qubex said:
I completely agree. This is the computer market, for Christ's sake! Even automobile producers update their models more often than Apple does. We jeer at our "misguided brothers" in the x86 camp, and yet they've been getting performance increases for the past 12 months, while we Apple zealots have been sitting round in a state of computer fossilisation.
sorry, Car makers update their product lines once a year in the fall. Apple announced the G5 less than a year ago and released it even more recently.
It's completely unacceptable. Updating your professional-level computers once a year is simply laughable.
unfortunately Apple doesn't make processors. They are, after all, at the mercy of IBM.
I'm sure there'll be the token 3 GHz G5 machine, but I don't think it'll be enough - especially if we'll have to wait another year for the next upgrade. A 50% performance boost once a year simply isn't enough in today's IT world.
Um.. yea.
Where has the PC world gone since the G5 shipped? Opteron/AMD64 has gone from 2GHz to 2.4GHz (just announced this week). That's a 20% increase in nearly one year. Intel released the 3.2 GHz P4 on the day that Apple announced (not on ship day) the G5. Wow, they've gone all the way up to.. um.. 3.4 GHz, but they did release the Prescott.. which doesn't seem ready to run over 3.2 GHz yet.. oh yea, and it's slower than the Northwood P4s too.
God, wouldn't it be awful if Apple only got us a 50% increase in 1 year?
That only be 2.5x as much as AMD, and it would make Intel look positively glacial.
I'm sure the next machines will be fantastic - at the time of launch. They'll be great by the time they're shipped. The problem is, that by the time they're updated, they'll be simply pathetic.
I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here. Oh, I get it.. If Apple releases a 2.6GHz dual G5 or a dual 3GHz Power5 based machine, it will be great at release, but if Apple doesn't update it for 6 months, or even one year, it will be crap? You haven't considered that Apple's machine will likely pull away from whatever the x86 camp has.. and that AMD and Intel's incremental upgrades during that time will be catch up? I suppose that you've also not considered that Apple's delay in getting out an upgrade is directly related to IBM's troubled transition to .09 micron? Um.. that's the freaking reason why Intel can't move their clock speed up either. It's the same reason why AMD has pushed their move to .09micron back 2 quarters to late this year.
At this point, there is no indication that we'll see a similar processor speed stall once the transition to .09 is complete.
Here in China I can almost afford a quad-Opteron with 4 GBytes of RAM for the price of a single dual-G5 2 GHz in the USA. What sort of comparison is that? Price/Performance ratio my ass.
Here in the US I can buy a Mac or a PC that isn't made with total crap disposable parts.. with non-remarked cpus.
A quad opteron, what are you smokin? The lowest price I can find on an 842 Opteron (1.4GHz) is nearly $700 each. The lowest price I can find on an 848 is nearly $1300 each. So, JUST THE CPUS for the slowest quad opteron you can build would be as much as a dual 2GHz G5. I'm having trouble finding a price on a quad opteron board since they are still pretty rare.. but I know you have to populate 4 banks of ram so figure increased memory cost too.
Why don't you, just for fun, spec out a quad opteron.. how bout just a quad 1.6 GHz.. low end stuff. Put in 512 to 1GB of ram (remember, 4 banks of ram). Put in a SATA 160GB hd (a decent one). Put in a DVDR, put in a Radeon 9600, put it in a NICE computer case with a good powersupply and let us know what it really costs. Remember, no plastic frame disposable hard drives! No guaranteed to fail generic memory.
It's amazing that CPUs fabed in Germany magically cost less in China. I guess AMD takes a hit for the honor of selling to China, or maybe the Chinese gov't subsidizes cpu purchases.