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More on PowerMacs at NAB?

gpu updates

I've noticed teh ati x800 shown in a few spots on the new Tiger page, which makes me think it will most likely become a build to order option, which would be great.

I think it really only makes sense for new powermacs to be released at NAB and given the comparitively long wait for an update, I really can't see the sense in apple doing it any other way.

OS X is hands down supperior and way ahead of windows so i don't think apple minds showing it off during development because they know they are safely way ahead. The hardware comparison is where the battle really lies. Since Jobs has come back, there has been a lot of 'pissing contests' going on with the 'first personal super computer', worlds fastest PC, first 64bit... Jobs obviously likes to be out in front with breaking new hardware ground and seems to always be very secretive about it until its officially announced. It seems likely that dual core will be announced, the technology is on the verge and i'm sure apple is planning on beating everyone out of the gates... and letting everyone know they did, and NAB is the best place to do that.
 
Update: Page 2 article specs are confirmed to be unreliable
 
iGuy said:
As much as I'd like to see four processor cores, I'm more interested in core improvements (no punn intended).

For me, such things as PCI Express and a fast FSB are more meaningful.

Fingers crossed,

~iGuy
Click to expand...
Actually, the G5 has a fast FSB already. And as for PCI Express, what would you be adding to the PowerMac that would work better on PCI Express? *curious*

What I really want in addition to the dual cores is room for at least one more hard disk inside the PowerMac case.
 
arn said:
Update: Page 2 article specs are confirmed to be unreliable
Click to expand...

Arn, does this mean that there will be no new PowerMacs announcements next week at all, or that there may be new PowerMacs, just that the specific specs in the page 2 report should be ignored? Thanks!
 
eye of the storm...

I, for one, believe that the next release of the Powermac will be a significant one meaning that it wont be just a MHZ increase but even such things as dual cores, on chip memory controller, increased cache sizes... Anyway, I pretty much have as much inisghts about future Apple products as most of the people here BUT since that Think Secret lawsuit I think Apple is teasing rumor sites with false info, I wouldnt even be surprised if that the recent IBM documents regarding the 970MP were done on purpose by Apple, I know it sounds silly but why not? considering that there has been too many leaks associated with Apple product releases... Anyway, back to my prediction as I got nothing better to do at this fine hour, people on this forum tend to forget that 970 is a derivative of a Power4 class processor, originally Apple and IBM were thinking of releasing the 970 as a dual from the get go but heat and size (cost) issues kept it stripped... Now, Steve Jobs promised a 3GHZ machine withing a year of the original G5 release but Apple and IBM came out short big time, but the entire processor industry has been stale recently anyway... So, why would Apple and IBM invest their money in something that clearly isnt on par with their expectations... And thats where the Power5 derivative comes in, a totally new structure, dual cores SMTs , better scalability, 40% clock for clock performance improvement over Power4, and from the reading about it it supports simultaneous OS support and isnt this what the rumor sites have been mumbling about for the past couple of months? To make this short, Apple is on a roll right now, they updated the Powermac line basically once over two years (went from 2 to 2.5ghz) so we will see Power5 derivatives faster then some people might think, I just dont see any snse of Apple investing any money in 970 when they supposedly worked with IBM on the Power5 from scratch and Power5 has been out for a year now... Anyway, I dont know when the next Powermac revision will take place but its safe to say it will be between NAB and Mac World SF, all I know is that a lot of people will be positively surprised...
 
arn said:
Update: Page 2 article specs are confirmed to be unreliable
Click to expand...
. . . which most likely means someone in Las Vegas (setting up for NAB) or elsewhere snapped a picture of the new machines (or their boxes). MR can't publish the picture because it needs to protect its sources and methods. :)
 
huh ??

Bear said:
Actually, the G5 has a fast FSB already. And as for PCI Express, what would you be adding to the PowerMac that would work better on PCI Express? *curious*

What I really want in addition to the dual cores is room for at least one more hard disk inside the PowerMac case.
Click to expand...

Just because the PM has a reasonably good FSB doesn't mean that it can't be improved. However if you read ENGLISH you'll see that I was saying that a fast FSB is more meaningful than four processor cores. At least it is to me. You may dissagree.

As for AGP vs PCI Express. Go do some research. It's not my job to educate you.

I will add that in addition to PCI Express expansion slots, more useful to me than additional HD space inside the case (FW800 external HDs are just fine for me), I would like to see more expansion slots and have them placed further apart. One card should not take up the room of more than one slot.

Just my thoughts. You may dissagree. That is your right. A Canadian Federal politician, addressing his supporters after losing his seat in the House of Commons, stated that he would support to the death everyone's democratic right to be wrong. ;)

~iGuy
 
iGuy said:
I will add that in addition to PCI Express expansion slots, more useful to me than additional HD space inside the case (FW800 external HDs are just fine for me), I would like to see more expansion slots and have them placed further apart.
Click to expand...
You want PCI Express, but additional hard drive space inside the case is lower on your list of priorities and FW800 external HDDs suffice for you. That's pretty inconsistent. Anyhow, FW800 so far is less than optimal on PM G5s (it's faster on PowerBook G4s, for instance). Everyone's best bet for fast external drives on PM G5s is external SATA drives. PCI-e's main benefits seem to be for games and probably Core Image / Core Video, but since we're 2 1/2 weeks away from seeing whether CI/CV is choked for throughput it's probably better to reserve judgment. I'll agree though that faster is always better. Finally, why would you criticize someone's English reading comprehension and misspell a really easy word in the same post? ("dissagree" instead of "disagree.")
 
True or Unreliable Rumors... Who cares! Let's play around!

How about a slight form factor change? I know I could use a refresh in my cup.

How about a slightly smaller tower, maybe alittle bit bigger than the G4's but a tad smaller than the current G5's? Maybe a redesign of the front grille so that a second optical drive can be added? How about an added storage bay for a HD?

Does anyone think that we might see a minor, and remember I have said MINOR, blend of Pro and Consumer like the Mac mini with alittle white poly on the tower? Think about it, they have yet to bring out an Aluminum version of the keyboard and mouse and while I love them, I think that the all white periph's hooked up to the Silver Power Mac looks goofy.

Just some thoughts and it's more fun to speculate since people keep retracting rumors left and right....
Here are my personal thoughts:

Single 2.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (4GB Max)
64MB Video Card
SuperDrive
80GB HD
3 PCI Slots
$1499

Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (4GB Max)
64MB Video Card
SuperDrive
80GB HD
3 PCI Slots
$1999

Dual 2.5 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (8GB Max)
128MB Video Card
SuperDrive
160GB HD
3 PCI Express Slots
$2499

Dual 3.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (64GB Max)
128MB Video Card
SuperDrive
160GB HD
3 PCI Express Slots
$2999
 
All the benchmarks I've read (four or five independent sources) indicate that the dual-core Pentiums perform very well on optimized, threaded tasks. And the dual Athlon (AMD) benchmarks are roughly in the same ballpark. So, you can consider Intel the "weakest" but it still will offer significant performance improvements in content creation which has traditionally been one of the strong points of the Power Macs.

I've got to take my hat off to both Intel and AMD, they been able to move to multi-core chips faster than anyone was expecting. And you've got to ask, where is IBM and Apple? No one knows for sure, but the existing Power Macs are certainly reaching the end of their run as the premier video and image editing platform.

daveL said:
Actually, it looks like the weakest dual-core processor out there:

http://hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2005-04-5

First article on the page.
Click to expand...
 
Rod Rod said:
You want PCI Express, but additional hard drive space inside the case is lower on your list of priorities and FW800 external HDDs suffice for you. That's pretty inconsistent....

Finally, why would you criticize someone's English reading comprehension and misspell a really easy word in the same post? ("dissagree" instead of "disagree.")
Click to expand...

It would appear that your reading comprehension could use some work. Where did I provide a list of 'priorities'? There's nothing inconsistent in stating that additional HD space inside the case is less meaningful to me than PCI Express and that external FW800 drives suffice for my purposes.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it just might be that HD space inside the case is less meaningful to me because external FW800 HDs suffice for my purposes. But I can see where that would require a relatively high level of reading comprehension.

As for the typo, I make lots of those. Allways will. :)

~iGuy
 
sosumi99 said:
Arn, does this mean that there will be no new PowerMacs announcements next week at all, or that there may be new PowerMacs, just that the specific specs in the page 2 report should be ignored? Thanks!
Click to expand...

just means the specs aren't reliable. so whether or not pmacs will be released or not is still up in the air.

arn
 
blitzkrieg79, if you haven't done so yet, take a trip over to the Arstechnica web site and do some reading in the Macintosh open forum ( http://episteme.arstechnica.com/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=50009562&f=8300945231 ). If you check out some of the links on G5 and 970 architecture and performance I think you'll see that your expectations on POWER5, SMT, and dual-core are much more optimistic than what most others believe.

In my opinion, we'll be lucky to see anything better than a dual-core 970 at around 2.5GHz. And that chip won't include POWER5 features or SMT (that much is known for sure). Other than dual-core, about the only thing the 970MP brings is a 1MB L2 cache for each core (current 970FX has 512KB). The 970MP will be a very nice upgrade, but I don't think it will allow Apple to leap to the front of the dual-core "parade." True, a twin dual-core 970MP would be a powerful performer, but it should also command a truly titanic price (unless Apple was willing to cut their margins to the bone, which I don't think will happen).

blitzkrieg79 said:
I, for one, believe that the next release of the Powermac will be a significant one meaning that it wont be just a MHZ increase but even such things as dual cores, on chip memory controller, increased cache sizes... Anyway, I pretty much have as much inisghts about future Apple products as most of the people here BUT since that Think Secret lawsuit I think Apple is teasing rumor sites with false info, I wouldnt even be surprised if that the recent IBM documents regarding the 970MP were done on purpose by Apple, I know it sounds silly but why not? considering that there has been too many leaks associated with Apple product releases... Anyway, back to my prediction as I got nothing better to do at this fine hour, people on this forum tend to forget that 970 is a derivative of a Power4 class processor, originally Apple and IBM were thinking of releasing the 970 as a dual from the get go but heat and size (cost) issues kept it stripped... Now, Steve Jobs promised a 3GHZ machine withing a year of the original G5 release but Apple and IBM came out short big time, but the entire processor industry has been stale recently anyway... So, why would Apple and IBM invest their money in something that clearly isnt on par with their expectations... And thats where the Power5 derivative comes in, a totally new structure, dual cores SMTs , better scalability, 40% clock for clock performance improvement over Power4, and from the reading about it it supports simultaneous OS support and isnt this what the rumor sites have been mumbling about for the past couple of months? To make this short, Apple is on a roll right now, they updated the Powermac line basically once over two years (went from 2 to 2.5ghz) so we will see Power5 derivatives faster then some people might think, I just dont see any snse of Apple investing any money in 970 when they supposedly worked with IBM on the Power5 from scratch and Power5 has been out for a year now... Anyway, I dont know when the next Powermac revision will take place but its safe to say it will be between NAB and Mac World SF, all I know is that a lot of people will be positively surprised...
Click to expand...
 
fpnc said:
All the benchmarks I've read (four or five independent sources) indicate that the dual-core Pentiums perform very well on optimized, threaded tasks. And the dual Athlon (AMD) benchmarks are roughly in the same ballpark. So, you can consider Intel the "weakest" but it still will offer significant performance improvements in content creation which has traditionally been one of the strong points of the Power Macs.

I've got to take my hat off to both Intel and AMD, they been able to move to multi-core chips faster than anyone was expecting. And you've got to ask, where is IBM and Apple? No one knows for sure, but the existing Power Macs are certainly reaching the end of their run as the premier video and image editing platform.
Click to expand...
Whatever you'd like to think. IBM and Sun have been getting ~70-75% scaling on their dual-core offerings (IBM has shipped dual-core CPUs for years, Sun for a year). If Intel, at 50%, is good for you, fine. My point is that they just wanted to get "dual-core" out the door, even if it's junk, compared to the field. BTW, all the other dual-core processors are 64-bit, while Intel isn't. But, if I were you, I'd buy a truck load.
 
Porchland said:
All of that COULD add up to the 5G iPod at WWDC or three months later at Macworld Paris. I think we'll see color standardized, models at 20GB/40GB/60GB with some kind of BT or WiFi feature. Wireless headset?

Airport Express is one year old this month. Maybe an update here? Seems to go along with a BT/WiFi iPod. . . .

.
Click to expand...

Anything would be welcome over those god-awful standard iPod earbuds.
 
Bear said:
Actually, the G5 has a fast FSB already. And as for PCI Express, what would you be adding to the PowerMac that would work better on PCI Express? *curious*

What I really want in addition to the dual cores is room for at least one more hard disk inside the PowerMac case.
Click to expand...

Here is the real kicker.
PCI Express is not only faster but it is cheaper to implement for Motherboard manufacturers.
Initially PCI Express cards will be more expensive than their PCI-X counterparts for 2 reasons. Limited numbers being manufactured and because only very high bandwidth hungry cards really need them at the moment.
I fully expect the new towers WILL add PCI Express for video.
I also expect you will see 2 PCI Express slots. 1 used for video and the other left for other expansion purposes.

I expect the next rev of Xserves to have PCI Express since technologies like Infiniband and 10 Gig Ethernet require them for full bandwidth.
 
Rod Rod said:
. . . which most likely means someone in Las Vegas (setting up for NAB) or elsewhere snapped a picture of the new machines (or their boxes). MR can't publish the picture because it needs to protect its sources and methods. :)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, we must concur. Unfortunate, because if the real specs were known to be 4x4GHzDP CPU's in a transparent aluminum case, well, who could resist running with that scoop?

So, I'm expecting to be disappointed. Bugger.
 
Good sign of dual cores

Both AMD and Intel are announcing shipment of their dual-core CPU's and chipsets this week. Not systems yet, mind you, they're announcing that they're going to be shipping parts.

There is no real rush to announce part shipments, since only industry people are going to be buying them and they know the schedules already. Motherboard/machine availability is more intestesting.

But.... let's assume Intel and AMD have better corporate spies than MacRumors has and that they're fiercely competive and always want to be first and hate a particular thorn in their side that's always claiming firsts that they'd rather stake. Now, let's reconsider those press releases.
 
KindredMAC, your Power Mac price points and configurations are certainly modest, but I expect that you are closer to the mark than most of the rumors and predictions that are being made. The only tweak (or hope) that I would make is to add the possibility of a dual-core (970MP) processor to the mix. Thus, instead of the dual-processor 970FX models (as we have today) we may see dual-core 970MP units instead. That would allow Apple to offer a lower-priced, "dual" configuration in the 2GHz range and higher performing twin-processor, dual-core units at the the very top-end price.

So, given your list:

Single 2.0 GHz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (4GB Max)
64MB Video Card on AGP
SuperDrive
120GB HD
3 PCI Slots
$1499

**note the following is a one-processor, dual-core system**
**thus, it offers two cores total (1 processors x 2 cores)**
Single-processor, dual-core 2.0 GHz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (8GB Max)
64MB Video Card on PCI-Express (replaces AGP)
SuperDrive
120GB HD
3 PCI-X Slots
$1999

**note the following are dual-processor, dual-core systems**
**thus, they offer four cores total (2 processors x 2 cores)**

Dual-processor, dual-core 2.0 GHz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (16GB Max)
64MB Video Card on PCI-Express (replaces AGP)
SuperDrive
200GB HD
3 PCI-X Slots
$2499

Dual-processor, dual-core 2.5 GHz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (16GB Max)
128MB Video Card on PCI-Express (replaces AGP)
SuperDrive
200GB HD
3 PCI-X Slots
$2999


KindredMAC said:
How about a slight form factor change? I know I could use a refresh in my cup.

How about a slightly smaller tower, maybe alittle bit bigger than the G4's but a tad smaller than the current G5's? Maybe a redesign of the front grille so that a second optical drive can be added? How about an added storage bay for a HD?

Does anyone think that we might see a minor, and remember I have said MINOR, blend of Pro and Consumer like the Mac mini with alittle white poly on the tower? Think about it, they have yet to bring out an Aluminum version of the keyboard and mouse and while I love them, I think that the all white periph's hooked up to the Silver Power Mac looks goofy.

Just some thoughts and it's more fun to speculate since people keep retracting rumors left and right....
Here are my personal thoughts:

Single 2.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (4GB Max)
64MB Video Card
SuperDrive
80GB HD
3 PCI Slots
$1499

Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (4GB Max)
64MB Video Card
SuperDrive
80GB HD
3 PCI Slots
$1999

Dual 2.5 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (8GB Max)
128MB Video Card
SuperDrive
160GB HD
3 PCI Express Slots
$2499

Dual 3.0 Ghz G5 Power Mac
512MB RAM (64GB Max)
128MB Video Card
SuperDrive
160GB HD
3 PCI Express Slots
$2999
Click to expand...
 
fpnc said:
All the benchmarks I've read (four or five independent sources) indicate that the dual-core Pentiums perform very well on optimized, threaded tasks. And the dual Athlon (AMD) benchmarks are roughly in the same ballpark. So, you can consider Intel the "weakest" but it still will offer significant performance improvements in content creation which has traditionally been one of the strong points of the Power Macs.

I've got to take my hat off to both Intel and AMD, they been able to move to multi-core chips faster than anyone was expecting. And you've got to ask, where is IBM and Apple? No one knows for sure
Click to expand...

Was this a joke?

The Intel Dual Cores in the Xeon Line are a very poor implementation. No internal crossbar for processor to processor communications. They also will be crippled and starved for memory bandwidth.
In contrast AMD designed the Opteron line for dual core from the start. They already included the crossbar in the CPU and were just waiting on their 90nm process to be ready so that they could add the second core.
Unlike the Intel offering they included 2 memory controllers on die which allows ea processor dedicated memory bandwidth.
When someone tells you about benchmarks on undelivered CPUs its time to consider the sources and wonder where their paychecks are coming from.
Independent source hmmm I doubt it.

As to the IBM/Apple comment, IBM has been producing dual core CPUs since 2001. Their Power 4 CPU is dual core.
A scaled back version of this CPU the PPC970 is what Apple had IBM build for them. The PPC970MP has already been sampled and MAY be in production right now. Apple and IBM are both tight lipped at times with the former being extremely so.
If I was a betting man, I would bet on seeing a dual core PowerMac announced at WWDC.
 
daveL said:
Whatever you'd like to think. IBM and Sun have been getting ~70-75% scaling on their dual-core offerings (IBM has shipped dual-core CPUs for years, Sun for a year). If Intel, at 50%, is good for you, fine. My point is that they just wanted to get "dual-core" out the door, even if it's junk, compared to the field. BTW, all the other dual-core processors are 64-bit, while Intel isn't. But, if I were you, I'd buy a truck load.
Click to expand...

IBM POWER and Sun Sparc processors aren't used in desktop systems (they are server/workstation class systems at vastly higher price points). That means for the price of one dual-core POWER or UltraSparc server I could buy a "truck load" of dual-core Pentiums. ;)

I don't see how a high-end server architecture like POWER or Sparc fits into a discussion of what Apple, Dell and others might introduce at NAB. In that sense, I'm pretty certain that everyone else on this thread is referring to the rumored dual-core 970MP, the dual-core Pentium, and the dual-core Athlon 64 (AMD).

And finally, Intel's dual-core Pentiums are 64-bit enabled (using Intel's EM64T technology), this means when a 64-bit application is run on a 64-bit version of Windows the processor uses 64-bit addresses and has full access to 64-bit hardware registers.

Here is what Intel says about this:
Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology, or Intel® EM64T is an enhancement to Intel's IA-32 architecture. The enhancement allows the processor to run newly written 64-bit code and access larger amounts of memory.

Intel's IA-32 processors with Intel® EM64T have 16 General Purpose Registers (GPR's) and 16 XMM registers. The GPR's and XMM registers are 64-bits and 128-bits in width, respectively, in processors with Intel® EM64T. The additional registers are only used by applications running in 64-bit mode. IA-32 processors without Intel® EM64T have 8 GPR's and 8 XMM registers. The GPR's and XMM registers are 32-bits and 128-bits in width, respectively, in processors without Intel® EM64T.
Click to expand...
 
Something else that is interesting: ATI's website has listed the x800 XT as out of stock for a very long time, and it seems that today, the day of the Tiger announcement, they're suddenly back in stock. Don't know if this is something we should read into, but it sure is funny timing...
Maybe Apple had largely bought out their x800's for the next rev. of PM's (after all, mac x800's have been notoriously hard to find recently), and only now is ATI finally catching up.

EDIT: okay, now this gets strange... the ati radeon 9800 is no longer listed as a BTO option for PMs in the apple store... its just the standard 9600 or the Geforce 6800. is this a deal made with Nvidia, or a sign that the x800 xt will be available BTO in a matter of days?

crpchristian said:
I've noticed teh ati x800 shown in a few spots on the new Tiger page, which makes me think it will most likely become a build to order option, which would be great.

I think it really only makes sense for new powermacs to be released at NAB and given the comparitively long wait for an update, I really can't see the sense in apple doing it any other way.

OS X is hands down supperior and way ahead of windows so i don't think apple minds showing it off during development because they know they are safely way ahead. The hardware comparison is where the battle really lies. Since Jobs has come back, there has been a lot of 'pissing contests' going on with the 'first personal super computer', worlds fastest PC, first 64bit... Jobs obviously likes to be out in front with breaking new hardware ground and seems to always be very secretive about it until its officially announced. It seems likely that dual core will be announced, the technology is on the verge and i'm sure apple is planning on beating everyone out of the gates... and letting everyone know they did, and NAB is the best place to do that.
Click to expand...
 
seen these "paper" arguments before, wait for proof

fpnc said:
this means when a 64-bit application is run on a 64-bit version of Windows the processor uses 64-bit addresses and has full access to 64-bit hardware registers.
Click to expand...

And Windows will have 64-bit graphics and GUI libraries - no "command line" restriction like OSX 10.4 ....
_____________________________

In some ways, these "Intel dual-core is junk" stories are reminiscent of other techno-hype myths from recent years

Claim: G3 will rule - RISC is king, CISC is dead
Truth: After a strong early start by RISC, CISC won the race

Claim: G4 AltiVec is a GFLOP supercomputer
Truth: P4 steadily increased its lead, except for a few sweetheart AltiVec apps (like BLAST)

Claim: G5 has super bus, great memory, will kill the Pentium
Truth: G5 was matched pretty evenly with the P4 (except on really AltiVec-friendly code), but has failed to keep up and is now lagging

Claim: (The initial) dual-core Intel architecture is junk, AMD/970MP much better
Truth: We'll have to see real systems from all three to understand if the claim is true, but it's far too early to claim victory.

The AMD approach looks better on paper, but so do the arguments for RISC vs CISC and for the 970's memory bus. Real world performance will vary by application - depending on how much synchronization is needed between threads on the two processor cores.

Note that Intel will be pricing dual-cores very similar to single cores, so even a 50% boost will give better price-performance.

And, by the way, if the AMD architecture is great - doesn't that mean that Windows will have a great chip? I don't understand Mac people rooting for AMD, unless their dislike for Intel is stronger than their common sense!
 
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