New G5's upgradeability/mac OS 10.4

[PismoGuy]

I know someone who is strongly considering purchasing a new PowerMac G5 within the next month and would like to ask a few things on their behalf. Firstly, I know that there are no CPU upgrades for any G5 tower, but if they come out how difficult will it be to change them in the 2.5Ghz tower? Can a technically savvy end user be capable of swapping the daughter card (it has a daughter card, right)? And another thing, when is Tiger going to ship? If its soon will it be installed on the new towers?(I am assuming yes, but if any one say's otherwise then I would like to know what's up?)

Thanks in advance.

 

[neoelectronaut]

Don't expect 10.4 till at least April 2005, at my guess.

 

[LeeTom]

If and when they come out with G5 upgrade cards, it should be fairly straightforward for a savvy person.
Tiger will ship early to mid 2005. A bit of a wait still... but when it comes out, it will be shipped with any new machine, if Apple continues with its past trend.

Lee Tom

 

[Sun Baked]

Firstly, I know that there are no CPU upgrades for any G5 tower, but if they come out how difficult will it be to change them in the 2.5Ghz tower?

More difficult than the PowerMac G4 and less difficult than putting a drive into the iMac.

But the machine needs to be recalibrated every time the daughtercards are swapped.

The LCS makes the swaps all that much more difficult.

 

[yoda13]

More difficult than the PowerMac G4 and less difficult than putting a drive into the iMac.

But the machine needs to be recalibrated every time the daughtercards are swapped.

The LCS makes the swaps all that much more difficult.

OK, time to make myself sound stupid. When you say that the machine needs to be recalibrated, are you speaking of the cooling system? Or are you speaking of something else?

 

[BeoVir]

I don't know but is this a potential problem?

Wouldn't there be a problem with the bus to processor speed ratio? I mean all the dual G5's have a bus half their speed so I would assume that having a faster processor may screw up some timing stuff. Of course I really dont know anything about computer hardware and am just thinking out loud!!

 

[GUSTO]

The only thing I see OS 10.4 no supporting is maybe the g3 chip. Since all Mac have the g4 or g5 now.

 

[oingoboingo]

The only thing I see OS 10.4 no supporting is maybe the g3 chip. Since all Mac have the g4 or g5 now.

I think there will still be support for the G3. The iBook was equipped with a 900MHz G3 up until the 22nd of October last year, so it has only been approximately 8 months since Apple shipped G3 machines. However, it may not be possible for G3 owners to run all features of OS X 10.4 at full speed, or with all options enabled (I'm thinking some of the eye-candy heavy features might rely on AltiVec).

 

[snickelfritz]

A faster GPU would probably be more beneficial than a faster CPU in Tiger, since CoreImage and CoreVideo are processed entirely on the GPU.
Spotlight might benefit slightly from faster CPU, but it's already practically instantaneous with current processors.

What every Mac owner is going to want for Tiger is a fully supported programmable GPU. (such as the 9800 or some variant of the GF6)
The 6800 is mainly necessary for those who want to use the 30" Cinema Display, since this is currently the only card capable of driving it.