G5 Specs for WWDC!

[Zaty]

Apples not here because they do what everyone thinks they are going to do, they are here because they always manage to suprise us, even though we pour through the rumor mills daily and think we know it all, Steve Jobs always has a good little secret up his sleeve.

Let's hope you're right!

 

[Mord]

1) 3GHz could be a reality think of the 970fx as a 744x g4 and the 975 as a 745x chip one for the powerbook, ibook, imac, emac and the 975 for the powermac.

2)wow watercooling in my dreamcast i would have never of thought crazyness, i'll be opening it up now to see if i can some how use it in my cube to reach sub 20 degree tempretures. again wow.

3)a water cooled g5 would be increibaly cool and i think it is a possibility.

 

[french macuser]

Hello

As a french macuser who knows "croquer.free.fr" pretty well , I may add something.

(please excuse my english)
(I have not read the whole thread)

Croquer.free.fr has been right some times. They predicted the specifications and prices of the new laptops (with some minor errors) before thinksecret did.
They also talked about "motion" (as an "after-effects like") long before NAB.
They also predicted some security update.

Nevertheless, they were completely wrong many times : they talked about new Powermacs and Imacs to be relaesed at january 24th.
They said that 970FX powermacs and Xsations had been delivered to various US governmental agencies, which would have delayed their relaese.
....

They also posted some interesting information about the PPC 975 :

Le PPC 975

Le PPC 975 va inaugurer la technologie Simultaneous Multi-threading d'IBM.
Les premiers résultats obtenus par Apple sont impressionnants. sans SMT, un PPC 975 à 3 GHz donne des performances SpecInt 1350 et SpecFP de 1479. SMT activé, on passe à un SpecInt de 1650 et un SPecFP de 1750. C'est le double d'un PPC 970 à 2 GHz.
La puce qui a 98 millions de transistors, consomme 71W de courant a 3Ghz, et 86 a 3,4Ghz.
Les Mac G5 975 seront peut être annoncés à la WWDC et mis en vente quelques mois plus tard.

Which means : The PPC 975 will introduce IBM's Simultaneous Multi-threading (SMT). First results, got by apple, are impressive. Without SMT, one 3 GHz PPC 975 gives 1350 (SpecInt) and 1479 (SpecFP). With SMT activated, it reaches 1650 (SpecInt) and 1750 (SpecFP). That is twice the performances of a 2 GHz PPC 970.
The ship has 98 million transistors, consumes 71 Watts at 3 GHz and 86 W at 4 GHz.
PPC 975 G5 Macs will be announced at WWDC and will be available few months later (I think at apple expo Paris, september).

They said that the processor is "taped out" and ready for production, and they also refered to "watercooling G5s".

 

[tgilbey]

water cooling?

I have no doubt they *could* do it, but
a) it would be a massive engineering effort and
b) surely the spanking G5 tower is not at the end of it's lifecycle yet? It was seemingly designed from the ground up with fan cooling in mind (different channels, large fans, front and back perforated) and so it would be a desperate company that scrapped Ive's gorgeous and quiet design for a new one. It is already quite large, and I have heard people complain about this, and so putting an active water cooler in is asking for trouble.

also, do these rumors actually SAY they have 2 optical drives, or two bays? I think the latter, and even at high end apple are concerned enough about the pricepoint to have a second drive ship as BTO only

 

[tgilbey]

Dothan/pentium M

Also, as someone pointed out, this chip (ie the new 90nm Dothan version, which will be integrated into the successor to centrino this fall, but as a chip is available now) is THE succese story of the market at the moment.
SO much so that intel has just dropped plans for any progression of the "main" desktop P4 architecture and is betting on this chip, perhaps in multiple core versions, for it's future desktop and notebook lines.

Powerbooks are awesome, but from talking to people who own both, well-executed centrino/dothan designs such as IBM's awesome thinkpad t41p are currently significantly faster than the top powerbook at similar battery lives etc etc. Clock for clock they are a LOT faster than normal P4s, and, at least in my opinion, the g4 architecture is not that much more efficient again to account for the fact that they are down at 1.5ghz and intel are up to 2, with more to come, at low power draws.

Apple really needs to pull their fingers out but, sadly, it seems that they are constrained by the difficulties with the g5

 

[tgilbey]

just a thought

perhaps watercooling is being done in the lab to get G5s running at 3ghz+, and this is where the rumors are coming from?

 

[immaculate]

the text in French

Since no-one's posted the original text from Croquer dans la pomme, here it is:

2004-05-20 - G5 Trinity à la WWDC

Les G5 équipés de PPC975 (nom de code: Trinity) seront annoncés à la WWDC et livrable au plus tard à l'Apple Expo. Le PPC975 consomme en moyenne 65W à 3 GHz et intègre 98 millions de transistors. Tous les modèles auront deux emplacement Superdrive et 4 emplacements de disque dur. Côté son, 24-bit 192Khz au moins sur le haut de gamme. Apple proposera avec ATI une carte graphique PCI-express professionnelle du type Fire GL.

Config (susceptible de changer):

Mono PPC 975 à 2,2 GHz
AGP 8x
FSB 1,1 GHz
Superdrive

Dual PPC 975 à 2,6 GHz
PCI-Express 16x
FSB 1,3 GHz
Superdrive Extreme (double couche)

Dual PPC 975 à 3 GHz
PCI-Express 16x
FSB 1,5 GHz
Superdrive Extreme (double couche)

The text explicity says there are two bays for Superdrives, and 4 bays for hard drives.

Croquer also post this item announcing an Apple press conference on 18 June:

2004-05-17 - l'Apple du 18 juin

Steve Jobs devrait donner une conférence de presse le 18 juin. Aucune information sur son contenu n'a filtré. Ce seront donc probablement de grosses annonces.

Steve Jobs is to give a press conference on 18 June. No information about the contents is available (literally: has leaked out/filtered through). It'll therefore probably be something big.

Apologies to all francophones for any translation errors I may have made.

 

[SpiceMustFlow]

Crunching Tiger and Apple G5

A teacher, a college (departement of arts) and me, are waiting (in stanby) to buying a new G5 desktop (2-3?) and Mac portable (2)... Lack of informations on upcoming products is good for saving money and compulsive buyer's!

 

[stockscalper]

Powerbooks are awesome, but from talking to people who own both, well-executed centrino/dothan designs such as IBM's awesome thinkpad t41p are currently significantly faster than the top powerbook at similar battery lives etc etc.

I don't know what Powerbooks you are referring to, but have you used one of the new 1.5's and they blow the doors off anything in the Wintel world. The Thinkpad's you refer to should be named Thinkbrick. Not only are they crude looking, clunky and heavy as hell, but you can fry eggs on them they get so hot. Then there is the matter of the ****ty video screen. Thanks but no thanks, I'll keep my PB.

Oh, wish you could have been in a local java spot the other morning while I laughed my ass off at some clown trying to log on to the wireless internet with his Thinkbrick. He kept asking, "is the internet working today"? I opened my PB and watched the airport scroll and simply ask me if I wanted to log on to the signal it found. I lost count of how many times he rebooted.

 

[thatwendigo]

1: the only real fact here is that each one of the features listed is the next significant advance in its respective hardware category. when is the last time apple released a machine with so many changes at once? although close, i don't even think the g5 was as different from its predecessors (revamped motherboard, 64bit, speed bump, sata) as this list is from current systems.

Here's a hint, mango... Apple will have to make at least some of these changes to keep up with consumer machines on the PC side. In order to maintain their position as a full-featured solution for computing, the macintosh platform has to adopt standards where possible. Quite aside from that, the overall speed of the system could be massively improved just by changing some of the background materials - PC4200 RAM (the next standard), 8x8 DVD-/+RW (Pioneer DVR-A07, and no, that isn't a typo in the generic descriptor), one-die memory controllers (more IBM's thing than Apple's), Dual-layer DVD-R (Sony, and others coming to market now).

The G5 towers had an all new FSB (167mhz to 800-1000mhz), ASIC, motherboard (four RAM channels per processor, SATA controller, AGP 8x, PCI X), processor (1.42ghz duals to 2.0ghz duals), storage technology (PATA to SATA), RAM (PC2700 to PC3200), graphics card (Radeon 9000 AGP 4x to Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 8x), expandability (PCI to PCI-X), audio (analog to SPDIF in/out), optical drive (SuperDrive optional to standard).

Actually, the jump is pretty comparable if you at all look at the issues. "refine before you flame, please."

2: apple, like most companies, needs money. they'll be able to keep sales up longer by spreading out new features over a period of months, regardless of whether the technology is present to provide them now at consumer prices. every so often apple goes for a big upgrade, but it's not probable.

Apple is in the business of making people say wow, and their business has grown to depend on the impression that others get from the experience as well as the actual specifications off the hardware. To that end, a release of a massively upgraded workhorse machine could drop all kinds of professional sales in their laps for all kinds of reasons. First of all, Apple is the only choice in stable, pretty *nix-based operating systems that are at all user friendly and capable of easy deployment. With the addiition of things like the xServe render farms and xServe RAID/xSan data farms, they're forging new paths into enterprise and design houses that couldn't do things like these all that easily before. The G5 sold 100,000 units in its firsst month before it ever showed up. Preorder strength was just that good, and so the idea of a mac that's back onto the speed crown like the G3 was back in the day, and the G4 after it... Well, it would sell. That's all there is to it.

in regards to your argument, i don't really want to get into all that. other people have already pointed out false statements, misused terminology, and incorrectly cited sources within your post, and the only thing i could add is that your grasp of ibm's ppc roadmap, both past and future, seems a little off. refine before you flame, please.

Maybe you should read his posts since those, because he's shown me that he made a couple of innocent mistakes and mistatements. Also, he's added meaningfully to the discussion, while you've mostly just trolled him for things others have already said.

i think you must be the hardest person to disagree with on this forum because you just happen to know so much, but the 970fx DOES run at 24.5 watts @ 2.0ghz. Just providing some sources to good information everyone needs.

Yes, I'm aware that the 2.0ghz single 970FX runs at around 25 watts. The point that I was making is that a single 2.0ghz G5 is not at performance parity with the ever-evolving Pentium-M. The Centrino has far better power management for a laptop, can slew actively, and competes favorably with a Pentium 4 3.0ghz desktop machine, back when they were 300mhz slower and had 1MB less cache.

Also, you're leaving out a few things. The Centrino uses an FSB that is half the speed of the 1.6ghz G5's (less heat), doesn't need PC3200 to keep it fed (less heat), and is less support-fabric dependent. It has less of an heat overhead for those reasons, and the massive cache allows plenty of avoiding access and prefetching data so that it can run cooler. I'd rather see the PowerBook get a chip that will allow it to remain cool, quiet, and functional, not become a leafblower like most PC laptops.

So if IBM can work out the kinks in their 90nm processors, it is very possible to see it in a g5 notebook, with hardly much change in temp or fan noise.

Sorry, but I think that you're missing something. We might see a 970FX laptop, but it will hardly be much faster than the current crop of G4s, without some massive reworking of the architecture. The G5 is a bandwidth monster and without that support, it chokes just as bad as people accuse the G4 of doing.

Also, as someone pointed out, this chip (ie the new 90nm Dothan version, which will be integrated into the successor to centrino this fall, but as a chip is available now) is THE succese story of the market at the moment. SO much so that intel has just dropped plans for any progression of the "main" desktop P4 architecture and is betting on this chip, perhaps in multiple core versions, for it's future desktop and notebook lines.

There is no perhaps to this.

Pentium-M derived systems are aimed at release around the middle of next year, with two cores on a single chip. The current logical process is a mere 23nm when manufactured at 90nm, and so they have plenty of headroom to double the processor on-die while still retaining quite a respectable cache. If you want to read about what's coming in the processor world, take a look at Endian and read their roadmap. The Jonah/Merom/Conroe line is going to be something that Intel has never really done before, and I'm really hoping that IBM and Apple beat them to the punch this summer.

Clock for clock they are a LOT faster than normal P4s, and, at least in my opinion, the g4 architecture is not that much more efficient again to account for the fact that they are down at 1.5ghz and intel are up to 2, with more to come, at low power draws.

The previous generation of Centrinos, at 130nm and 1.7ghz, were competitive on most tasks with a Pentium 4 running at 3.0ghz. That's a nearly 2:1 performance difference between the two, and if it scales linearly, means that the 2.0ghz processors are around 3.7-3.8ghz equivalents.

I don't know what Powerbooks you are referring to, but have you used one of the new 1.5's and they blow the doors off anything in the Wintel world. The Thinkpad's you refer to should be named Thinkbrick. Not only are they crude looking, clunky and heavy as hell, but you can fry eggs on them they get so hot. Then there is the matter of the ****ty video screen. Thanks but no thanks, I'll keep my PB.

Oh, wish you could have been in a local java spot the other morning while I laughed my ass off at some clown trying to log on to the wireless internet with his Thinkbrick. He kept asking, "is the internet working today"? I opened my PB and watched the airport scroll and simply ask me if I wanted to log on to the signal it found. I lost count of how many times he rebooted.

If you're going to attack something, know what you're talking about. Benchmarks place the Pentium-M 1.7ghz laptops of last generation higher than the PowerBooks in overall performance. There's some wiggle room on floating point and vector, but that's not common enough in daily operation to matter.

The place that Apple shines in the portable world is feature set, sleekness, portability, and the combination of these things. While they're rather speedy in their own right, the G4 PowerBooks have been clearly supplanted in the performance arena at this point. I happen to love my iBook for the very reason that you've brought up - it works. However, you can't pin that all on OEMs in the PC world, since they don't control the OS the way that Apple does. A lot of the blame rests squarely on Microsoft and Windows, though they do have to support an incredible amount of hardware.

We're lucky and blessed, but Apple isn't perfect. Don't lose sight of that.

 

[tgilbey]

stockscalper...

I agree with you about ease of use (although thinkpads do have some interesting ibm-specific software stuff), but i have to disagree on speed and size.
There is a large diversity of thinkpads made and while the styling is not that hot, some like the ultra-industrial black chic look! The "thin and light" models that I mentioned are pricey (think powerbook and more) but

a) as thatwendigo said have chips that absolutely own anything apple has to offer at the moment on sheer speed. Also they are right at the start of 90nm at the mo and there is a lot more to come

b) are not that hot....as apple are finding, you cannot put a hot chip in an inch-thickm housing

c) are just as small if not smaller than apples offering (eg IBM have an even smaller x-series which is so tiny it is almost unusable, whilst performance wise would still be above the 12 inch powerbook). They use advanced composites, have superb quality screens and even have a proprietary accelerometer-based HDD protection system that parks the disc head if you drop the machine, before it hits the ground!

There are other centrino based offerings, but they do not have as rich a feature set/nice design. If a power user wanted the most powerful, functional and portable machine on the market, at any price, it is NOT currently an Apple. Just look at what is there before you criticise them so heavily....IBM have about 5 different thinkpad lines at various pricepoints, don't assume that they only have 6 or so configurations like apple
It is just a shame the thinkpads are hampered by windows. I hope IBM counters the Pentium M/dothan architecture well because they are currently quite a bit behind. That said, I would rather use an Apple on almost all counts, providing I am not paying for a comparitively slow machine.

 

[Kagetenshi]

You guys keep forgetting about COOLIGY!!

You mean like how it's been referenced multiple times in this thread alone? And not infrequently in other threads? That kind of "forgetting about Cooligy"?

~J

 

[ffakr]

i must commend thatwendigo on his input, i feel very enlightened having read his contributions to this thread and he (at least appears haha) to really know what he's talking about...that being said i would like to hear his take on the whole water/liquid cooling aspect because (i dont think) he has commented on that yet...

Hey! What about that stupid ffakr? I can be as argumentative, I mean informative as anyone!.



BTW.. the Dothan and it's predecessor are nice processors, but if you pull back the curtain, their wattage is actually relatively high when the processor clock isn't slewed.

 

[wide]

Who cares about the PowerMac G5

I'm still waiting for the PowerBook G5! I doubt I will ever buy a desktop computer again. I don't see a need for them. They are big, clunky (especially the G5), and it's much cooler to be able to use your computer anywhere with wireless internet or to be able to watch movies up close in bed, on a chair, wherever you want! I don't care if they are more expensive...I don't think you should be buying an Apple if you aren't willing to fork over whatever you can for your computer.

 

[Sun Baked]

The G5 towers had an all new FSB (167mhz to 800-1000mhz), ASIC, motherboard (four RAM channels per processor, SATA controller, AGP 8x, PCI X), processor (1.42ghz duals to 2.0ghz duals), storage technology (PATA to SATA), RAM (PC2700 to PC3200), graphics card (Radeon 9000 AGP 4x to Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 8x), expandability (PCI to PCI-X), audio (analog to SPDIF in/out), optical drive (SuperDrive optional to standard).

Shared Dual Channel DDR, and most likely 4 'switched' banks (pairs) of RAM.

The new architecture made the RAM the weak point at 6.4GB/s, but it sure beats the G4's 1GB/s constipated FSB.

 

[anjaki]

Hey! What about that stupid ffakr? I can be as argumentative, I mean informative as anyone!.

That's true, but thatwendigo has obviously given up his day job, he's been so busy posting. Really together.

If this rumour is true though, it would explain why there have been no updates for the past year. I mean, why go to all the trouble of updating a stop-gap (because that's what the current G5 looks like compared with what might happen), it could only mean that Apple has been investing its energy in such a project as this, after all it would be a disaster if all those developers had been twiddling their thumbs for the last year, they must have been doing something!

 

[invaLPsion]

Ahh, dude?

The iBooks were right on except the high end, but they even called the Superdrive. The Powerbooks were also right minus the midrange. They made these calls before anyone else, including ThinkSecret.

Again, I'm not saying this is it, but it appears these guys do have some decent info.

And BTW, was it not you that believed and promoted NeatGekko's predictions? At least these guys have gotten a few things right. Not trying to get on your case or anything, but I find your statement of "Croquer has never gotten anything right" to be misleading, and unfounded.

They also said that powermacs would be released in March from 2.2 - 2.6 GHz.

 

[Telomar]

They also said that powermacs would be released in March from 2.2 - 2.6 GHz.

So did just about everyone else and in fact I think AppleInsider led the chorus on those rumours.

 

[neonart]

They also said that powermacs would be released in March from 2.2 - 2.6 GHz.

And your pal NeatGekko said 3Ghz G5's in January.. no, February... no, March..

All the rumor sites, including the best, make inaccurate calls. In fact, ThinkSecret- one of the most respected- said a special edition 40GB iPod would be available at the Paris show. They were very confident, but that changed.

Who knows how many times it's not that it's not true, but a change in Apple.

Let's see what happens come the WWDC.

 

[bryanc]

Just to fan the flames...

on the liquid cooling issue...it seems to me that something like liquid cooling would only really be necessary for laptops or 1U servers, where the space and/or power consumption for air-cooling is a problem.

However, I carry my Tibook around at -46, so a liquid cooling system might cause me a real problem (esp. if the liquid was water). I know lots of people who've suffered cracked pipes in their houses when it's gotten cold...it'd be a bugger to have cracked pipes in your laptop.

Thanks to all the posters in this thread...I've found it most informative and entertaining.

Cheers

 

[Gymnut]

the system I saw water cooling working on was a dual power mac G4 with a very hot running upgrade. I will post the url with pics if I can find it.

this is a start anyway: http://www.overclockers.com/topiclist/index31.asp

why doesn't someone say apple will put another usb port on these models or something else very realistic so I can laugh and make fun of you...

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/watercooled_MDD_G4/watercooled_mdd_g4.html

This is a pretty old topic and I did in fact e-mail Dangerden awhile back asking to how far they are along in developing a water cooling system for the G4 and I was notified that the project was put to the wayside. Unless this has changed or another company has started development, I see this not happening. Take note that this water cooling system was done to a single processor. As to the link you provided, mind stating where the pertinent information is?

 

[thatwendigo]

as thatwendigo said have chips that absolutely own anything apple has to offer at the moment on sheer speed. Also they are right at the start of 90nm at the mo and there is a lot more to come

Actually, I have a feeling that 90nm is going to be the limit of traditional CMOS production lines because of issues of leakage, crosstalk, power bleeding, and other problems. Nobody foresaw just how difficult it was going to be, but even IBM has come right out and said that future chips will have to be more innovative to gain in features because the transistor size is starting to be an issue.

This isn't stopping companies from investigating CMOS065 (65nm process), but it could very well be a long, long way off.

BTW.. the Dothan and it's predecessor are nice processors, but if you pull back the curtain, their wattage is actually relatively high when the processor clock isn't slewed.

I don't doubt that you're right, but I'd be curious to see any numbers you have on the subject. Most of the sites I've found report the Dothan Centrino 2.0ghz as running between 22 and 26 watts at peak, improving both performance and heat usage.

Is there a source you could point me at?

Shared Dual Channel DDR, and most likely 4 'switched' banks (pairs) of RAM.

The new architecture made the RAM the weak point at 6.4GB/s, but it sure beats the G4's 1GB/s constipated FSB.

Ah, sorry.

What I'd meant to say was four banks of RAM per processor, locked onto a dual-channel bus. I'm hoping the see the dual-channel kept, but the RAM itself swapped for DDR1 PC4200 or DDR2 PC3200. However, I disagree that the RAM is the weakpoint because, in almost every modern computer, the worst speed is in the I/O systems - optical and hard drives.

That's true, but thatwendigo has obviously given up his day job, he's been so busy posting. Really together.

Hey, leave my current unemployment out of this! I posted like this even when I had a job.

If this rumour is true though, it would explain why there have been no updates for the past year. I mean, why go to all the trouble of updating a stop-gap (because that's what the current G5 looks like compared with what might happen), it could only mean that Apple has been investing its energy in such a project as this, after all it would be a disaster if all those developers had been twiddling their thumbs for the last year, they must have been doing something!

Exactly my thoughts, though a little less detailed.

The PowerPC 970 and 970FX are looking more and more like they were holdovers intended to keep Apple's loyal professional core tided over until the real announcement could be made a year later. As I've noted, Jobs merely said that Apple and IBM would be at 3.0ghz within twelve months, not that the chip used to do the job would be the one that they'd debuted. The PowerPC 975 seems to be a whole different animal from its close cousin, and it could very well be the thing that rockets the mac world into a clear position of high competition and possible speed dominance - though that will always be temporary. Returning pro-grade tools like 24khz audio and the FireGL line of cards (we'd really be doing well if we got Matrox Parhelia, ATI FireGL, and nVidia QaudroFX all as options!) back into the towers.

As I've been saying since last summer, there has never been a better time to be a mac user. The machines have more than ever for their cost, they are more speed competitive than they've been since the early days of the G3, and the OS is getting faster with each revision. Apple is strong and turning a profit, with a warchest that gives them options.

This is far better than 1997.

 

[frem001]

The new VapoChill case is around $800 and it comes standard on all of L's Mach desktops - probably the finest windows pc ever made.

Phase-change cooling has come along way since it made its consumer debut a few years ago. Everyone here knows that Apple could take this technology and make it reliable (Although, it is just as reliable as an air-conditioner) and cost-effective. Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't take risks by bringing new, somewhat questionable technologies to the market before any other computer manufacturer.

Looks like a brewery...

 

[Flowbee]

I usually don't jump into a thread that's already this long, but nobody's mentioned the most interesting part of this rumor: that the new systems are codenamed "G5 Trinity." If memory serves me, Apple had another product codenamed Trinity... the original G4 CUBE!

Just thought I'd throw that out there. Let the speculation begin.

 

[appleface]

speculation

I usually don't jump into a thread that's already this long, but nobody's mentioned the most interesting part of this rumor: that the new systems are codenamed "G5 Trinity." If memory serves me, Apple had another product codenamed Trinity... the original G4 CUBE!

Just thought I'd throw that out there. Let the speculation begin.

why TRI-nity?