MWNY PowerMac Specs?

[arn]

An anonymous source provided the following specs for upcoming PowerMac G4's upcoming... presumably at MWNY.

1.0 GHz, 1.2 GHz, and dual-1.4 GHz G4's
DDR 333 MHZ
ATA 133 support
4 64 bit PCI
1 AGP
Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire, USB
60, 80, and 120 GB drives
New Superdrive, and faster CDRW.
Built-in Bluetooth
$1599, $2299, and $3299.

These certainly sound like reasonable specs for future machines... again, the upcoming Servers (May 14) specs may help confirm/deny some of these specs.

 

[lucs]

yah

That most definitely sounds more realistic than a 2ghz G5 and stuff

i like it

 

[Falleron]

What about Firewire 2 + USB 2?

 

[rainman::|:|]

Originally posted by Falleron
What about Firewire 2 + USB 2?

I think we can be reasonably sure USB2 will be standard... as for Firewire2, we can only hope...

These do sound like much better specs. I wonder how zippy the dual 1.4s would really feel... prolly an improvement over a 500MHz iMac, eh?

hehe

pnw

 

[Falleron]

We wont see USB2 until Firewire 2 is out! I have a Dual 1Ghz machine + it runs very nicely! A Dual 1.4Ghz would be sweet (Not for me because I just got my machine 3 months ago!!).

 

[dongmin]

The rumor is conservative enough to be true. Nothing really new other than the DDR Ram.

40% increase in processor speed in five months aint bad. Hopefully this will mean 2 ghz G5s by MWSF.

If Bluetooth is built-in, could the wireless mouse and keyboard rumors be true too?

 

[TyleRomeo]

Sunday, March 17 3:17 PM EDT

Faster Superdrives later this year? According to several very interesting documents emailed to us by an international Apple source, yes. The current model Swiss Army Knife of optical drives runs at 6x read/2x write for DVDs and 24x read, 8x CD-R write and 4x CD-RW write. A new version currently being tested at Apple would up virtually all of those speeds - 8X/4X for DVDs and 40X/12X/8X for CDs, respectively. Of course as with all CD drives claiming 40X speeds, real-world performance will be much lower, but it should still be significantly improved over the current 24X speed. If the timeline put forth in these documents proves accurate, we may see this new SuperDrive before the end of the year - in PowerMacs first, of course.

Still longing for more processor performance from the latest PowerMacs before you buy one? Well, if a Dual 1GHz model with 133MHz SDRAM doesn't impress you, how about a Dual 1.4GHz beast employing powerful new PowerPC 7500 processors and screamingly fast 400MHz RapidIO-compatible memory? It has taken months of digging to confirm this, but it looks like the much-hyped PPC 7500, a G4 designed to add some of the features of the G5 family, will be the centerpiece of Apple's mid-year PowerMac update. A 400MHz leap in processor clock is dramatic, but made possible by the 7500's deeper command pipelines, next-generation wiring process and modernized chip architecture. Much more on this rumor in the days and weeks ahead.

New information from one of Apple's key component suppliers suggests the company is working on a mid-sized widescreen flat panel. The new display would be roughly the same height as the company's current 17-inch model, but would be significantly wider to provide a letterbox aspect ratio for watching widescreen DVDs. It is not known whether this would replace or complement the existing standard-aspect 17-inch Studio Display, but resolution is said to be 1152x768 -- same as the Powerbook G4.

thank you macosrumors

but i guess more speculation can't hurt, go apple

 

[Tobsen]

Why do you all want USB2?
USB2 is not faster than FireWire and there is no hardware, that may be a reason to have it.
Also the HD-bridge is slow as these old bridges for FW.
So why?

 

[TyleRomeo]

well having USB 2 and Firewire 2 standard will be good for the long haul when we get new USB 2 devices and faster external firewire 2 hard drives, so i really hope they put them in.

also is the new super drive going to be the one that macosrumors.com specified or something else.

hmmm and what about the video card are we going to have the 128MB Nvidia card or something else?

 

[sirion]

What would the effective speed difference be between a dual 1 GHz and single 1.2 GHz machine with DDR ram?

I'm told OSX is *extremely* snappy with dual processor configurations, and the older dual GHz model's price is probably going to drop down significantly...so I'm wondering just how nice that ram really is...

 

[Backtothemac]

Good evening everyone. One thing I can add to this is that they will have Firewire 2. Bank on it.

Also X.2 will be standard on these machines. Everyone is saying September for X.2, but as long as there are no MASSIVE bugs, it will be at MWNY.

 

[blogo]

Because

Originally posted by Tobsen
Why do you all want USB2?
USB2 is not faster than FireWire and there is no hardware, that may be a reason to have it.
Also the HD-bridge is slow as these old bridges for FW.
So why?

USB 2 products are cheaper

 

[Rower_CPU]

Re: Because

Originally posted by Eple
USB 2 products are cheaper

Really? Can you give some examples?

 

[j763]

I think we'll see bumped up G4's AND G5's. I say this because of what I pointed out the other day...

If you didn't see it, think about this, Apple's Web Server has the directory http://www.apple.com/powermac/g4/ ready to be used (it's currently pointing back at the main powermac page).

If we don't see any G5's at MWNY, there are going to be some really pissed off people out there...

 

[TyleRomeo]

i'd be very happy with a dual 1.4 G4, i want the DRR, new superdrive and the ata 133 drive

 

[nero007]

Originally posted by Tobsen
Why do you all want USB2?
USB2 is not faster than FireWire and there is no hardware, that may be a reason to have it.
Also the HD-bridge is slow as these old bridges for FW.
So why?

I thought USB 2 was faster than Firewire (not FW2). Maybe I misread though.

 

[nero007]

Originally posted by j763
If we don't see any G5's at MWNY, there are going to be some really pissed off people out there...

Well they can stick it. This would be a great upgrade.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

this all sounds pretty good to me..

not that i know what it is, but what about rapid i/o?

i know you all technical geeks had been talking about it... so what up wit dat?

 

[G4scott]

That's great. At least Apple's total mhz speeds (speed of each processor x number of processors. It sounds weird, but i believe that if people saw two processors with speeds that add up, they would be convinced...) will be up to par with Intel by years end, but maybe a little behind... I heard that Intel will be up to 3 ghz by years end. Wow, a barbecue grill that can cook at 3ghz! Just what we need! Maybe Intel should team up with George Forman and actually make a colored computer/grill. It would be like an iMac with a grill, except it would only really work as a grill...

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by jelloshotsrule
this all sounds pretty good to me..

not that i know what it is, but what about rapid i/o?

i know you all technical geeks had been talking about it... so what up wit dat?

Here's some info from their website (http://www.rapidio.org):

The RapidIO™ architecture is an electronic data communications standard for interconnecting chips on a circuit board and circuit boards using a backplane. This new high-performance, packet-switched interconnect technology was designed for embedded systems, primarily for the networking and communications markets. Industry leaders in networking, communications, semiconductors, and embedded systems have founded the RapidIO Trade Association to develop and support this new open standard.

An important bottleneck in networking and communications equipment is the speed at which the various components "inside the box" communicate with each other. The RapidIO architecture eliminates this bottleneck. Current equipment is limited to hundreds of Mbits per second transfer rates using legacy bus technologies such as PCI. The new RapidIO interconnect increases this bandwidth significantly. Many believe that increases in bandwidth have already replaced increases in microprocessor performance as the key requirement for higher-performance Internet technology.

To summarize: Rapid IO removes one of the major bottlenecks in system performance, namely, the system bus speed.

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by j763
If we don't see any G5's at MWNY, there are going to be some really pissed off people out there...

Well, let me save them a wait. Go ahead, get pissed. Go set a house on fire, and kill the neighbors cat. There will not be a G5 at MWNY, not a real one anyway. Maybe in SF, but not in NY. I am not saying that you should do the above, just the crazy people that would complain about a Mac with those specs.

 

[macstudent]

I would like USB 2 for the option to add these devices later without having to purchase an expansion card. If apple is devloping a new motherboard, they might as well add new technologies unless it is not cost effective.

 

[mmmdreg]

Originally posted by Backtothemac
There will not be a G5 at MWNY, not a real one anyway. Maybe in SF, but not in NY. I am not saying that you should do the above, just the crazy people that would complain about a Mac with those specs.

Yeah...the above specs for a better G4 are way more likely than a G5 until MWSF03...but we are always getting proved wrong so lets just wait and see..

 

[Catfish_Man]

In response...

...to the post about how much DDR would help, consider this:

A single 533MHz G4+ (7450) can max out (saturate) PC133 if it's running well made Altivec code. That means that if all that was running was a single well made Altivec task, then the ONLY reason that the dual 1GHz would be faster than the single 533 is that the DP1GHz has a better cache. The extra processor, the better manufacturing process, and the almost double clockspeed would all be essentially useless. Obviously in the real world this almost never happens, but it shows the kind of boost we can expect by doubling (or with 333MHz DDR, more than doubling) the memory bandwidth. A dual 1GHz is a fine machine, but it's trying to feed six Altivec pipelines (G4+s can dispatch 3 instructions per clock cycle) off of a bus that's maxed out with 3 running at half the speed. I think a single 1.2GHz with DDR will beat a dual 1GHz with SDR in most tasks. A few that really benefit a lot from SMP will keep up or be slightly ahead.

 

[barkmonster]

Wonder if the entry level mac will be crippled this time ?

They've started putting the entry level model inline with the other models in all areas (7200rpm HD, reasonable amount of RAM, optional Superdrive) apart from the L3 cache. Maybe this time apple will realise that people buying the entry level model arn't to be concidered a stereotypical consumer/home user with deep pockets but a pro user with fairly empty ones!

From the current specs the 1Ghz G4 has a 250Mhz DDR L3 cache (effectively 500Mhz), a 1Ghz G4 without a L3 but with the new motherboard is going to have 333Mhz to play with instead but I do wonder if putting a L3 cache on all models wouldn't be a fair thing to do given the fact that the bandwidth between 333Mhz and 500Mhz is small but could still be significant.

when you look at it in terms of what we've got now and what we might have it looks like it could be an either or situation on whether it's needed on a 1Ghz model with the new motherboard but the 1.4Ghz model should have a 700Mhz L3 cache if they're still going to use L3 on the new models. That would skew the performance of the lineup in favour of the top 2 models like now.

It's damn good to here though, I just hope my long running theory that whatever's the high end becomes the lowend everytime the lineup is changed is correct this time.

I'd love to be able to buy a G4 that's well over 4 times the speed of my G3 when I'm looking at buying my next mac, the mid range 1.2Ghz system looks tempting but the entry level model looks even more tempting to me because I know I could afford it by late autumn all things going well.