PowerBooks have 7457

[ColoJohnBoy]

I just spoke with a good friend of mine (well, my boyfriend) who is an AppleTech in Cupertino. He refused to tell me anything beforehand about the new PowerBooks, but I just asked him and he confirmed:

Apple used the Motorola 7457 G4 processor throughout the entire line.

If you look at the processor specs on Moto's site, you'll see that while the 7457 is capable of 2 MB L3 cache, it doesn't have to have any. Boy said Apple opted to not have L3 because of heat and cost issues, but that by upping the L2, they got better performance than with 256k L2 and 2 MB L3 (At least, that's what he was told).

 

[cb911]

yeah, i though it might be something like that. good to see that they could keep the cost down without losing performance.

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

Apparently they've had them there for the employees to tool around on for a few weeks, and he said it definitely feels snappier, even when doing video editing (which he tried out - FCE). He aslo said Panther will most likely include several key optimizations for the 7457, so once that comes out, you'll notice a difference even over 10.2.7 that comes with it.

 

[panphage]

Re: PowerBooks have 7457

Originally posted by ColoJohnBoy
I just spoke with a good friend of mine (well, my boyfriend) who is an AppleTech in Cupertino. He refused to tell me anything beforehand about the new PowerBooks, but I just asked him and he confirmed:

Apple used the Motorola 7457 G4 processor throughout the entire line.

If you look at the processor specs on Moto's site, you'll see that while the 7457 is capable of 2 MB L3 cache, it doesn't have to have any. Boy said Apple opted to not have L3 because of heat and cost issues, but that by upping the L2, they got better performance than with 256k L2 and 2 MB L3 (At least, that's what he was told).

Then why not use the smaller 7447, which is exactly identical to the 7457 except for the lack of L3 cache? Maybe Moto couldn't actually produce any 47s...

 

[illumin8]

Re: PowerBooks have 7457

Originally posted by ColoJohnBoy
I just spoke with a good friend of mine (well, my boyfriend) who is an AppleTech in Cupertino. He refused to tell me anything beforehand about the new PowerBooks, but I just asked him and he confirmed:

Apple used the Motorola 7457 G4 processor throughout the entire line.

If you look at the processor specs on Moto's site, you'll see that while the 7457 is capable of 2 MB L3 cache, it doesn't have to have any. Boy said Apple opted to not have L3 because of heat and cost issues, but that by upping the L2, they got better performance than with 256k L2 and 2 MB L3 (At least, that's what he was told).

Sorry if I don't quite believe you right off the bat. I think it is highly more likely that Apple used the 7447 because Motorola had problems producing the 7457 in quantity great enough for the PowerBook release. Also, why pay for the 7457 if you aren't adding any L3 cache?

 

[chazmox]

I think that the 7447 is not rated to as high as clock speed ( among other issues ) as the 7457...

But I am just going off the specs on Motorola's summary page...

 

[tomf87]

Re: Re: PowerBooks have 7457

Originally posted by panphage
Then why not use the smaller 7447, which is exactly identical to the 7457 except for the lack of L3 cache? Maybe Moto couldn't actually produce any 47s...

It's not exactly identical.. The 7447 has 360 pins while the 7457 has 483 pins among others...

7447:

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC7447&nodeId=03C1TR046708718653

7457:

http://e-www.motorola.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC7457&nodeId=03C1TR046708718653

 

[ColoJohnBoy]

Check out the front page. No reason given for the use of the 7457, but is indeed the one used. Perhaps is of better quality, or cheaper than the 7447.