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More PPC 970/750 Rumors (Possible Information)
- Thread starter maraczc
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Graphics cards for PC and Mac are pretty similar, the important thing is graphics drivers. Perhaps Apple could help out more (finacially or with actual development).
Also getting some big game titles released on Mac at same time as PC would be good. Even better is when PC and Mac version come in same box, that make availabilitiy much higher, and prices lower.
Also getting some big game titles released on Mac at same time as PC would be good. Even better is when PC and Mac version come in same box, that make availabilitiy much higher, and prices lower.
exactly, I was most pleased to see Warcraft 3 come with both versions on the same CD - I can run it on my Laptop PC and also on my mum's iMac.
I think this is the main issue regarding games and its linked to availibility. Finding mac-only games in my local shops is really hard and they are mixed up under the 'PC Games' section. There is only one shop I know that has Mac games in a seperate section to PC Games; and thats a department store so its selection isn't that great and each Mac game is about £5 more than the PC version.
I think Blizarrd should be congratulated for shipping both version in one box
Re: More PPC 970/750 Rumors (Possible Information)
What are you talking about? So the top of the line PPC970 will run at 1.8GHz and will equal a 3.6GHz Pentium 4.
As far as I know the fastest Pentium 4 is running at 3.06GHz, means 600MHz less.
Fast enough for me my friend...
groovebuster
What are you talking about? So the top of the line PPC970 will run at 1.8GHz and will equal a 3.6GHz Pentium 4.
As far as I know the fastest Pentium 4 is running at 3.06GHz, means 600MHz less.
Fast enough for me my friend...
groovebuster
I have yet to see a single benchmark that had USB 2 faster than FireWire; in some tests (notably copying lots of small files to an external HD a la iPod) FireWire was up to 70% faster; and this was with FireWire 400, not even the current hardware.
Mike.
I can't remember any specific examples but I have read reviews where USB2 external CD-RWs have been faster than Firewire400 drives.
The main benefit of Firewire, as far as I can see, is that it has a greater capacity to power devices than USB 1.1 or USB 2.
alright, you are bickering about firewire 400 , which has been out for a loong time. and, actually, there is a lot of peripherals that have firewire, you just don't notice the port. I have a digital camcorder about 2-3 years old, and it isn't top of the line, but when i got my imac and started video editing, sure enough, it had a firewire port, but no usb 2 port. but anyway, firewire 800 has been released not too long ago, which means its only a matter of time before manufacturers (sp?) start adding firewire800 ports to all their peripherals, which means that usb 2 will be too slow for most people. That is unless you are doing something small, in which speed wouldn't make much of a difference. But that's not the point. USB 2 isn't greater than firewire 400, and firewire 400 is already outdated. All you have to do is wait.
Right, but in order for Apple to implement a new RAM tech, they would have to re-design or at least modify their existing motherboards. This would drive up production costs and thus increase the price of the actual product. In other words, even if it comes standard on new towers, there might still be a slight price increase.
Not really. A PPC 970 1.8 GHZ is not going to be 80% faster than a PPC 970 1 GHZ. Maybe 40-50% at most. And a duel proccessor does not double the speed either. You're looking at about the equivalant of the current Intel Pentium 4 3.6 GHZ at most, in special tasks only.
it doesn't. it's called common courtesy, not letting everyone know about every single problem you have ever had
I have never heard of this unspoken rule of not critisizing anything. Must be specifically Mac boards.
I wouldn't be sure of that. I use USB for mice, keyboards, printers, Joysticks and other low usage devices. If I am moving any signifagant amount of info (hard drive, DV camera, or scanner or cd-rw) they are plugged into my firewire bus. Its faster
I wouldn't say rambus is newer or signifagantly better than DDR. The cost is not worth the benefits you possibly could seeOriginally posted by job
You do realize that this would probably drive up costs even further, right?
It's a vicious cycle. Newer better tech results in higher prices, thus people are less likely to purchase them until they drop in price, which in turn usually occurs when something better is available.
Actually a 1.8 GHz 970 will at most be 80% faster than a 1 GHz
I think RDRAM is effectively dead. Intel is favouring dual channel DDR-SDRAM over RDRAM now.
The only published scores that I know of for the 970 are SPEC-CPU2000 results:
Processor Clock int2k fp2k
IBM PowerPC 970 1.8GHz 937 1,051
Pentium4 2.7GHz 984 928
Athlon XP 2800+ 2.25GHz 933 843
So it will be in the same ballpark as a 2.7Ghz P4 at 1.8Ghz.
Where it will really shine is in Altivec enabled apps, but it should be a great all around general purpose cpu.
I'm sure we'll see Steve using a PPC970 render some Photoshop movie poster faster than a Xeon could do it. I mean, even the G4 could do this.
Maybe we should start calling it by it's name: PowerPC GigaProcessor.
(I'll leave out the "ultra-lite" part, sounds pretty wimpy)
-Wyrm
Processor Clock int2k fp2k
IBM PowerPC 970 1.8GHz 937 1,051
Pentium4 2.7GHz 984 928
Athlon XP 2800+ 2.25GHz 933 843
So it will be in the same ballpark as a 2.7Ghz P4 at 1.8Ghz.
Where it will really shine is in Altivec enabled apps, but it should be a great all around general purpose cpu.
I'm sure we'll see Steve using a PPC970 render some Photoshop movie poster faster than a Xeon could do it. I mean, even the G4 could do this.
Maybe we should start calling it by it's name: PowerPC GigaProcessor.
(I'll leave out the "ultra-lite" part, sounds pretty wimpy)
-Wyrm
USB 2.0 is slower
Look at some benchmarks. It's slower. It's not used for DV for a reason. That's a fact Jack.
Look at some benchmarks. It's slower. It's not used for DV for a reason. That's a fact Jack.
All this whining is Bull**** anyways
Where the speed is really needed is in big-data projects, like DV rendering/compositing. Too many people took Charlie White's benchmarks at DigitalVideoEditing.com (later reposted at Adobe's site in the "preferred platform" incident), which compared a 3.06 P4 to a powermac G4 dual 1.25, to heart and without suspicion. FYI, the 1.25 is no longer the fastet mac. Moreover, Dave Nagel of CreativeMac.com later pointed out a trick which would double the speed of After Effects renders on a mac using a tool included with the AE production bundle. What did the trick do? It used both processors. If Charlie were to run the AE benchmarks again, using this trick on the 3.06 P4 and the current dual G4, the P4 would get slaughtered. The truth is out there if anyone would bother to look.
So quit yer goddam whining already.
Where the speed is really needed is in big-data projects, like DV rendering/compositing. Too many people took Charlie White's benchmarks at DigitalVideoEditing.com (later reposted at Adobe's site in the "preferred platform" incident), which compared a 3.06 P4 to a powermac G4 dual 1.25, to heart and without suspicion. FYI, the 1.25 is no longer the fastet mac. Moreover, Dave Nagel of CreativeMac.com later pointed out a trick which would double the speed of After Effects renders on a mac using a tool included with the AE production bundle. What did the trick do? It used both processors. If Charlie were to run the AE benchmarks again, using this trick on the 3.06 P4 and the current dual G4, the P4 would get slaughtered. The truth is out there if anyone would bother to look.
So quit yer goddam whining already.
Seems to me like we've got a troll who's acting like a Mac user but is really an Intel sychophant.
Trust me, the new chips will be very competitive performance-wise. Remember this, the G4 doesn't put up bad numbers with its bottleneck. I'm sure the G4 could remain rather competitive if Moto had continued to put real effort into it and pushed the bus speed up to 800 MHZ and the clock rate to 1.8 GHZ. A dual-970 running at 1.8GHZ with a 900MHZ FSB will hold its own and beat the Xeon and the P4 in many benchmarks. There are some other improvements that can be made to the architecture, but I'm sure IBM will continuously improve the chips, unlike Moto.
Trust me, the new chips will be very competitive performance-wise. Remember this, the G4 doesn't put up bad numbers with its bottleneck. I'm sure the G4 could remain rather competitive if Moto had continued to put real effort into it and pushed the bus speed up to 800 MHZ and the clock rate to 1.8 GHZ. A dual-970 running at 1.8GHZ with a 900MHZ FSB will hold its own and beat the Xeon and the P4 in many benchmarks. There are some other improvements that can be made to the architecture, but I'm sure IBM will continuously improve the chips, unlike Moto.
The Need for Complaining
I think the reason competitive speeds are necessary on the Mac is perception, which in turn affects business.
If corporate offices or animation/post houses could be motivated to take a second look at Apple because of their speeds, then that would trickle down to consumer sales. That could explode the Mac market share.
A second issue raised here was whether or not the new 970s would be competitive with the latest 64-bit versions of the x86 offerings. I didn't read all the links provided, so maybe I'm off here. But, if a 1GHz 970 is equivalent to a 2GHz P4, what on earth is wrong with that? The rumored introductory speeds of this chip are supposed to top out at 1.8GHz. Let's assume with overhead and everything that this means it would be equivalent to a 3GHz P4. Say by then Intel has released a 4GHz P4. I think that being 3/4 of the way there to performance parity is an awful lot better than being nearly 2/5 of the way there now. I never expected the 970 to suddenly leapfrog us over the x86 world. Just getting that close would be a great start. Just as long as IBM doesn't rest on its laurels, Apple will be fine.
I do believe however that one drawback to all this is that nothing's been officially announced yet--with the exception of the 970's existence by IBM last fall. None of us knows for certain if these chips will make their way into Macs, nevermind when.
Truth be known, all we have is hearsay, folks. Let's wait to see what Apple announces--or fails to announce--this summer before we start getting all worked up. I already have a PC, and am reluctantly ready to "jump ship" if Apple continues its current hardware ineptness. But I am sticking with the platform until my great patience and love for the platform dry up. And I think that we have all had enough nonsensical rumors the past several years to know that what we hear now and what Apple actually announces are usually very much different.
Let's relax folks, and just see what happens. Then let's get angry or happy.
I think the reason competitive speeds are necessary on the Mac is perception, which in turn affects business.
If corporate offices or animation/post houses could be motivated to take a second look at Apple because of their speeds, then that would trickle down to consumer sales. That could explode the Mac market share.
A second issue raised here was whether or not the new 970s would be competitive with the latest 64-bit versions of the x86 offerings. I didn't read all the links provided, so maybe I'm off here. But, if a 1GHz 970 is equivalent to a 2GHz P4, what on earth is wrong with that? The rumored introductory speeds of this chip are supposed to top out at 1.8GHz. Let's assume with overhead and everything that this means it would be equivalent to a 3GHz P4. Say by then Intel has released a 4GHz P4. I think that being 3/4 of the way there to performance parity is an awful lot better than being nearly 2/5 of the way there now. I never expected the 970 to suddenly leapfrog us over the x86 world. Just getting that close would be a great start. Just as long as IBM doesn't rest on its laurels, Apple will be fine.
I do believe however that one drawback to all this is that nothing's been officially announced yet--with the exception of the 970's existence by IBM last fall. None of us knows for certain if these chips will make their way into Macs, nevermind when.
Truth be known, all we have is hearsay, folks. Let's wait to see what Apple announces--or fails to announce--this summer before we start getting all worked up. I already have a PC, and am reluctantly ready to "jump ship" if Apple continues its current hardware ineptness. But I am sticking with the platform until my great patience and love for the platform dry up. And I think that we have all had enough nonsensical rumors the past several years to know that what we hear now and what Apple actually announces are usually very much different.
Let's relax folks, and just see what happens. Then let's get angry or happy.
If Apple wants to go anywhere with these 970's, they have to take a page from AMD's book and advertise the speeds being different than they really are. They could say that a 1.8 GHz 970 is the same as a 3.6 P4, and it would take off, because what PC users want (even Internet and email types) is lots of MHz, whether they need it or not.