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G4's and G5's

apollo

Hello macusers.
I have heard that the g5 is codenamed apollo not the g4 because when the g4 was first out i heard of development of project apollo. Anyone else here this?
 
Horsepower

We need apple to come out with a processor speed leap to shut up the nagging Mac haters, and to satisfy everyone who's gotta make a living using Macs, especially in Audio and Video.

Apple' s got the Coolest design, the coolest gui and ideas good enough for MS to rip off. Now we need the speed.......PLEASE!!!!!!!
 
Speed isnt everything

You must realize that half the pc world are undeducated who take numbers for granted. They are believers in the mhx myth. But most people know better and these people are generally mac owners. Apple cpus are better because of their high capacity work loads with a smaller pipeline. If an apple cpu can get the same job done faster with half the mhz speed, why would anyone care so much about mhz. Intel's itanium will only reach 8oo mhz. So their is more to computers than just cpu speed.
 
*Clap* *Clap*

Well that hasnt been repeated f*** knows how many times.

Ofcourse macs are better/ faster at some tasks. PCs are better at others.
The fact is, clock speed and overall speed has not moved up enough for the past 2 years, mac-wise.

And by the way most people dont know better than the Mhz myth. Which is partly why macs dont sell aswell as PCs. Duh.
 
G4 imac and G5 Desktops

G4 imac flat panel will be announce and G5 will be announce also...but will start selling in March.
 
Re: G5

Here's a post I made in another forum with a the same topic:

"The G5, from these speculated reports would essentially be along the lines of cold fusion for Motorola and Apple.

First off, from what The Register says (which I don't stand by at all) it would support something in the neighborhood of 8 gigs of DDR SDRAM, which by personal computing standards, is a ton. This would make the G5 an optimal server machine.

Second, the processor would process in 64 bit chunks, which from my very limited knowledge means in essentially that the G5 would be a true supercomputer/high end serving machine like the UltraSPARC III. This of course would also give Apple an amazing advantage over all other 64 bit processors, such as the UltraSPARC and Intel's Itanium, meaning that if your looking into buying a 64 bit server/home computer, and your choices are the UltraSPARC III at 1GHz, the Intel Itanium around 800MHz, or the G5 at 1.4/1.6 Ghz, the obvious choice would be most likely the Apple.

As for the pipelines, it was reported that it would have a 10 stage pipeline, which is what the Intel Itanium and the UltraSPARC uses. The advantages of 3 extra stages in a pipeline means that Apple can pump the clock speeds up higher and higher. While the P4 is at 20 stages, it's somewhat at a disadvantage when it comes to a 20 stage pipeline, due to the fact that if a faulty branch prediction pops up in the pipeline, it must be completely cleared before it can start again, meaning you just lost 20 stages of instructions, and in instances where there are lots of branch predictions, this can severely limit the P4. With 10 stages on the other hand, you won't lose as much executed code with a faulty branch prediction, thus making the machine more efficient. It's very hard to compare the P3 to P4 jump with the G4 to G5 jump, as they are completely different processors in all respects.

According from these so called sources also, the G5 would have a 400 Mhz system bus, which is a great improvement over the 133 Mhz bus in the current macs, which is lagging behind the bus speeds in the pc terms, with the P4 at 400 Mhz I believe. This would give an overall system boost dramatically.

The only real setback would be having to recompile and optimizing the OS to use 64 bit processing, along with all other applications, meaning that software would have to be redesigned like the jump from OS 9 to OS X. "

Now in response to the "MHz myth"...

I can't believe you people fell into that propaghanda myth. Although it's not a complete lie, Apple leaves out some crucial facts about that. One is that the P4 is running at twice the speed of the g4, meaning those branch predictions get cycled out faster and are found before the g4 has, just due to the clock speed. Not to mention, this doesnt happen often in applications like games, so thats why the P4 gets about 200 fps in quake 3 and the G4 can barely break 100.

Also, mentioning the itanium chip from Intel, it's fundamentally different from the P4, just like the G5 is to the G4. The G5 will be 64 bit, along with the itanium, and the G4 will be 32 bit, along with the P4.

As for your G3 outperforming a 1.2 Ghz pc? I mean, haha, you gotta tell me where you found those shrooms. Seriously though, you make it sound like you tested them both, and that the G3 won, when you're probably going by something you made up in your head.

The fact is, if Apple wants to get ahead of the PC market, they're going to need to make an extremely nice easy to use OS, which they have, along with a nice development enviroment, which they have. Now all they need is a nice machine with the best real-world application support/performance.
 
re: really nice hardware

if apple does not already have that "really nice" hardware with their current g4 lineup, they are really close to the g5 which hopefully will come out next year (but hey, the faster g3s and g4 are good enough for me)

i see that you mention the high gaming frame rates of the p4 and i heard if i wanted to see a gaming experience, i should go and see the xbox/ps2/gamecube and though i was skeptical at first, micrsoft has made a monster of a gaming machine much cooler than my friend's dual g4 with a gig of RAM...but then again, who really buys a $10,000 dollar machine a with cinema screen and thousands in software so they can only play quake and some other fast games?

wanna thrash that hard drive and those components as well as muss up your os pretty badly?, then just play games all day long and then you will help me or someone like me pay for their bills by just calling and tech to fix it for a fee, that's what we do for a living...so playing games a lot is better done on a gaming xbox type machine that does not also house your financial records, contacts, and grad school thesis

but the support of the public using apple machines is the very hard task that apple inc. has in front of them

...too many computer using people have no idea what using a mac is all about unless they actually own one and the prices of cheaper pcs has made entry-level macs seem inaccessible for many people

e-machines, which started out with what some people refer to as really "junky" computers, have made great strides in their machines and quality control and they have still been able to keep the entry-level machine at only 475 dollars with a rebate of 75 dollars which brings the total cost to just 400 dollars

by meaning junky, i mean that e-machines' power supplies were breaking down and they had a laptop model for awhile which had a flimsy power switch and cd-rom tray...but otherwise they used standard processors, components, and cases and there are many reliable e-machines i still see running in homes and businesses (sometimes i think some of the more expensive compaq computers have had just as many hardware problems and i own one of their 1200 series presario laptops which is very flimsy and has to be handled very carefully unlike my ibook which is built like a tank in comparison)

if it is not already done by now, e-machines willl have their slowest machine bench at 1 ghz with an intel celeron chip which is not as good as a g3 or g4, but the public does not know this

many people who do not know too much about apple but still manage to have an opinion steer away from it because they believe their workplace will more likely have windows... which is true

but apple does have a "flaky" image with many people who probably get that idea from the fact that they know "flaky" artists who swear by apple, and it does not help that apple has a toy-like appearance to their computer instead of looking like a proper beige box ready for real work

these negative toy stereotypes of macs and apple's flaky california image are things which are sure to slow sales but it is not the fault of apple entirely...the public likes to play it too safe and they are happy with the previous experiences that the beige pc towers have given them in the past

i believe five to seven years ago, most pcs could not have been as easy to use as a mac and most pcs could not have really been a good multimedia machine, but today there may not be those gaps in ease of use and performance

when i look at more objective reviews of the mac vs. pc, the pentium 4 does seem to be an all around faster machine on more tasks than any dual g4, except for graphics applications in adobe which the everyday user will never use or need to use

there seem to be many high-end users who have a g4 and a pentium three or four in their homes which may be better for many non-adobe related tasks

while i wouldn't want a celeron equipped machine be my wife's photoshop/illustrator machine for her graphics job at work and at home, i am sure a pentium 3 or 4 would get the job done in a timely enough matter to make a pc graphic design solution ok for this day and age
 
Gives not one TOSS...

Originally posted by jefhatfield
...but hey, the faster g3s and g4 are good enough for me...
Click to expand...

Bravo, Mr.Hat!

It's so comical reading some of these comments - at least you pointed out the very important fact that it's not necessary to have a computer that's powerful enough to control the entire planet, just so Office X can launch 0.3 of a millisecond faster than a 500MHz iMac.

Bollocks. I'm just happy to be able to run the odd game of Aliens vs. Predator, or a decent Flight Sim.

I mean, honestly - how many of you ever tried to run one of your favourite programmes that used to run on your old LCII on one of today's Macs? Impossible. In those days, Men were Men - Women were Women - Sheep ran scared (in New Zealand, anyway) - and computers were ZX Spectrums and Commodore 64's. Even the Sinclair ZX81, with it's 1K of onboard Ram and a 16K Ram pack, held more computational power than it took to send 3 men to the Moon and back.

When will this madness end?!?

For that old nostalgic look at how computers used to be, check out http://www.applefritter.com/apple1

I looked at this site through a link from http://www.woz.org
It just goes to prove how bizarre this whole computer thing has become. An Apple made on a BREADBOARD? Nah! Really?

There's even some interesting postcards and replies from Apple themselves in the early days of the company - read the signatures for a laugh...



[Edited by kiwi_the_iwik on 12-16-2001 at 08:31 AM]
 
i agree, it's so easy to fall into the hype

when i first entered this field on the tech side of things two years ago, the professor told the class that most of the old motherboards from many years ago share a lot of the same coponents (diodes, resisters, etc.) of today, but you sure couldn't tell from the ads that hype every month's computer as some sort of next big thing (the next big thing will be a biotech solution or some form of quantum computing)

a friend of mine who has a pentium 233 mmx who surfs the web and plays old pc games tells me that his two 900 mhz machines he just got gave him more hard drive space but not that much of a speed boost in what he does with his older games and surfing the internet

it is interesting to closely study processors in detail and see that the pentium 1, 2, and 3 were basically more closely related to each other than intel would want the general public to believe and i am sure that the great jumps in mac processors are really not that great

that said, i am still looking forward to the G5 out of curiosity and will still probably replace my two year old ibook in 2002 with just a "consumer" level mac since that is all i really need for my small businesses and home

my wife just did a pretty decent graphics job for a client on the 300 mhz ibook which was done in photoshop and illustrator much faster than on our old 1996 era, $5,000.00 dollar powercomputing mac clone so we certainly didn't need a G4 for the job (though it would have been nice to have bought one of those sleek silver towers for the desktop at our apartment)
 
(ripping hair from scalp, stomping feet)

Dammit!!!

RPM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TORQUE!!!!!

A Dual G4 running @ 800 (NOT 1600) Mhz does seven times more work per second.

A cummings turbodiesel can pull 2+ tonnes @ moderate RPM's and a Honda civic engine can't haul Dick @ any RPM.

Get Mhz OUT of yer heads. Think in FLOPs.It's about torque!!!!!!
 
This is an old string coming back up into the ranks, huh?

I must agree with Jef and everyone else. What the hell do you need to have Quake run at 200fps for? Crimeny. Film is only 24 frames per second, and you dont get bored watching the frames go by when at the movies, do you?? What do you do, sit there and count them?

Anyway, 'torque' is mighty different than RPM. Sure, speed is important, but its gotten so fast that no one can tell the difference. Its all about the pipeline. And yes, PC's are fine computers, and the itanium chip also runs at 800mHz and performs better than a P4. So why cant an Apple with the G4? Megahertz IS important, but its still a number that PC sellers use to 'show' consumers how much faster their computers are.

But what it really amounts to is demonstrating a really fast hampster in a wheel, who is going 2+ gHz.

Thats why its so frustrating to read people's posts who say silly things like, "Oh, then Apple will come out with a 1.5 gHz chip a year late and a dollar short" Its not about the mHz.

[Edited by agreenster on 12-21-2001 at 01:08 PM]
 
10 Ghz computer

Hey, maybe there's an angle here..........we could build a line of 10Ghz Wintel boxes out of overclocked "obsolete" components and make all the numbers BIG and ROUND and these freakin guinea pig'd line up around the block for em.
 
Re: (ripping hair from scalp, stomping feet)

mischief> Get Mhz OUT of yer heads. Think in FLOPs.It's about torque!!!!!!


Were the x86's lower FLOPS figures x86 ops or u-ops? If they were x86 ops,
the figures would probably be 2-3x larger after emerging from the ucode
layer (i think, i'm not a processor... guy...)
 
It's time to think different

I have been reading this forum for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say I am very impressed with the level of expertise of many of the posters.

But there seems to be so much I want a G5, I want 1Ghz, we-need-this-to-beat-intel type talk. And, honestly, I don't think that's what owning an Apple is all about.

Computers are tools, nothing more, nothing less. No, I take that back. Windows computers are nothing more (sometimes a lot less). Apple computers are to some an extension of our personality. I'm not saying that's bad, just stating what it appears to be.

That being said, I'm not sure if it's even fair or accurate to compare the two machines. Speed comparisons should ONLY be used for like machines, i.e. G3 vs G3, P3 vs. P3, AMD vs. AMD (In fact, Apple should quit promoting speeds altogether, and processor speed should be found only in the technical section of their documents). What each individual purchaser needs to decide is what tool works best for them. Reference has been made in this thread as to how well the machine works for audio, for graphics, and for gaming. If you need the machine for audio, weigh the speed vs. interface/functionality, if for graphics, find out what machine works best for your application, if for gaming, well, I don't know why anyone would buy a $1-2K machine when a Playstation serves that purpose. But we're talking about machines that are light years ahead of what NASA had a few years ago already. Does anyone really know how much more 'productive' we'll be with a G5? I'm guessing, and I'm not trying to start a flamewar (although that's fun, too), that most (ok, many) people could forgo the G5 by staying up five minutes later before going to bed, for all of the difference in the time it takes to accomplish something.

Also, as far as the comparison goes, what people need to compare is the difference between SYSTEMS, not processors. A forum poster noted the new 'quality' of e-machines PCs. People, there is no comparison. Yes, an e-machines will suffice for many users, but they are no where near the quality that Apple puts out. So the folks that a clamouring for a cheap Apple will never be satisfied. Apple simply doesn't make cheap machines. Their 'low-end' iMacs are really high-end consumer boxes. Besides, Apple tried that with their "clone" experiment, and if failed misearably. All it accomplished was Apple basically competing against themselves with an inferior product (I didn't say 'bad', just inferior to Apple's own brand). No market share was added. This adds to the theory that the price of Apple computers is less significant, because those that are going to buy an Apple will do so even if it costs a little more.

Another point is that the longer it takes Apple to upgrade, the longer our machines stay current, the more valuable they are. (But we don't care about that, do we? If we weren't married, we'd have direct deposit right to Cupertino! ;)

Oh, and to anyone who thinks we can convince Wintel users about the superiority of Macs, just try and convince a Chevy truck owner why Fords are better. Or vice versa. (Or Toyota vs. Honda, BMW vs. Benz, Coke vs. Pepsi, etc. etc.)

This is not meant to be an end-all post, because all opinions are valid, and as we homo sapiens appreciate a good debate, the war will rage on.

So with that being said, here's my wish list (I'm not picky, 'cuz I drive an 8600/250 without any upgrades and a meager 96 Meg of RAM - gawd, that was all the memory in the world when I bought the thing) :

Portable or luggable device with a 15" screen that incorporates the quality of the 22" Cinema Display (hopefully good color gamut)

Tablet style input for graphics applications

Superdrive availability (I know I would need a G4, not even sure if I would spring for that, though)

Two button mouse

I can't really think of anything else, except for the stuff that's already out there, such as USB, Firewire, OSX, card reader capability, wireless, etc. (Man, I am WAY behind).

I think the 'thin' look of the Powerbook is good, but it limits the stuff that can be put in the box. I'd like to see the iBook migrate to a kind of obese Powerbook, with capabilities of adding larger (size-wise) hard drives but would be cheaper. Same with drives, Superdrives will be tough to ever fit into the Powerbook with it's form factor. Maybe the new LCD iMac (if it exists) will be just such an animal.

Thanks for listening.
 
TColling>If we weren't married, we'd have direct deposit right to Cupertino!


Jesus, I think thats the smartest thing I have ever heard here on macrumors.

Thank God our women keep us in check, or I would be a very, very poor man.


Good points TColling, very excellent post. I guess most of us just want more power on top of Apple's excellent quality.
But unlike you, I have a hard time saying "no" to the Apple gods. Im a sucker for new toys.

:)
 
I am confused.....people are talking about how slow macs are compared to 2gig pcs however i go to college with kids who have all different types of computers... i have a dual 800mhz g4 and it is so much faster then any pc i have seen even the fastest dell sooped up with ram....it just can't be compared...i can't think of anything that a windows computer is faster then mine at ...not a single thing... and even the kids who own those computers after seeing mine are suprised because macs are completely different from what people remember from school like six or seven years ago...they just say apples suck solely because their last experience with a mac was in school and as time went on they just and apple computers along with every computer advanced technologically they compared their new pc's to old macs they used in school
 
I think its safe to say that all of us here at macrumors love our Apples, but we have to admit that there are some really nice PC's out there. There just are. I think you are doing the same thing that angers you about PC users who regard Apple as an inferior product: You dont give them a chance.

My school as well uses Apple, Gateway, IBM Intellistations, and SGI. All four of these companies produce really nice systems. IBM's Intellistations are just un-freakin' believeable. The Gateways are adequate, and certainly priced well, the SGI's are really nice, but expensive-the same as Apple. We have the top of the line on all models (except we dont have the Z intellistation with the itanium, but I have used one) but everyone knows the pro's and con's of each. The Dual 800 Macs are really fast and nice, but so are all the other ones. When it comes down to it, it sometimes doesnt matter which one you use.

And no, the 800Dual isnt ALWAYS faster than the IBM (or whatever PC). In fact, its about 50/50. We have tested the hell out of both systems (not professionally, but a bunch of the Computer Lab workers have no life, and just run all kinds of render tests with Premiere and Photoshop, Maya, etc etc) and they are about the same, and the intellistation was only like 1500 bucks. There was only like 2-3 seconds difference either way, and what does that matter, really. But, that does prove (to me) that a dual 800 Mac is about as fast as a 2gHz Intellistation. (not itanium, remember)

I think its better to be well-versed in both systems, and respect them both. Get out there and use them all, because you may wind up at a job someday that requires you to use PC or Unix, not Apple.
 
Huh?...

To the guy that says he's used a Z-Pro with Itanium, what software were you using on it. At present, there aren't any programs out there, besides scientific visualization, designed to run on them. 32-bit code cannot run on 64-bit chips, so I'm a little curious.
Oh, and I think Apple is going to be out of a manufacturer for it's CPU's soon. It was announced on MarketWatch, a highly respected financial news program on NPR, that Motorolla is in big financial trouble because of failed marketing of it's wireless and chipmaking divisions. Supposedly the decision has been made to dump the chipmaking side. A true G5????? Maybe not...
 
Well, apple could buy out the moto section. And they have ties with IBM and AMD.

And if you look at IBMs G5 it was meant to be a good design.
So moto dieing isnt such a bad thing.
 
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