keep your eye on the prize
I think we have to step away from the chip for a second and take a look at the other possibilites. We all know that the mobo of the g4 has been basically unchanged since that of the B&W g3's and that a revamp is definately due. However, you hav to remove yourself from the hype to really take a look at what is offered. I'm going to take a "sweet and wheat" style approch to my statement (frosted mini wheats have a sweet "extreme, happy go lucky side" and a "sensible" wheat side.... Or so the comercial says ).
Wheat---->
too often some one says "intel has xchip at xmhz! oh no! i'm behind" or "my system bus is only 133 mhz! Damnit, I want 400 mhz like my pc buddies!". Why? What advancement does it give you? Can that intel chip run Final Cut pro?
Well what ever happened to updated pci buses, firewire 2, rapid io, and agp 8x? Processor is one thing, but you cant just sit a chip on your desk, plug it in and start animating the next CG masterpiece. It would be like pulling a yugo's engine and poping in an air-cooled porshe masterpiece. It wouldnt do any good.
So lets say that apple follow this thinking and builds a vastly superior mobo that included a faster bus, rapid io, faster pci, firewire 2, support for 4 gigs of memory, and 2 agp 4x slots. What do you think is going to be in that? A G5? Why would they test a brand new Chip in a Brand new board? If something goes wrong how do you know who the culprit is, the board or the chip?
The quick silver is one such example. Redesigned board with the same series G4 chip as the previous graphite models. Then out came the new apollo chips using the now proven board with the new chip.
In my own (hopefully wrong
) opinion, we will see one more rev of pro G4's with a brand spanking new motherboard. The only flaw in this hypothesis is that the current G4s are not designed to operate at higher bus speeds. But hey, this is just a prediction right? Besides I would much rather apple take their time perfecting the G5 than rushing to put it out there and leaving it so full of bugs, that it's basically useless.
Sweet------>
The G5 is way past due! However I want this thing to not only be a G5 by name but to be one by mechanics as well. But, my G5 is going to need a companion. I want a fully 64 bit G5 to run a 64 bit os x! A 64 bit G5 is useless without software that runs
natively on that processor. You won't see that 64 bit boost untill all of the apps coded to 32 bit are ported over. I've seen many posters here go and drool at the thought of the current g4's running at 2 ghz just so they can say "hey windoze guy, I have lotsa ghz too!" I'll keep my tounge in check untill I see a fully implemented 64 bit g5 @ whatever the mhz runing a 64 bit os (os x) rendering my final cut pro 3 (fcp 3-64?) projects in real time. That is power, not how fast you can send an instant message while playing quake.
It is also possible that the G5 will be out with the new Mobo so coveted by the mac faithful. The current G4 is unable to run at the bus speeds *predicted* for the new mother board. So what's going to be humming away on that puppy, the G5! That way the bus speed can be boosted by two fold, the memory capacity can double, and we will finally breat out of the 66 mhz pci slump.
Apple has opened a big can of worms for macworld with this recent phase out of the G3. Previously, the G4 has been an exclusive "pro" machine chip that came with a price. Now with consumer G4's, the pro label is all but destroyed. To reestablish "pro relations" apple would have to bring out something truely tastey right? Well, another G4 won't do it for marketing (but might for those who know their hardware). Quad machines are not the answer. As mentioned before, quads would be too expensive for the pro-sumer but the software does exist to support them.
Originally posted by thedude
...For one, there was a post earlier this month about apple talking with CG facilities and asking them what they wanted in a machine. The all said duals are the minimum, quads would be nice. So, with the g4 running up and down the product line, wouldn't it make sense for apple to pop out a quad machine, (albiet a little expensive) for the high end, a couple of dual configs for the middle range and a couple of single procs for the bottom of the line? This would make Moto think twice about screwing with apples timeline with all the investment in g4's they'll have.
Right now, the new thing for CG that requires a lot of horsepower, is clustering. I think apple has realized this with their implementation of gig-e accross the pro line. Unlike quad machines, a clustered system would be made up of many seperate systems and could there for be "barrowed" when needed. I can see it now "Hey could you drop by with your ti 800 and daul 1 ghz? yeah i need it for a long render in Cinema 4D."
With all of that said, I would like to see this for the next machine:
Dual or single G5 @ xxmhz (preferebly dual)
266 bus for DDR ram
2 x agp 4x
firewire 2
4 gigs of memory
faster or new pci
osx 64 (along with a 64 bit final cut pro and dvd pro)
Give me this and I'll be happy.
-----------------------------------------
well even though the two sides seemed to overlap at times, you can get the basic picture. The G5 would be great for marketing but right now, there are other factors to be considered. Whatever happens I will probably blow my entire long post to hell. So we'll see in July.
