The G5 doesn't work in the Powerbook
In this thread, lots have been asserting this idea it would be possible to put a G5 into a Powerbook. Some are pointing out the current specs have DDR RAM but the processor cannot take advantage of it, so putting a G5 in instead would be a better idea and other such stupidity.
The reason this is stupidity is because the G5 cannot be put into the current Powerbook design, period.
The G5 is not compatable with Motorola's MaxBus architecture! This is why you will never see a G5 upgrade for G4 towers. Even if you could shoehorn a G5 onto the current Powerbook motherboard, would you expect it to perform any better than a G4 Powerbook? The anemic bus has been the bane of G4 performance for a couple years now.
To adapt a G5 to the MaxBus would require a chip of such complexity and expense it would not make any financial sense to produce it. That's not my opinion. It's paraphrased from the Ars Technica articles about the 970 and Hypertransport. Apparenty a lot of people here never bothered to read them proior to the G5's announcement.
Also, regardless of whether a G5 can be underclocked to produce little enough heat to work in a slim Powerbook case, as someone pointed out in another thread, the system controller is a hot runner and its heat dissapation would also have to be taken into account.
In short, the move from a G4 in the Powerbooks to a G5 would be more then a simple change of chip like some here suggest. It would require a complete redesign of the motherboard to Hypertransport.
Also, someone else has implied that people who are in the "no G5's" camp may be that way because they have a financial interest in Motorola. What a load of crap!
Almost everyone here has been dogging on Motorola and their inability to do anything right (except make filp-phones) and said we need to get away from them completely. Does that sound like something MOTO investors would say?
The "yea-G5" group has been doing little more then just saying "OOOoooo! I hope they're G5's!" They have offered little evidence a G5 Powerbook technically is possible at this time, let alone actually going into the updates Tues. They have some figures a G5 processor could run cool if it was underclocked, but other than that I have yet to see anything by them or anyone to show this path is what will happen.
If the "no G5" camp seems a little pessimisstic, perhaps it's because the other half seems to be wearing rose colored glasses with no frames. We're suppoting our view with marketing theory, logic, past upgrade experience, and sometimes charts and photos. I don't think there has been a single rumor on
any rumor site suggesting the new Powerbooks would be G5's for the last three months, except MacOS Rumors. Yet, there is this idea the Powerbooks will be G5's, and it is largely unsupported by, well,
anything.
Thank you. <stepping off soap box>
