatB JR

iamspooky

Aug 13, 2002, 10:30 AM

Aloha,

I don't know about you you folks but I won't believe all this
"TRUE" DDR ram throughput bus voodoo from Apple's savy marketing staff. The proof is "in the putting" and I'm putting my money nowhere until I see some raw tests and actual results of performance from an independent party. Compare these new systems to the old G4's and let's see what happens ?? Until then all this talk is only "poopput" to me......

Regards,
Mark :cool:

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:31 AM

Originally posted by topicolo

As much as I hate to flame you cyberfunk, you don't seem to know what you're talking about at ALL. All that crap that you posted is ONLY the memory bus! 333Mhz DDR produces 2.7GB/s throughput but 166Mhz SDR is half that! do the calculations. 100Mhz gives 800MB/s, 133Mhz gives 1.067MB/s, 166Mhz gives 1.328MB/s (ok, so I screwed up with the calcuations, but 1.4Gb/s is still closer to Apple's number than your claim of the memory bus as the fsb), etc. For proof check it out here (http://www.simmtester.com/page/news/showpubnews.asp?num=50)
while Apple's proof of the 1.3GB/s throughput is here (http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html)

" Up to 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache per processor, with up to 4.6GBps throughput
Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput
256MB or 512MB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM main memory supporting up to 2.7GBps throughput"

Maybe you should do some actual research before accusing people of speculating

IF DDR is done right though, that high speed memory bus should EXTEND from the shipset to the CPU.

Another thing. Look at the size of the buses in this picture, the one from the chipset to CPU to DDR are all the same size, while others vary in size from the chipset... HMMMMMMMMMMM

http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html (main picture)

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 10:33 AM

350 for the 128 GeForce 4? Here in the pcworld i can buy one for 150. Does apples drivers work on all Nvidia based cards?

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:33 AM

Originally posted by Ibjr

Mac rumors readers are so nice, you keep responding to him saving me hours throughout the day. Thanks

InternatB JR

Alright you pompus little prick, you explain it if your so smart.

arn

Aug 13, 2002, 10:35 AM

let's keep the dialog focused... no personal attacks please.

arn

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 10:37 AM

Originally posted by cyberfunk

Alright you pompus little prick, you explain it if your so smart.

Apples marketing is very creative. There 150 new features are not all new, many were found in OS9. Faster than light? Ya, that’s great marketing. You can't juge a computer based on marketing speak. Remember the one gigaflop campaign? Now that was a laugh.

And please do leave the speculation on my anatomy off these boards.

thanks

InternatB JR

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 10:38 AM

Originally posted by arn

Acutally, the server move was to a different provider.

The actual server upgrade will happen later this week (Thurs) and should be minimal downtime.

There will be a no-ad contributer version available shortly...

arn

That's great! I didn't mean to offend you, I know it is a load of work to keep a site as good as this running...
It's always great to see the community growing... good luck with the upgrade!

GPTurismo

Aug 13, 2002, 10:40 AM

Originally posted by arn
let's keep the dialog focused... no personal attacks please.

arn

Words of Wisdom

UNIVERS ROCKS ;)

Rolle

Aug 13, 2002, 10:40 AM

This new Mac will be music in my ears. But... does anyone now if it supports OS 9.x? Otherwise I'll just have to by the old dual 1 GHz version. U C the music industri seams to be a bit behind.

Roland the roadie:confused:

puffmarvin

Aug 13, 2002, 10:43 AM

Originally posted by cyberfunk

Alright you pompus little prick, you explain it if your so smart.

you know, i hate when people correct others in the forums but this is a perfect example:

pompus should be pompous

and

your should be you're since YOU'RE saying you are.

before lashing out against someones intelligence... check your spelling :p

AndrewS

Aug 13, 2002, 10:45 AM

Here's an interesting piece of info pulled from that

http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html

link given a few posts ago....

"The resulting throughput between main memory and the system controller is up to 2.7GBps, more than double the throughput from the previous dual 1GHz Power Mac G4"

groovebuster

Aug 13, 2002, 10:47 AM

I just checked the prices in the german Apple Store (based on the current exchange course):

DP867: 1845.- US$ + tax
DP1000: 2,620.- US$ + tax
DP1250: 3,490.- US$ + tax
DP1250 (ultimate): 5,470.- US$ + tax

They are really nuckin' futs!!! The rip off goes on for european users! I am really mad now! The DP1250 costs almost 200$ more here! :mad: What do they think??? ... in case they think at all!!!

Yeah, that's how you increase market share Apple!!! Go on like that... good plan!

*shaking head*

groovebuster

arogge

Aug 13, 2002, 10:48 AM

Many of the things on my upgrade wish list came true - front expansion slot, dual-processor configurations, and lower prices. I hope these new PowerMacs are really quiet. I like the more aggressive looks of the case design too, and the elimination of some old PC-type bottlenecks will be another reason to choose the PowerMac over the "Made in Elbonia" Dell desktop.

BongHits

Aug 13, 2002, 10:50 AM

i have never been so happy that i bought early. sure the new case looks nice and a dualie with ddr (same fsb) would scream but i also would have had to wait close to 6 months for these IMO minor improvements. This is what the PM should have been last update. When I see this new IBM chip im getting a new one, until then my 933 doesn't make me the least bit envious of these machines.

Draft

Aug 13, 2002, 10:57 AM

Originally posted by gropo
Please tell me you're kidding... Univers is such a "Kindergarten Goofy Playtime" font! Look at the lower-case 'C' for god's sake! The stroke is so uneven! Myriad kicks its ass!

Oh lord, did I really instigate a font flamewar? ;D

Off-topic, but does Myriad go by a different name? If not, is there someplace I could download it? I'd like to try it out.

Draft

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 10:58 AM

Originally posted by arn
let's keep the dialog focused... no personal attacks please.

arn

Sorry, it's just people who reffer to me in the third person and attack me ad hominum offend me. :mad:

But, now I'm happy, cause I'm getting a dual Ghz :)

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by cyberfunk

IF DDR is done right though, that high speed memory bus should EXTEND from the shipset to the CPU.

Another thing. Look at the size of the buses in this picture, the one from the chipset to CPU to DDR are all the same size, while others vary in size from the chipset... HMMMMMMMMMMM

http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html (main picture)
OMG, you can't actually be serious about that! The size of the buses in the picture have nothing to do with the speed of the buses. The PCI bus lines look almost as thick as the AGP bus lines when the throughput of 4x AGP is 8x greater. The speeds of the bus between G4s and from the G4s to the system controller are only 133-166Mhz, just like the XServe, unfortunately. Looks like Apple screwed up again thanks to motorola

iShater

Aug 13, 2002, 11:01 AM

Originally posted by iamspooky
Aloha,

The proof is "in the putting" and I'm putting my money nowhere until I see some raw tests and actual results of performance from an independent party. Compare these new systems to the old G4's and let's see what happens ?? Until then all this talk is only "poopput" to me......

Regards,
Mark :cool:

I 100% agree. I have been waiting to switch for sometime, and I want to know the performance of these machines compared to the old ones. I specifically want to know how VPC would run on these babies! The old DP was ok, I hoping these are better. I have to be able to run some work software at an acceptable rate.

bretm

Aug 13, 2002, 11:02 AM

Originally posted by iamspooky
Aloha,

I don't know about you you folks but I won't believe all this
"TRUE" DDR ram throughput bus voodoo from Apple's savy marketing staff. The proof is "in the putting" and I'm putting my money nowhere until I see some raw tests and actual results of performance from an independent party. Compare these new systems to the old G4's and let's see what happens ?? Until then all this talk is only "poopput" to me......

Regards,
Mark :cool:

I thought the proof was in the "pudding." Have I just been eating way too much desert? Or is it dessert?

Draft

Aug 13, 2002, 11:02 AM

Oh, and by the way, I do like the new powermacs. The case leaves something to be desired, as well as the jacked-up pricing, but it's a sweet machine.

My favorite things are dual optical drive bays, ATI 9000, and the fact that they finally have DDR.

Draft

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 11:05 AM

Now I'm REALLY confused.. I just called an Apple drone at 1800MYAPPLE, and got confirmation that DDR is the WHOLE way thru...

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 11:05 AM

Originally posted by Draft

Off-topic, but does Myriad go by a different name? If not, is there someplace I could download it? I'd like to try it out.

Draft

...it's a professional Adobe font and costs you hundrets of dollars :D

I agree with groovebuster, the German prices are a total rip-off ! Good thing I was able to get an iPod in the US half a year ago... it was still cheaper than it is in Europe now, after the price drop!

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 11:06 AM

Originally posted by topicolo

OMG, you can't actually be serious about that! The size of the buses in the picture have nothing to do with the speed of the buses. The PCI bus lines look almost as thick as the AGP bus lines when the throughput of 4x AGP is 8x greater. The speeds of the bus between G4s and from the G4s to the system controller are only 133-166Mhz, just like the XServe, unfortunately. Looks like Apple screwed up again thanks to motorola

Exactly, especially since DDR has nothing to do with how "wide" (even if you could determine that by the number of traces on the motherboard which you can't) the bus is and everything to do with transfering data two times per clock.

The only hope you can get from this architecture is the fact that the system controller supposedly allows other devices DMA to main memory. So, the bandwidth to the processor may only increase a little with the clock bump to 167MHz but we may be able to get a little more bandwidth to peripheral cards, devices, io, etc.

nero007

Aug 13, 2002, 11:08 AM

Originally posted by TheT

I had a Quicksilver G4 with an extra external Firewire-Burner, and everytime I pressed that button, both drives ejected the CDs...REALLY annoying :/

This doesn't happen anymore in Jaguar.

mdurg

Aug 13, 2002, 11:10 AM

Various forms of Myriad can be purchased from Adobe or Eyewire. It also comes with most (or all?) Adobe products. So if you have Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. you will have Myriad normal, italic, bold and bold italic.

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 11:12 AM

Originally posted by arogge
... I hope these new PowerMacs are really quiet. ...

There is no way those macs are gonna be as quiet as the old ones... I mean, did you see the cooling system, there must be some really loud fans as well...
I just hope it's not even nearly as loud as the Xserve, that would suck so bad... No way I'm gonna leave my fan-less iMac for one of those :D

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 11:14 AM

Originally posted by nero007

This doesn't happen anymore in Jaguar.

So how does it work? Shift-Eject? I don't have any experience with Jagwire yet :D

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by Sayer

For reference most Compaqs and DELL cheapy PeeCees come with 20 Gig HDs and 128 Meg SDRAM (no DDR for you). They don't have dual ATA channels, they generally don't have dual head graphics cards either. Even an iMac or eMac has better specs out of the box than many of the cheapy PeeCees (FireWire, high speed Ethernet built in, SuperDrives).

True, but any self-respecting pc user (trust me they actually exist) would buy/build a clone with much better specs than that. Practically all of the good motherboards out there have 4 IDE channels, 2 of which are on an onboard RAID chip. They all use at least PC2100 DDR RAM, and many have onboard ethernet and as much as 5 usb ports. Some even have USB 2.0 onboard. Granted, they don't have gigabit ethernet or firewire, but aside from firewire, how many people actually use the full gigabit connection?

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 11:15 AM

YES !!! YES !!! WE HAVE DDR the WHOLE WAY !!! I talk to two seperate people at the Apple Store, who KNEW what they were talking about, and I quote

" No, this isnt' like the X Serve that only has DDR to the chipset sir, it has DDR the whole way through"

SCORE !!!!!!!

YES YES YES !!!!

mdurg

Aug 13, 2002, 11:15 AM

About time! The dual 1 gig is looking good to me at this early point in time. Also good that it is shipping right away. I'll probably order Monday when I'm back from vacation.

Will these towers accept a 3rd party IDE burner? Apple isn't giving us much choice in this department. $250 for an additional combo drive is a little steep. Also I'm worried about the door arrangement.

Ditto for memory. I will fill it with memory from Crucial or elsewhere for much cheaper.

giovanni

Aug 13, 2002, 11:16 AM

well,
does anyone know whether these new (well, not really new!) Macs are in the Apple stores ? if so we could go and check them out.

TheT

Aug 13, 2002, 11:16 AM

Originally posted by mdurg
Various forms of Myriad can be purchased from Adobe or Eyewire. It also comes with most (or all?) Adobe products. So if you have Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. you will have Myriad normal, italic, bold and bold italic.

I have PS7 (yes, a officially paid-for version) and I didn't see any fonts coming with it... where do I find 'em? I don't think the installer put em on my system...

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:19 AM

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 11:23 AM

Originally posted by topicolo

True, but any self-respecting pc user (trust me they actually exist) would buy/build a clone with much better specs than that. Practically all of the good motherboards out there have 4 IDE channels, 2 of which are on an onboard RAID chip. They all use at least PC2100 DDR RAM, and many have onboard ethernet and as much as 5 usb ports. Some even have USB 2.0 onboard. Granted, they don't have gigabit ethernet or firewire, but aside from firewire, how many people actually use the full gigabit connection?

i am pretty confident if you built your own pc that matched the specs of these new powermacs that you would spend more than the powermacs cost.

take a look at the benchmarks on the old machines at barefeats and you will see the old machines though slower were still very close the the pcs, and these new improvements should make that difference very close.

try specing out a new pc and i think you will find these powermacs are very aggressively priced. we will have to wait for some non-apple benchmarks to get a real idea of what is a comparable pc, but judging from the old benchmarks seems like these new macs should be able to go head to head with intel and amds finest.

PretendPCuser

Aug 13, 2002, 11:27 AM

From the apple PDF included software: Mac OS X, OS 9 (obviously they don't tell you x.2 or 9.2), but they do include it, so i have to assume that they wouldn't give you OS 9 if the new machines wouldn't run it.

I do remember hearing that the next PM wouldn't run OS 9, maybe that's for the *next* iteration (not this one). I spent the morning doing the same thing being that my work is looking to purchase new machines (woot!). Talk about good timing. Considering we're upgrading from Beige G3s, all the DDR-speak/confusion/nonsense doesn't worry me, i *think* the new machines will be faster...:p

Hope this helps.

robguz

Aug 13, 2002, 11:29 AM

By Apple's own stats, the new 1.25 is only 20% faster in gigaflops than the old 1ghz. So even with DDR, they are actually slower than the 25% speed improvement you'd expect with a Mhz increase. Oh yeah, the bus speed is up to 167 Mhz. So with DDR AND a faster bus speed, the damn thing is even slower than you'd expect if there were no architectural changes. this is totally lame! And they raised the price on an already overpriced machine. Fortunately they've implemented someother improvements, though not enough of them. Why not the top ATI card? Why is the GF4 Ti a $350 premium? Why isn't it standard on the high end?

Leave it to Apple to implement DDR and it provides no speed improvement. Will it at least improve performance if used as a server, like with the Xserve?

Why pay the extra for DDR RAM? Maybe makes more sense to get the old DP Ghz with the larger L3 cache instead of the new machines which will cost a lot more.

stevesien

Aug 13, 2002, 11:31 AM

Both Mac OS X & Mac OS 9 are installed on your new Power Mac

G4 (Mac OS X v.10.2 Jaguar, is the default boot-up operating system). Choose optional languages other than the country default language, if needed

iamspooky

Aug 13, 2002, 11:32 AM

Edge100

Aug 13, 2002, 11:32 AM

Originally posted by cyberfunk
YES !!! YES !!! WE HAVE DDR the WHOLE WAY !!! I talk to two seperate people at the Apple Store, who KNEW what they were talking about, and I quote

" No, this isnt' like the X Serve that only has DDR to the chipset sir, it has DDR the whole way through"

SCORE !!!!!!!

YES YES YES !!!!

I'm sorry, but this simply doesnt make sense given the following info on Apple's site:

"256MB or 512MB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM main memory supporting up to 2.7GBps throughput"

AND

"Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput"

Notice that the memory bandwidth is TWICE the FSB bandwidth. Until someone PROVES otherwise, the FSB is NOT DDR!

Edge100

Aug 13, 2002, 11:35 AM

I would like to point out that we have NO REAL WORLD PROOF of the speed of these machines, except for Apple's little blurb.

Let's wait until we really see this thing work to pass judgment.

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:35 AM

According to the guys at the Motley Fool messageboard (under the AAPL ticker), the new powermacs are xserves with overclocked system bridges and fsbs. That could explain the vents in the front and the larger heatsink since overclocking raises the cpu's heat dissipation geometrically. Also, it seems believable since there was that guy who overclocked his G4 Dual 1Ghz to 1.2Ghz each.

mdurg

Aug 13, 2002, 11:35 AM

i am pretty confident if you built your own pc that matched the specs of these new powermacs that you would spend more than the powermacs cost.

Not even close. The PCs are much cheaper. I've built a lot of PCs. And when you hand build, you get cutting edge technology. The ingredients that Apple has put together for today's announcement have been around for quite a while (in computer-life time)

try specing out a new pc and i think you will find these powermacs are very aggressively priced.

Not even close again. I just bought a Micron Millenium XP 2200+ with 512 meg for $1200. You'd have to add $500 for the difference in cost for the Superdrive. But you're still not close on price. When I have the Micron and new Mac in, it will be fun to compare the speeds. I have some renderings in Strata that will be can be used to see how the dualie does. Oops, Strata is not OSX native yet. Maybe that wouldn't be a good test. Maybe something in Photoshop or Illustrator.

If we're going to compare Mac vs PC prices, we're just kidding ourselves. Macs come at a premium. And the reason we pay the premium is that they are that much better than PCs. Or are they? :rolleyes:

iamspooky

Aug 13, 2002, 11:36 AM

Originally posted by robguz
By Apple's own stats, the new 1.25 is only 20% faster in gigaflops than the old 1ghz. So even with DDR, they are actually slower than the 25% speed improvement you'd expect with a Mhz increase. Oh yeah, the bus speed is up to 167 Mhz. So with DDR AND a faster bus speed, the damn thing is even slower than you'd expect if there were no architectural changes. this is totally lame! And they raised the price on an already overpriced machine. Fortunately they've implemented someother improvements, though not enough of them. Why not the top ATI card? Why is the GF4 Ti a $350 premium? Why isn't it standard on the high end?

Leave it to Apple to implement DDR and it provides no speed improvement. Will it at least improve performance if used as a server, like with the Xserve?

Why pay the extra for DDR RAM? Maybe makes more sense to get the old DP Ghz with the larger L3 cache instead of the new machines which will cost a lot more.

I agree with you, I think this is all Apple Marketing "VOODOO" .......

Regards,
Mark

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 11:36 AM

Most likely, unless Apple is using a new processor, this is the same as the Xserve. You can't just take a processor designed for 100 mhz bus and drop it in with DDR and say "Here you go, take it all." It doesn't work like that.

What Apple did is they took the FSB and brought it up to 166.67 mhz (if you want to be technical about it, there is no 167 mhz bus- only if you round it to be!). This is no different than how some overclockers on the other side make their CPU faster- by keeping the multiplier the same but increasing the bus. So, your comparison here:

Old G4: 133 bus x 7.5 multiplier = 1 ghz
New G4: 166 bus x 6 multiplier = 1 ghz

By increasing the FSB, you can get a speed increase because it is the FSB that controls the CPU, not the memory speed. Want proof? Take a look at the P3 and RDRAM and DDR. The P3 was running on a 133 mhz bus, and having more available memory bandwidth than it could use was a waste.

So why go to a DDR bus?

It's simple- it does benefit devices like high performance pci cards that do direct memory transfers. I dunno if this will make it clearer, but here:

_______________PCI Bus___------AGP Bus
CPU 1--\___________|______/
______(166)---System Chipset ----(266/333)---- Memory
CPU 2--/___________|______\
________________IDE____-----Firewire/USB/Sound

(_ = space, board didn't like whitespace in there)

So, the math works out like this:
Memory Bandwidth: Assuming a 166DDR bus (since the specs state either 133 or 166, I'm assuming that it runs at the same frequency as the FSB)

All numbers in MB/sec

Memory: 2660

CPU: -1330 MB/sec
64 bit PCI: -266 MB/sec
4x AGP: -2112 MB/sec
USB -1.2 MB/sec
Firewire -40 MB/sec
Sound -133 MB/sec
Gigabit -125 MB/sec
-----------------------------------
-1347 meg/sec

Now, you have to realize that those are max values, and you usually won't ever saturate the AGP bus, and only come even so close when playing games where you have to swap out AGP card memory with real memory, and Sound will never use 133 megs/sec, but you get the idea. In a SDR memory subsystem you would be cutting into the CPU's bandwidth immediately, whereas with a DDR system you can have many things going on without stealing bandwidth from the CPU.

So why did the Xserve DDR systems do no better than a MP Powermac?

One problem that is shared with both Intel and Apple (but not AMD) is that the FSB is shared by BOTH CPUs. That means that if both chips are doing 100% work, they have half the bandwidth the the chipset. So, any increase in the available bandwidth (which we'll get to next) is effectively halved, giving only around a 50 megs/sec advantage of a SDR system.

Which brings up the second point: Very few things are done independently of the CPU. So, even though a gigabit network card can have memory bandwidth independent of the CPU, it still needs to communicate with the CPU, using the CPU bandwidth and CPU time.

So, the main difference between this and the Xserve will be the FSB. And that WILL make a difference in benchmarks. They didn't need DDR, but since that's where the general trend is going, it's not a bad idea to implement it into current systems so that you can use the ram again in your new system. But, I repeat, without a major architecture revision in the CPU, it will NOT benefit from DDR as much as Apple would want people to think. The 166.67 mhz bus, however, will. _______________

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 11:42 AM

i really suggest everyone go to apple's website and read some of the info on the powermac. and no not just to educate you (though some of you definitely need some educating, especially those holding on to biege g3s) but to see some of the very agressive marketing speak. they are attacking both old powermacs and peecees. very interesting marketing if you ask me.

on ata100
On a dual 1.25GHz Power Mac G4, try 50% faster than a dual 1GHz Power Mac with ATA/66

The new Power Mac G4 desktop system with the dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processor configuration hits speeds of over 18 gigaflops.

The results were astounding: The dual 1.25GHz Power Mac G4 was three times faster than a 500MHz G4. For the record, the dual 1GHz Power Mac G4 was almost 2.5 times faster than the original, and the dual 867MHz model is twice as fast.

ok, so this one is the best. all you spec morons read closely.
The performance advantage of the PowerPC G4 starts with its data pipeline. The term “processor pipeline” refers to the number of processing steps, or stages, it takes to accomplish a task. The fewer the steps, the shorter — and more efficient — the pipeline. Thanks to its efficient 7-stage design (versus 20 stages for the Pentium 4 processor) the G4 processor can accomplish a task with 13 fewer steps than the PC. You do the math.

All advanced processors try to guess what they will need to do next in order to increase performance. This is known as “speculative operation.” Of course the processor doesn’t always guess correctly, and when it’s wrong it must often clear out the pipeline and start over. This results in bubbles — or periods of time where no data is available for processing — that leave the processor idle while it waits for new data. Because the G4 pipeline is short, the processor recovers from bubbles more quickly, resulting in higher processor utilization. With fewer processing steps, faster recovery and higher processor utilization, processor output is maximized.

Another aspect of speculative operation worth noting is that it is possible to create (for testing purposes) a contrived set of instructions that can make the processor guess correctly much more often than it would under real-world conditions. Thus a “benchmark” with no relation to actual performance can be crafted to cleverly avoid the bubble problem and thus indicate unrealistically high performance. This underscores the importance of using real applications to provide valid performance comparisons.

PCI performance is optimized on the Power Mac G4 with a direct bus to the system controller, providing a maximum sustained throughput of 266MBps. Contrast that with the typical PC, where PCI is connected to the I/O controller through a bridge — a stage in the data path that constricts the data flow — causing a slowdown. The result is maximum throughput of 133MBps, which limits the performance of otherwise fast PCI devices. The direct bus on the Power Mac G4 guarantees high throughput and low congestion. Additionally, the Power Mac G4 supports write combining (the grouping of write instructions into one large instruction), further increasing data throughput.

FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet are two high-performance technologies for connecting to the latest peripherals and high-speed networks. On PCs, these features are often installed as PCI cards, adding more data congestion for the PCI bus and the I/O controller. On the Power Mac G4, FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet are connected directly to the system controller. This dedicated connection guarantees low latency and maximum throughput, resulting in optimal FireWire and Ethernet performance. And because they don’t share a bus with PCI and are not routed through the I/O controller, there’s also less congestion for PCI devices.

well ive already auoted a lot, but theres lots of other great lil tid bits. so head on over to apple. got to love the aggressive marketing.

iH8Quark

Aug 13, 2002, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by topicolo
" Up to 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache per processor, with up to 4.6GBps throughput
Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput
256MB or 512MB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM main memory supporting up to 2.7GBps throughput"

So...this basically means that you could have left off all the fancy DDR, because this thing is limited to 1.3GB/sec due to the BUS???

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:48 AM

Just to nitpick a little:

Originally posted by locovaca

So, the math works out like this:
Memory Bandwidth: Assuming a 166DDR bus (since the specs state either 133 or 166, I'm assuming that it runs at the same frequency as the FSB)

All numbers in MB/sec

Memory: 2660

CPU: -1330 MB/sec
64 bit PCI: -266 MB/sec
4x AGP: -2112 MB/sec 8x AGP is 2133Mb/s, 4x AGP is 1066Mb/s
USB -1.2 MB/sec
Firewire -40 MB/sec
Sound -133 MB/sec
Gigabit -125 MB/sec
-----------------------------------
-1347 meg/sec

Now, you have to realize that those are max values, and you usually won't ever saturate the AGP bus, and only come even so close when playing games where you have to swap out AGP card memory with real memory, and Sound will never use 133 megs/sec, but you get the idea.
You could saturate the AGP bus if the processor is supplying enough data to the T&L unit of a fast GPU (ie playing games at low res like 640x480 or 800x600) and if the sound system is implemented on the same bus as the PCI bus, you would have to share the 133MB/s with other devices using the same bandwidth (USB 2.0 card, extra IDE controller, etc)

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 11:48 AM

Originally posted by mdurg
i am pretty confident if you built your own pc that matched the specs of these new powermacs that you would spend more than the powermacs cost.

Not even close. The PCs are much cheaper. I've built a lot of PCs. And when you hand build, you get cutting edge technology. The ingredients that Apple has put together for today's announcement have been around for quite a while (in computer-life time)

try specing out a new pc and i think you will find these powermacs are very aggressively priced.

Not even close again. I just bought a Micron Millenium XP 2200+ with 512 meg for $1200. You'd have to add $500 for the difference in cost for the Superdrive. But you're still not close on price. When I have the Micron and new Mac in, it will be fun to compare the speeds. I have some renderings in Strata that will be can be used to see how the dualie does. Oops, Strata is not OSX native yet. Maybe that wouldn't be a good test. Maybe something in Photoshop or Illustrator.

If we're going to compare Mac vs PC prices, we're just kidding ourselves. Macs come at a premium. And the reason we pay the premium is that they are that much better than PCs. Or are they? :rolleyes:

i seriously doubt your 1200$ pc was similiarly speced. that is my point. sounds lie you had a barebones system. thats why it is cheap. spec out a new pc right now, matching each and every component. you will find the powermacs are well priced. people have done this on these boards time and time again and found that the pc is not cheaper. sure you can build a stripped down pc, and claim it is cheaper but thats not really fair now is it? you would have to compare that to a stripped mac then.

macsurfer

Aug 13, 2002, 11:50 AM

Originally posted by soosy

Now if we can usb/firewire on the front, eject buttons back on the drives and a power on key back on the keyboard. ;)

NO THANK YOU (and I don't mind the way they look at all).

skunk

Aug 13, 2002, 11:51 AM

Did anyone notice the ambiguous wording in Apple's press release: "Mac OS X version 10.2 "Jaguar," Apple's next-generation operating system as the startup operating system, as well as Mac OS 9.2.2." It's not actually clear that these machines will boot in 9.

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 11:52 AM

Originally posted by iH8Quark

So...this basically means that you could have left off all the fancy DDR, because this thing is limited to 1.3GB/sec due to the BUS???

well, the DDR does give an extra 300MB/s over pc 133.

ImAlwaysRight

Aug 13, 2002, 11:53 AM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
i really suggest everyone go to apple's website and read some of the info on the powermac. and no not just to educate you (though some of you definitely need some educating, especially those holding on to biege g3s) but to see some of the very agressive marketing speak. they are attacking both old powermacs and peecees. very interesting marketing if you ask me.

...

well ive already auoted a lot, but theres lots of other great lil tid bits. so head on over to apple. got to love the aggressive marketing.

Sounds kinda like how I write my ebay ads...

job

Aug 13, 2002, 11:53 AM

Originally posted by locovaca

_______________PCI Bus___------AGP Bus
CPU 1--\___________|______/
______(166)---System Chipset ----(266/333)---- Memory
CPU 2--/___________|______\
________________IDE____-----Firewire/USB/Sound

macsurfer

Aug 13, 2002, 11:53 AM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
(though some of you definitely need some educating, especially those holding on to biege g3s)

NO KIDDING

job

Aug 13, 2002, 11:56 AM

I think this revision, under the hood, is a very decent one.

I don't think the rumors of a Power4 based Mac for this time frame were very accurate, and as seeing as I'm stuck with an old slot-loading iMac (400Mhz!), the new mid-range tower looks very nice indeed.

But can someone please tell me whether a larger L3 cache is better or a faster bus (i.e. comparing the dual 867 and the dual 1Ghz)

Oh, I also think the slight price increase may be due to the inclusion of X.2....

ImAlwaysRight

Aug 13, 2002, 11:59 AM

Has anyone else noticed that Apple includes absolutely no (zero) keyboards nor mice in their photographs of the new G4 PowerMac? I'm curious if the color of the new keyboards will be white or black. I'd guess white given the rumors of black has been EOL'ed.

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 12:01 PM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon

i seriously doubt your 1200$ pc was similiarly speced. that is my point. sounds lie you had a barebones system. thats why it is cheap. spec out a new pc right now, matching each and every component. you will find the powermacs are well priced. people have done this on these boards time and time again and found that the pc is not cheaper. sure you can build a stripped down pc, and claim it is cheaper but thats not really fair now is it? you would have to compare that to a stripped mac then.

*sigh* I was hoping to stay out of this, but I just had to join in here.

Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 10:58:11 AM CDT
Catalog Number: 29 19

Category Description Product Code SKU
Dell Dimension 8200 Series: Pentium® 4 Processor at 2.53GHz with 533MHz system bus/ 512K L2 Cache D825W [221-0191]
Memory: SAVE $80! (savings included in price) 512MB PC800 RDRAM 512M82P [461-5718]
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Monitors: No Monitor N [320-3000]
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Hard Drive: Save $60! (Savings included in price) 120GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive 120P [461-3813]
Floppy Drive: 3.5 in Floppy Drive 3 [340-1927]
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition WHXP [313-7222] [412-0189] [420-3079]
Mouse: MS IntelliMouse® IM [310-2757]
Network Card: 10/100 PCI Fast Ethernet NIC CNET [430-5353]
Modem: 56K PCI Telephony Modem 56KWSXP [313-1583]
CD or DVD Drive: Save $50! DVD+RW/+R Drive with CDRW (includes 1 DVD+RW disc) DVDRWP [313-1203] [430-0310] [430-0365] [461-3858]
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Live! Digital Sound Card SB1024 [313-1488]
Speakers: Harman Kardon HK-395 Speakers with Subwoofer HK395 [313-7284]
Bundled Software: Microsoft® Works Suite 2002 w/Money Standard WORKS [412-0133]
Virus Protection: Norton AntiVirus™ 2002, 90-day introductory offer NAV2002 [412-0259]
Digital Music: Dell Jukebox powered by MusicMatch MMBASE [412-0246]
Digital Photography: Dell Picture Studio, Image Expert Standard DPS [412-0271] [412-0273]
Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options: 3 Year Limited Warranty plus 3 Year At-Home Service S3OS [950-1272] [950-3339] [950-4270]
Internet Access Service: 6 Months of America Online Membership Included AOLDHS [412-0258] [412-0279] [412-0287]
Recommended Media: Free Verbatim DVD+RW Media,1 Disc 1RWDISK [313-1203]
Protect Your System: Belkin Surgemaster Gold Power BELGOLD [A0004763]

-----------------------------
$1996 vs. Apple's $3299

mdurg

Aug 13, 2002, 12:02 PM

i seriously doubt your 1200$ pc was similiarly speced. that is my point. sounds lie you had a barebones system.

Yes it was similarly speced, except for Superdrive which they obviously don't offer. By similarly speced, I'm counting on the AMD 2200 by be similar in performance to today's dual 1 gig.

As far as stripped down, I could buy one of those for $500 with monitor.

dobbin

Aug 13, 2002, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by bretm

I thought the proof was in the "pudding." Have I just been eating way too much desert? Or is it dessert?

I think the saying actually goes "The proof of the pudding is in the eating". As in, you can't tell how good something is by looking at it, or reading about it, but only by using it.

In the case of new PowerMacs, you can compare specs and read that Apple think its 90% faster than a P4, but really THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING. i.e. when you use it, you'll know whether its any good, and not before!

Cheers,
Dobbin

ddtlm

Aug 13, 2002, 12:03 PM

AmbitiousLemon:

"ok, so this one is the best. all you spec morons read closely."

As in SPEC, the industry-standard benchmark where G4's get their asses kicked by P3's, P4's, Athlon's, Sparc's, Power4's, Itaniums, and a few more? :) Anyway, all you did was quote Apple marketing speak... that means exactly nothing. (Zero.)

General Commentary for Everyone:

The 166mhz FSB with 1.3gb/s bandwith is obviously NOT DDR, or else it would have a higher bandwidth to match the DDR 333 and not only that, but Apple would call it a 333mhz FSB just like Intel and AMD do. However 166mhz is 25% faster than 133mhz and this is a good thing.

I am also suspicious of just how fast the L3 caches are running... they may have "adjusted" the multiplyer on those. I haven't really seen anywhere where they say up front what the clock speed and bandwith is for the L3's on each model.

Anyway, things have come to pass much as I have been predicting for weeks, perhaps months. I did my part to keep the hype under control... but some people just never listen.

robguz

Aug 13, 2002, 12:03 PM

And Just imagine how cheap that same PC will be when the new 1.25 actually ships. Knock another $200 off the price or add about 200 Mhz!

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:05 PM

Did anyone else notice that the monitor rebate is still going on with a purchase of a new tower?

When does that finish?

Rajj

Aug 13, 2002, 12:06 PM

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo:p :mad:

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 12:06 PM

*sigh* I'm depressed :(

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 12:09 PM

Hey, where is the radeon 9700 option that was rumored?

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by topicolo
Hey, where is the radeon 9700 option that was rumored?

Ehm, it was a rumor.

:p ;)

tjwett

Aug 13, 2002, 12:12 PM

very disappointing. these are not only ugly but i'm guessing will be unreliable as well. besides looking slapped together i don't feel safe knowing they felt the need to put in a giant heat sink and a million vents and holes. i think these are tweaked/overclocked beyond the safety range and will turn out to be be pieces of crapola. just my opinion.

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:12 PM

Can anyone answer my question though :

Which is better for overall performance, a larger L3 cache or a faster system bus?

iShater

Aug 13, 2002, 12:16 PM

Originally posted by topicolo
*sigh* I'm depressed :(

I'd wait after we get the independent testing results to get depressed :D that will tell us if these are worth the extra $$$.

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 12:17 PM

Originally posted by topicolo
Just to nitpick a little:

Yea, for some reason I was giving AGP more credit and thinking it was a 64 bit bus, not 32. And yes, the new Nvidia and ATI cards are getting close to saturating the bus, but I was thinking more towards video editing/ 2d graphics than games.

I was also unsure if the sound functions were inplemented in the system controller or on the PCI bus, which is why I kept them seperate. But yes, if they're part of the PCI bus then they take away from that.

As for your little quoting of the Apple specs- maybe you should go read a good CprE book on processor design instead of just quoting Apple. Apple is not the be all end all source on computing architecture- they just want you to buy their products.

A processor with a shorter pipeline is more efficient, however, a processor with a longer pipeline scales to higher speeds. So, it becomes a math equation- efficiency over clock speed. Additionally, the effiency only comes into play when a processor miscalculates a branch and has to abort the pipeline. So, while the P4 may have a longer pipeline, it has a faster clock to make up for aborted pipeline efficiency, and it also has a very good BPU.

If you want to be an educated consumer, Apple's (Or Intel's or Amd's or VIA's or Transmeta's) website is not the place to learn from. Take a class, read a book, but don't copy and paste something from the seller's website and take it as 100% truth.

PretendPCuser

Aug 13, 2002, 12:19 PM

Work is using Beige G3, doesn't mean i'm "holding onto one", though i admit i can always use a little education. Maybe i was being a little oversensitive.
:rolleyes:

macsurfer

Aug 13, 2002, 12:20 PM

OS 9 for Life?????? Now *THAT'S* PATHETIC.

iamspooky

Aug 13, 2002, 12:20 PM

Originally posted by tjwett
very disappointing. these are not only ugly but i'm guessing will be unreliable as well. besides looking slapped together i don't feel safe knowing they felt the need to put in a giant heat sink and a million vents and holes. i think these are tweaked/overclocked beyond the safety range and will turn out to be be pieces of crapola. just my opinion.

I agree, I think this is a desperate attempt to satisfy the masses. I want to switch over from PC but there is still to much of a gap. I got Protools running great on XP, I just wanted to switch for better 3rd party software reasons...but I think I will wait...

regards,
spooky

BongHits

Aug 13, 2002, 12:20 PM

does the xserve also have an ata/66 controller? the new powermacs have 1 ata/100 controllin 2 drives and a ata/66 controlling the other two. WTF is 133? is apple really confident that mac fans are so fanatical about apple's computers that they're not going to pay attention to some of the inner specs. also, the 1.25 with ddr only offers ~3.5gigaflops more than the dual 1 without ddr. I guess you can say this is an improvement. It just makes me happier I got my 933 back in april although i was very pissed to see the 800 tibook came out the next week with l3 (could easily compete with my 933 and its portable :eek: )

ddtlm

Aug 13, 2002, 12:21 PM

tjwett:

What's with all this "overclocked" sillyness? (Making an effort to stay positive.) Don't you realize that a large heatsink with large slow fan is also a very very quiet way to cool processors? The Quicksilvers are louder than most OEM PC's I've seen, for crying out loud. It's great to see Apple's new cooling system. Stop whining, yes we only have a 25% increase, but that doesn't suddenly mean that it's a 25% overclock!

I mean, what would you have said about the 1.4ghz or 1.6ghz rumored chips? Oh no, no that's not an overclock, only 1.25ghz chips are overclocked!

And what the hell is an overclock anyway? If Moto or Intel or AMD sells a chip at "x" ghz that's it's speed. It is not "over" clocked until it is made to run faster than the seller said it should.

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 12:24 PM

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:24 PM

Originally posted by hitman
Can anyone answer my question though :

Which is better for overall performance, a larger L3 cache or a faster system bus?

Come on people, someone has to know....

I'm pricing the new towers and I am either aiming for the low-end or mid-range....

LethalWolfe

Aug 13, 2002, 12:26 PM

Overall, I'm glad they finally got new PM's out the door. But 5k for the top end system is insane. I busted out laughing when I read that. Unless it comes w/a 17" Studio Display and a 20gig iPod that rig is a complete rip off. Apple has NO comp hardware that is worth that much money.

I just hope Apple comes out w/some serious x86 butt kicking hardware at MWSF so we can get some real speed and Apple can disconinue the "Type-R" strategy that they are using now.

Lethal

macsurfer

Aug 13, 2002, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by ImAlwaysRight
Has anyone else noticed that Apple includes absolutely no (zero) keyboards nor mice in their photographs of the new G4 PowerMac? I'm curious if the color of the new keyboards will be white or black. I'd guess white given the rumors of black has been EOL'ed.

Keyboard and mouse are included in the Quicktime VR.

soilchmst

Aug 13, 2002, 12:29 PM

If you look at apples architecture, each proccessor has its own 167 bus to it, then the DDR cache for each processor. This makes the data transfer to the processors operate at DDR speeds. :D

Also, Jaguar has even more enhancements for symmetic processing and preemtive multitasking. ;)

To address the cache vs. bus issue, more cache will help if your doing high end graphics or gene research, but a faster bus makes the less tasking even application (even games) faster. :cool:

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:30 PM

Hmmmm...

• Power Mac G4 Dual 867MHz w/133MHz system bus
• 256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
• Optical 2 - None
• ATI Radeon 9000 Pro dual-display w/64MB DDR
• Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
• Mac OS - U.S. English

$1,820.00

---------

• Power Mac G4 Dual 1GHz w/167MHz system bus
• 256MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Ultra ATA drive
• Optical 1 - Combo Drive (DVD/CD-RW)
• Optical 2 - None
• ATI Radeon 9000 Pro dual-display w/64MB DDR
• Apple Pro Keyboard - U.S. English
• Mac OS - U.S. English

$2,270.00

Surely a 133Mhz increase and a slightly faster bus is not worth $450! :eek:

I could get an iPod with the difference! :eek:

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:33 PM

Originally posted by soilchmst
To address the cache vs. bus issue, more cache will help if your doing high end graphics or gene research, but a faster bus makes the less tasking even application (even games) faster. :cool:

Thanks mate. :)

dandy

Aug 13, 2002, 12:34 PM

How to open 2 drives with 1 keyboard eject?

I've been bothered ever since they removed the eject key from the drives in the last powermac rev. I actually had a problem on a quicksilver where the drive wouldn't open even though nothing was in it! The drive even failed to show up in System Profiler!. It was extremely annoying 'cause I couldn't even boot off a system cd -- even using all the tricks to open the drive on startup wouldn't work. Running disk utility and fixing drive errors finally let the drive be recognized again. This was in 10.1.5.

Anyway... how do you think you'll control which optical drive to eject with one keyboard key?

Maybe the good old command+shift+1 and command+shift+2 returns??

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 12:37 PM

Originally posted by ddtlm
AmbitiousLemon:

"ok, so this one is the best. all you spec morons read closely."

As in SPEC, the industry-standard benchmark where G4's get their asses kicked by P3's, P4's, Athlon's, Sparc's, Power4's, Itaniums, and a few more? :) Anyway, all you did was quote Apple marketing speak... that means exactly nothing. (Zero.).

:) guess you didnt read closely. i always find it interesting how these spec benchmarks show the mac as being 'crushed' by the wintel world and then in real world benchmarks surprisingly you find that the pc isnt actually all that much faster. btw if you cant understand what was written there (its not just marketing speak) then you shouldnt be claiming it means nothing. it might mean nothing to you. pretend as you like, but pipeline length is important. and if you cant get that then i am sorry.

and for you guys trying to build pcs. :) good try but still not quite there yet. and im curious why you choose the ultra discounted dell pc and compare it to the highest end mac. and you still didnt configure it to match the mac. keep trying. and remember the low end pm is only 1700. and the dual 1ghz is only 2500. an amd machine may be cheaper (agreed) but it wont be all that reliable (not as much as a pm) stick with intel if you want to compare. you build a intel computer with similiar specs to that dual ghz model and it will come out around 2000 to 2700.

some of you mac guys around here have some serious inferiority complexes. i suspect most of you have not built a pc before ro seen real benchmarks comparing the machines. the old dual ghz sat 20% behind a 1900+ amd. was nearly head to head with a 2ghz intel. these new machines are more than 20% faster (although how much we will have to wait and see). that leads me to believe that the speed difference between these powermacs and the wintel world (as if any of us cares how fast winxp will run) is negligable. this release may not be all that we were hoping for, but it does close the gap (for now). with a power4 at least 6-18months away i think macdom can hold its head high (ok maybe not high but you can at least look a wintel zealot in the eye again). i think the past few months with those lame dual ghz machines or yore damaged some of your self esteems. no these arent the machines that will place pentium4s on snails backs again. but we are in the race. and before you mention a 3ghz pentium or a hammer read those power4 rumors again. apple has something cooking just like amd and intel. the dard days of moto are nearing and end, osx is finally fleshing out to the more complete os we were promised for so long. its a good day for macdom. so please chill

pgwalsh

Aug 13, 2002, 12:38 PM

eirik

Aug 13, 2002, 12:39 PM

Originally posted by hitman
Can anyone answer my question though :

Which is better for overall performance, a larger L3 cache or a faster system bus?

I'll take a crack at it.

For big jobs such as rendering large 2D animations that require hours and hours of processing, the faster bus is far more beneficial. In fact. L3 would not offer any signficiant benefit.

For small jobs, particularly many small jobs, such as web browsing, email, M$ Office, and others apps running simultaneously with blocks of data smaller aggregately than the size of the L3 cache, then the L3 cache kicks butt over the faster bus (33 MHz delta for the bus versus an L3 to CPU bus that is typically 500 MHz or so...much faster than main bus).

So, large L3 and L2 cache, benefits all operations that are small enough to place most or all of its data into the cache for quick computation when the CPU's need it. But, if you're rendering or doing something on blocks of data that far exceed the L2 and L3 cache, then you're dependent upon the front side bus.

This is why many posters are expressing dismay over the new PowerMacs. Because, the throughput from the system controller to the CPU's is 1.3 GB/s, up from 1.05 GB/s. Well, this is still a good speed bump for large jobs. You're essentially gettting a 33% (roughly) improvement on large jobs because of the larger throughput from main memory to the CPU's.

Many of us had hoped that Motorola would have re-worked the CPU's so that they could take in far more throughput. Afterall, if you only have 1.3 GB/s of throughput from main memory to CPU's for big jobs, the 18 GLOPS of super duper potential aint gonna happen. The faster CPU's and the large L2 and L3 cache will give us a snappier response.

I seriously question the benefit and value of faster CPU's. I don't regard 'snappier response' as a truly practical offering. I see faster overall data throughput from main memory to CPU's to results (computation) as the ideal metric, as opposed to "real world" performance.

Here's a block diagram from macteens.com to illustrate:

http://163.120.13.18/xserve_arch.gif

MacArtist

Aug 13, 2002, 12:41 PM

Originally posted by mdurg
About time! The dual 1 gig is looking good to me at this early point in time. Also good that it is shipping right away. I'll probably order Monday when I'm back from vacation.

Will these towers accept a 3rd party IDE burner? Apple isn't giving us much choice in this department. $250 for an additional combo drive is a little steep. Also I'm worried about the door arrangement.

Ditto for memory. I will fill it with memory from Crucial or elsewhere for much cheaper.

Yes. Just check the itunes compatability for the drive mechanism. You can get a Lite-On 48x12x48 internal for ~$70 that'll work with the new PowerMacs.

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by locovaca

As for your little quoting of the Apple specs- maybe you should go read a good CprE book on processor design instead of just quoting Apple. Apple is not the be all end all source on computing architecture- they just want you to buy their products.

A processor with a shorter pipeline is more efficient, however, a processor with a longer pipeline scales to higher speeds. So, it becomes a math equation- efficiency over clock speed. Additionally, the effiency only comes into play when a processor miscalculates a branch and has to abort the pipeline. So, while the P4 may have a longer pipeline, it has a faster clock to make up for aborted pipeline efficiency, and it also has a very good BPU.

If you want to be an educated consumer, Apple's (Or Intel's or Amd's or VIA's or Transmeta's) website is not the place to learn from. Take a class, read a book, but don't copy and paste something from the seller's website and take it as 100% truth.

As for my little quoting of Apple specs, I didn't mention pipeline design at all. I already know about the advantages and disadvantages of pipeline lengths and cache hits/misses. You may have me confused with somebody else. All I pointed to is the fact that a 166Mhz 64bit bus gives only 1.3Gb/s of throughput.

job

Aug 13, 2002, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by eirik

I seriously question the benefit and value of faster CPU's.

Yeah, me too.

I am also wondering about spending an extra $450 for a 133Mhz increase in the CPU speed. I compared similarly configured Towers in a previous post; the dual Ghz does not seem to offer that many benefits over the baseline...

Anyways, your post seems to have answered my question. Thanks. :cool:

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by giovanni
look, we all know that if the architecture does mimic the Xserve (as Apple states) then this implemtation of DDR does not give any, absolutely ZERO, performance improvement. Again, I wonder what the real improvement is of going from a 133Mhz bus to 167Mhz. We'll see soon some tests

That's nonsense! The XServe is much faster than any of the Quicksilvers. Check out the benchmarks at Xinet.com. (http://www.xinet.com)

This is DDR RAM... It's being clocked at 167Mhz, and pushes data through at 333Mhz. Not too shabby. The only "hack" Apple is doing with the XServe, and I'd imagine these G4's, would be with the memory controller, due to the fact that the current 7455 CPU cannot use DDR directly. This doesn't mean that the RAM isn't faster... The RAM is never as fast as the CPU anyway. Also we have a faster FSB and 7200 RPM ATA-100 drives. These are still faster than any G4 so far.

Also I'd guess these are "stopgap" models, kind of the same way the first G4s were, until Apple gets the rumored MPC 7470 CPU, which does handle DDR properly.

Re: the new case design. I also think it's ugly, but my feeling is Apple is trying to make an aggressive looking case to appeal to PC users that think Macs are too "shiny" and all. It's more like a Jeep than a Ferrari now.

firewire2001

Aug 13, 2002, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by Edge100
Unreal.

C'mon Apple, how on Earth do you expect to be able to sell ANY of these new machines (except the low end, which seems to be an excellent deal).

they might be faster (significantly so) than the machines they replace, thanks to DDR SDRAM, but the FSB (to my eyes) is still not DDR. They simply dont have the power to justify the $3000 price tag, given the imminent release of Jaguar and it supposed power boosts.

Innovate, Apple! Innovate!

As has been said before, Save Us IBM!

i disagree completely. i think that the dp (dualprocessor) makes up for all that you said.. did you see that ALL the models are dp?

it would be an interesting move on apple's part if they created more systems with dual processors rather than higher mhz... this would allow them to do a lot better than pcs -- ill bet a dual 1ghz mac could beat the fastest pIV... however, definately not better than a dp pIV... but if apple marketed it in the right way, they could sell only dp macs with similar/same prices to their old macs and then compare models with pentiums..

to my surprise theyre "immediatly" available, too...

soilchmst

Aug 13, 2002, 12:44 PM

I have seen processor speeds soar, but my 366 ibook performs about the same as the 1. something pc's. The difference is, that while pressenting a technical paper in Orlando, my computer did just fine with the PowerPoint, and the PC before me crashed, and had to use a slide projector. ;)

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 12:46 PM

Originally posted by MacArtist

Yes. Just check the itunes compatability for the drive mechanism.

Can you give link?

If i can get my 24x12x40 Aopen RW to work on a Mac then i can switch this weekend!

drastik

Aug 13, 2002, 12:47 PM

Originally posted by arogge
Many of the things on my upgrade wish list came true - front expansion slot, dual-processor configurations, and lower prices. I hope these new PowerMacs are really quiet. I like the more aggressive looks of the case design too, and the elimination of some old PC-type bottlenecks will be another reason to choose the PowerMac over the "Made in Elbonia" Dell desktop.

Hey now, that's not nice, Dels are made right here in Nashville. Though I could do without Dell, I like my town.

On topic, New Pmacs rock, want one, but I'll probaly wait. Given the DDR, we'll just have to see.

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 12:51 PM

Originally posted by drastik

Hey now, that's not nice, Dels are made right here in Nashville. Though I could do without Dell, I like my town..

The laptops are not made in the US.

jadam

Aug 13, 2002, 12:51 PM

errrr.... one thing. The low end powermac is a sweet deal.

Now why have DDR if it doesnt increase bandwith to the FSB? well lets see. If you were using an old Powermac and lets say you were using the video card and 2 PCI cards and FireWire and USB and such, now you have to u se some of your bandwith for those proccess dont you? sure you do, and guess what, the 2 processors dont get 1.1gb/sec of bandwith but instead get much less.

now with DDR you have more memory to go around, you have a dedicated 1.3gb/sec for the processors and another 1.3gb/sec for say the hard drives and the AGP video card and the PCI cards and Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire and USB and such.

there are reasons for things :p

anyways, the low end is sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttt, just wish i could afford it :(

Inhale420

Aug 13, 2002, 12:51 PM

it looks like apple removed the 2MB L3 from the mid-range. that price range is the model i can afford and i'm assuming most will buy. so they give us something significant(2nd proc) and they remove something significant.

nice try apple, but i'll pass for now.

i like the new case.

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 12:52 PM

Originally posted by topicolo
I hope for apple's sake that they get those IBM G5s out soon. If this is the future of the G4, I'm sticking with windoze.

IBM doesn't even make G4's, so why would they make a G5??

Motorola already released a G5 embedded processor a few weeks ago.

You think having to use Windoze makes up for having a faster clock speed? Yeah, OK! Troll!

A lot of people here need to get a clue! These Macs are faster than anything any of you are using right now, and is anyone having problems due to their computer being too slow for what you do on a day to day basis? I seriously doubt it.
;)

PyroTurtle

Aug 13, 2002, 12:55 PM

anyone know if these have 5.1 suround sound support in the audio card? just want to know....
and what are those things in the front? sorry, i don'pt have time to look through the entire thread

bousozoku

Aug 13, 2002, 12:56 PM

Why so many complainers?

Apple is a for-profit company--they're not a charity. Don't ask them for new and better and then whine that it's not free. Don't build yourself up to believe that something more is coming, just wait. If you don't see what you want, don't buy it.

tjwett

Aug 13, 2002, 01:00 PM

Originally posted by ddtlm
tjwett:

What's with all this "overclocked" sillyness? (Making an effort to stay positive.) Don't you realize that a large heatsink with large slow fan is also a very very quiet way to cool processors? The Quicksilvers are louder than most OEM PC's I've seen, for crying out loud. It's great to see Apple's new cooling system. Stop whining, yes we only have a 25% increase, but that doesn't suddenly mean that it's a 25% overclock!

I mean, what would you have said about the 1.4ghz or 1.6ghz rumored chips? Oh no, no that's not an overclock, only 1.25ghz chips are overclocked!

And what the hell is an overclock anyway? If Moto or Intel or AMD sells a chip at "x" ghz that's it's speed. It is not "over" clocked until it is made to run faster than the seller said it should.

by "overclocked" i just meant - a desperate attempt to squeeze the last possible drop out of a dying processor. i know it's slightly different than the old one and slightly faster but it just looks shady to me. perhaps it's the looks i don't like. but must admit it's a lame increase if it's not an overclock. the looks are a personal taste thing. if it turns out that the new cooling system is indeed for silence, i'd be psyched since i use my Macs in a sound studio. in the meantime i'm still giving it a thumbs down. i'll buy when we get a DDR bus, 2ghz, etc...basically a whole new chip and mobo.

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 01:01 PM

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon

IBM doesn't even make G4's, so why would they make a G5??

Motorola already released a G5 embedded processor a few weeks ago.

You think having to use Windoze makes up for having a faster clock speed? Yeah, OK! Troll!

A lot of people here need to get a clue! These Macs are faster than anything any of you are using right now, and is anyone having problems due to their computer being too slow for what you do on a day to day basis? I seriously doubt it.
;)

IBM probably will make the "G5" according to what we've been hearing out of both the Motorola and IBM camps. They made the "G3". Those are just Apple's terms for the chips BTW (well and what Mot puts on it's rediculous "roadmap"). The G3 is actually an IBM PPC750 or variant like CXe. IBM also made some 601s and the 604.

And no, these Macs aren't faster than anything out there. They'll get their butts creamed by most other workstations/high-end pee cees. Granted, the low end are decent for the price, but come use the multi-processor Sun E4000 that my X terminal is hooked up to and then you can tell me all about speed. Troll.

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon

IBM doesn't even make G4's, so why would they make a G5??

Motorola already released a G5 embedded processor a few weeks ago.

You think having to use Windoze makes up for having a faster clock speed? Yeah, OK! Troll!

A lot of people here need to get a clue!

Between ignorant slashdotters and ignorant Mac rumors posters who call everything a troll, you can not even offer a differing opinion without being accused of trolling.

Slashdot, Macslash, Mac Rumors, OSnews, Cnet, Zdnet, The Register, and The Inquirer, all posted stories on the desktop chip IBM is putting out, and all speculated that it would be ideal for Mac. Silicone and other news sources claim IBM is talks with apple right now.

Who cares if Motorola released a G5 embedded processor a few weeks ago, embedded G5s are not desktop G5s.

And yes using windows is a hellish nightmare, but until we see how these DDR macs perform a mac will not cut it for any professional use.

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by Edge100

I'm sorry, but this simply doesnt make sense given the following info on Apple's site:

"256MB or 512MB of PC2100 or PC2700 DDR SDRAM main memory supporting up to 2.7GBps throughput"

AND

"Up to 167MHz system bus supporting over 1.3GBps data throughput"

Notice that the memory bandwidth is TWICE the FSB bandwidth. Until someone PROVES otherwise, the FSB is NOT DDR!

I realize that, DDR is always a 2x multiple of FSB speed.. FSB 1.3 Gbps reffers to stuff from say, the io controller to the CPU, not the Memory to CPU, which I've been assured, hasa DDR pathway.

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon
A lot of people here need to get a clue! These Macs are faster than anything any of you are using right now, and is anyone having problems due to their computer being too slow for what you do on a day to day basis? I seriously doubt it.

Just wait for the winjers using the old 'have you ever manipulated a XXXdpi, XXXMb file in Photoshop on a Dual Ghz Power Mac with only 1.5GB of RAM........ it's sooooo slow i think I'm going to die!!' routine :p :p :p

It's totally mind numbing....... :rolleyes:

eirik

Aug 13, 2002, 01:03 PM

When I read the report yesterday of all dualies in the PowerMac line, I was both skeptical and excited. Please look at that block diagram in my last post.

Theoretically, the 1 GHz G4, without AltiVec, can produce a maximum throughput of:

1 billion cycles per second
x 16 bytes (derived from 3 instructions per second one
is 64 bit and two are 32 bits; divide this by
8 bits/byte)
____________________________________________
1.6 GB/s (or about 1.56 GB/s)

Now, dual 1 GHz can theoretically yield without AltiVec:
3.2 GB/s.

Obviously then, the 1.25 GHz can yield:
2.0 GB/s or as a pair, without AltiVec:
4.0 GB/s.

Now the point here is that if your main memory can ultimately feed you only 1.3 GB/s because of the G4's MPX unit, then faster CPU's or dual CPU's only improve performance for small computation jobs or many small computation jobs, giving a snappier feel in response.

But, without increasing the overall throughput from main memory to the CPU's, we'll not see appreciable performance improvements in large jobs (larger than the L2 and L3 cache; the larger the more dependent we are upon the this bottleneck).

With the new PowerMac's, the best info I've seen thus far indicates that we've gone from 1.05 GB/s of main memory to CPU's throughput to 1.30 GB/s. That's almost a 33% improvement. So, we should see significant Photoshop benchmark test improvements.

What kind of main memory throughput to CPU's do the best x86 systems yield?

So anyway, I was skeptical about the move to all dualies because I felt that if Apple didn't significantly improve the main memory to CPU throughput then the extra CPU's would only improve performance for the small stuff, for snappier response. Fortunately, Apple has increased the throughput by 33%. So, Apple will not get severely hammered.

BTW, how much does Motorola charge Apple for the CPU's? This might give us some insight into a relative change in Apple's margin and their current market strategy. Just a little insight.

LethalWolfe

Aug 13, 2002, 01:03 PM

Originally posted by firewire2001

i disagree completely. i think that the dp (dualprocessor) makes up for all that you said.. did you see that ALL the models are dp?

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but DP only makes a difference if the software is coded to take advantage of the 2nd proc (otherwise that 2nd proc is just sitting there doing nothing). Overall having it all DP is just marketing and grasping at straws IMO. People who need DP know they need it and will spend the extra for it (in the past when there were single and dual options). I'm not sure how many consumers realize that none/little of their software taked advantage of DPs and they aren't getting any speed boost at all from the 2nd prop.

Hopefully this DP mania is to clear out the apple stock of G4s for something better in 03 and not just smoke and mirrors from Apple.

Lethal

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by iGAV

Just wait for the winjers using the old 'have you ever manipulated a XXXdpi, XXXMb file in Photoshop on a Dual Ghz Power Mac with only 1.5GB of RAM........ it's sooooo slow i think I'm going to die!!' routine :p :p :p

It's totally mind numbing....... :rolleyes:

Ya, its just like all those liberals who start on Nixon illegally used his office to further his...

It's totally mind numbing...... :rolleyes:

Just because its repeated ad nauseam doesn’t mean its any less true.

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 01:10 PM

Originally posted by topicolo

As for my little quoting of Apple specs, I didn't mention pipeline design at all. I already know about the advantages and disadvantages of pipeline lengths and cache hits/misses. You may have me confused with somebody else. All I pointed to is the fact that a 166Mhz 64bit bus gives only 1.3Gb/s of throughput.

Nah, I didn't confuse you, I had just switched gears in my heads, but not in my fingers. No hard feelings :)

If you look at apples architecture, each proccessor has its own 167 bus to it, then the DDR cache for each processor. This makes the data transfer to the processors operate at DDR speeds.

No, if you look at Apple's acrhitecture, you'll see that they share a single FSB running at 166.67 mhz. The BSB (Back side bus) has nothing, NOTHING to do with anything else. It is there for the sole purpose of linking the cache to the cpu that owns it, no more. Any kind of cache coherincy requests between the two cpus, non-cache memory requests, anything OTHER than cache hits occur over a single 166.67 FSB.

Try taking your plumbing to your toilet and running it through a 1/8th inch tubing. Just because you have 1/2 inch tubing at exit does not mean that 1/8th inch section goes any faster. You could make the exit tubing 3" and it still would go no faster than the 1/8th tubing allows. The difference here is that, if the data is in cache, then yes, it is faster. The chance that your data in in cache is a small one.

twelve

Aug 13, 2002, 01:14 PM

It is a good thing that the audio-in is back on this machine, how embarassing when they too it out for them. Anyways, i am wondering if anyone knows what kind of converter is connected with that audio-in?

12
http://www.thecolortvs.com

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 01:15 PM

Originally posted by LethalWolfe

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but DP only makes a difference if the software is coded to take advantage of the 2nd proc (otherwise that 2nd proc is just sitting there doing nothing). Overall having it all DP is just marketing and grasping at straws IMO. People who need DP know they need it and will spend the extra for it (in the past when there were single and dual options). I'm not sure how many consumers realize that none/little of their software taked advantage of DPs and they aren't getting any speed boost at all from the 2nd prop.

Hopefully this DP mania is to clear out the apple stock of G4s for something better in 03 and not just smoke and mirrors from Apple.

Lethal

No, no, no no no no no no no! That is just FUD that people with non DP machines say so that they feel better!

If an app is not written with multithreading in mind, then yes, it will not perform much better than if it was run on a single processor system. However, think of it this way.

A processor does not do work on a program, it does work on a "thread."

At any given time, there could be hunderds of threads running.

Instead of just taking one thread and working on it, a dual processor system takes two threads and do them at the same time.

If an app is optimized for dual systems, then it can take independent tasks within the app and split them into two (or more) threads.

Any Dual system will be faster than a single. You just have to try one to see.

cooper13

Aug 13, 2002, 01:17 PM

Originally posted by kenohki

Granted, the low end are decent for the price, but come use the multi-processor Sun E4000 that my X terminal is hooked up to and then you can tell me all about speed. Troll.

Sure. Too bad the E3500 with 1 proc starts at $52K and an E4500 with 2 procs starts at $124K!! If we think Apple has bloated pricing, try buying from Sun!

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 01:21 PM

Hey locovaca, I'm just curious... What do you do for a living? Are you an electrical engineer? BTW, no hard feeling taken :)

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 01:21 PM

Originally posted by Inhale420
it looks like apple removed the 2MB L3 from the mid-range. that price range is the model i can afford and i'm assuming most will buy. so they give us something significant(2nd proc) and they remove something significant.

nice try apple, but i'll pass for now.

i like the new case.

You are missing a point here. You think it's significant, but I suppose Apple doesn't.

First off how many other computers use an L3 cache? Apple did this to make up for not having faster clocked G4's. They used DDR in the L3 for the same reason. It was a go between for the CPU and the slower SDR SDRAM. Now the main memory is DDR, so the L3's importance is lessened. Also each CPU has it's own cache.

They are also using a "direct memory access" model for much of the system.
Take a look here: Architecture (http://www.apple.com/powermac/architecture.html)

All of a sudden everyone is an expert at designing computers! Too many people get hug up reading specs and not really understanding what they mean in the real world. Macs are not PCs. They don't use off the shelf motherboards and chipsets. Apple designs all their own support chips, so they can tweak them to get the performance they want.

And now all the G4s are dual processors. This is a big deal now that Jaguar is out. In the past it didn't mean too much, and in fact some dual 604 Macs, like the 9500's weren't much faster, and for some things slower, than single CPUs. And up until Jaguar, even in OS X it didn't make them faster for everything.

As far as the prices, they are about the same for a lot more computer. Not a bad deal at all. Some of us expect too much and then get disappointed when our wildest dreams don't materialize.

Reality check here. Apple is about to release the best OS available on some of the best hardware available. They have been doing more than any other PC maker. All the others can do is throw in a faster CPU. Where's all the cool innovations from Dell? What's so great about Windows XP compared to OS X? Nothing, zilch, nada.

I'm on a 466Mhz G4, and these system looks REAL nice to me!

Mac users are getting so damn whiney! ;)

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:22 PM

Originally posted by locovaca

Any Dual system will be faster than a single. You just have to try one to see.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4ZONE/QT_imovie_G4tests.html

Wow, i must say! A whole 3 seconds. Not worth the cost.

cooper13

Aug 13, 2002, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by LethalWolfe

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but DP only makes a difference if the software is coded to take advantage of the 2nd proc (otherwise that 2nd proc is just sitting there doing nothing). Overall having it all DP is just marketing and grasping at straws IMO. People who need DP know they need it and will spend the extra for it (in the past when there were single and dual options). I'm not sure how many consumers realize that none/little of their software taked advantage of DPs and they aren't getting any speed boost at all from the 2nd prop.

Hopefully this DP mania is to clear out the apple stock of G4s for something better in 03 and not just smoke and mirrors from Apple.

Lethal

Not exactly. While it is true that if a program isn't multi-threaded it can't take advantage of multiple processors, the fact that almost nobody runs just one program at a time really makes up for this! OS X itself is multithreaded, so moving those to a second processor helps a lot. Then if you run iTunes while working, it won't slow down your main apps tasks as it will be on the 2nd proc. So while a given program doesn't execute more tasks in a given time on a given proc, it will still be faster because it won't have to compete for proc time with other programs!

As a test, open a terminal and type ps -a to see a list of processes running on your machine. Or top to see their cpu utilization. Now if you could split all of those 50/50, you'd be happy.

el_aarono

Aug 13, 2002, 01:28 PM

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but DP only makes a difference if the software is coded to take advantage of the 2nd proc (otherwise that 2nd proc is just sitting there doing nothing)....
...I'm not sure how many consumers realize that none/little of their software taked advantage of DPs and they aren't getting any speed boost at all from the 2nd prop.

If I am not mistaken, OSX is able to take advantage of both processors so any task you do in OSX will be more efficient and somewhat faster. That sounds like a good thing to me. Especially with how fast Jaguar is supposed to be anyway.

LethalWolfe

Aug 13, 2002, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by locovaca

No, no, no no no no no no no! That is just FUD that people with non DP machines say so that they feel better!

If an app is not written with multithreading in mind, then yes, it will not perform much better than if it was run on a single processor system. However, think of it this way.

A processor does not do work on a program, it does work on a "thread."

At any given time, there could be hunderds of threads running.

Instead of just taking one thread and working on it, a dual processor system takes two threads and do them at the same time.

If an app is optimized for dual systems, then it can take independent tasks within the app and split them into two (or more) threads.

Any Dual system will be faster than a single. You just have to try one to see.

Okay, so if a DP rig is running, lets say, UT, it won't be much faster than a SP (single proc). But if I'm running a bunch of apps the DP will be faster because the "thread load" is handle by 2 procs, not just one.

Is that the jist of it? And I own a DP 1gig so I'm not having any proc envy thank you very much. ;)

Lethal

cyberfunk

Aug 13, 2002, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon

Also I'd guess these are "stopgap" models, kind of the same way the first G4s were, until Apple gets the rumored MPC 7470 CPU, which does handle DDR properly.

These ARE 7470's !!

eirik

Aug 13, 2002, 01:30 PM

Originally posted by DavidRavenMoon

First off how many other computers use an L3 cache? Apple did this to make up for not having faster clocked G4's. They used DDR in the L3 for the same reason. It was a go between for the CPU and the slower SDR SDRAM. Now the main memory is DDR, so the L3's importance is lessened. Also each CPU has it's own cache.

I don't know. DDR can double the effective throughput. So, even if the bus is at 200 MHz, if your L3 cache runs on an independent bus that runs at 500 MHz, then that L3 cache really provides a significant boost (an extra 100 MHz) in performance for small or many small jobs on your PC, making the most out of your CPU's.

I'm surprised that the x86 boxes don't use L3 cache (I'm assuming you're correct about that.). They have all the more reason than Apple to do so because of their very highly clocked CPU's, which can deliver some pretty impressive throughput. I imagine their CPU's are data starved as well.

davei

Aug 13, 2002, 01:32 PM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon

i am pretty confident if you built your own pc that matched the specs of these new powermacs that you would spend more than the powermacs cost.

take a look at the benchmarks on the old machines at barefeats and you will see the old machines though slower were still very close the the pcs, and these new improvements should make that difference very close.

try specing out a new pc and i think you will find these powermacs are very aggressively priced. we will have to wait for some non-apple benchmarks to get a real idea of what is a comparable pc, but judging from the old benchmarks seems like these new macs should be able to go head to head with intel and amds finest.

Check out the MJ-12 DDR from Alienware:

http://www.alienware.com/main/system_pages/mj12%20ddr.asp

Nearly the same price as the "Fastest" Powermac ($50 difference), but there's more memory (albeit technically slower), much better video, 5.1 sound, no Superdrive, no Firewire, slightly more HD space, no Gigabit ethernet.

You can draw your own conclusions, but I don't think the top end Powermac is all that bad for $3300, except on processor speed.

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 01:32 PM

Originally posted by Ibjr

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4ZONE/QT_imovie_G4tests.html

Wow, i must say! A whole 3 seconds. Not worth the cost.

Selective stats.... and how old is that test??? :p :p :p

Maybe try a Dual against a single in 'Jaguar' using After Effects and see what the gap is then...... :rolleyes:

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:34 PM

Originally posted by cyberfunk

These ARE 7470's !!

source? I could be wrong but I thought these these were 7455

Added: If it was the 7470 wouldn't Motorola announce it? No press release…

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 01:35 PM

Originally posted by twelve
It is a good thing that the audio-in is back on this machine, how embarassing when they too it out for them. Anyways, i am wondering if anyone knows what kind of converter is connected with that audio-in?

12
http://www.thecolortvs.com

It is nice to have audio in jacks, but no one ever used them for anything serious. I think Apple figured it would push everyone to use Firewire or USB for audio, the same way removing ADB and serial ports got the whole USB thing going.

Apple has OK A/D converters, but nothing special. They were always 16-bit, 44.1, but OS X handles 24-bit and up to 96KHz (I think) so who knows?

I'm a musician, and I wanted a Cube, but needed more options for audio, so I got a tower.

In my opinion none of the USB audio interfaces are all that great, so I went with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card. It sounds much better than when I used to record with either my 6100 or Powercenter's audio in jack.

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:37 PM

Originally posted by iGAV

Selective stats.... and how old is that test??? :p :p :p

Maybe try a Dual against a single in 'Jaguar' using After Effects and see what the gap is then...... :rolleyes:

'Jaguar' should not help SMP, that would be the bsd. (I think, not sure!?!)

its an old test yes, but with Apple’s encoders. Apple didn't bother to help the DPs along…

Edge100

Aug 13, 2002, 01:41 PM

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:44 PM

Originally posted by Edge100

PCs are faster (what that means in the real world depends on the user!!!). But they dont run OS X so they dont get my money.

Thank you, an honest mac user! And you didn't use, "pee-cee" Way to go!

Mac needs to sell OSX not their desktop hardware. (I mean figuratively)

spudnik187

Aug 13, 2002, 01:51 PM

One of my best friend's dad is a high ranking officer at Motorola. (He runs MOS 13, here in Austin, TX.) He told me that these are in fact 7470 chips

topicolo

Aug 13, 2002, 01:51 PM

Originally posted by cyberfunk

I realize that, DDR is always a 2x multiple of FSB speed.. FSB 1.3 Gbps reffers to stuff from say, the io controller to the CPU, not the Memory to CPU, which I've been assured, hasa DDR pathway.

Look, DDR is NOT always a 2x multiple of FSB speed. DDR RAM and cache do NOT have to be at the same speed as the fsb. The fsb and the memory bus are NOT the same!! Understand that! If the fsb is still only 1.3Mb/s, it's not going to use the full 2.1-2.7Gb/s that 266 and 333Mhz DDR ram provides because the fsb will saturate at 1.3Gb/s. Why don't you go read up on this stuff before making more posts?

iGav

Aug 13, 2002, 01:53 PM

Originally posted by Ibjr

'Jaguar' should not help SMP, that would be the bsd. (I think, not sure!?!)

its an old test yes, but with Apple’s encoders. Apple didn't bother to help the DPs along…

You can't go on benchmarks that are like 2 years old, running OS9 :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

If you really want to believe that in terms of true performance, in real world demanding tasks that a single is only 3 seconds slower than a dual........ :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

P.S wasn't OS9 not configured to fully make use of Dual processors? unlike OSX?
the difference would be much more pronounced now......

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 01:55 PM

Originally posted by PyroTurtle
anyone know if these have 5.1 suround sound support in the audio card? just want to know....
and what are those things in the front? sorry, i don'pt have time to look through the entire thread

Using the built in audio?? Macs don't have audio cards, and since there is only the headphone jack, and Apple Pro-Speaker jacks, both of which are stereo, the answer would be no. How would you hook up 5 speakers to a two channel system?

You can add a sound card, however. But I don't think there are too many with 5.1 support. The SBLive has it, but I don't think they ever released OS X drivers, and the specs on the card are not to great anyway.

I think Griffin has an USB audio interface with 5.1, and M-Audio might also.

My M-Audio card just does 2 channel, with S/PDIF and MIDI, which is all I need. :)

soilchmst

Aug 13, 2002, 01:56 PM

"Numerous kernel and library enhancements provide better performance on the same hardware. Smart thread scheduling, in the form of thread affinity and preemption, makes more efficient use of both single and multiple processors."

and also from Apple:

"Jaguar includes enhanced preemptive multitasking, symmetric multiprocessing and multithreading capabilities that speed up individual applications and provide true multitasking capabilities." :cool:

PS- are they 7470's?:confused:

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by spudnik187
One of my best friend's dad is a high ranking officer at Motorola. (He runs MOS 13, here in Austin, TX.) He told me that these are in fact 7470 chips

why no press release?

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by Edge100

Of course, the similarly spec'ed PC would blow the doors of the PowerMac, but your point is well taken.

PCs are faster (what that means in the real world depends on the user!!!). But they dont run OS X so they dont get my money.

blow the doors off? hardly. similiarly spec'ed pcs pitted against the old powermacs very narrowly beat out the powermacs (amd(1900+) 20%, intel dead heat against a 2ghz intel, havent seen the benchmark against a 2.5 yet). although id agree a similiarly spec'ed pc would beat these new powermacs i think it would be very very close.

amd yes you can build a nice pc system for less, but you can also configure a barebones powermac for under $1000 if you went to an apple specialist. the reason i have been harping on the similiarly spec'ed thing is that most people here probably have never built a pc before and they beleive these idiots who claim they can build a machine compareable to the powermac for 1200. you cant. you can build a very nice system for 1200 but it still wouldnt have everything the powermac does. if you spec it out part for part and get things as close as possible the machines will cost about the same. the pc quite possibly will beat the powermac in some benchmarks (id bet the powermac woudl also win a few benchmarks) but the difference would be negligable especially when one considers the non-hardware advantages of a mac.

Ibjr

Aug 13, 2002, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by soilchmst
"Numerous kernel and library enhancements provide better performance on the same hardware. Smart thread scheduling, in the form of thread affinity and preemption, makes more efficient use of both single and multiple processors."

and also from Apple:

"Jaguar includes enhanced preemptive multitasking, symmetric multiprocessing and multithreading capabilities that speed up individual applications and provide true multitasking capabilities." :cool:

PS- are they 7470's?:confused:

Apples claims hold as much water as MS's claim that they had near DVD quality at 500kps. (WMV8)

onemoof

Aug 13, 2002, 02:03 PM

Originally posted by groovebuster
I just checked the prices in the german Apple Store (based on the current exchange course):

DP867: 1845.- US$ + tax
DP1000: 2,620.- US$ + tax
DP1250: 3,490.- US$ + tax
DP1250 (ultimate): 5,470.- US$ + tax

They are really nuckin' futs!!! The rip off goes on for european users! I am really mad now! The DP1250 costs almost 200$ more here! :mad: What do they think??? ... in case they think at all!!!

Yeah, that's how you increase market share Apple!!! Go on like that... good plan!

*shaking head*

groovebuster

If Macs cost more in Europe can't you just buy one from a U.S. website? Or find a friend to purchase one and have it shipped directly to you.

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:04 PM

Originally posted by Ibjr

Apples claims hold as much water as MS's claim that they had near DVD quality at 500kps. (WMV8)

then dont buy jaguar. those of us who have used it know it is all apple claims it is, but if you enjoy having your head in the sand then quit bitching and just dont buy it.

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 02:04 PM

Originally posted by Ibjr

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4ZONE/QT_imovie_G4tests.html

Wow, i must say! A whole 3 seconds. Not worth the cost.

Those systems were not identical. Example, the single CPU system had a 7200 rpm hdd vs the 5400 in the dual. And, if you've ever done anything video editing wise, you'd realize that it is by far a HDD limited program. Ever wonder why those people take 15k rpm hard drives and run them in raid 0? Hell, even when my friends does editing on his dual athlon it only uses 70% of both cpus because his 10k hdd can't keep up. I would take (and have taken) a slower dual system over a faster single proc system any day of the week.

topicolo: I'm actually a Junior in Computer Engineering at Iowa State.

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:04 PM

Originally posted by eirik

I don't know. DDR can double the effective throughput. So, even if the bus is at 200 MHz, if your L3 cache runs on an independent bus that runs at 500 MHz, then that L3 cache really provides a significant boost (an extra 100 MHz) in performance for small or many small jobs on your PC, making the most out of your CPU's.

I'm surprised that the x86 boxes don't use L3 cache (I'm assuming you're correct about that.). They have all the more reason than Apple to do so because of their very highly clocked CPU's, which can deliver some pretty impressive throughput. I imagine their CPU's are data starved as well.

I agree, but they didn't remove the L3, just reduced it on the low and mid model from 2MB to 1MB. Think about it. Neither of these are very large, and at 500Mhz they are moving data through pretty fast. If the main memory bus is running faster that might be enough to make up for the smaller L3. My feeling is they do this to make the high-end machine faster than the mid, so it seems to justify the price difference. If the high-end was a dual 1.5 or 2GHz, then they wouldn't have to do that.

nero007

Aug 13, 2002, 02:06 PM

You could build a PC that would be faster and cheaper than the 1.25. But, you'd be building it with cheap (poor quality) parts which don't always agree with each other.

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by locovaca

Those systems were not identical. Example, the single CPU system had a 7200 rpm hdd vs the 5400 in the dual. And, if you've ever done anything video editing wise, you'd realize that it is by far a HDD limited program. Ever wonder why those people take 15k rpm hard drives and run them in raid 0? Hell, even when my friends does editing on his dual athlon it only uses 70% of both cpus because his 10k hdd can't keep up. I would take (and have taken) a slower dual system over a faster single proc system any day of the week.

topicolo: I'm actually a Junior in Computer Engineering at Iowa State.

just some benchmarks to help with the whole single versus dual discussion.
http://www.barefeats.com/xserve2.html

http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

ddtlm

Aug 13, 2002, 02:09 PM

AmbitiousLemon:

"guess you didnt read closely. i always find it interesting how these spec benchmarks show the mac as being 'crushed' by the wintel world and then in real world benchmarks surprisingly you find that the pc isnt actually all that much faster. btw if you cant understand what was written there (its not just marketing speak) then you shouldnt be claiming it means nothing. it might mean nothing to you. pretend as you like, but pipeline length is important. and if you cant get that then i am sorry."

Dunno about you, but I have taken years of university classes in digital+processor design, assembly, OS design, compiler design, programming in general... I work as a programmer and I have worked as a PC and a Mac tech. I also have spent years reading hardware sites, and I read though parts of technical docs from Intel, Moto, and AMD from time to time. So... yes in the end I've got a pretty good handle on this.

Yes, SPEC means more to me than Apple Photoshop "tests" or the speed of a G4 running RC5. The G4 pretty much brings up the rear in SPEC when ranked against other processors that are available in desktops/workstations/servers.

This is not to say that I would pass on an Apple desktop, in fact I'm thinking about getting a 1.25 when they ship. But the fact of the matter is that the G4 is not an especially good general purpose processor (although AltiVec remains very nice).

(Oh, and yes all that stuff you quoted was just Apple's marketing speak, and it does little to impress me.)

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by eirik

I'm surprised that the x86 boxes don't use L3 cache (I'm assuming you're correct about that.). They have all the more reason than Apple to do so because of their very highly clocked CPU's, which can deliver some pretty impressive throughput. I imagine their CPU's are data starved as well.

That's because L3 cache costs a lot of $$$, and is usually found on high end workstation/server chips. A majority of the X86 community is the "cheap boxes" community, and adding L3 cache would make it much more expensive and would provide little benefit for their needs. L3 cache is better suited to databases and other software where you have large datasets you need quick access to. Memory that fast is expensive, especially in the quantities that Apple is using (1-2 megs).

The Intel Xeon MP chip has 512k - 1 meg of L3 cache.

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by cooper13

Sure. Too bad the E3500 with 1 proc starts at $52K and an E4500 with 2 procs starts at $124K!! If we think Apple has bloated pricing, try buying from Sun!

Oh, of course they are. They'll take you to the bank and back again. But their hardware scales and it's balanced. I was just responding to the guy who thought that Macs were the be all end all of performance.

When you get into the markets where Apple looks like they want to target...traditional SGI, Sun, HP, and now Linux markets, their workstations can't compete. People in these markets will pay a premium for extremely fast hardware because...and this sounds so cliche, but...time is money. Either that or they'll get inexpensive (but still up to Mac spec) commodity hardware, run Linux, and have a cost effective render farm. Apple needs to be competitive here and this doesn't look good for them.

GPTurismo

Aug 13, 2002, 02:13 PM

10.2 I can't wait. Sped up finder, faster overall performance, GFX Card accelerated Aqua... *drool*

Is the finder Cocoa yet or is it still Carbon?

As for my beef with 10.2 is more of a beef with apples business practices O:-)

As for the machines, the look nice, and the 867 looks to be the best bang for the buck, even in the long run.

My problem is, that the high end cost so much more. 3299? that's 300 more than the old cost of a dual Gig. They really need to go with the pricing of 1599, 2299 and 2999 for marketting and to keep prices consistant between lines. Those higher prices are going to hurt them more than anything else.

BUT, the fact that all the pro desktops now have duals and the consumers have singles is an excellent dividing line.

Maybe they will go dual in the pro portables? Dual G4's in the Titaniums? :9

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:13 PM

Originally posted by Ibjr

'Jaguar' should not help SMP, that would be the bsd. (I think, not sure!?!)

OS X doesn't run on BSD, it runs on the Mach kernel. It does have a BSD "subsystem" that gives you all the UNIX tools, but you can actually install OS X without the BSD subsystem as a custom install option.

The kernel is where the SMP happens.

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:17 PM

ddtlm. :) sorry im not impressed. basically all you said is that despite an education (from where i wonder) that you still will ignore all tests of real world performance i favor of a benchmark that in no way translates to the speed of the processor. furthermore you ignore everything regarding the differences in the archetecture of the chip all to stare blindly at a single benchmark that says something different from every single other benchmark performed on these machines. your education means absolutely nothing to me as long as you keep those blinders up. the plain fact of the matter is that the spec benchmarks do not test real world performance. since this machine is a desktop personal computer real world benchmarks mean far more than spec. what do the real world benchmarks show? well yes the powermacs are slower. but it is a narrow victory for the intel folks (amd does better). these new machines should make the gap even smaller. if you are interesting in using a computer how it is designed to be used apple does well. if you want to run spec all day get a pc and enjoy.

rugby

Aug 13, 2002, 02:21 PM

I can show proof that my G4/400 is nearly twice as fast as a Dell P4/1.7ghz. Run rc5 on both. Talk about pathetic, how can this poor G4/400 beat the pants off of a P4/1.7?

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 02:22 PM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon

blow the doors off? hardly. similiarly spec'ed pcs pitted against the old powermacs very narrowly beat out the powermacs (amd(1900+) 20%, intel dead heat against a 2ghz intel, havent seen the benchmark against a 2.5 yet). although id agree a similiarly spec'ed pc would beat these new powermacs i think it would be very very close.

What benchmarks are you talking about here? Steve Jobs' Photoshop bakeoff. Marketing that is. Run a different set of filters that are SSE2 enabled and the P4 will come out ahead.

I'd love to see an independent standard benchmark like SPEC (or TPC-C since I'm a DBA). Granted, SPEC isn't always the best indicator of system performance but it's pretty much the best independent benchmark out there for processor performance. And the G4 doesn't end up in a dead heat against a 2GHz P4 in SPECcpu.

DavidRavenMoon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:22 PM

Originally posted by Edge100

Of course, the similarly spec'ed PC would blow the doors of the PowerMac, but your point is well taken.

PCs are faster (what that means in the real world depends on the user!!!). But they dont run OS X so they dont get my money.

The ultimate smackdown: Mac versus PC (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2002/07/12/steinberg.htm)

The ultimate smackdown: Mac versus PC

By Gene Steinberg

The other day someone sent me a message stating that he really liked Macs, but he felt they were too slow. How did he conclude that? Simple. The fastest Mac had a one-gigahertz processor (all right, two of them), and the fastest "Intel Inside" Windows box had already achieved 2.4 GHz.

Doesn't that prove a Windows PC is faster?

That's the impression Apple has struggled to overcome with its "bake-offs," featuring the fastest Mac of the week against a top-of-the-line Pentium 4. The latest comparison I consulted at Apple's Web site claimed the most powerful Power Macintosh G4 was 68% faster than a 2.2-GHz Pentium 4 in a series of test runs with Adobe Photoshop "using nine commonly used actions and filters that stress overall system performance."

Testing the claim
Rather than simply select a PC hotrod for the ultimate smackdown, I looked for a Windows box with a touch of class, since Apple is so heavily involved in style. I came up with a Sony Vaio RX690G Digital Studio, which incorporated the 2.2-GHz processor. Now I should point out that things move awfully fast in the PC universe, and this model has since been replaced with a RX790G, where processor speed is boosted to 2.4 GHz, but I'll await the next Power Macintosh upgrade to do that comparison.

Putting the pedal to the metal

Apple's test protocol suggests the test computers run with as few system encumbrances as possible, and that includes disconnecting network cables. But because graphic artists don't usually work in that fashion, I decided to keep the configurations normal, even if it hobbled potential performance somewhat. The Mac was upgraded to the latest version of Mac OS X, 10.1.5. The Sony had Windows XP. I installed the standard retail versions of Adobe Photoshop 7 on both computers. Apple's original comparison employed an older version of Photoshop, which no doubt accounts for some of the differences between my test results and theirs.

Running the tests proved exceedingly simple because Photoshop displays the actual timing of a rendering process rounded off to tenths of a second. Per Apple's directions, I conducted each test four times to deliver the most accurate results.

Like all Adobe applications, Photoshop is a bit slow to launch. It took 15 seconds on both computers to get ready for the main event.

In the nine test runs, the Mac came out on top five times, besting the Sony by up to 8.1 seconds. Where the PC emerged victorious, the margin was usually less than half a second.

In all, the Mac took a total of 35.5 seconds to complete the nine rendering steps. The PC took 50.1 seconds, making it 41% slower according to my calculator's reckoning.

All right, as that old song says, I'm a believer.

MacArtist

Aug 13, 2002, 02:24 PM

Here is a similarly specced DIY Athlon MP system :

2x$122-- Athlon MP 1600
$167-- Tyan S2460 Dual Athlon MP/ATX mboard
$111-- PC2700 DDR 512MB
$149-- ATI Radeon 9000 pro
$128-- Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1
$60-- Belkin 1394 firewire controller
$50-- D Link Gb Ethernet
$250-- Pioneer DVD-R drive
$113-- case
$20-- keyboard
$20-- mouse
$299-- Windows XP Pro
$84-- EIDE 80.0GB
_________________
$1695

There are some other parts that are required to build this system from nothing so the price is approximate. prices pulled off of pricewatch (http://www.pricewatch.com)

The Prices on the new PowerMacs aren't that outragious. After all, they are workstations, not your run-of-the-mill consumer PC. And I'd like you to price of a brand name Athlon MP or Intel Xeon workstation. The price will be very close.

Like another poster stated earlier, if you think the systems are too expensive, your not Apple's target market, and you don't have to buy one.

And those of you who are saying "I'm waiting till MWSF" I wouldn't get your hopes up. With a release this late in the year I'd be surprised to see a blow your socks off update until at least MWNY.

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:25 PM

Originally posted by kenohki

What benchmarks are you talking about here? Steve Jobs' Photoshop bakeoff. Marketing that is. Run a different set of filters that are SSE2 enabled and the P4 will come out ahead.

I'd love to see an independent standard benchmark like SPEC (or TPC-C since I'm a DBA). Granted, SPEC isn't always the best indicator of system performance but it's pretty much the best independent benchmark out there for processor performance. And the G4 doesn't end up in a dead heat against a 2GHz P4 in SPECcpu.

no im not talking apple's benchmarks if i was id say the powermac is 90% faster than a 2.5intel. benchmarks are available all over the web from many independant sources. i quoted some above. every source i have found indicates someting similiar. the old powermacs were down about 20% from the top of the line amd. and about even with a 2ghz intel (i havent seen benchmarks against a faster intel).

kenohki

Aug 13, 2002, 02:27 PM

Originally posted by rugby
I can show proof that my G4/400 is nearly twice as fast as a Dell P4/1.7ghz. Run rc5 on both. Talk about pathetic, how can this poor G4/400 beat the pants off of a P4/1.7?

Because RC5 on the G4 is using the SIMD unit (read, AltiVec) which allows it to process lots of data in parallel on that specific task.

locovaca

Aug 13, 2002, 02:29 PM

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
ddtlm. :) sorry im not impressed. basically all you said is that despite an education (from where i wonder) that you still will ignore all tests of real world performance i favor of a benchmark that in no way translates to the speed of the processor. furthermore you ignore everything regarding the differences in the archetecture of the chip all to stare blindly at a single benchmark that says something different from every single other benchmark performed on these machines. your education means absolutely nothing to me as long as you keep those blinders up. the plain fact of the matter is that the spec benchmarks do not test real world performance. since this machine is a desktop personal computer real world benchmarks mean far more than spec. what do the real world benchmarks show? well yes the powermacs are slower. but it is a narrow victory for the intel folks (amd does better). these new machines should make the gap even smaller. if you are interesting in using a computer how it is designed to be used apple does well. if you want to run spec all day get a pc and enjoy.

The SPEC benchmark tests one thing: CPU speed (and to a lesser degree, memory bandwidth/effiency). In many computing applications, this is not the bottleneck, but rather HDD speed, OS effiency and memory management, and the chipsets, to give a few examples. While an overkill, you could take a 7200 rpm hdd and put it in the original Macintosh and it would fly- up to a point, but do you catch my drift?

AmbitiousLemon

Aug 13, 2002, 02:31 PM

u yes i 'catch your drift' but what you just said is simply proving my point? if you are trying to agree with me um thanks but no need to be snotty with the catch my drift bit. i appreciate someone else trying to educate all the troll we have today.

as long as you are proving my point you should also point out that while spec tests 'cpu speed' it does so only under imaginary conditions. its sort of like when intel claims usb2 is faster than firewire. ist faster on paper but you drop it into the real world and usb2 seriously lags behind fw. you take a machine that cranks through a spec benchmark with high ratings and drop it into the real world and you will see it choke. sure it might still beat a powermac but the powermac will be in the race. none of this mac gets blown away nonsense some people like to claim.

loc. :) np. i wasnt sure if yo were agreeing with me or not.