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New PowerMac Model?
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What a lot of messages! Has anyone done a "strings" on the SMU_Neo2 plugin and see what's inside it? Is it bigger or smaller than the G5 PowerMac one?
Speculation on Apple Insider is that SMU stands for "Shared Memory Unit" and this is an expandable multiprocessor PowerMac, not an iMac.
Speculation on Apple Insider is that SMU stands for "Shared Memory Unit" and this is an expandable multiprocessor PowerMac, not an iMac.
I would like a picture from unclezeppy but as many have stated lots of talk,no pictures and from a newbie so what does this mean to most of rumors folks? not much .Talk is cheap and we have plenty of it here. I doubt a G5 could go into the current shell with its supporting hardware.
One thing that is sure is that Imac sales have sucked,its not gaining any market for Apple and with its slow cpu and last in class video(fx5200) and then they want your arm & leg. If Apple wants Imac to compete with other $2000 machines then it needs a lot of help. Even if Apple comes out with a G5 imac i cant but help wonder how they will end up crippling it so not to take away from Powermac. Apple has a very strong history of playing the crippling game with all of its so called consumer lines. Its just to bad that Imac has become Apples worst value.
One thing that is sure is that Imac sales have sucked,its not gaining any market for Apple and with its slow cpu and last in class video(fx5200) and then they want your arm & leg. If Apple wants Imac to compete with other $2000 machines then it needs a lot of help. Even if Apple comes out with a G5 imac i cant but help wonder how they will end up crippling it so not to take away from Powermac. Apple has a very strong history of playing the crippling game with all of its so called consumer lines. Its just to bad that Imac has become Apples worst value.
Dont Hurt Me said:
Most PC manufacturers are using Intel's integrated graphics and not a card, unless you get up into the iMac's pricerange, and even then you're not getting quite as adjustable or elegant a solution. It's true that the machine is getting long in the tooth, and few people here will argue that, but fact of the matter is that just about any machine that has the same features is going to cost about the same at this point.
The one place the iMac loses is in having a lower-clocked G4, and that's not so much of a loss if you compare the heat and noise profiles of its competitors.
Wyrm said:I don't see how you get 2H 2004 for the 97x GR-UL from the slide, since by the same logic the GP-UL would have been released in the beginning of 2003.
The GP-UL was released in the beginning of 2003. Apple didn't release machines using it until six months later.
Hey thatwendigo, i allways think of high end Pcs like say alienware when comparing to imac, for $1700 i can buy a alienware machine that will almost match a powermac G5 let alone smoke a Imac. In this price category they have real video cards. Even base aurora has a 9600xt which is better then what you get in a new dual G5 which has a 9600 pro. Apple needs a model that says look at me with performance to match if its going to bring in new users. current imac is sweet and very nice but its performance is very poor and probably is about the same as a P4 running at 2.0 how long ago did they stop making P4s at 2.0? catch my drift? Anyways after lots of looking i couldnt ever go out and switch to pc. so ill just keep waiting hoping that one day Apple does what it should have done a year ago and that is make a imac that has respectable performance with a decent cpu & gpu.
Apple really needs a computer that calls in the masses(high end consumers) and right now they just dont have one. dual G5 is great for the pro's but a single G4 at 1.25 doesnt cut the mustard in todays age of video games,movie editing and what have you. 26 days and counting
Apple really needs a computer that calls in the masses(high end consumers) and right now they just dont have one. dual G5 is great for the pro's but a single G4 at 1.25 doesnt cut the mustard in todays age of video games,movie editing and what have you. 26 days and counting
thatwendigo said:
Thatwendigo, you may want to read my latest response to your claims that a 970fx iMac isn't possible (post #301, near the end of the "Clearing out G5s?" thread). Simply put, I don't accept your arguments that the 970fx is too hot and power hungry to be used in an iMac. I'm pretty certain that the figures that I provided show that a 970fx-based, G5 iMac is possible.
As to whether an iMac G5 will be introduced at WWDC, that is another question. It's possible that they may just do a speed bump to a 1.5GHz G4 (although one could ask why they waited so long to do that -- more chip supply problems at Motorola?). However, if they could produce a G5-based model running at 1.6GHz or higher then that should produce a very nice performance increase over the current G4s. And I'm sure that Apple marketing would love to have ANY G5-based iMac (even over a similarly clocked G4).
fpnc said:
Funky. I replied to that, but it seems my post was lost.
Well, back to the trenches. I'll have a new one written up before too long.
thatwendio said:
I still think the main place where the iMac loses is still in price. The eMac is essentially the same machine with a CRT as opposed to an LCD, but the price difference is much greater that the cost of an LCD screen (in fact you can pick up an eMac and a 17" Apple Display for $100 less than the cost of the 17" iMac). Explain that pricing scheme.
fpnc said:
I agree there seems to be no logic behind another simple speed bump of the G4's that are in the current iMacs. It has been nine months since the top one went to 1.25 GHz (around the same time the G5's started shipping at the same speeds they are now, so I guess IBM has the same supply problems). I would expect to see a total redesign of the product. I have started to believe that the iMac may be the announcement of the FreeScale (formerly Motorola) e600. I never thought I would agree with thatwendigo
, but I have to say a 2 GHz, G4 with a 400 MHz system bus sounds like a pretty good chip.
Just a point for pjkelnhofer, there does not exist a 2.0 G4 with 400 fsb yada yada yada, there does exist a 970fx 2.0 G5 with 1 gig fsb. now which one could be put into a imac with some engineering today? G5 which one is vaporware? thats right slow old aging G4 that just hit 1.5 after 5 years so come on. please we have had to make due with this chip(g4) 2 years longer then we should have.
Dont Hurt Me said:Just a point for pjkelnhofer, there does not exist a 2.0 G4 with 400 fsb yada yada yada, there does exist a 970fx 2.0 G5 with 1 gig fsb. now which one could be put into a imac with some engineering today? G5 which one is vaporware? thats right slow old aging G4 that just hit 1.5 after 5 years so come on. please we have had to make due with this chip(g4) 2 years longer then we should have.
I understand that, but there is also no 975 or 980 yet (in fact there seems to be not one single official announcement for it), and the IBM 750VX (which many people here pegged to replace the Moto G4) has turned out to be vaporware itself. Whatever IBM's future plan for the 970 line is unknown to everyone except IBM and their customers.
So far the IBM G5 has gone one year with a speed increase despite the introduction of the 970FX, and other than a vague promise from Steve Jobs there is no real evidence that they are going to get any faster soon.
The e600 and e700 are at least announced and publicly planned by Freescale.
I don't dispute the 970FX could be in the iMac in a month, I just think that to simply find a way to put it in an iMac at it's current speeds would not make for much of a WWDC keynote. Let's hope IBM, Apple, etc. have more for us than that.
Dont Hurt Me said:Just a point for pjkelnhofer, there does not exist a 2.0 G4 with 400 fsb yada yada yada, there does exist a 970fx 2.0 G5 with 1 gig fsb. now which one could be put into a imac with some engineering today? G5 which one is vaporware? thats right slow old aging G4 that just hit 1.5 after 5 years so come on. please we have had to make due with this chip(g4) 2 years longer then we should have.
970 - not possible
970fx - possible but the supply is still constrained.
Xserves still show a 4-6 week delay which is better than the 5-7 week delay of the last two months, but still not that great. I say IBM is still having difficulties fabbing enough 970fxs to go around.
Of course, it's possible that Apple will release 970fx iMacs and not ship for 6 weeks during which time IBM will be able to ramp up production. But then, what the heck are they going to put into Power Macs?
dongmin said:
We only know that the 970 & 970 fx are being produced and shipped in products, so we can't really speculate about other processors (well, we can, but with absolutely no certainty)
We also know that the 970fx had or still has some yield issues, and that the shipping of Xserve's has seen a delay because of this. But there is also reason to believe that the 970fx will be the processor in the upcoming powermac revisions.
Isn't it possible that Apple changed their plan a little bit after ibm didn't get through with their end of the deal (so they could update pm's in march) and now they are dividing the 970fx they do get into 2 parts.. not equal parts for that matter.
let me say it in an example. Say Ibm ships 1000 970fx processors per batch to Apple, and Apple uses 700 of them for use in the Xserve's, and holds back 300 for use in the powermac revisions, so they have a sufficient stock to meet the demand when announcing the macs with immediate availiability...
Would that be too far of a stretch? Because I bet they will be very eager to ship and announce products at the same date, and to avoid paper releases as much as they can...
Any thoughts on this?
Yes, it would be like saving the change you get from your weekly trip to McDonald's so you have enough money to take Wolfgang Puck out to eat at the Four Seasons.klaus said:
The XServe G5 is a rather low volume product, holding back anything from the XServe production wouldn't make a dent in the first weeks pre-orders for Rev.B Powermacs.
Sun Baked said:
This is an excellent point. I highly doubt they could squirrel away enough chips to release a new line of PowerMacs (970FX version), and they are trying too hard to make inroads with the Xserve for them to delayed production for some suprise release. If we are going to see a new lineup of G5 powered products (iMacs, PowerMacs or PowerBooks), I feel like our best hope is for some as yet announced 9XX chip that can run at faster speeds and/or at similar speeds with lower power consumption.
blakespot said:
Mac OS X Tiger should support DirectX then... (wave of the hand decree)
This might not be so far off the mark, as XBox2 dev kits from Microsoft include an Apple G5... and do you think the XBox2 is going to just use OpenGL? No. So some work has to be done to port DirectX to work on a PPC platform... hmmmm.
Other than that we have to hope OpenGL org can sort out the ARB vs pure debate before we die of old age.
-Wyrm
SpiceMustFlow said:Macbidouille.com user's found numbers previously... And no Mac follow...
we have a 7,3 ? G5= 7,2, G4 = 3,x
In french:
"La mise à jour 10.3.3 comportait déjà elle aussi un code inconnu jusqu'ici : Power Mac 7,3. Aucune machine frappée de la pomme n'a encore porté ce nom de code. En effet, la série de Powermac actuelle (les G5 quoi) ont pour nom de code Power Mac 7,2. Il faut savoir que les Powermac G4 répondaient eux au nom de code Power Mac 3,x, les Cubes au nom Power Mac 5,1 et les iMac TFT et eMac quant à eux aux noms Power Mac 4,x et 6,x... la liste complète de ces noms de codes se trouve ici : http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=products&subpage=newworld
Or, si l'on regarde maintenant un peu plus la mise à jour 10.3.4, on s'aperçoit qu'il y est fait mention d'un Power Mac 8,1 , ce qui laisse penser qu'il ne s'agit pas du tout d'une mise à niveau mineure mais d'une toute nouvelle machine !
On trouve aussi la référence SMU_Neo2, ce qui peut aussi laisser penser que Neo2 serait une nouvelle version du processeur. Ce qui est certain c'est que Neo2 serait un dérivé du processeur G5 actuel. Mais il est encore difficile d'affirmer qu'il s'agisse d'une version allégée (comme les 970fx des serveurs Xserve) ou boostée (!!!).
Si vous voulez en savoir plus, faites la mise à jour 10.3.4, ouvrez ce fichier :
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleMacRISC4PE.kext/
Contents/info.plist
et faites une recherche avec pour objet "8,1".
Sachant justement que les Powermac G5 et les iMac n'ont pas été revus depuis longtemps, on peut en déduire ce qu'on en veut... ;-)
Je vous laisse rêver... (pour moi le 8,1 est un iMac G5 nouveau design, pour fin juin. Le 7,3 quant à lui sera le powermac G5 mis à jour, même date)."
source: http://www.macbidouille.com
English version of bidouille:
http://www.hardmac.com/
If you can translate the post, writing in english is not easy for me!
"the 10.3.3 update contained a previously unknown model number up to
now: Power Mac 7.3. No current Apple model bore this code. Indeed, the current series of Powermac (G5 what) bears model number Power Mac 7.2. The Powermac G4 bore the model Power Mac 3.x, the Cubes Power Mac 5.1 and iMac TFT and eMac Power Mac 4.x and
6.x... the complete list can be found at: [
url]http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=products&subpage=newworld[/url
]
However, if one now looks a little more at the 10.3.4 update ,
one realizes that mention is made of a Power Mac 8.1, which
leads one to think that it is not a question of the whole of a minor update
but of a very new machine!
One finds also the SMU_Neo2 reference, which can as let think as Neo2
would be a new version of the processor. What is certain it is that
Neo2 would be a derivative of the current G5 processor. But it is
still difficult to affirm that it acts of a reduced version (like the
970fx of the Xserve servers) or boosted (!!!).
If you want to know some more about the 10.3.4 update, open
this file: /System/Library/Extensions/AppleMacRISC4PE.kext/
Contents/info.plist and search for object: "8,1".
Knowing that Powermac G5 and the iMac were not revised
for a long time, one can deduce from them what one wants...; -)
Dream away... (for me the 8,1 is a iMac G5 new design, for the
end of June. The 7,3 for others will be the updated powermac G5...
pjkelnhofer said:I have started to believe that the iMac may be the announcement of the FreeScale (formerly Motorola) e600. I never thought I would agree with thatwendigo
Agree with thatwendingo? I hear there's a 12 step program for that.
A 600e at 2 GHz and 400 MHz FSB would have been a killer system if released in the past. Whether or not it performs as good as a similarly clocked G5, we are in the G5 era and people (myslef included) do not want to buy old technology. Motorola, er, Freescale has announced what they should have done well over a year ago. And who the hell knows when they'll actually ship it. I see these Freescale chips being used in PBs and iBs only.
pjkelnhofer said:
The great thing about fabs is, if you get your process down, you can fab the heck out of thing. Each wafer can hold over 500 fabbed 970s at the 130nm node (so even more at 90nm obviously), minus waste and defects, this is still probably a few hundred good ones. These are then verified and binned (heat/speed/whatever)
From an article in 2003:
"By year's end, IBM may be running 15,000 to 18,000 of the 300-mm wafers per month" (eetimes Article)
Ok, the 970 isn't the only thing they do there at Fishkill, and now they have 130/90/65 nodes in various stages, so assuming they get ok yields, the Fishkill fab can easily fill Apple's needs. So it's pretty binary: either they can make it, and make lots of it, or they can't.
According to Bernie, yes they had some problems at 90nm but IBM innovation has overcome that... so the XServe stuff might have been some of the early low-yield runs, and now they're now fabbing 970fx en masse at 90nm.
Who knows if they are fabbing something else (the mystical 97x etc, but knowing IBM, if it were different enough from the 970, I think we'd hear about it well in advance... of course Apple might be pressuring them to secrecy... hmmm... low probability there)
Whether the 970fx can hit 3Ghz remains to be seen.
I think, theoretically, it is possible, but that remains in the hands of the IBM and Apple engineers to back up Steve's statement.
If I were Steve, I'd be calling my Engineering team everyday saying "Am I going to eat my words? Come'on! Pull out some Apple magic!!! I want 3Ghz! Gimme 3Ghz!"... of course, from what I've heard, Steve might be breathing heavily over their shoulders ("Don't let me down guys... nobody let's Steve down... twice!")
-Wyrm
Wyrm said:Whether the 970fx can hit 3Ghz remains to be seen.
I think, theoretically, it is possible, but that remains in the hands of the IBM and Apple engineers to back up Steve's statement.
If I were Steve, I'd be calling my Engineering team everyday saying "Am I going to eat my words? Come'on! Pull out some Apple magic!!! I want 3Ghz! Gimme 3Ghz!"... of course, from what I've heard, Steve might be breathing heavily over their shoulders ("Don't let me down guys... nobody let's Steve down... twice!")
-Wyrm
It's not really in the hands of Apple engineers at all. It's pretty much all up to IBM. I think that Apple can probably cool anything IBM puts out. They're obviously taken air cooling to a new level with the PM G5 and there's been lots of rumors of Apple working on liquid cooling.
The two big questions for me are: what plans and information was Steve basing his 3.0Ghz promise on? Is the 970fx supposed to be the 3.0Ghz chip, or was it the 975/980 all along. The other question is whether or not the production problems IBM was having have been solved and put them right back on track, or if they're been "solved" and set them back, so that we might see say a 2.6Ghz G5 instead of the 3.0.
many seem to forget that Apple could just engineer a 970 Imac. 975 for powermac, 970 for imac ,sort of like G3 imac vs G4 powermac from a few years ago. 970s have been in production with no problems for a year!dongmin said:
Dont Hurt Me said:
No problems and no speed bumps. Also, there is still no conclusive evidence that the 975 even exists.
spankalee said:
Steve was probably basing the 3Ghz number on the marketa-ganda that IBM was feeding him at the time: ("3Ghz?!? Steve what do you take me for? Of course! E-A-S-Y by next year... we're making the conversion to the 90 node as we speak, and Bernie here is giving me the thumbs up... that is your thumb, right Bernie? Bernie?).
From Bernie's Prague talk it sounds like they HAD problems (past tense), but they have innovated around them (aka redesign). So we will probably only see a 970fx by WWDC. That gives them until the Winter to bring the 97x or the 980 or whatever notation the Power5 UL has.
-Wyrm
klaus said:
I seriously doubt Apple would do this. Why? Accounting. I don't think it would be worthwhile for them to hold back revenue. They can't show a sale on the books until the systems ship. Therefore, wouldn't it be more likely that they would ship as many as they could as fast as they could?
However, I'll throw reason/caution to the wind and indulge you for a moment. Here's a nice rumor:
Apple has actually been manufactoring G5 iMac-like computers for 4 months. They could not hold up the production line so they had to use a large number of the available .90 G5's to keep the line going. This effectively lengthened the wait times for the G5 XServes. While it hurt overall revenue in the short term, Apple had to make this move so as to not shut down the G5-iMac factory and thus incur a larger financial burden. However, the supply problem will mean no new G5 PowerMacs at WWDC. The new PowerMacs will follow two to three months later as G5 supplies increase.
Okay, how's that for wild speculation?