New Ultra Mac?

[MacManiac1224]

I just saw this at MacWhispers:
http://www.envestco2.com/macwhispers/archives/000030.php

I am not sure what to make it of it, but I can say it does not sound that far out. Basically, it says that Apple is going to release new Ultra Mac's that sport 4 and 8 way 970's, and the current Powermac line will go to the Motorola 7457. While I am not happy that the 970 may not come out in the current Power Mac, I think that this is great news for Apple, finally a respectable workstation. Anyway, I am not sure how credible MacWhispers is, so I am not sure how credible this news is, take it with a grain of salt. Anyway,

What do you guys think?

 

[pivo6]

I would wait unil they put one 970 in a computer, before speculating when they will put in 4 or 8.

Glenn

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

I saw this to, who knows? Im waiting for a SUPER CUBE with a 970 at 1.8ghz, 1 pci slot,Ati's 9700, lighted keyboard, 10 gb of mem! Now where and when can i place my order? Anything from apple will be great as long as we dont get another teeny weeny moto bump. If they come out with a 7457 Motochip in a ultramac there is going to be a lot of Primal Screaming going on.

 

[MacManiac1224]

Personally, I think it would be a mistake to put 970's in workstations and not in the current Powermac line, I think this will be bad for sales, and most people would not buy the workstation, Apple has to cater to the semi-professionals and power users who don't need 4 or 8 processors. I think Apple should put 970's in the current line as they just have established it: single, single, and dual, and then for the workstation: dual, quad, and 8-way. Something tells me this is far off, maybe a year or two. IBM might not be able to handle that king of demand with that chip, but who knows? What do you guys think?

 

[Chaszmyr]

The powermac is already quite expensive compared to PC equivalents... I highly doubt Apple will release another line of consumeresque hardware that would be like twice as expensive.

 

[nuckinfutz]

MacWhispers needs to execute

the poor fool who gave them that info.

Powermacs will be Dead in the Water if they attemtp to sell "peashooter" G4's by years end. It doesn't matter if you have 4 G4's if they are half the speed of a Dual Xeon Workstation.

Forget Quad or Octo systems. We'll be lucky enough to get Dual 970's to start. Once the 970 drops to .09 micron perhaps IBM will implement Dual Core capability which we lessen the amount of CPU traces on the Motherboard.

By years end Apple needs

eMac 1Ghz G4
iMac 1.2Ghz -1.42 G4
iBook 1Ghz+ G3
Powermac 1.4, 1.6, Dual 1.8Ghz PPC 970.

Anything less and all the fecking free iApps in the world won't save Apple from oblivion.

PDA...forget it. The market for PDA's is oversaturated and most people are just into using them as glorified addressbooks.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Re: MacWhispers needs to execute

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
the poor fool who gave them that info.

Powermacs will be Dead in the Water if they attemtp to sell "peashooter" G4's by years end. It doesn't matter if you have 4 G4's if they are half the speed of a Dual Xeon Workstation.

Forget Quad or Octo systems. We'll be lucky enough to get Dual 970's to start. Once the 970 drops to .09 micron perhaps IBM will implement Dual Core capability which we lessen the amount of CPU traces on the Motherboard.

By years end Apple needs

eMac 1Ghz G4
iMac 1.2Ghz -1.42 G4
iBook 1Ghz+ G3
Powermac 1.4, 1.6, Dual 1.8Ghz PPC 970.

Anything less and all the fecking free iApps in the world won't save Apple from oblivion.

PDA...forget it. The market for PDA's is oversaturated and most people are just into using them as glorified addressbooks.

Could not have said it better myself this should be the line up. now what about video cards ( dont want to see mx stuff except for emac if your going to be the best act it damn it)

 

[DHagan4755]

I don't see it. Why would Apple further complicate their product line like this? No, the PowerMac G4 will give way to the 970 when it's ready. The G4 will trickle down the line, pretty much like the G3 did when the G4 came out.

 

[macphoria]

Yup. Apple is not dumb enough to use yet another G4 in their professional line of computers. People are fed up with G4 and waiting for G5/970. I certainly am. If they miss the boat this year, it will mean more market share loss.

 

[Catfish_Man]

I *highly* doubt Apple is capable of doing dual, let alone quad or octuple 970s. Doing 4 450MHz DDR buses for the processors alone is NOT trivial. According to discussion on arstechnica, Apple will probably have to use an IBM supplied northbridge chip, and IBM will probably keep the 4/8 (and maybe 2) way chips for their own stuff. A single 970 should be plenty fast, and it'll really get interesting when it transitions to .09 micron.

 

[Sun Baked]

Only one MAJOR problem with this view of reality, the G4 is basically EOL'd in the current pro line -- any future speed bumps and changes are just keeping the corpse twitching.

Think about it -- it's 32-bit addressable right now, which gives us a memory limit of 2-4 GB of memory, and file size and volume limits in HFS+ that people will soon know all about.

The future of the pro-line is a 64-bit chip...

Add to the info wagon, that Motorola actually has already released info on the 7457 and estimated ship dates.

The 7457 is a darn good consumer chip if it was in machines NOW and the 7457-RM should be a good companior to the 970 when the 970 ships, but when are where they'll be used ...