dongmin said:
What about selling the iMac without a display?
Grandma = eMac
Dad with homevideos(prosumer) = iMac
Professional = Powermac
Even our college paper has G5s, and we're just students. I also don't consider iMacs to be entry-level.
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G5 Specs for WWDC!
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What about selling the iMac without a display?
Grandma = eMac
Dad with homevideos(prosumer) = iMac
Professional = Powermac
Even our college paper has G5s, and we're just students. I also don't consider iMacs to be entry-level.
ethernet76 said:
when i subdivided the prosumer category into 'all-in-ones' and 'cpu-only', i was referring to the iMac and the Cube. The eMac is the only real entry-level machine. The iMac needs to move to the G5 and add some higher-end features to justify its high price tag.
The reason your college paper has G5s is because producing a newspaper (daily or weekly) is a professional endeavor. Not that you couldn't get by with iMacs. But the production-side of publications definitely need 'professional' features like driving large (and dual) monitors, large HDs, lots of RAM, fast networking, etc.
ethernet76 said:
Yeah, but just because it runs on a G5 loaded with a modified version of WinNT, that fact alone offers absolutely no relevance as to exactly which processor the xbox2 will use. Just because apple switches from a 970 to a 980, do they have to completely recode their entire OS? No, the code is based on the PPC architecture, so wether Microsoft decides to go with a G4, or a G6 is completely unknown, and inconsequential to your argument that that fact alone proves the use of the 970fx.
No one is clamouring for dual layer drives because they are brand spankin new. 10 years ago we never thought we needed more room that our Zip100 drives, but now we are faced with HD video editing in realtime, which uses alot more space than traditional video. As the industry progresses so does our necessity for more space. Also, since it can very realistically be assumed the upgrade will cost apple/the consumer almost nothing by demonstrating that their current drive can support it with a firmware/hardware upgrade, and by the unbelievably low initial price of dual layer drives I think it is very feasable. I would much rather back up 100 gigs on 11 disks instead of 26. Or backup my movies without the need to reencode them. And to a consumer about to spend 2000+ dollars on a computer, it offers a little peice of mind that it will not be out of date in 6 months.
As far as graphics cards are conserned, if you look at any of the G5 comparison charts (just the first one I found) The only tests the G5 consistently looses in is gaming / graphics intensive tasks. To alot of people, we dont care, but to professionals, and even to Apple who would love to be able to claim the "worlds fastest' again, this has always been the thorn in their sides. OS X is pretty graphics card intensive, and if you utilize quartz extreme , then almost everything you see is being processes visually through your graphics card.
Your entire original argument was based on the same 'facts' that you now regard as rumors. You cant use them for your argument then discredit them for someone elses counter-point.
ethernet76 said:
Truly the number IBM decides to give the chip has no relevance to this discussion. 971, 975, 997755, it means nothing. My argument is simply that based on what we do know, its is highly unlikely that the upcoming chip will be based on anything in the 970/power4 series, regardless of the chip size. You yourself seem to prove this argument for me...
Knowing full well that no data we have seen so far or projections based on the processors performance suggest that any POWER4 based chip will reach beyond 2.6-2.8ghz. Now, Steve Jobs is not a stupid man, so why would he specifically claim that Apple would be at 3.0 ghz by this upcoming summer? Wouldnt it be foolish of him to fall 200mhz short and dissapoint the entire mac community that holds him to his promise? Now this is purely my speculation but I would love to hear any relevant reason why it would be false.....But if you made a promise that you would be at a certain speed, and you currently had either A. A chip that can never reach it. or B. A developemental chip that has no boundaries as of yet, which would you spend the next year developing? Myself, being an intelligent person, would use the chip that could pull through on my promise, and not leave me 200mhz shy of victory.
And since my post was fill of "Rumors and perceived problems do not constitue reality or product existance", My sources for them were POWER5 Data , Apples Partnership With IBM , and IBM Opens Up Chip For Customization . The last one bears the most significance due to its underlying idea. The fact IBM developed the POWER5 to be fully customizable to any vendor. Sony, Microsoft, Toshiba, Apple, why wouldnt you think that if any company can call up IBM and say "Hey, I want a POWER5 that does this and that.." that Apple, who has a very in depth partnership with them and who IBM is committed to, cant do the same?
And for the record...a 6 in 1 media reader instead? Well I guess that would be handy for my 6 different digital cameras with 6 different cards. For now, Ill just keep plugging my camera in to its USB cable and hope for better graphics / dual layer DVD.
ethernet76 said:
I do agree with you on the headless iMac though 100%. It seems so stupid to me to buy such a beautiful 20" screen only to have its beauty forever connected to the crummy G4 processor beneath. The ability to purchase the monitor separately and then just go buy a drastically cheaper base station for future upgrades would make much more sense to consumers.
ethernet76 said:
umm.. some people can't afford anything more then the emac. is there really a need to say its for grandma's.
you don't need to tell us what machines are what level. we know that.
SyndicateX said:
Something tells me you'll be seeing quite a few products and published mods to allow people to either upgrade the G4 iMac or use it as a monitor. I would like to see future iMacs - if they retain the same form factor - support a "monitor in" capability as well as an official "monitor out" non-mirroring capability (which is already available via software hack).
maverick13 said:???
Are you living in a fantastic world? Please don't say things like this if you don't have a clue.
The PowerPC 970 at 2.0GHz provides approximately 4.5Gigaflops
The Opteron 2GHz provides 2.8Gigagaflops
The Xeon 3.05GHz provides 3.9Gigaflops
and The Itanium 2 1.5Ghz provides 4.4 Gigaflops
So please when taking abouit performance comparission provide some back up and don't state things like this because they fit nicely in your 'little' mind.
Maverick
are you sure those figures are correnct an active fractal demo on my dual g4 cube says that it achieved 4957 megaflops is it an inaccurate bechmark or are you foggeting to add a zero to the end of that
ljsw said:
He said mega flops!
That is arround 0,5 gigaflops. I dodn't known the gigaflop/s rating of G4 but this looks kind of low. The Pentium 3 is arround 0,6 gigaflop/s. Maybe the benchmark wasn't good or sth.
Maverick
dongmin said:
It was just ten years ago that I was managing editor of my college newspaper and we had a network of IIx and IIcx machines (one of which even had a color monitor - my desk of course). Plus a server that was a MacSE with an external 1 GB drive that we were pretty sure we could never fill up, and we got by okay running Quark 3.1 and Photoshop 2.0 (not sure about the Photoshop version number). Everything worked very nicely until we were volunteer to be a System 7.0.1 beta testing site. Then the crashes began.
It is amazing that the paper we put out with that arrangement looked nearly identical to the paper my college puts out today using a network of flat-panel iMacs (1 GHz I believe) and a B&W G3 for a server.
Hector said:
Yeah, it is 4.9 gigaflops/s ,but again this is a little to high for a G4. I don't know...but you are talking about a dual machine! I was talking about a single processor performance. In apple's website the xserve dual g5 is stated as 9 gigaflops so this looks ok then.
Maverick
blue&whiteman said:
And what really sets the eMac and the iMac apart. Just the monitor. Thanks to the last eMac update. They are essentially the same, but one has an 17" CRT and the other has 15", 17" or 20" FP. So grandma gets the eMac just because it is cheaper and dad needs the FP screen for an extra $800 just to edit videos? The are pratically the same computer. The iMac is just way overpriced right now. The fact that the haven't stuck the 1.5 GHz G4 into the iMac yet makes me think there is not much time left for the current incarnation. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised to see Apple drop the iMac line and replace with something else (maybe a single processor G5 in a desktop case with no monitor).
maverick13 said:l
He said mega flops!
That is arround 0,5 gigaflops. I dodn't known the gigaflop/s rating of G4 but this looks kind of low. The Pentium 3 is arround 0,6 gigaflop/s. Maybe the benchmark wasn't good or sth.
Maverick
I am VERY interested in where you got the Opteron #'s. It seems AMD is not as trigger happy in releasing this information as Apple; but I found a few sites that estimated the Opteron close to 4gigaflops, not 2.8.
http://www.midrangeserver.com/breaking/bn062503-story03.html
2.8 sounds way too small, especially if its compared to the old Xeons at that *_*
Mav451 said:
I don't remember where I've read it. I remember reading it though and I remember that the Opteron's floating point performance isn't anything exceptional. Take a look at the Viriginia Tech profile webpage in apple.com. The guy is talking about the floating point performance of Opteron,Itanium 2 and G5 and he also stated that Opteron's floating point performance was much lower than the other two.
maverick13 said:l
He said mega flops!
That is arround 0,5 gigaflops. I dodn't known the gigaflop/s rating of G4 but this looks kind of low. The Pentium 3 is arround 0,6 gigaflop/s. Maybe the benchmark wasn't good or sth.
Maverick
Darn it! I should never, ever post before drinking my morning coffee! Especially sarcastic responses....
Rower_CPU said:
Actually, I went and read about that drive, and it's not at all a dual-layer device. It is, however, a dual-format (meaning it supports both DVD+ and DVD-) and so is positioned to work with both major standards in the industry. The fastest dual-layer drive is less than 4x at the moment, because the Sony DRU-700A is $199 and records 2.4x DVD+R DL, 8x DVD-/+R, 4x DVD-/+RW, and 24x CD-RW.
dongmin said:
"I will say it again... They cannot hurt you unless you let them..."
I'm sorry, but there is next to no chance of there being a G5 cube, for a variety of reasons. The most basic one is that the chip under the hood is already six times as hot as the original machine if you use a 2.0ghz 970FX (24.5w as opposed to 4w). Add on the 1.0ghz FSB instead of a 100mhz FSB (tenfold increase), PC3200 RAM instead of PC100, a modern graphics card instead of the Rage 128... You're talking about a fifteen-fold increase in heat, which is going to take either a lot of noise or a lot of money to cool in the same space. Technical issues aside, there's a market perception of the cube as being too pricey for what you get, aside from a niche market where people have bought them long after for their coolness factor.
If a G5 cube were made, there is no way it would be cheaper, unless they completely sacrificed the idea of it being cool and quiet and crammed eight fans into it.
Paging Mr. Amelio and Mr. Spindler. Mr. Amelio and Mr. Spindler, we need you to come kill Apple again. I repeat, paging Mr. Amelio and Mr. Spindler to kill Apple Computers...
On a more serious note, there might be room for another line of machines that would really be prosumer level computers. By that, I mean that they'd have the expandability of a current G5 tower and reasonable power without infringing too much on the PowerMac territory. To that end, I put out my wishlist for the Apple desktop product line:
eMac 1.8-2.0ghz FreeScale e700(single-core), 512MB PC3200, 60GB PATA, Radeon 9600, Combo/SuperDrive 8x
iMac 17" 2.0ghz FreeScale e700(dual-core), 512MB PC3200, 60GB PATA, Radeon 9600 XT, SuperDrive 8x
iMac 20" 2.0ghz FreeScale e700(dual-core), 512MB PC3200, 60GB PATA, Radeon 9600 XT, SuperDrive 8x
iMac 23" 2.0ghz FreeScale e700 (dual-core), 512MB PC3200, 60GB PATA, Radeon 9600 XT, SuperDrive 8x
BTO options: AirportExtreme, Bluetooth
cMac dual 2.0ghz IBM 970FX, 512MB PC3200, 80GB SATA, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, SuperDrive 8x
cMac dual 2.2ghz IBM 970FX, 512MB PC3200, 120GB SATA, Radeon 9800 Pro SE 256MB, SuperDrive 8x
cMac dual 2.4ghz IBM 970FX, 1GB PC3200, 250GB SATA, Radeon 9800 XT 256MB, SuperDrive 8x
BTO options: upgrade/downgrade graphics, any PCI-X option Apple offers, dual-layer DVD-R, extra drive (2 total HDs)
PowerMac dual 2.6ghz IBM 975, 512MB PC4200, 160GB SATA RAID 0+1, Radeon x800 128MB, SuperDrive 8x
PowerMac dual 3.0ghz IBM 975, 1GB PC4200, 240GB SATA RAID 0+1, Radeon x800 128MB, SuperDrive 8x
PowerMac dual 3.4ghz IBM 975, 1GB PC4200, 500GB SATA RAID 0+1, Radeon x800 256MB, SuperDrive 8x
BTO options: Pro audio or graphics cards, extra HDs (1.6TB max in 4 drives), faster HDs (10000RPM SATA), extra optical drive, PCI-X expansions
ethernet76 said:
Actually, it means nothing other than the fact that the XBox 2 will be on a PowerPC platform. I can write software for the G5 on my G4 machine and have all the optimization calls in place when the code is compiled at install. This is, in larrge part, due to Apple's insistence on using the GCC compiler and its portable libraries for their core components, but it would be true even if you use the IBM XCC compilers instead. The PowerPC is a standard and all PowerPC compatible code will run on other PowerPCs with the proper libraries, or will at least address the hardware properly. It's up to the OS to do the talking between layers.
And 640kb is enough for everyone, right?
Hector said:
I'd agree. I doubt we'll see a headless consumer system in the near future. I look forward to redesigns of the current form factor, but I suspect they'll include attached LCD screens for some time.
And, yes, I've had my coffee now.
Hector said:
The MPC7450 runs at 4 watts at 400mhz, and I find it extraordinarily unlikely that it would jump to nearly three times that in a mere 50mhz climb. Mind showing me your source for the 11.5 watt claim?
Also, you've said that people have upgraded the machines with this and that and the other, but what you're not specifying is how those were cooled. Every modification I've ever seen has required extensive changes in how the box was cooled, and that's precisely my point. On top of that that, even the 1.2ghz G4 and Radeon 9800 card would still be cooler than the G5's support system, and that's the major stumbling block.
Hector said:
It's been around for five years and hasn't sold well in the past two, but is iconic and essential? Right now, the iPod is the main thing for which Apple is known.
The don't need to drop the iMac line, just totally rethink it. For one thing, it is not a true all-in-one right now (external speakers). For another, the 15" iMac is $500 more than the combo-drive eMac which is the same machine (which a bigger albeit CRT monitor). The 17" iMac is $800 more than the identical (expect again CRT) Superdrive eMac.
The only reason it may be essential is that it is so overpriced that they make a killing everytime somebody buys one. In fact, you could buy a Superdrive eMac and a third Party 20" LCD display for less than the cost of a 20" iMac!!!
The G4 cube didn't ship with a 7450.. it shipped with a 7400 which was rev'ed to a 7410 before the cube was retired. 11.5 sounds about right to me.thatwendigo said:
You can upgrade a cube to about 800MHz with the newer G4s without additional cooling, but for an upgrade like the one suggested by Hector, you would need to add a 120 mm fan to the bottom of the cube case. That's the most common way to mod the cooling of the cube.
I'm not sure where you are getting your figures on the power requirements for the U3 chipset though. I just looked at our dual G5 and the chipsets are on the back of the motherboard. They apparently use the case as a heat sink. I did notice, however, that the case has no warm spots near any of the larger motherboard chips (the U3 appears to be in front of the cpus judging by the very large pin out grid). You can, however, find the cpus from the outside of the case, there is a noticable warm spot directly behind the CPUs. We have bus slewing turned off so the chipset runs at 1GHz all the time.
I've not seen any figures on the chipset, other than Apple's info on the U3 being fab'ed on the same process as the PPC 970. It doesn't appear, however, that the chipsets of the G5 generate nearly as much waste heat as the PPC 970s.
thatwendigo said:
So if people can upgrade and come up with a way to cool the cube there is no reason believe that Apple cannot come up with some way to cool the same. There is absolutely no reason for the single processor G5 towers to be the size they are. There is a huge space where the second processors would be. I am not saying that the G5 will be in a cube any time soon, but how about a desktop "pizza" box or a mini-tower half the size of the current G5.