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Apple Releases Dual Core PowerMac G5s

the pics of the new PM looks smaller! werid right?

well my i'm(me and grandma) are picking up a 17'' PB but it a secret) for xmas for mom so dont tell her!


i want the quad PM i'd be set for awhile
 
johannes said:
I feel your pain. I too need a PCI-X slot for my audio interface. I just think it's weird for Apple to do this since pro audio is a huge market for Powermacs.
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Others said it was weird that Apple didn't bump up to PCIe earlier... :D

Seriously expect PCIe audio cards soon, be happy Apple included an 8 lane PCIe slot in addition to two 4 lane slots and that the 8 lane slot doesn't get blocked by having a huge high-end video adapter.
 
itswoody said:
Goddammit I'm so pissed right now...saved up for months to buy a Dual 2.7 Ghz Power Mac back in April (although it took a whole month to arrive but that's another story) thinking it would last...and now this a few months later. Apple have screwed me and many others again....70% performance advantage over yesterdays "top of the line" mac!!! But still we buy their products! If you're listening Jobs, offer to buy mine back and give me a mega discount on a quad, that will make me happy. :mad: :eek: :mad: :eek: :p
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I wouldn't sweat it, for one the top line system now costs $300 more than your dual 2.7.

For another - these initial benchmarks - they are not being looked at very closely.

Once this mania dies down, I think in-depth looks at the performance of these machines will show that the low end and midrange powermacs were not really much of an upgrade (if any). Take a look at the cpu performance of the dual 2.5 vs dual core 2.3, then take a look at the multithreading performance of the dual 2.5 vs dual core 2.3

People are out to 'prove' something right now, and the benchmarks will be presented in such a way as to prove their point, but my experience is that dual processor > dual core, and those benchmarks are acutally whispering that fact for those that want to look. I can about guarantee you that there is no more than a 30% difference in overall performance of the new 2.5Ghz dual dual core (quad) vs the 2.7ghz dual processor. You can already see by the benchmarks that for multitasking, the old dual processor boxes outrun the new single chip dual core boxes...

All that said, the dual processor dual core box is definitely a step up, but not as big as it's being hyped up to be.

I am seriously disappointed in the other two boxes. I would vastly prefer to see a low end dual 2.3 and midrange dual 2.5 than the singe cpu dual core boxes they gave us. I am thinking now is a great time to buy one of the now discontinued dual 2.0 or dual 2.3 boxes.
 
GyroFX said:
can someone say DAYSTAR GENESIS?...
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On my first Mac-using job (where I had to learn them despite hating Macs) I ended up with one on my desk :) Quad-processor G2! 200Mhz I think... maybe even 180. :D

I used to run Strata Studio Pro. I learned to appreciate the Mac, but I never stopped hating Strata! :)
 
nagromme said:
EDIT: Question answered below. One FW 800, no internal modem, separate digital and analog audio I/O.

BTW, the specs say ONE Firewire 800 port, but I swear I see two here:

I see, from top to bottom:

Dual ethernet
Modem
FW 400
Dual FW 800? Am I crazy?
Audio I/O
Three USB
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Yes, but one of the two FW800 ports is a dummy one. :D
 
rolandf said:
The top-end machines seems nice, although not enough pre-installed memory. But what is not workstation like, are the hard-drives
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Um, it's configurable with any amount of memory you like. Given Apple's markup on memory, I'd rather have less so I can load up on faster Crucial or other 3rd party, first tier memory. You can get low latency DDR2 from a good vendor for less than Apple's normal latency. If I were buying a quad core machine I wouldn't hobble it with normal high latency DDR2.
I'm not able to confirm that the new controller supports lower latency DDR2 but the iMac G5 and the Older G5s support DDR down to 2 CAS though they ship with CAS3.

Also, what's not workstation-like about Hitachi's 250GB and 500GB drives? These are the same drives in the xServe RAID.
Granted, I like the Maxtor 300GB with 16MB cache but those aren't terrible drives (I run the MaxLineIIIs in my XServe and Dell 1U and they smoke).
So, they don't have incredibly overprices SCSI drives or way overpriced Raptors.. they have fast, reliable, large SATA drives.

My only real complaint about drives is.. no hardware mirroring or striping. If you've got a good disk-to-disk backup system, this thing would scream with L1 RAID (it does double you chance of a volume failure after all).
I suppose I'd also like NCQ. It's SATA-150 which can have NCQ but I do believe NCQ is standard on SATA2-300.

Overall I love the new machines. It's like Tiger, polish everwhere.
Dual GigE you can aggregate, PCI-E, built in Airport wireless antenna....

howard said:
is a dual core 2ghz faster than a dual 2ghz? if so why?
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Dual core can be faster because, the cores can snoop on each other's caches.. they can cooperate more efficiently...
Dual core can be slower because two cores now share a Front Side bus while dual processor machines generally have their own busses. This should be fairly uncommon though as the FSB has way more bandwidth than the memory bus.

If the code threads with a very low level of parallelism where the threads are dependent on the results of other threads, dual-core should be better.
If the threads are very memory intensive and very independent.. then dual processor may be faster.

These dual-cores do have an extra advantage. Not only are they dual core on a very fast FSB, they have twice the L2 cache of the old CPUs.
 
kalisphoenix said:
My birthday is tomorrow and my wedding is in about 3.5 weeks. Any takers?
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Of all that old hardware in your signature? Sure, you can unload it on me. My gift to you is an uncluttering of your space. I'm sure your fiance will be even happier with the idea :) Where are you? I'm in Dallas, so I need to know soon if I should try to drive over to pick it all up, before the wedding.
 
Quadros is a very good start,but why not also say the 3400 etc.Those 4500s are way over priced.Maybe some Fire gls will end up in the mix a little later on as well.



Am very tempted by the quad for 3D work,but once the Intels land I wonder how many years the quads etc will still be supported with the old atchitecture.



All up though this is a very good move towards getting the studios looking a bit harder.I know for a fact the lack of high end card was something holding many back.The dual boot option of the new Intels coming though is something I think many studios might just wait a bit longer for.
 
shawnce said:
That is a defect in Safari that in my testing appears related to use of some aspects of Java Script. It causes Safari to stall the main thread... having more cores wont really help with this at all. Hope for an updated Safari to address this issue.
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JavaScript seems to eat FireFox's lunch, sometimes, too. At least as recently as 1.0.7. And don't even think about JavaScript and heavy Flash on a website, under FF. I've seen that beachball everything, not just FF.
 
I am getting sick of Apple sticking it to us. 512 ram on a top of the line machine? They are saving money on the bottom two Powermacs by only having to purchase one chip. But, they are charging the same? Why not put another chip, or maybe discount the price some?? It is getting old, Apple may be more greedy than Microsoft. If OSX was available on something else, I would definately by us. What a slap in the face...
 
Is that nVidia Quadro the best GPU choice currently for GAME performance? Or is it less useful for that?
 
nospleen said:
I am getting sick of Apple sticking it to us. 512 ram on a top of the line machine? They are saving money on the bottom two Powermacs by only having to purchase one chip. But, they are charging the same? Why not put another chip, or maybe discount the price some?? It is getting old, Apple may be more greedy than Microsoft. If OSX was available on something else, I would definately by us. What a slap in the face...
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LOL I find it amazing that Apple can release a quad core @ 2.5 GHz box and people still find something to complain about, honestly if you can afford to buy this box you can afford to buy RAM! :rolleyes:

nagromme said:
Is that Quadro the best choice currently for GAME performance? Or is it less useful for that?
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The graphics card on the AGP Power Macs are better for gaming than the current ones available for the PCIe Power Macs.
 
I like how Airport Extreme and BT are still BTO.

512 MB if RAM on a pro machine?

LOL

Nice upgrade, though. Can't wait to see the quad benchmarks when they ship in February. :p
 
risc said:
LOL I find it amazing that Apple can release a quad core @ 2.5 GHz box and people still find something to complain about, honestly if you can afford to buy this box you can afford to buy RAM! :rolleyes:
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I am not saying the machine isn't nice. My main gripe is not even that it only comes with 512 ram, but that is just pathetic. If you can afford a Lexus, you expect Leather!! But, my point is to not put in an extra chip on the bottom two? Why not?? Because they want to continue to make a premium at our expense. If they only want one quad, I can understand. But, wouldn't you agree a little price cut would have been nice? After all, they are saving money. I just think it is a little greedy. The new imacs on the other hand, are an AWESOME deal. Apple could of charged more, but did not. I certainly do recognize that, but I just think they are really asking a premium for a single chip dual 2.0.
 
Intel? Whats that??

Cheers to the others that wanted another G5 in the PowerMac before the transition in 2 years. I still think we'll see a Single Dual Core G5 low end & 2xDual Core G5 at 2.5Ghz and possibly 2xDual G5 3.0Ghz by next year end.

Man this is sweet. I had a chance to get an old used 1.8 Dual G5 this summer for $1800 Canadian (1GB Ram, not sure if it was PCI-X or not) without moving back to Toronto. Glad I moved to T-Dot. 2nd new job; worthy of adding to my resumé with much better pay. Although this place is cramped, and I was supposed to have a Cube G4 by now, I think its worth the wait another month. Then a Rev iMac G5 will adorn where my PC sits. If I'm smart, and frugal (no coffee, MacWorld/Addict Mags, spend less for public transit to work, hold out on the Nano, work holidays) I could net a sweet new DualCore 2.0Ghz by Xmas/Boxing Day. :eek: :D .

Who needs fashion clothes for work. :p
 
nospleen said:
...But, wouldn't you agree a little price cut would have been nice? After all, they are saving money...
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These are brand new Macs with brand new components, how do we know what they cost Apple? I think it has been said before but I'll say it again Apple are in the business of keeping their share holders happy, no one else. Personally I think these machines are great value, it's a whole lot of workstation for not too much cash.
 
nospleen said:
I am getting sick of Apple sticking it to us. 512 ram on a top of the line machine? They are saving money on the bottom two Powermacs by only having to purchase one chip. But, they are charging the same? Why not put another chip, or maybe discount the price some??
Click to expand...

Yes, an amazing quad processing machine, Apple's really sticking it to us...
:rolleyes:

Apple charges a premium for RAM, that's just the way it is. It's not going to change. So basically you're saying you would prefer Apple to include more of their overpriced RAM in their machines without giving customers a choice, which would then result in a higher cost? I would much rather buy the bare minimum amount of RAM possible from Apple (just like they're offering) and then buy my own 3rd party RAM for much cheaper. :cool:

nospleen said:
If OSX was available on something else, I would definately by us.
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First of all, that sentence doesn't make any sense. :p Secondly, haven't you heard? OS X is available on PC. Everyone's hacking it. Go buy a PC. :cool:
 
nagromme said:
Is that Quadro the best choice currently for GAME performance? Or is it less useful for that?
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All of the new Power Macs are likely better then prior Power Macs because the have faster memory, PCIe, and the option for more advanced video adapters.

The extra cores in the Quad system likely won't help much with most games but the fact that they run at 2.5GHz would make them potentially better then 2.0GHz and 2.3GHz dual core systems.

For CPU heavy games the old Power Mac 2.7 GHz may also be better but likely other factors, in particular PCIe and better adapters, could balance the raw single threaded performance difference.

I suggest folks look forward to Mac OS X 10.4.3, it should bring some nice stuff to OpenGL support on Mac (even for existing systems).
 
nospleen said:
Because they want to continue to make a premium at our expense.
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Price out a comparable system from Dell. Looks like you'll pay a lot more than Apple's price.

(But don't overlook their displays... those are Mac-ready and priced nicely!)
 
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