Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Motorola 7457 Upgrades

Re: Where's the G5

Originally posted by Foucault
What is the deal with these tiny upgrades for the G4 processor. The G4 is almost three years old, where the hell is the G5. Apple and Motorola needs to get their act together!!
Click to expand...

That would actually be about 3 years and 3 months old already. And my trusty old G4 350 is still better than my roommate's Pentium 4 1.something GHZ. What a piece of blue screen death trash.

They need to be faster. But even in the latest DV mag, they compared workstations on mac and pc. Actually they were doing a timeline of the last 10 years. They weren't trying to compare speeds. But when they got down to comparing the latest computers, they did a variety of tests comparing the dual 1.25 gig to dual 2+ ghz PC machines. The difference was pretty small. PCs that clocked at nearly twice the speed were only about 20% faster. Sometimes not that fast.

I'll take my OS over a little extra speed.
 
this is directed at all of those who seem to be down on mac and have not yet mastered the ability (though many of them calim to be 'experts') to click links. (theranch, Phechs, Foucault, ktlx, clubsport, bousozoku)

read the link! i find this all VERY good news. simply because it coroborates a previous rumor (the link). that rumor claims that moto dropped the ball on the g5 by numerous last minute delays and eventaully dropping the g5 alltogether. apple approached ibm to create the 970. plans are in the works for a q3 release of the 970, and the work for the 980 (2004) 990 (2006) is being done.

moto dropped the ball. right now we are simply waiting for that 970. if you recall, apple has always been the leader in desktop computing speed. the current slump is only because of the g5/moto screwup. just 3-4 years ago apple was number one. so stop complaining. this rumor puts a lot of strange occurances in place and gives us a clear roadmap for the next few years that promises to bring apple to that number one place again.

i dont care if you buy a pc. for many it is probably a good idea. buy one and sell it when apple releases the new machine. if you can handle the switching why not. but at least understand what is going on, and do not make rash decisions.

read the link.
 
This is pretty pathetic. Another meager speed increase. Motorola is on the long slide downard and taking Apple with it. I have been a diehard Apple fan. But that may be changing. It's all about having the right tools to get the job done. I would rather not have to wait 4 times as long to render out a file. So if it means more bandwidth for a fraction of the cost, that will be the business decision I have to make in the next few months. Sorry to see Apple get to this sad state of affars. And they wanted to take the high-end post market. LOL.
 
It would be nice if everyone hops on this stupid MHz mania with the switch to 64-bit processors and once again look at the true processing power of the CPUs - or several of the other factors that are becoming just as important.

They can squeeze a heck of a lot of power and battery life out of a chunk of silicon if they stop focusing on making it vibrate really fast and look at making it more powerful, consume fewer watts, reduce the heat signature, etc.

Sort of sad that the big iron is once again sucking up more power and moving back towards needing hi power air condition systems.

Heck even the standard PC is making some of the older offices hard to live in when they suck all the power out of the walls (or service panels) and heat up rooms.

But hey at least the POS on the desk is cheap, even if it requires gutting the office to install all the electric lines and new ac units.
 
What if everybody who's capable of speeding up our Macs start doing it instead of just posting numbers on the Internet. Blablabla 1.4, 1,8, 970. Geez, it almost looks like politics. Just a bunch of sheep making a lot of noise and doing just NOTHING. When someone says to me: Let me buy you a beer which you never taste before, so nice, so refreshing. We'll he better buy me one for real, or I'll poke him in the eye. Promises, promises... now we want results.
 
Re: Motorola 7457 Upgrades

Originally posted by Macrumors
Geek.com posts rumors from a source "in the know" on Apple's 2003 chip plans:

According to the source, the next revision of the Motorola G4+ PowerPC, the 7457, will top out at 1.33 or 1.4GHz (1.0GHz, 1.17GHz, 1.33GHz, 1.40GHz?) in February 2003, and will stick there until July 2003, when another 7457 revision should arrive, promising to push the chip up to a more respectable 1.83GHz (1.50GHz, 1.67GHz, 1.83GHz).
Click to expand...

This information echoes some of the information from this anonymous source -- which also pegs the 970's successor to be due in Q3 2004.

The only contradictory information we have is that Dual 1.5GHz PowerMacs have existed within Apple for some time now... but this does not give any indication to Motorola's ability to produce these in volume.
Click to expand...

Moore's Law Check (Moore's Law ~= double performance in 18 months; roughly 12.2% increase in 3 months ... P=n^t where n=1.5874 when t is in years ...):

1.25GHz August 2002

November 2002 (+3mo): 1.4GHz
Feb 2003 (+6mo): 1.57GHz
May 2003 (+9mo): 1.76GHz
Aug 2003 (+12mo): 2.0GHz
Nov 2003 (+15mo): 2.22GHz
Feb 2004 (+18mo): 2.5GHz

Reality? We're rumoring 1.4GHz in Feb 2003, 1.8GHz in July 2003.

This is not good news. This is sub-Moore's Law performance!

Intel is keeping up with Moore on the GHz front (and then some). Motorola's not keeping up.

Yes, yes, yes, Moore's law talks about transtor count, not truly raw performance, and GHz don't directly equal system or even CPU performance either. But, when Intel is doubling CPU performance every 18 months, and Motorola is more like 1.73x in 18 months (extrapolating from 1.44x in ~12 months), especially after the long sub-Moore's trend we've been stuck in for years (Sept 1999-Aug 2002 3.125x improvement instead of 2.51x under Moore's ... although granted July 2001-Aug 2002 was above Moore's), we're SOL!

Sorry, folks, I just can't see this as a positive outlook on the state of the Mac.

Bring on IBM!
 
Re: Re: Motorola 7457 Upgrades

Originally posted by jettredmont


This information echoes some of the information from this anonymous source -- which also pegs the 970's successor to be due in Q3 2004.

The only contradictory information we have is that Dual 1.5GHz PowerMacs have existed within Apple for some time now... but this does not give any indication to Motorola's ability to produce these in volume.
Click to expand...

Moore's Law Check (Moore's Law ~= double performance in 18 months; roughly 12.2% increase in 3 months ... P=n^t where n=1.5874 when t is in years ...):

1.25GHz August 2002

November 2002 (+3mo): 1.4GHz
Feb 2003 (+6mo): 1.57GHz
May 2003 (+9mo): 1.76GHz
Aug 2003 (+12mo): 2.0GHz
Nov 2003 (+15mo): 2.22GHz
Feb 2004 (+18mo): 2.5GHz

Reality? We're rumoring 1.4GHz in Feb 2003, 1.8GHz in July 2003.

This is not good news. This is sub-Moore's Law performance!

Intel is keeping up with Moore on the GHz front (and then some). Motorola's not keeping up.

Yes, yes, yes, Moore's law talks about transtor count, not truly raw performance, and GHz don't directly equal system or even CPU performance either. But, when Intel is doubling CPU performance every 18 months, and Motorola is more like 1.73x in 18 months (extrapolating from 1.44x in ~12 months), especially after the long sub-Moore's trend we've been stuck in for years (Sept 1999-Aug 2002 3.125x improvement instead of 2.51x under Moore's ... although granted July 2001-Aug 2002 was above Moore's), we're SOL!

Sorry, folks, I just can't see this as a positive outlook on the state of the Mac.

Bring on IBM! [/B][/QUOTE]

:rolleyes: do any of you read?

o and btw, intel has publically stated they will be hitting a wall with performance. they stated they will not be able to keep up with 'moores law' anymore.
 
um... clock speed is pretty much irrelevant to overall performance now.

For instance, the 970 is expected to start at 1.6GHz and celing 1.8GHz (according to IBM), yet it will slaughter any moto G4 running at a faster speed. Just like a G4 700 will beat a G3 700... except the difference will be much greater.
 
Re: Re: Re: Motorola 7457 Upgrades

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon

:rolleyes: do any of you read?

o and btw, intel has publically stated they will be hitting a wall with performance. they stated they will not be able to keep up with 'moores law' anymore.
Click to expand...

Link, please? I haven't heard any such thing.

I found this:

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-203750.html?legacy=cnet

(note the date: 1997 ...)

and this (April 2002):

http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/18212-1.html

and this (Aug 2002, talking about 64-bit procs though):

http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020816S0025

and this (Aug 2002):

http://www.technologyreview.com/offthewire/3001_682002_4.asp

and this (Sept 2002):

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020919tech.htm


And, yes, I read the article. How is anything it said supposed to make me feel better about Motorola's paltry contribution to the state of the Mac?
 
Originally posted by j763
um... clock speed is pretty much irrelevant to overall performance now.

For instance, the 970 is expected to start at 1.6GHz and celing 1.8GHz (according to IBM), yet it will slaughter any moto G4 running at a faster speed. Just like a G4 700 will beat a G3 700... except the difference will be much greater.
Click to expand...

Clock speed across architectures (meaning chip architectures, not system architectures) is never directly relatable. However, the one thing you can always say about clock speed is that if the clock speed of a chip (without anything else changing) doubles, that processor will be able to do twice as much processor-constrained work in the same amount of time.

Going from the 7450 to 7457 is a design change, and so perhaps it is unfair to compare clock speeds. But aside from redesign benefits, a 2.5GHz G4 would go exactly twice as fast as a 1.25GHz G4. I'm bordering on the resounding "duh" factor here, I hope.

That having been said, in the two years (Jan 2001 to Aug 2002) that Motorola pulled itself from 733MHz to 1.25 GHz on the G4 (a 70% increase in speed), Intel went from a 1.4GHz P4 to 3.0 GHz P4 (a 114% increase). And that was a fast period of Motorola development!

Yes, there are other bottlenecks that the G4 has, and the 7457 might address these (FSB pudding along is a biggy), which would give a 1.8 GHz G4+ a better-than-clock-speed-increase performance jump ahead of the current crop. On the other hand, on the PC side these bandwidth issues are not there (533MHz FSB, to be 800MHz FSB next year?)

Back to the point: no, clock speed isn't "everything", but when all else remains roughly the same, it does directly affect performance.
 
Like I replied to MacDuffy's thread:
Form article: "According to the source, the next revision of the Motorola G4+ PowerPC, the 7457, will top out at 1.33 or 1.4GHz (1.0GHz, 1.17GHz, 1.33GHz, 1.40GHz?) in February 2003, and will stick there until July 2003, when another 7457 revision should arrive, promising to push the chip up to a more respectable 1.83GHz (1.50GHz, 1.67GHz, 1.83GHz)"

Oh oh... stuck to (hopefully) 1.4 Ghz until next summer. That's not good news: only a 125 Mhz leap (step) from last summer.....
COME ON POWER4
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I do want faster renders. And no more waiting for simple things (no spinning beachballs). But have you seen how close the benchmarks are? Most of these tests where the Intel and AMD PCs with double the clock speed "slaughter" the Macs, the G4 runs very competitively (even sometimes beating the Multi-GHz machines). That says a lot.

Regardless.

Blah, blah, blah. MHz myth whatever. We can complain all we want. We can benchmark all we want. We just want faster and, more importantly, cheaper machines.

Is that so much to ask?
 
There is a school of thought (lost the links) that suggest that our current G4 (and some of the road-mapped ones) are such huge jumps over the original G4 that they could easily be termed G5 or whatever, in fact the report Im thinking of said that in terms of raw performance difference between the G4+ (apollo?) and orig G4 at the same clock speed, Intel would have bumped the number (eg. P2 to P3) so whilst Im not arguing that the Dual 1G MDD im running here is infact a G5, do bear in mind that these things are not simply clock-bumped versions of that good 'ol 450 G4 in the corner...

On the PC front, our new Dell workstation packing a HyperThreading P4 at 3.06G is really dissapointing - slower to burn DVDs than either the Dual 1.25MDD or even this Dual 1G, the HT technology is not really supported yet. On the plus side though it is MUCH quieter than any MDD G4 Ive heard!
Windowz XP still crashes daily when the thing is being used in anger!


--------------------------------
Life is not a rehearsal - lets make the most of it
 
Well, if Motorola can increase the Mhz by about 600Mhz in the next 6 months (1.25Ghz --> 1.85Ghz or so) then I think you people are stupid to complain! We all know that the G4 has its limitations but this is a rate of increase of which we have not seen in a long time. That cant be bad!! These predictions have been what I was thinking could happen. However, who knows if this information is true.

Plus, on the note of PC's being quicker. On most tasks (barring a few such as video/3d) what does that bit of extra speed help you do when you are browsing the web? ABSOLUTLY NOTHING. You save more time by using the Mac OSX which saves time on less keystrokes. I admit that Apple needs to move up a level for 3D and Video. However, its out of Apple's hands. Dont blame them.
 
Goodbye, professional users. This is SUCH bad news. No amount of spin (or arbitrary re-naming of processors) will get around the fact that Apple are right up the creek without a paddle in sight! With such a long delay before they get competitive again, lots of businesses are going to HAVE to re-equip on other platforms, and once they've done that, they won't come back. The one good thing is that it makes my Cube suddenly look like a good long-term investment: with an upgraded CPU, the Cube will stay competitive with Apple's top end for years more!
 
Originally posted by j763
Just like a G4 700 will beat a G3 700... except the difference will be much greater.
Click to expand...
Is this true? Not what I've heard. I think there's a lot of grasping at straws going on here today....
 
Originally posted by skunk

Is this true? Not what I've heard. I think there's a lot of grasping at straws going on here today....
Click to expand...

I heard too that the Sahara G3 is faster than the G4 in non-Altivec instuctions...
Is it a fact that the 7457 supports a "true" DDR-bus? So we can hope for a dual 1.4 GHz G4 running on a 333 MHz bus... with AGP 8x ?
 
I think we should be a bit more interested in what we might get before the 970, which is at least some 8 months away.

If the 7457 is 0.13 not 0.18 and has the ability to take advantage of DDR memory effectively unlike the current chip, it will be relatively more powerful and perhaps even create less heat -> less noise issues. (By the way, current dual 1GHz DDR equals to 1GHz SDRAM Quicksilver in some tests - the latter has more level3 cache though). Interesting enough, when pro users may be disappointed in top PowerMacs speed, they offered DUAL processors in the "semi-pro" entry model. Dual G4 with 1MB level3 cache each for 1699$ is not a bad deal, is it? (if they weren´t noisy).

But does the 7457 have 0.13 or 0.18?
The 7470 was supposed to have, and also better DDR support, but it doesn´t seem to make it in the market before the IBM 970.

Sorry about the tech talk I´m not sure what I´m talking about myself either.
 
If these rumors turn out to be true... here is what things look like for us...

Motorola + Apple
=================
Feb 2003 - MOT G4+ PPC 7457 at 1.0Ghz, 1.17Ghz, 1.33GHz, 1.40Ghz
Jul 2003 - MOT G4+ PPC 7457 at 1.50Ghz, 1.67Ghz, 1.83Ghz

NOTE: The 7457 will STILL NOT fully support DDR (thanks alot MOT)

The 7457 does have some bonuses:

- .13 micron SOI (Silicon-On-Insulator) process
- 512 KB of L2 cache (from 256 KB)
- Support for 4 MB of L3 cache (up from 2 MB)

Future Motorola 7457RM chips at 2Ghz and better will be aimed at Apple iMacs, not Power Macs. (RM = True DDR Support... I think)

IBM + Apple
============

- IBM is making a large volume of PowerPC 970 test chips available sooner than expected for Apple

- Apple has "... many prototype machines based on the 970 from engineering samples IBM is providing."

- The PowerPC 970 is expected to reach 1.8-2.0Ghz in Q3 2003, with the source noting a July 2003 date.

Future IBM PowerPC chips include:

- The Power4 - based PowerPC 970 to reach 1.8Ghz/2Ghz in July 2003
- The Power5 - based PowerPC 980 to reach 3Ghz in Q3 2004
- The Power6 - based PowerPC 990 in 2006.

Dave
 
Great. So any business wanting to buy is going to be stuck with 1.4GHz until late 2003. That's going to keep them happy. Tell you what, they'd better be cheap....
 
Originally posted by DaveGee

Future Motorola 7457RM chips at 2Ghz and better will be aimed at Apple iMacs, not Power Macs. (RM = True DDR Support... I think)

Dave
Click to expand...

So, we could be seeing 1.5 - 1.8 GHz (G4)iMacs and 1.8 Ghz (PPC 970)PowerMacs by the end of 2003?
That'll be great!
Talk about a speed BUMP :)
 
Pentium 4: Intelligence Meter

Don't get all hot about a P4 running 4ghz.

The P4 is SLOWER then the P3, unless you double the Mhz.
For example: a P3 running at 800mhz is FASTER then a P4 running 1.6ghz. Intel took a V8 engine that ran at 5000rpm, cut it in half to create a turbo charged, fuel injected, 4 cylinder engine running at 10,000rpm. But, just like real engines, it's not faster but slower then the original.

Also, Intel's approach required that huge 20 stage pipeline, taking up more chip area, so that now, even if it wanted to do something smart and add more execution units, to increase the instructions executed per clock, it DOESN'T HAVE THE ROOM!

A performance increase to really be shocking to a human requires not a 10% performance increase but a 500% jump. Intel isn't going to be able to deliver that: 8Ghz

Intel isn't run by stupid people, so why spend so much money to bump mhz, because most computer buyers think that if they switch from an 800mhz machine to a 3.0ghz P4 they will be getting an 400% performance increase. They don't, so they are disappointed by their purchase. But, intel has suckered them into another purchase.

To compare the P4 to the G4, divide the P4 ghz by 2:
P4 3ghz == G4 1.5. So, we aren't so far away. And we have the better operating system and a better computer chip design.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back