IBM releases 50% power consumption PPC CPUs.

Even if PPC for computers outstrip x86 in terms of performance in the future, I'd still prefer Apple stay with the rest of the computing world. There is just this sense of stability when you can run Windows natively on your machine.

The 970GX has been out for a while now, and a lower power G3 is a big "whoopty do" affair.

Yay, Powerbook G5's next Tuesday.

generik said:

There is just this sense of stability when you can run Windows natively on your machine.

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That's the first time I've seen the words Windows and stability in the same sentence without an expletive also being used

It would be good if processor upgrade manufacturers could get these onto cards for G4s though.

Mord said:

The 970GX has been out for a while now, and a lower power G3 is a big "whoopty do" affair.

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Though, the 970GX wasn't up to 2.5 GHz last I saw--it was only 1.1 GHz. That would be quite a jump for someone's PowerMac G3 or iBook G3.

bousozoku said:

Though, the 970GX wasn't up to 2.5 GHz last I saw--it was only 1.1 GHz. That would be quite a jump for someone's PowerMac G3 or iBook G3.

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Do you see any possibility of this winding up in some upgrade card or something? Or have they written that off? Just curious.

steelfist said:

Just a thought: TOO Late!

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My thoughts exactly.


Oh well, I am glad for the switch to Intel.

steelfist said:

....

Just a thought: TOO Late!

the creepy thing is that IBM has complete dominance over the console market.

the cpus aren't suitable for the macs right now. it's not fast enough despite it's heavy improvement.

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Not too late at all. The PPC are very popular in the embedded processor market. By your own admission, derivatives of this processor now own the gaming console market with all three major manufacturers using them. There is nothing creepy about using the best tool for the job.

keysersoze said:

Do you see any possibility of this winding up in some upgrade card or something? Or have they written that off? Just curious.

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I see PowerLogix buying a few to try. I really don't think they'll work well in the iBook but they could certainly work in a PowerMac with some aggressive cooling such as they've used for the G4 upgrades for the high end.

IBM's G3s had better floating point processing than a G4 of the same speed and they were better on power so it would be a good computer for those who can't afford to upgrade those older machines. Not everyone needed AltiVec.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20381.wss

970GX is 1.2 to 2.5GHz

bousozoku said:

Though, the 970GX wasn't up to 2.5 GHz last I saw--it was only 1.1 GHz. That would be quite a jump for someone's PowerMac G3 or iBook G3.

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You're confused. The 970GX is the successor to the 970FX which went into the G5 Power Macs. The FX previously topped out at 2.7 ghz so 2.5 ghz is actually a step backwards (although it may be more power efficient).

The "G3" chip, the 750CL tops out at 1.0 ghz. Again, not that big of an improvement. I believe the last G3 iBooks topped out at 900 mhz.

dongmin said:

You're confused. The 970GX is the successor to the 970FX which went into the G5 Power Macs. The FX previously topped out at 2.7 ghz so 2.5 ghz is actually a step backwards (although it may be more power efficient).

The "G3" chip, the 750CL tops out at 1.0 ghz. Again, not that big of an improvement. I believe the last G3 iBooks topped out at 900 mhz.

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You're right. I saw the 750 and the GX and merged the two. I should blame my pain meds but they're not that effective anymore.

generik said:

Even if PPC for computers outstrip x86 in terms of performance in the future, I'd still prefer Apple stay with the rest of the computing world. There is just this sense of stability when you can run Windows natively on your machine.

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What is the world comming to.. really running windows on a mac! I do think it is good that we went intel, at least now the dell people cant question our speed anymore, windows never came into the equasion for me!

I'd rather they kept it working on both architectures going forward. Intel are going to whip IBM's ass on the speed front in both laptops and desktops, but think what type of device Apple could bring out with a low-power embedded G5 at a decent speed.

It won't happen though