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Motorola 7457 in Q4 2003

Hmmm .........

Very interesting discussion here.
First, I am reading many Mac forums because I don't have a mac (I have a PC) and I want to get one. So I can relate to some comments made here about PC users that will or will not switch depending on caracteristics and price offered by a Mac.

I am not a professional in graphic arts/animation .... or in any processor demanding sort of tasks. In fact, I am a hospital pharmacist using my personnal computer mostly for usual tasks like word processing, email, syncing my Palm Tungsten T, spreadsheet, PowerPoint to teach other health care professionals etc... BUT yes if I finally buy a Mac I want it to be at least as fast as my cheap 1 GHz AMD Duron running XP!! And to tell you the truth, when I went to play with Macs (FP iMac 1 GHz and PB 17" 1 GHz) at a dealer here I was a little disappointed with the speed of those very expensive beauties. What am I talking about? Just the fact that those nice machines running this OS X wonder were just not very snappy. I don't need to run complicated applications to see that I should expect more speed at that price (I am not talking about the esthetic here and how user friendly they are). We all become very "speed hungry" with computers when we use them many hours a day and the second more it takes to open a window is enough to upset you when you are used to faster, there is no way back in that part of the user experience. That is why I use a snappy Palm device and not a slow Pocket PC! So even for the average user, the speed (not GHz) is important too for a good experience! It is even more important when the machine you buy is not very upgradable. It is also important if you plan to keep it for a couple of years and you know that you will ALWAYS need more speed in future apps. Do you think that the average user would be happy with those first Macs or 383 wintel anymore just because they are average users? You need speed even just to run the OS properly, no need for fancy graphic applications.
BTW, since I have XP running on my machine, the stability is not an issue anymore, so people should stop bringing that up, it is not true anymore.

So why would I bother looking for a Mac and not just grab a faster wintel machine to upgrade?
Here is why (some of those reasons may seem silly to some but this is my reality):
1- I have always found wintel machines very ugly, all of them even those fancy "no beige" ones, they just don't keep up with the esthetic of Macs and I want that even if it is not important to most people in the PC world.
2- I want to use that beauty of OS X (in all its aspects)
3- I want a quiet machine!!
4- I want one of those Mac displays.
5- I want to explore new possibilities with Mac software like iMovie, Keynote, iTunes, iDVD etc
6- I don't want to be like everyone else!:D

BUT, I am holding back until WWDC to see if those rumors about the early coming of PPC 970 machines are true. If it is, I will be ready to pay the premium to get a "BMW type of computer". It is just that when you pay the premium for a BMW, speed comes with taste and elegance .... If those new processors are not coming soon, I will be the most sad person since I will still have the same reasons mentioned to buy a Mac but will be tortured at the idea to pay more without getting the speed with it. Hope to be one of yours soon!:p
 
I am amazed at the rating. People seems to be desiring Motorola not to be having any decent processor for the Mac more now or in the future, and be stuck with only one processor provider once again, which is precisely what got Apple into the situation of being way below PCs speed-wise.

I really hope both Moto and IBM release powerful PPC and keep investing as much money in its processor R&D team.
 
Originally posted by krube73
whooppee, a 200 Mhz FSB. C'mon Moto, my toaster runs at 200 Mhz! get with the program bozos. You can only tout Velocity Engine and AltiVec for so long. Sure it helps, but so does blinding speed in the 2Ghz+ range.
Click to expand...

Don't forget that neither Intel or AMD has faster motherboards. The 800mhz board for intel (based on SiS chipset) is a 200mhz board quad pumped) The 400mhz board for Athlon (based on nVidia's nForce 2 chipset) is a 200mhz double pumped board.

This makes me wonder wether the Macboard will be pumped. It will not be quad pumped since G4's do not run fast enough but they can certainly be double pumped.

In previous article they spoke about a possible 2Ghz processor (next generation). I am quite dissapointed that the official speed is only 1.33Ghz (slower than the current 1.42Ghz). Sure they can also overclock these chips. And reading between the lines suggest that if a 1.6V can do 1.6Ghz, a 1.85V can do 1.8Ghz, which is not bad.

But good power comes from the PPC 970 which runs (natively?) on 1.8Ghz and delivers a 90% performance boost when adding a dual processor instead of the 50% of the G4. Also the PPC970 supports a 900mhz system bus. How must I interpret that. Is it an unpumped 900mhz bus or more somethin like a tripple pumped 300mhz bus. Can busses be tripple pumped? .... Need more information.
 
For Apple to stay with Moto they will have to majorly demo that they indeed have both the current goods AND the future plans.

One or the other will not do. They only way I see it happening is, as some such as Pyrotoaster suggest, as a revision of the current line until the 970 arrives, and then possibly as a stop gap in the consumer line until the 970 and the Gobi are produced in suifficient numbers.

Then, I imagine...

"The King is dead!. Long live the King!"
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hey, lighten up guys & gals :D

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
That's far from "average user" stuff, but I'll do my best to address it anyways. I have a PBC design program (DesignWorks Pro). It's even OS X native. Quite good too. There are at least a half-dozen excellent CAD programs on the Mac. Vellum & RealCADD come to mind. I've seen a few good ones specifically for architects too, like ArchiCAD. But since that's not my specialty, I really can't comment on them. I'm more into animation. On the specialized enterprise/server stuff, you've lost me. I know nothing about it. I'm sure you can do quite a bit with OS X Server. And I've heard there are some high-end database apps available under it, in either OS X or UNIX environments. I don't know the specifics, of course.
Click to expand...

You're right that these aren't average apps. But I look at it this way. Every average user is an individual person, unique in some way. Someone might be completely average, except that he needs to hook up to a Behringer EQ to set up his sound system. Can he use a Mac? No. Another guy is totally normal except he needs to access his company's payroll databases with a custom app. Can he use a Mac? No. Another guy needs to VPN through his company's firewall. No again. The point is that this is a real issue...when you have 3% marketshare and shrinking, lack of app support becomes a real problem--not just a myth in the minds of foolish sales clerks.

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
I'm just relaying my impression from looking at the shelves in the typical gaming aisle. They all look pretty much the same to me. Half of them are first-person shooters, and most of the rest are third-person shooters. :D But I do occasionally see an interesting looking one. And the only one of those I've ever seen that was not ported to the Mac :( was Pharoah. All the ones I've bought run fine on both my Macs, even the 350 MHz G3. Only Falcon 4 and X-Plane are a bit sluggish. But the machine is 5 years old. Cut it some slack. 800 Mhz G3 upgrade on it's way... hehe
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You know what people say about music they don't like: "it all sounds the same". :)

Anyway, I think this is an eye-of-the-beholder thing. Let us stick to WB III, since we are both familiar with that. I haven't played it in a while, but I just downloaded the latest version and fired it up for a test run. I have a good machine to test with, since it is a QS867 which should be about on par with today's consumer Mac. I used low res (1024x768) and selected "medium quality" graphics. Hopped in a 109 and rolled off the tarmac to play with the default drones offline. Now to me, at these settings the graphics quality was pretty weak...the low resolution especially was pretty awful. But the worst part was the frame rates. 25 fps average!! And maybe 35 fps peak! On a 2-year old game with dated graphics! Subjectively, this was unplayable for me. If a PC user suffered with these frame rates with such an old game, he would throw the machine in the trash.

So what kind of Mac do I have? QS 867 with a GeForce 3 and a gig of RAM. Compare that to the new Macs you can get for less than 1500. Let's see...we have an iMac 800 with a <gag> geforce2mx. A 2mx?? A card that was obsolete two years ago when it came out? My Mac and the new iMac will be comparable in general purpose apps, but I guarantee that I will trounce the iMac in game speed. I estimate maybe 10 fps in WB 3 under similar settings. Let's be generous and say 15. So we have a $1300 (+ RAM) computer that does 15 FPS on a 2 year old game at low resolution. I call that inadequate power for the money.

Now compare that to a PC. Let's take the example of that Dell machine that somebody posted to these forums about recently. IIRC he got the whole package for $1200-$1300. That's with an 800MHz bus, 2.6 (or 3?) GHz P4, a gig of RAM and a ATI 9800. My guess is that machine will get 150-200 FPS in WB III with those settings. That's probably a low estimate, actually.

Originally posted by ZeeOwl
I don't really mind paying the premium for OS X. I think it's worth it. But the lack of speed is starting to actually hurt me. And that's why Apple needs to get these PPC 970s in their pro lineup. Macs will never compete with Wintel boxes on price/performance (if the definition of performance is limited to speed, mine is a bit vaster ;)). And frankly, I don't care. As long as they're fast enough to get the job done. That's what's been missing lately. Just don't take away my high-performance hardware design and user interface, because that's why I'm willing to pay the premium price.
Click to expand...

What about the hardware is high performance?

I think we agree on most of this. On one side of the scale we have PCs with faster hardware at any given price and better app/game support; on the other side we have the comparative advantage of OSX minus XP. For most of the Mac's history, the premium for MacOS has been reasonable. Objectively, IMO the premium right now is too high. If the 970 doesn't come out RSN, it will be higher still. If our only hope is 1.3 gig G4's in 1Q 2004, a hopeless situation turns into despair.

So what is the point of all this? Basically, we as consumers have power. Don't let Apple shaft it to you with poor hardware, saying it's "good enough"! They have a lot of cash in the bank. Let them use it to give us a reasonable deal! I'm not asking for PC price/performance...as we agree, that will never happen. But the current situation is really too much. We should expect and demand better, and not let our love for the Mac blind us to the absurd value-gap that exists right now. If we do not demand it, Apple will keep milking us with weak hardware until it is too late and even the most fanatical of us will have turn to the dark side in despair. Perhaps we have passed that point already...but the 970 at least offers some hope. This G4 announcement (the subject of this thread) certainly does not.

There now, wasn't that a powerful harangue. :)
 
Originally posted by elmimmo
I am amazed at the rating. People seems to be desiring Motorola not to be having any decent processor for the Mac more now or in the future, and be stuck with only one processor provider once again, which is precisely what got Apple into the situation of being way below PCs speed-wise.
Click to expand...

Having one CPU provider was meant to be an advantage. The clones where around when Motorola signed on with Apple. When the clones were stopped Motorola got burnt. How that affected the progress of the G4 is for others to decide.

It would have been interesting to see quad-processor PowerMacs but that pipe dream never materialized for OS X. If OS X.3 offers quad G4 support that would be a boost performance-wise way past any GHz gap between G4s and x86 processors.

By selling quad G4 Powermacs Apple would not only give users more power than PCs but also Motorola with twice the processors to sell to their biggest customer. Sure they would cost more than PCs, but if you want the BMW, with speed, etc. you have to pay the BMW price.
 
Originally posted by Sol
If OS X.3 offers quad G4 support that would be a boost performance-wise way past any GHz gap between G4s and x86 processors.
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Two serious problems with this....

First, adding processors does not scale linearly - except for a few applications or running a large number of applications at once. (This is why servers are more often SMP, they are usually doing lots of things at once.) Your Quad Mac wouldn't be 4 times faster.

Second, there are many 4-way, 8-way, 16-way and even higher Intel systems available. How would your quad Mac compare against an IBM x440 with quad Xeon MP CPUs, hyper-threading, 2MB full-speed on-chip L3 cache, and 32MB of L4 cache shared per quad? (That's 128MB of L4 for a 16-way x440 system.)

Or, how about an x450 quad Itanium 2, with 6MB of L3 per chip and 64MB of L4 cache shared per quad?

You can't ignore quad Intel boxes when you compare performance - that's just not honest!
 
Originally posted by elmimmo
I am amazed at the rating. People seems to be desiring Motorola not to be having any decent processor for the Mac more now or in the future, and be stuck with only one processor provider once again, which is precisely what got Apple into the situation of being way below PCs speed-wise
Click to expand...
Truth be told, Motorola probably can't produce the new processors they're touting. Definitely not any time in the near future.

The 970 will start at 1.8 GHz, and may break 2 GHz by the end of the year. And next year, the 980 gets introduced. That's a promising processor future with IBM.

Motorola is cornered. They're saying just about anything to get Apple's attention again. Next thing you know they'll be talking about the non-existant G5!
 
Originally posted by Sol
It would have been interesting to see quad-processor PowerMacs but that pipe dream never materialized for OS X. If OS X.3 offers quad G4 support that would be a boost performance-wise way past any GHz gap between G4s and x86 processors.
Click to expand...

I think that's a little like putting a V12 into a Ford Focus, and then sticking a banana up the exhaust pipe.
 
Originally posted by soggywulf
I think that's a little like putting a V12 into a Ford Focus, and then sticking a banana up the exhaust pipe.
Click to expand...

Very true. Apple would surely update the motherboard to prevent that situation... only without the banana, obviously.
 
Originally posted by Sol
Very true. Apple would surely update the motherboard to prevent that situation... only without the banana, obviously.
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Are you sure? They left the banana (SDR) in the Xserve/PowerMac mobo! ;) ;) ;)
 
Apple really can't get away from the SDR "banana" because it is required by the current G4's.
 
Originally posted by pyrotoaster
While I agree that Apple's secrecy has its downsides, consider this: In January, Apple announces plans to switch Powermacs to the 970 in June. Who the hell is going to buy a Powermac now? Apple's market share is too small to lose business because they let some info slip.

Also, imagine if Apple had trusted Motorola's when they had their little roadmap for the G5. Apple would have said something like: "G5-January 2002." Whoops! Moto's a deadbeat and the G5 doesn't actually exist! You see my point.
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Sun Microsystems just announced that the UltraSPARC IV previously expected during Q4 2003 will not be available until Q1 2004, and UltraSPARC V is pushed back in 2006.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/31040.html

May be we should ask them if they still sell UltraSPARC III boxes ;)
 
Re: reality check

Originally posted by sparkplug
Why are you sure? Have you actually tested this assertion personally? No.
Indeed have you compared any p4 to g4, and no not just a comparision you read on a mac booster web site.
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Well, I have some render tests with a dual G4 1.42GHz and a Pentium 4 3GHz. The Dual G4 clocks in roughly at the speed of a Pentium 2.8 GHz. So, taking into account that both processors are sharing the same bus, a single G4 will be about the speed of a 1.6GHz Pentium. Not too shabby for a system with a 167MHz SDR bus. And my 1GHz G4 to 1.7GHz P4 comparison was for a laptop. Apple has the edge on those, because the G4 is not highly penalized by that environment. It runs pretty cool, at only 1GHz, and the 167MHz SDR bus isn't so much of a bottleneck at the clock rate. I've never heard of an 800MHz quad-pumped DDR FSB in a laptop. But Apple uses the same bus in their laptops as in their desktops. So PowerBooks are nearly as fast as (single-processor) PowerMacs (or to the woe of high-end Mac users, PowerMacs are not much faster than PowerBooks). The situation in the PC world is quite different. PC laptops are much slower than PC desktops, because a PC desktop motherboard design would explode in a laptop. Heck, it's pretty close to exploding in a desktop. :p Just teasing.

A dual 1.4 g4 is less than half as fast as a mildly configured p4@2.4, and costs over twice as much. Open your eyes, the emperor has no clothes!
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lol I thought Apple had a copyright on the "Reality Distortion Field"!
 
Re: Re: Re: When does...

Originally posted by Sol
Something tells me that Apple will try to have its cake and eat it too by buying Motorola and IBM processors, in order to differentiate their professional and their consumer computers.
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Fine with me. I think the G4 is a fine processor for the consumer line. Even for the mainstream "pro". I only want a pair of Dual PPC 970 XServe Cluster Nodes for rendering. :D My G3 900 is fast enough for modeling, and texturing.
 
Originally posted by ZeeOwl
Fine with me. I think the G4 is a fine processor for the consumer line. Even for the mainstream "pro". I only want a pair of Dual PPC 970 XServe Cluster Nodes for rendering. :D My G3 900 is fast enough for modeling, and texturing.
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Ah, if only every PC user thought the same thing... :p
Apple needs faster processors to sell more machines. Period.
 
ZeeOwl:

Well, I have some render tests with a dual G4 1.42GHz and a Pentium 4 3GHz. The Dual G4 clocks in roughly at the speed of a Pentium 2.8 GHz. So, taking into account that both processors are sharing the same bus, a single G4 will be about the speed of a 1.6GHz Pentium.
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So based on some rendering test, hopefully more than one such test, you conclude that overall performance of these machines is simular? What is someone gets crasy and plays a game, or does anything other than rendering?

And my 1GHz G4 to 1.7GHz P4 comparison was for a laptop. Apple has the edge on those, because the G4 is not highly penalized by that environment.
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The only thing at 1.7ghz in Intel laptop land is the Pentium M, which is not the same thing as a Pentium 4. The Pentium 4's in laptops are at 2.4ghz easy, and I think a lot higher although I've never tried to find anyone selling above 2.4ghz. The Pentium M, on the other hand, doesn't need that sort of clock speed, or even a super fast FSB. It has a full 1mb of L2 on die at full speed... rather nice compared to the backside L3. Of course it does have the 400mhz FSB to back that up still, plus DDR-266. The Pentium M is more along the lines of Athlon performance per clock than Pentium 4 performance, and it runs quite cool. Dell and IBM, along with everyone else, offer nice 5 pound 1" thick 1.6ghz (or 1.7 but thats really new) machines, even sometimes with Radeon 9000's and all the other goodies. Intel is planning on having 90nm Pentium M's with 2mb of L2 in Q4 of this year, so for the sake of Apple's laptop sales I hope they get some help soon.

It runs pretty cool, at only 1GHz, and the 167MHz SDR bus isn't so much of a bottleneck at the clock rate.
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The only 15" vs 17" tests I've seen actually failed to demonstrate any processor performance difference, despite this FSB and DDR boost. Perhaps you can provide a more informative link for me?
 
It's not so much that no one wants a new G4. I think it's more about Moto promising a new chip, and not delivering. Too little too late. They can put out all the specs they want, but it won't mean a thing. If they can deliver, more power to them. As far as IBM's 970 being vaporware, it does exist. It's being manufactured as we speak. It's not available to purchase yet, but it exists. So does the Moto G5. An embedded-only, 8500 series chip. No Apple desktop G5. Never happened (wonder if it ever got past the pdf). The APPLE DESKTOP 970 is the question. This we don't know about. Nor do we know if OS X.3 is 64-bit.

But we're hoping. We don't want to get our hopes up too much and be too disappointed. But we NEED, desperately, a new chip, just to keep up. This is why all the excitement about the 970.

This is why we all want Moto to stick it.

And when asked about the future, the smile on Steve's face was all the proof I need that he knows something REALLY good is coming.
 
Originally posted by AidenShaw
Two serious problems with this....


Or, how about an x450 quad Itanium 2, with 6MB of L3 per chip and 64MB of L4 cache shared per quad?

You can't ignore quad Intel boxes when you compare performance - that's just not honest!
Click to expand...

Honest... there's a word that gets a little twisted.
I have no idea why you keep putting these wierd slants on other people's honest appraisals or questions but this reply of yours is obfuscation at its best.
So, let's look at the kind of examples you bring up.

IBM has a Quad Xeon( go to IBM and start configuring the x360's) with 74 Gig HD, a CD-ROM (not even a writer), ethernet (not even Gig) 2 Gigs of memory, OS of choice ( I chose Red Hat linux to save a little cause since it's a server- DO YOU EVER PAY- at $399 US per client or in their example 39,000 BUCKS (Mac Server is , well, zip!)
Well, anyway it came to $28,509.95 without the $39,000 100-client license... I just couldn't bring myself to go there and include that amount, so I stuck with one.
Oh, and the Xeons were a BLINDING 2 Gig... a breathtaking speed, we all know!

Well, IF Apple ever decides to do a quad 970 in a server, there won't be additional license costs (after one), there will be Gig ethernet, there will be OSX Server and all the stability that that entails and it sure won't cost 30 thousand dollars, or SEVENTY if you want a hundred clients. (Surely, there must be a discount here but no mention of it on the website.)

Point is you are comparing Apples and IBMs and making it seem, well, comparable. NOT! Let's get a little honesty. I know you love to give Apple big bites... but really!!!!!
 
100 users = $3200, not $39,000

Originally posted by rjwill246
IBM has a Quad Xeon( go to IBM and start configuring the x360's)... Well, anyway it came to $28,509.95
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Well, I did a quad x255 Xeon. 1.9GHz, 1MB L3 cache, 1GB, 36GB for $17,000. Did you know that the 2.0GHz Xeon has 2MB of L3 cache, and is much more expensive than the 1.9GHz with 1MB?????

Hot swap SCSI RAID, up to 12 internal disks, redundant power, ... lots of things that the Xserve doesn't have. And, BTW, if you think that Apple is going to build a quad on the cheap - I've got a bridge to sell you. There's a lot of availability and redundancy that's expected in systems of that class - if Apple does another low-end system like the Xserve they'll be laughed at. If they make it comparable to other quad servers, they'll be similarly priced.

Also, you're confused about that $39,900 "100 user" license - that's a license for the IBM Director Server Management software - to manage 100 servers! See http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/xseries/systems_management/director_spp.html.

Look at shopper.com, you can get 100 Windows client licenses for under $3200

A similar quad 1.9GHz from Dell is under $20,000.

And, of course, the IBM and Dell systems have 3 years parts and labor warranty...apparently Apple has about 1/3 the faith in the Xserve.
 
C'mon now...

Damn.... some of these replies make you wonder!
Do some of u even know why u r using a Mac? I know why I chose a modest 250mhz G3 Powerbook over my old 700mhz Athlon PC..... rock solid stability, both OS & Hardware. I'm suprised people really believe that the P4 is something that G3/G4's should be "shooting for".

You know, the P4 really had to compromise on CPU performance to achieve the clock speeds it has...... the pipeline length of the P4 is 20-stages long! Aside from the penalty of CPU cycles spent in branch prediciting, when it actually does get the branch-predicton wrong.....well lets just say it's bad for realtime performance, it takes a lot more than 20 cpu cycles to "get it together' again. Heat is another issue of increased pipeline stages.

Compare this with the current G3, the IBM 750FX. With a minimal 5-stage pipeline and a power consumption of 3.6w @800mhz..... 512k L2 cache (256 bits wide running at full CPU speed)...... thats just the obvious advantages of the chip. The Gobi will clock higher, double the L2 cache, run cooler......

I believe most Mac users dissapointed in the current performance are mainly Gamers.... I don't know what the fastest AGP 3D graphics card is available for the Mac, but I'd imagine an underpowered Graphics card in your Mac causes more of a performance hit in games than the CPU.....

Anyways....my original point was..... macs are rock-solid for production work, I personally don't care about graphics performance because my main use of the computer is for Audio production. I external console ca take care of that for me. I really don't care how "far-ahead" the P4 is in clock cycles, as any educated Mac user knows the price it pays for being "the fastest mhz cpu".... in the end, i gave up tearing my hair out trying to iron out the creases on my desktop Athlon windows nightmare, for real-time performance I will NEVER go back to Windows PC....... cause you never get those f'ing machines to perform smoothly, the overhead is just not worth it compared to peace of mind in reliable Mac computing. PC user 5 years and frustrated, Mac user 1 year and lovin' it!

It's funny how off-topic this all got, this was about the new G4 motorola has planned.... Anything that gets those TI Powerbooks movin' along is fine with me...... faster TI's mean faster Ibooks..... Faster Ibooks mean faster IBM G3's for Powerlogix to incorporate into there Pismo upgrades! I'm just waiting for that damn Gobi to be available..... hopefully this month hey!

Ryan
 
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