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Apple Releases iMacs
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Technical Question
Since the new 17" iMac has a 133MHz bus, and the low end 15" iMac appears to just be the old 17" iMac with a 15" screen and 100MHz bus, it appears they've upgraded the new high end with a new motherboard (which includes the AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth connectivity, and Firewire 800 omitted). I've also read elsewhere that the Mac uses direct memory access for its peripherals, I believe. So, doesn't this mean that hard drives, CDs/DVDs, video card, and the like are all accessing the DDR memory via the new 133MHz bus directly, thus taking advantage of the higher speed DDR RAM?
I'm asking because I keep hearing people complain about the Mac's use of DDR memory, but it seems to me that the only part of the system NOT taking advantage of it is the CPU, and it CANNOT because the Motorola 7455 G4 doesn't support it. I believe I also read that the first Motorola G4 to support it will be the RM version of the 7457 which isn't due for a year. So, why is everyone blaming Apple for this? It seems to me they've upgraded the infrastructure as best they can.
While we can wish for better, the technology has to exist first. Hopefully, Apple will take advantage of the 970s.
Since the new 17" iMac has a 133MHz bus, and the low end 15" iMac appears to just be the old 17" iMac with a 15" screen and 100MHz bus, it appears they've upgraded the new high end with a new motherboard (which includes the AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth connectivity, and Firewire 800 omitted). I've also read elsewhere that the Mac uses direct memory access for its peripherals, I believe. So, doesn't this mean that hard drives, CDs/DVDs, video card, and the like are all accessing the DDR memory via the new 133MHz bus directly, thus taking advantage of the higher speed DDR RAM?
I'm asking because I keep hearing people complain about the Mac's use of DDR memory, but it seems to me that the only part of the system NOT taking advantage of it is the CPU, and it CANNOT because the Motorola 7455 G4 doesn't support it. I believe I also read that the first Motorola G4 to support it will be the RM version of the 7457 which isn't due for a year. So, why is everyone blaming Apple for this? It seems to me they've upgraded the infrastructure as best they can.
While we can wish for better, the technology has to exist first. Hopefully, Apple will take advantage of the 970s.
shadowfax
macrumors 603
no it isn't. it sends twice as much info at the same clock speed, because it sends data 2 times every cycle, instead of once like PC133.
in the old days, they would call DDR something like "DDR266" and note that it was really clocked at 133, but acted like 266 MHz normal ram because is was DDR.
yzedf
macrumors 65816
Re: 17" iMac shipping...
spec ceiling - sad but true
price - money is not as abundant for most of us as it was in the '90's. Now we want better value for the dollar. iLife is not it either, for me. iPhoto is nice though... but that is cuz I use linux, and their support of "new" cameras is abysmal 🙁
snow - neither does the eMac 😉
Don't call people dumb because they can't pay $2500 to have a decent gaming machine. Some are referred to as smart for getting what they want, at a decent price.
spec ceiling - sad but true
price - money is not as abundant for most of us as it was in the '90's. Now we want better value for the dollar. iLife is not it either, for me. iPhoto is nice though... but that is cuz I use linux, and their support of "new" cameras is abysmal 🙁
snow - neither does the eMac 😉
Don't call people dumb because they can't pay $2500 to have a decent gaming machine. Some are referred to as smart for getting what they want, at a decent price.
Only if you take "Pro" to mean "business server". "Pro" to most of the world means suitable for those who make money working on their computers. That includes artists and musicians and developers, along with a whole host of others.
The key characteristics that differentiate a "professional" machine from a "consumer" machine are upgradability and durability. If you are making money on your machine, you need to be able to hug the "state of the art" curve a little tighter than grandma surfing the web. Downtime doesn't mean sending out the Christmas family letter on Dec 22 instead of Dec 21; it means losing money.
The iMac line is and has always been aimed at the consumer. Consumers generally do not need to continually upgrade their hardware. If the monitor gets broken for some reason they can live without the machine while the monitor gets fixed. On the other hand, consumers far more than professionals demand a compact and simple design that has an appealing look to it.
Huh? The stats I've seen show the XServe selling like gangbusters, far ahead of what analysts had predicted when it was introduced. I've personally seen a rack full of Sun equipment swapped out for XServes, and they do live up to their promise.
In any case, XServe is not "Pro" level; it is corporate level. XServe is, as the name would imply, a server. While it would fit into a rendering farm fairly nicely, it's not exactly geared towards being a developer's workstation or fitting under an artist or graphical designer's desk.
That having been said, IMHO the key differential between the markets is not sheer horsepower, but form factor. Except, of course, for the "Pro" and "Consumer" lines of laptops (where the form factor is a fairly minor differentiating factor), the reason Apple puts Processor X in one line and Processor Y in another is to keep the price of the consumer line down and the capabilities of the pro line as high as possible.
While I'd love to see a dual-1.42GHz iMac with a 19" screen and FW800, such a beast would be far more expensive to produce than Apple's iMac line has traditionally been, and would sell pitifully. I mean, imagine you had such a machine, priced at, say, $2624 (basing this on differential between 17" iMac and similarly configured head-less PowerMac at $1724, a $75 lower amount for the iMac). Who would buy it? I'd drool over it, but ultimately not purchase because I need to be able to upgrade components (and, frankly, even the 20" wide-screen LCD is a bit small for me ... I work solely with 21" CRTs running 1600x1200 and there just aren't that many pixels on Apple's 20" display!) For home, I'd buy a less-expensive unit.
Dont Hurt Me
macrumors 603
Re: Technical Question
thanks dave, there should be good gains made just about everwhere if this is true! i guess xserve type architecture
shadowfax
macrumors 603
RAM is transferred at a given rate, right? PC 100 sends info 100 times a second, yielding whatever thousand megabytes per second transfer rate. PC 133 RAM is clocked at 133MHz and sends info 133 times a second... you see, these are following a sinewave model..each rise and fall is a cycle. normal SDRAM sends data once each clock cycle, with the rise of the cycle; DDR SDRAM, on the other hand, sends data at both the rise and fall of the cycle, effectively doubling the information passed for the same actual clock speed. so formerly, they would call DDR SDRAM that was clocked at 133 MHz "DDR 266," because it behaves like normal RAM at 266 MHz, even though it's at half that. i don't know if this is the case with Apple's DDR 333, though i would bet it's really at 166 MHz (someone correct me? everything else is at 166 (167) MHz....
does that help, at any rate?
Expensive RAM?
Welcome!
Hmmm ... lots of complaints about memory being expensive.
I looked up PC2700 DDR memory at crucial.com and found that a do-it-yourself memory upgrade (assuming 2 DIMM slots available) from 256MB to 1GB would run about $180 ($120 for a 512MB DIMM and $60 for a 256MB DIMM, both guaranteed to work on the MDD PowerMacs, although I suspect the slot in the iMac is identical ...)
Apple is charging $400 to have that pre-installed. Yeah, that's expensive, but if you find it too much you can always just hop over to crucial.com and pick up memory there after your system arrives from Apple and do it yourself! As for "the most expensive memory ever", well, this doesn't even come close! A few years back you couldn't get 512MB SDRAM for $400! And, of course, ordering memory pre-installed on a system has always been more expensive than buying it and installing it yourself, and a 2x markup isn't unheard of there.
Note: the "ultimate" 17" iMac also has Airport and Bluetooth built in (not just "ready"), which adds $150 to the base price. The difference isn't "all" memory!
Welcome!
Hmmm ... lots of complaints about memory being expensive.
I looked up PC2700 DDR memory at crucial.com and found that a do-it-yourself memory upgrade (assuming 2 DIMM slots available) from 256MB to 1GB would run about $180 ($120 for a 512MB DIMM and $60 for a 256MB DIMM, both guaranteed to work on the MDD PowerMacs, although I suspect the slot in the iMac is identical ...)
Apple is charging $400 to have that pre-installed. Yeah, that's expensive, but if you find it too much you can always just hop over to crucial.com and pick up memory there after your system arrives from Apple and do it yourself! As for "the most expensive memory ever", well, this doesn't even come close! A few years back you couldn't get 512MB SDRAM for $400! And, of course, ordering memory pre-installed on a system has always been more expensive than buying it and installing it yourself, and a 2x markup isn't unheard of there.
Note: the "ultimate" 17" iMac also has Airport and Bluetooth built in (not just "ready"), which adds $150 to the base price. The difference isn't "all" memory!
cr2sh
macrumors 68030
Re: I just realized something...
Motorola should adopt an arbitrary method of rating their processors. Similar to the old pentium scale that cyrix and amd used to use, and the new + scale that amd uses now. It couldn't be anymore meaningless than intel's "533" system bus.
Put simply... Underwear gnomes.
Motorola should adopt an arbitrary method of rating their processors. Similar to the old pentium scale that cyrix and amd used to use, and the new + scale that amd uses now. It couldn't be anymore meaningless than intel's "533" system bus.
yzedf
macrumors 65816
Pro level machines are usually leases, unless we are talking about very small offices (such as mine), or people that work from home. Upgrading is not a factor, the machine is turned in and a new one is delivered (that is how I got this laptop I am typing on right now... turned in 2yr lease that was then sold by the leasing company).
XServes sold 6,000 machines last quarter, IIRC. That is not good. And your "beat expectations" remark reminds me of Microsoft. They "always" beat expectations, because they understate them.
pixels - what is the deal with apple's display densities? seems odd to me...
For me, all of my dollars are precious. And the iMac does not give enough to me in this market to inspire me to buy one.
My money is on the iBook... when there is enough of it around 🙄
XServes sold 6,000 machines last quarter, IIRC. That is not good. And your "beat expectations" remark reminds me of Microsoft. They "always" beat expectations, because they understate them.
pixels - what is the deal with apple's display densities? seems odd to me...
For me, all of my dollars are precious. And the iMac does not give enough to me in this market to inspire me to buy one.
My money is on the iBook... when there is enough of it around 🙄
Have you looked at the eMacs? For $1,299 you can get an 800 SuperDrive (I have one). Pretty good machine. For $1,499 you can get a 1GHz Tower.
Just because they goofed on the iMacs doesn't mean there are no other options.
GeeYouEye
macrumors 68000
Nice enough... I can't see it as much more than a stopgap though. While I certainly appreciate the speed-bump and the price drop, if I was in the market for an iMac, I wouldn't wait for the next revision, though I might consider a PowerMac instead. OTOH, I'm not right now, since I just got a new iBook (whose Radeon 7500 is plenty fast enough for anything I've thrown at it, including a transparent terminal window, Aquamon, DVD Player [playing Monty Python] and the iTunes visualizer, all simultaneously.)
cr2sh
macrumors 68030
My question is where do we go next? The g3 was put into the powermacs/books until the g4 was introduced. Everyone stepped up a level at that point, the ibooks/imacs got a g3, the powermacs/books got a g4. When the ppc970 is introduced sure.. they powermacs/books will step up to the 970, but what will be done with the imacs/books?
Right now, everyone (cept the ibook) is pushing a g4, with ram and specs differences sure... but when we get the 970, the iMac should not step up as well. It should reside with the g4, but they'll probably cease manufacturing them... and then what? Unless Apple/IBM has something up their sleave, this type of updating (where all the lines get slight variations and RAM types) will be the norm.
Will we continue to get dual pro systems?
I think what I want, maybe what we all want, is a superchip introduced for pro-level and a lower level chip for the consumers. What I'm talking about is sheer power4 and ppc970... but I don't understand what Apple is doing. 😕
Right now, everyone (cept the ibook) is pushing a g4, with ram and specs differences sure... but when we get the 970, the iMac should not step up as well. It should reside with the g4, but they'll probably cease manufacturing them... and then what? Unless Apple/IBM has something up their sleave, this type of updating (where all the lines get slight variations and RAM types) will be the norm.
Will we continue to get dual pro systems?
I think what I want, maybe what we all want, is a superchip introduced for pro-level and a lower level chip for the consumers. What I'm talking about is sheer power4 and ppc970... but I don't understand what Apple is doing. 😕
Dunepilot
macrumors 6502a
RAM upgrades
Just thought that I had better post up a quick message to those who say that they might upgrade the iMac's RAM after purchase.
Do bear in mind that OS X is very picky about the quality of RAM you put in your machine .
If you do use RAM you get free from a third-party vendor (even extra RAM installed before you buy your Mac, from a mail-order reseller) you do run the risk of having kernel panics in OS X. There is a lot of documentation of this on macintouch.com.
Personally, I've found Crucial's RAM to be pretty safe, but it is just a thought worth bearing in mind that you are more likely to enjoy solid-as-a-rock stability if you buy Apple's RAM despite the premium they charge. This wasn't always the case (when most people were using OS 9), but it does need to be borne in mind these days.
Just thought that I had better post up a quick message to those who say that they might upgrade the iMac's RAM after purchase.
Do bear in mind that OS X is very picky about the quality of RAM you put in your machine .
If you do use RAM you get free from a third-party vendor (even extra RAM installed before you buy your Mac, from a mail-order reseller) you do run the risk of having kernel panics in OS X. There is a lot of documentation of this on macintouch.com.
Personally, I've found Crucial's RAM to be pretty safe, but it is just a thought worth bearing in mind that you are more likely to enjoy solid-as-a-rock stability if you buy Apple's RAM despite the premium they charge. This wasn't always the case (when most people were using OS 9), but it does need to be borne in mind these days.
aethier
macrumors 6502a
in my opinion
I find the new imacs to be not bad... i am a little disapointed though. i thought that apple would
1- at least upgrade all models to a ati radeon 9000 with 64 megs. or keep the low end with the mx.
well i guess i have no "2" i thought i would but w/e..
anyways.. i wuold like a new 17 inch 1gig imac with the whole shabeel.. but the graphics card is a little of a turn off.. so i guess i will just have to save more money and buy myself a dual 1.25 g4
😉
I find the new imacs to be not bad... i am a little disapointed though. i thought that apple would
1- at least upgrade all models to a ati radeon 9000 with 64 megs. or keep the low end with the mx.
well i guess i have no "2" i thought i would but w/e..
anyways.. i wuold like a new 17 inch 1gig imac with the whole shabeel.. but the graphics card is a little of a turn off.. so i guess i will just have to save more money and buy myself a dual 1.25 g4
😉
shadowfax
macrumors 603
Re: in my opinion
i appreciate that mentality towards apple. i think it'd be wicked cool for them to have a nicer vid card in the iMac; i would be personally attracted to it. as it is, my powerbook still outperforms it. but at the same time, you realize that the computer tailored to your tastes is something else and you are prepared to save to buy it, rather than complain about the iMacs.
i appreciate that mentality towards apple. i think it'd be wicked cool for them to have a nicer vid card in the iMac; i would be personally attracted to it. as it is, my powerbook still outperforms it. but at the same time, you realize that the computer tailored to your tastes is something else and you are prepared to save to buy it, rather than complain about the iMacs.
My problem is people not understanding the market.
Sun, IBM, SGi, HPUX, Tru 64 and other high end machines only make up between 5 to 10% of the market, but they make 80% of the overall money spent in the market. And these are machines that usually run between 500 megahertz and 1.5 gigahertz. The OS is more stable and reliable (posix) and the archetecture is totally different than that of the OH SO WONDERFUL x86 archetecture. I mean, SGi machines have no real system bus, all the components are fast enough and smart enough to talk to each other at full speed, not relying on a FSB or the Processor. Plus higher bittage.
MS is desperately trying to bust in this area of the market because of the $$ and it's the only area they haven't been able to bust into. The only real mid range os to get into this market is Linux. Even then it's not taking down the super huge oracle databases that run on sun and aix and the supercomputers that our science communities heavily rely on.
Apple is stepping up to the plate, and they can with the new PPC970, going into the 64 bit arena with a new achetecture and the scalability of posix apps (MOSX.)
And I am sorry, you're dual p4 running at 2.9 gigahertz a piece isn't going to get into the pants and rule my dual Power4 when I need a serious app running a humoungous database or running humongous calculations.
Also, if you are running Windows on those "big powerful" p4's, you're running unnecessarily bloated code, and running an os with privacy and security issues. Not like, MOSX for example, that is Necessarily Bloated in a sense, which is simply apple releasing an os a wee bit before that had the real horsepower to drop it onto the market.
I like MS, i personally think they will become to software what IBM is to hardware, because they are exactly in the exact same shoes. I think they will open up, and become more of a benefactor to the industry once they realise they don't have to be so tyranical and so closed to be so successful and large. Maybe even see a MS desktop environment running in Linux one day O🙂
But if processor speed and price is all that matters to you, not quality, not good design, go ahead and get a p4, shut your whining, and get of the mac forums 🙂
Peace
GPT
Sun, IBM, SGi, HPUX, Tru 64 and other high end machines only make up between 5 to 10% of the market, but they make 80% of the overall money spent in the market. And these are machines that usually run between 500 megahertz and 1.5 gigahertz. The OS is more stable and reliable (posix) and the archetecture is totally different than that of the OH SO WONDERFUL x86 archetecture. I mean, SGi machines have no real system bus, all the components are fast enough and smart enough to talk to each other at full speed, not relying on a FSB or the Processor. Plus higher bittage.
MS is desperately trying to bust in this area of the market because of the $$ and it's the only area they haven't been able to bust into. The only real mid range os to get into this market is Linux. Even then it's not taking down the super huge oracle databases that run on sun and aix and the supercomputers that our science communities heavily rely on.
Apple is stepping up to the plate, and they can with the new PPC970, going into the 64 bit arena with a new achetecture and the scalability of posix apps (MOSX.)
And I am sorry, you're dual p4 running at 2.9 gigahertz a piece isn't going to get into the pants and rule my dual Power4 when I need a serious app running a humoungous database or running humongous calculations.
Also, if you are running Windows on those "big powerful" p4's, you're running unnecessarily bloated code, and running an os with privacy and security issues. Not like, MOSX for example, that is Necessarily Bloated in a sense, which is simply apple releasing an os a wee bit before that had the real horsepower to drop it onto the market.
I like MS, i personally think they will become to software what IBM is to hardware, because they are exactly in the exact same shoes. I think they will open up, and become more of a benefactor to the industry once they realise they don't have to be so tyranical and so closed to be so successful and large. Maybe even see a MS desktop environment running in Linux one day O🙂
But if processor speed and price is all that matters to you, not quality, not good design, go ahead and get a p4, shut your whining, and get of the mac forums 🙂
Peace
GPT
ohh just so you know a dual G4 Power Mac doesn't automaticly make it twice the stated GHZ. I have the original 1.25 Dual and its not a 2.5 GHZ G4, sure in dual processor tasks it performs nicely. But its a dual becuase its a prosumer machine and not a consumer machine. 1 GHZ with DDR ram and 133 bus are a step up with a price decrease.
Ohh and to anyone complaining about the specs, put a sock in it, just remember what OS is inside. and if OSX isn't good enough for you, then get a Dell.
Tyler
IndyGopher
macrumors 6502a
Is the Open Firmware hack that enabled dual video (non-mirrored) on Radeon iBooks and 17" iMacs still going to work on these new 17" iMacs? I suppose we won't know until they ship, but that will be the deciding factor for me.