New PowerMacs Released

[Pauls]

Apple advertised the new PowerMac range as built on Xserve architecture. If you refer back to xinet's benchmark test of the xserve you will see the old dp powermac model included in the benchmark adn how much of an improvement the xserve was even though they both had dual 1GHz cpu's — http://www.xinet.com/benchmarks/benchmarks.2002/

This should give some indication that today's offering from apple is not just a speed bump, but a serious increase in speed and bandwidth. I for one am glad that apple is working on performance across the board.

For me, it's not enough to look at the figures in isolation. Look at the whole picture, compare benchmark tests, set up your own benchmark tests and try it in the shops. Personal experience is the best judge of speed. Get to know the tasks where you need better performance and try them out on as many machines as possible, including wintel machines. Don't just buy a machine on spec, buy it when you know how it will make your life better.

 

[DannyZR2]

That site shows an Xserve running OSX Server while the Dual 1ghz G4 tower is running regular OS X.. I wonder how much that had to do with it..

Barefeats showed a test with xserve and the previous top-end dual 1ghz g4 and there was very little difference in perfmorance between the two...

 

[Cappy]

Originally posted by cyberfunk


OH dear, here comes the whole DDR vs RDRAM thing...

From what I can see RDRAM is a struggling "standard" that has tapped most of it's potential already, and DDR 400 supposedly beats the best RDRAM. Whats more, RDRAM is expensive and proprietary, and requires obnoxious fees to RamBus.

I'm not even going to start on RamBus the company and it's sleazy tactics.

Company aside from what I've seen users are just beginning to see the benefits of the technology. Unless someone can point to some hard facts the latest rev of rambus eats ddr for lunch although dual channel ddr and the forthcoming qdr should give rambus a run for its money.

 

[whiskeybravo]

I've read the vast majority of this thread with great interest. I've never bought into the PeeCee vs Mac comparisons/debate. As a user of both systems for 18 years (that right, Mac 128k right out of the box) I will probably never have anything but a Mac at home even though I will probably have to work with a PC at work for the rest of my career (maybe I should change careers?). I firmly believe that there isn't anything that can't be done better on a Mac than on a PC. Notice I didn't say faster.

In any event, Apple made my new computer decision relatively easy. While I love the new powermacs, I find them an uncompelling value. In order to equip the low end powermac roughly equal to the 17" iMac, you end up with a computer that costs more than $700 extraeven after the $200 rebate on the display. (substitute superdrive, larger HD, add 17" studio display).

As a home user, I don't see $700 extra value in two processors and the ability to have 4 hard drives. Hell, I can buy a whole G3 iMac for my kids for $799! (Then I could cluster them along with my StarMax and...oh never mind) Of course if I was making my living with my Mac, it would be a different story.

So I'm the proud owner of a 17" iMac and not the least bit envious of the new PM's.

 

[mdurg]

The "I can build a peecee for under for $100 out of baling twine and duct tape that will outdo the fastest Mac around" types probably would also drop a monsterous engine inside of a rusted '78 Cordoba. Sure, you've got horsepower, and it was cheap, but good luck getting it to run consistently well, and you're still stuck with a lousy experience driving it.

Why do you "types" always assume the worst? When I hand build a PC, EVERY component is the best you can get. But that's just me. Why do you assume it's a lousy experience? Have you ever built a peecee? OK Macs are the best, Steve has some more cool-aid for you to drink.

As for Apple, I almost bought the dual 1 gig last night. I susbstituted the Combo drive for the Superdrive and it was $200 cheaper. I'd use the combo far more since it's faster. But I chickened out. I'm going to wait until after the 20th, the date of my AMEX statement. Have a lot of charges for this month and I don't want the accountant to get all over me

It's too bad this thread has degenerated into a Mac vs PC thing. Everyone has to realize that one or the other is not the be all end all. Not all PCs are junk like many of you would like to beleive. Personally I like and use both. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. And in a few weeks I will have a nice brand spanking new dual 1 gig sitting next to my hand built XP2100+ where, at least in my office, they will coexist peacefully.

 

[kenohki]

Re: What's the Big Deal?

Originally posted by burleypokey
I am just posting here to try to bump this up to the record. Little help here!

I am really trying to understand this obsession so many people have with the chip architectures and how they compare to this or that. Seems to me to very reminiscent of a group of good old boys drinking some MGD discussing which is better, Ford or Chevy?

For me, the reason I'm concerned is that I would like to be able to go to my boss and say, "Hey, this Mac over here is a great platform. It's now Unix based and has the same or greater amount of processor power as our NT workstations. Let's replace some of our NT boxes (including mine ) with them and see what happens."

If we had similar performance I might not get laughed at and might be taken seriously. And if we had similar performance I might be able to get them in. And if we had similar performance, I know our engineers would like the platform much better than the W2K junk they have today. But the processors aren't there yet for most tasks.

 

[MacArtist]

Originally posted by bretm
Um hmm. Yeah. Screw airport too. Wires are so much more fun! And dontca just love all those huge-a power supplies all over the place for the zips, external firewire drives, etc.?

It's called USB bus powered, no big bulky powersupply. And if you work on more than one tower or a tower and portable, what are you going to do buy a zip for each computer? This coming from all of the people b****ing about the price of the towers.

Originally posted by bretm
Wasn't it apple that ditched the floppy because they wanted everyone going towards zip at least?
At the time Apple ditched the floppy in favor of the zip, CD-R/RW was too expensive and too slow. ~$700-$1000 Zip was the most viable mas storage media. Now that's not the case, zip drive int ~$100 from apple, zip disks 4 for $55.95. CD-RW $229 from apple, CD-Rs 50 for $29.95.

Originally posted by bretm
Wasn't it apple that had the imac commercial focusing on the number of wires coming out of the machine? Wasn't it apple installing airport capability in their computers?

The iMac was marketed as easy to set up with only having one wire to plug in. Anyone with more than the keyboard and mouse had to get a hub. As for airport I never said anything about it.

Originally posted by bretm
And if hubs are so cheap, how 'bout they stick a whole bunch of usb ports on the front of the computer? The side at least.

I have my keyboard, mouse, trackball, graphics tablet, 2 printers, scanner, usb headphone/mic, and soon I'll have a digital camera. That's 8 usb devices, and since I don't have a Studio Display, I'd need to have 5 more usb ports on my tower to use all of my usb devices without hubs.

Originally posted by bretm
I don't think SJ would agree that external zips are better. Have you ever checked the speed difference? USB zip drives are amazingly slow. Horribly slow. The internal zip drives are running off an ata 66. A whole zip disk in less than a minute. Externals can take 5-10 minutes if it's got a lot of smaller files.

And why would we want to walk around with a zip drive and a zip disk in it? I f we all agreed this was a more productive route, wouldn't it even be more productive to buy an external usb drive for the same price and carry it around instead?

I don't deny that usb zips are slower than internals, but it's more ecconomical to buy one external zip drive for use with multiple computers than it is to buy multiple zip drives for multiple computers.

Originally posted by bretm
Let's not make excuses for apple. They do do stupid and rash things. They learn from them. They're either transitioning, or they're going to be doing a lot of learning. People are going to backlash on the style thing over the function. We can accept great style even if it lacks function. But the latest batch has dropped function like the internal zip AND the style is in question.

Me, I like the lower air ports. Looks fast. But the big nasty doors for the optical is butt ugly. Why not just have 2 quicksilver type doors?

Yes Apple does make rash dessions, I'm not making excusses for them. And if you really want an internal zip, I'm sure that they'll probably make an installation kit for the second optical bay, which I may add has been a request of many people since the B&W G3s were introduced.

As for the new look of the optical bays, it's a split, some like them, and some don't. I'll tell you one thing though, no matter what design they come up with, some will like it and some wont. You can't please everyone

 

[MacArtist]

Re: Re: Question about RAM

Originally posted by G4scott


From Apple's tech specs:

Four DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM using one of the following:
256MB DIMMs (64-bit-wide, 128-Mbit)
512MB DIMMs (64-bit-wide, 256-Mbit)

Hope it helps...

One of the things that I want to know, is if it only supports up to 2 gb of ram... I saw a pee-cee mobo on e-bay with 3 ddr ram slots, and it said it could take 3gb of ram... If they do make 1gb ram chips, will they work in these new PowerMacs?

Theoreticly it should support 4GB ram unless Apple did something to govern the amount of ram each slot can hold. However 1GB DDR333 chips aren't readily available and 1GB PC2100 chips start at $324.

 

[Pauls]

Originally posted by DannyZR2
That site shows an Xserve running OSX Server while the Dual 1ghz G4 tower is running regular OS X.. I wonder how much that had to do with it..

Barefeats showed a test with xserve and the previous top-end dual 1ghz g4 and there was very little difference in perfmorance between the two...

Do you have a URL for the Barefeats test?

What's interesting about the xinet test is that as the load of simultaneous processes increases, the differences between test machines become apparent. The graph shows that most machines were closely matched with only one process run at a time. The early 1GHz DP PM didn't perform as well under the increased load of simultaneous processes as the xserve but was comparable in single process loads.

This looks like an important point to keep in mind when comparing benchmark tests.

The new powermacs may well show their stripes in intense multithreaded activities such as processing large numbers of images simultaneously, or running many concurrent background tasks.

 

[MacArtist]

Re: 5.1 on a mac

Originally posted by DannyZR2
I bet there are some USB 5.1 solutions out there, but I'd say go get one of those audigy sound cards, or whatever sound card for mac that will do 5.1 and pop it in the pci slot.. that probably be the easiest way.

The Soundblaster cards don't work with OS X.

 

[MacArtist]

Originally posted by DannyZR2
I really can't complain if I get the 867 "lowend".. ha!

I was looking for a refurbed dual 800 machine for around 1999-2199 and now I can have more cpu power, ddr ram, audio in, dual optical bays, and a better vid card.. for $1699..

I'll probably sell the combo drive out of it and buy the superdrive from macsales.com for $299 (ANYONE INTERESTED????) and then I'll be set!!!

I've got a 24x cd burner in the PEECEE that I'll through in, and get another 256MB 266 RAM and I cant complain.. fastest computer i'll have ever used in my life! (including my xp1800+ system)

CAN"T WAIT!

Final Cut Pro on X.2 HERE I COME!!!!!!!!!

BTO it with the superdrive, it's the only way to get iDVD. Other wise you have to drop $999 for DVD Studio pro. And as a $200 upgrade from Apple it's worth it.

 

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by MacArtist

BTO it with the superdrive, it's the only way to get iDVD. Other wise you have to drop $999 for DVD Studio pro. And as a $200 upgrade from Apple it's worth it.

... or you can pay $19.95 for iDVD 2.1
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M8755ZM/A

 

[bretm]

Originally posted by MacArtist

BTO it with the superdrive, it's the only way to get iDVD. Other wise you have to drop $999 for DVD Studio pro. And as a $200 upgrade from Apple it's worth it.

You can buy the superdrive any where you want. As long as it's an A03 or A04.

I've got an A03 in my G4 350agp, as well as an extra 80gig internal, and an internal zip drive. I've also thrown in a a 7000 video card. I'm running OSX.1.5 all the time and in general operations, the box doesn't feel much less snappy than a dual gig. Rendering in final cut pro is a different matter. Although not as much as you'd think. A 3 sec render of a dissolve in a dual gig is only about 8 secs in my G4 350.

That new sonnet 867mhz G4 processor upgrade is looking pretty decent right now! ($400 I think)

 

[G4scott]

Re: No Fan in the PowerMac

Originally posted by cbrantly
One thing that everyone seems to be overlooking is that the PowerMac has a larger heatsink and NO FAN! There were a bunch of people complaining on the message boards about how loud this new PowerMac was going to be...and then Apple releases it with no fan. I love Apple, and I hate how pessimistic a lot of rumormongers are.

Actually, it has at least 2 fans. One by the motherboard that sucks heat from the optical drives when the case is closed, and another fan that goes the whole width of the computer, right in front of the heat sink (when it's closed). When you think about it, you really need the fans. With dual 1.25 ghz, 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives, and everything else in the thing, you'd have to be insane not to have fans. I have a friend whose video card had a heat sink that would burn you if you touched it while it was running...

Some of my other questions: Does this thing have the same type of power supply as the xServe, or at least a slimmer than normal power supply? In the pictures, you can see that it must be to have the PCI cards fit... Which leads to another question. Where would you run the cables for SCSI hard drives from a PCI SCSI card? Would you have to run them over the mobo, or is there a way to route them under it?

And my other question: Can you just put any ATA CD drive in the second bay? That way, I don't have to shell out $250 for another DVD drive and CD burner. I only need 1 burner and 1 regular CD drive.

 

[locovaca]

Originally posted by DannyZR2
Give it a break and figure it out!

On a PC EVERYTHING goes through the system bus.. NOT SO on a Powermac.. Each thing has it's own dedicated bus to keep from hogging the main system bus.

check out the article on zdnet...

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-949574.html

"But Joswiak defended what apparently is a small increase in the system bus.

'Our architecture is tough to compare to a PC bus, because we don't run everything off the same bus the way a PC does,' he said. 'A PC may have a 533MHz bus, but it's putting everything through that bus--whereas, we put everything on its own dedicated bus.'"

So, since an Apple marketing rep says that, it's fact?

Well sir, I'm afraid he's wrong. The truth is that the Apple System Controller is 95% similar in design to a typical x86 architecture design.

A typical PC design consists of two chips, the north bridge and the south bridge (with Intel being stupid and calling theirs different to make it sound better). A bridge is just a seperate controller, and the north/south designation is only the describe what each does. One of the misconceptions is that, since it has the designation "bridge", it slows things down. Call them chips, call them whatever you want, they're not like an ethernet bridge or anything.

The North Bridge does:
CPU Communications (FSB Bus connects here)
Memory Communications (Memory Bus Connects Here)
AGP Communications (AGP bus connects here)

The South Bridge does:
PCI Bus Control
USB Control
Integrated Video (if provided through the South Bridge and not an external chip or AGP)
Integrated Sound (if provided through the South Bridge and not an external chip)
Integrated Network (again, if not provided by an external chip)
Standard IDE (RAID functions are on the PCI bus)
Audio-Modem Riser slot functionality
Hardware Monitoring


The two bridges are usually connected nowadays by a pretty quick link, usually .5 GB/s in tranfer rates. The used to be connected via the PCI bus, which made it slow, but the link is more than sufficient for the traffic that goes from the South Bridge to the North Bridge.


The only difference between these two is that standard X86 chipsets will split it up among two different chips (although some of the newer boards are coming out with one big chip). This is usually done to lower costs (since it is much easier to make a pair of 400 pin chips than one 800 pin chip. You get fewer problems with heat dissipation, quality control, etc.). Otherwise Apple is no different nor better than x86- they all use the exact same technology, just implemented ever so slightly differently.

 

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by MacArtist
I have my keyboard, mouse, trackball, graphics tablet, 2 printers, scanner, usb headphone/mic, and soon I'll have a digital camera. That's 8 usb devices, and since I don't have a Studio Display, I'd need to have 5 more usb ports on my tower to use all of my usb devices without hubs.

Not necessarily. You could use the built-in USB ports on the back plus a USB card for your keyboard, mouse, trackball, graphics tablet, 2 printers, scanner, and headphone/mic. That leaves only one item (your digital camera) that you need fast plug-and-play access to, thus the point of having at least one FW and USB port on the front.

 

[stevesien]

New PowerMAcs

OK here is my 2 cents worth, as if anyone cares, well I do, anyway. The problem as I see it is this, at least for persons like me, I work with CAD and Photo software most days. Therefore every second I have to sit and wait for screen redraws etc. really add up, therefore I want the fastest machine I can get. A thousand dollars more for a better machine, that will save me from thousands of wasted, impatient minutes is a very acceptable expense, at least to an impatient person like me.
BUT, a thousand dollars or even a few hundred more for a SLOWER machine!!!!! Can't do it. As much as I want to. IF I fork over 4-6000 dollars I want the best available.
The new machines to me are so out of date already, it really makes me wonder WTF IS apple DOING? And a 6-8 week wait for the 1.25s?? What have they been waiting for?
I would be putting out for a new PM but like I said these are already out of date.
I hope APPLE realizes they are losing a lot of sales from people like me. If I fork over 4-6000 I want to feel I won't feel like I got last years goods. Therefore I have to wait till they catch up.
I bought an iMac Flat g4 800, I was disappointed with that too. It is a great design but it is so unresponsive FOR A BRAND NEW MACHINE, I have an Athlon 800 right beside it with an older graphics card and the same RAM 768mb and the Athlon is peppier with everything. Just scrolling a web page or clicking on something , it's like the G4 has honey poured over it or something, it is just sluggish again FOR a Brand NEW machine, whats up with that?
Ok I am done. Let me have it.
STeve

 

[DharvaBinky]

OS X server & PC hardware followup

Just was reading some benchmarks between a dual 1GHz quicksilver PM and the Xserve and someone wanted to know the difference between OS X server and OS X client.

Answer:

None.

Well, ok, As far as system performance and kernel and stuff is concerned, there's no difference. As far as we've been able to determine in house, the difference between OS X and OS X server is the fact that OS X server includes WebObjects and QuickTime Streaming Server and a couple of other goodies. But the underlying OS is identical.

Besides... considering that Apple is battling an image problem concerning the speed of their machines, it would seem that they'd ship the fastest (most optimized) OS available on all platforms. Hobbling the client would do nothing but p*ss us all off. <grin>

Also, there's been some significant misunderstanding regarding the PC specs I quoted yesterday versus the Mac specs. The PC specs I quoted are a completely built system, unpack the box, set it up, turn it on, it goes. well... we've all seen the Windows/Mac setup simplicity shoot out from back in the day, so... yeah, it doesn't "go", you have to type in this that and the other and do WPA and blah blah, but you get the point.

Additionally, the system I quoted has WinXP Pro included to bring it to "parity" with MacOS X... as far as latest versions are concerned. Now that doesn't mean there's true feature Parity, the both lack things the other has, but it's their latest. And for Stability concerns. I'm on OS 10.1.5 at home, and have never had a kernel panic. I'm on Win2kPro at home, and have never had a BSOD. <shrug> Both seem really stable to me.

So it comes to this, I guess:

Apple wants you to have a computer running an OS that is a productive tool that allows you to work and play as you see fit.

Micros*ft wants you to have a computer running an OS that is your plastic pal that's fun to be with.



Dharvabinky

 

[Dave Marsh]

Swapping out combo drive issue

Originally posted by DannyZR2
I really can't complain if I get the 867 "lowend".. ha!

I was looking for a refurbed dual 800 machine for around 1999-2199 and now I can have more cpu power, ddr ram, audio in, dual optical bays, and a better vid card.. for $1699..

I'll probably sell the combo drive out of it and buy the superdrive from macsales.com for $299 (ANYONE INTERESTED????) and then I'll be set!!!

Careful...if you plan to use iDVD to burn to your new Superdrive you may have a problem. Their consumer iDVD app is designed specifically to work ONLY with the Apple built-in drive. In fact, they just stopped a third party from selling an enabler to be able to use this app to burn to the third party Superdrive. So, if you get the Superdrive from a third party, you'll have to use either Apple's PRO version of iDVD, or a third party app.

 

[eric_n_dfw]

Re: Swapping out combo drive issue

Originally posted by Dave Marsh


Careful...if you plan to use iDVD to burn to your new Superdrive you may have a problem. Their consumer iDVD app is designed specifically to work ONLY with the Apple built-in drive. In fact, they just stopped a third party from selling an enabler to be able to use this app to burn to the third party Superdrive. So, if you get the Superdrive from a third party, you'll have to use either Apple's PRO version of iDVD, or a third party app.

Um, there is no "Pro" version of iDVD - did you mean DVD Studio Pro? (which is in NO WAY iDVD - it's huge, like comparing FCP to iMovie)

Check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com - they have a database of users who have put DVD-R drives (as well as any other kind of drive you can think of) in thier Mac's. There's people with Beige G3's (upgraded to G4's) running iDVD 2 on Mac OS X with Pioneer DVD-R drives.

I'm presuming the third party enabler you speak of is from OWC. It was only needed for Firewire DVD-R's and iDVD. Internal drives work with iDVD without any "enablers" (aka "Hacks" ;-) )

-Eric S.

 

[FatTony]

Originally posted by Hemingray
Oh, fantastic... has anyone else noticed that we can no longer order a ZIP drive for the second bay?! That ticks me off.

I know, and you can't get a SyQuest or Bernoulli drive either. I mean, really...Apple dropped the ball.[/sarcasm]

Honestly, just order one from a third party and install it. So what if you have to alter the front panel. Who knows, maybe someone will make a face plate to match these new cases.

 

[PyroTurtle]

ok, i'm leaving town, so if someone could e-mail me about the usb 5.1 or anything that has actually links to where i can buy something that does 5.1, please feel free to e-mail me, thankx everybody

 

[Dave Marsh]

Re: Re: Swapping out combo drive issue

Originally posted by eric_n_dfw

Um, there is no "Pro" version of iDVD - did you mean DVD Studio Pro? (which is in NO WAY iDVD - it's huge, like comparing FCP to iMovie)

I'm presuming the third party enabler you speak of is from OWC. It was only needed for Firewire DVD-R's and iDVD. Internal drives work with iDVD without any "enablers" (aka "Hacks" ;-) )

-Eric S.

Yes...I was referring to DVD Studio Pro, and yes it's a big app well out of iDVD's league. I was looking around for a Superdrive to use with my graphite AGP tower to play around with when I discovered the iDVD limitation with third party external drives.

Thanks for clarifying the OWC issue. That helps...

 

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by FatTony


I know, and you can't get a SyQuest or Bernoulli drive either. I mean, really...Apple dropped the ball.[/sarcasm]

Oh, please... Right, you forgot Jaz and floppies, too.

I dunno about where you are, but where I am our graphic design firms still use zips a lot. It would have been thoughtful for Apple to include a Zip option for the second bay instead of "optical or nothing". A lot of us have no use for a second optical drive, but we DO have use for removable media for quick swaps. I realize Zips are going the way of floppies, but they're still a viable media.

 

[FatTony]

And MO drives, too.

I'm sorry, Hemingray, I couldn't resist. You're right, of course. There are tons of zips out there. I just don't know about expecting Apple to support it as a BTO option. I'm not sure about how much that would cost them versus the return on that investment.

I wasn't being sarcastic about the case mod, though. I have put some interesting things inside alot of cases. Mostly because the power supplies of old external drives died. I'm not sure how the optical drop-down drawer works on the new case, but you probably wouldn't have to cut the case to get a 3rd party zip in there.