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64bit no more??

M

matthutch

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 26, 2004
149
13
Perth, Western Australia
in one of the macbytes articles the author raises a very valid point, and one that I have been wondering about since the change in the chips were announced.

What will happen to 64bit capabilities? and also what would be the likelyhood of dual processor x86 based macs? from what i understand dual cpu windows boxes have issues with software not running on them if it is not designed to run on them - i heard this somewhere i have no idea if it is true.

also some other questions
FSB - would it drop back down to 800mhz like most of the stuff available in the x86 market
the amount of ram the system could address - would it drop or stay the same?

sorry if this is in the wrong section - i wasnt sure which one if would be best suited to.
 
64 bit will stay. All of the new intel cpu's except for the celeron i believe will be able to support x86-64.
As far as dual cpu's being used, I think it would be more plausable that apple would use dual core chips instead. The only current intel cpu's that are capable of dual cpu usage is the xeon, which are much more expensive than any of the pentiums.

Yes the front side bus is lower that the g5 today, but next year the fsb may be higher than today. All of this is based on the chips that intel has out right now. I think intel is going to improve on there technology and hopefully will put out some decent x86 for apple and the rest of the PC world.
 
By the time the first Intel Macs ship in one year Intel should have a lot of 64-bit chips on the market.
 
Pentium & 64 Bits

The next generation of Pentium's will be 64 bit, so no need to worry there.
 
badmofo9000 said:
64 bit will stay. All of the new intel cpu's except for the celeron i believe will be able to support x86-64.
As far as dual cpu's being used, I think it would be more plausable that apple would use dual core chips instead. The only current intel cpu's that are capable of dual cpu usage is the xeon, which are much more expensive than any of the pentiums.
Click to expand...

Is this true? I know older Pentiums would support up to two CPUs, you needed a higher end CPU to do four or more. I find it odd that Intel would have dropped that.
 
dirtymatt said:
Is this true? I know older Pentiums would support up to two CPUs, you needed a higher end CPU to do four or more. I find it odd that Intel would have dropped that.
Click to expand...

No, the older Pentium's had HyperThreading so they registered to the PC as two CPU's, however Pentium's don't support multiple processors on one motherboard. You need Xeons for that.
 
matthutch said:
from what i understand dual cpu windows boxes have issues with software not running on them if it is not designed to run on them - i heard this somewhere i have no idea if it is true.
Click to expand...

That may be true for dual cpu windows boxes, but the issue lies with the operating system, and as long the machine is running OS X, that shouldn't be an issue.
 
considering that the current state of things on the Mac are barely 64-bit, we needn't worry about 64-bit on x86. it will be there with the slew of processors currently in the lineup at intel...read ars technica's articles on the transition to get a better perspective on the (hypothetical) timetable...
 
GFLPraxis said:
No, the older Pentium's had HyperThreading so they registered to the PC as two CPU's, however Pentium's don't support multiple processors on one motherboard. You need Xeons for that.
Click to expand...
No, there were definitely dual CPU systems with standard PII/PIII processors. I have a couple of each.

-Tony
 
Quartz Extreme said:
matthutch said:
from what i understand dual cpu windows boxes have issues with software not running on them if it is not designed to run on them - i heard this somewhere i have no idea if it is true.
Click to expand...
That may be true for dual cpu windows boxes, but the issue lies with the operating system, and as long the machine is running OS X, that shouldn't be an issue.
Click to expand...
Taking advantage of multiple CPUs is application dependent. If an application is not coded to take advantage of multiple CPUs (one single threaded process), it basically only does one task at a time. That one task (thread) can only run on a single CPU at any given time. In that case, the performance of the application tops out at 100% of one CPU.

If the application IS coded to take advantage of multiple CPUs (a single multi threaded process), it does multiple tasks (each in it's own thread) simultaneously. Each of those threads can run on a CPU. For example, if an application has two threads, it could potentially use 100% of two CPUs (200% CPU utilization) on a system with two or more processors.

An application could also be coded to use multiple processes. For example, the Apache web server can run like this. The application spawns a separate process to service each request. Each of the processes can use 100% of one CPU, but the application as a whole consists of multiple processes. So, though each process can only use 100% of a single CPU, the application as a whole is still taking advantage of multiple processors.

-Tony
 
kg9ov said:
No, there were definitely dual CPU systems with standard PII/PIII processors. I have a couple of each.

-Tony
Click to expand...

Ahh! But there is such a thing as a Dual Processor Pentium Pro (basically a Pentium I). I have one of those sitting on a shelf with 2 233Mhz Pentium Pro's in it. Its just a mobo, the processors, and ram so it doesn't run... but during the only time I ran it, it wasn't terribly fast... DUH!
Oh well. Read this ars technica article for some nifty details.

-mcg
 
GFLPraxis said:
No, the older Pentium's had HyperThreading so they registered to the PC as two CPU's, however Pentium's don't support multiple processors on one motherboard. You need Xeons for that.
Click to expand...

You're talking about the PIV

previous CPU's by intel (since the pentium pro) were all available in multiprocessor systems.
 
MrCommunistGen said:
Ahh! But there is such a thing as a Dual Processor Pentium Pro (basically a Pentium I).
-mcg
Click to expand...

Well, that's not entirely correct. The Pentium pro is in fact a completely different chip than the Pentium it's actually more a P2. To be more specific: the P2 is built around the same architecture as the Pentium Pro, which has little in common with the first gen Pentium.
 
dual intel processors... that would be a yes

yep there sure were dual processor intel comps. we used to have a dell dual 450 pentiums or something like that in our design lab.
 
MrCommunistGen said:
Ahh! But there is such a thing as a Dual Processor Pentium Pro (basically a Pentium I). I have one of those sitting on a shelf with 2 233Mhz Pentium Pro's in it. Its just a mobo, the processors, and ram so it doesn't run... but during the only time I ran it, it wasn't terribly fast... DUH!
Oh well. Read this ars technica article for some nifty details.

-mcg
Click to expand...
Yes, Pentium Pros also. I have a quad Pentium Pro 200MHz box also. Though not fast by todays standards, in it's day... :cool:

BlackDan said:
previous CPU's by intel (since the pentium pro) were all available in multiprocessor systems.
Click to expand...
There were even some multiprocessor systems built with the original P1.

-Tony
 
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