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PowerMac G5, iMac G5, eMac Specs
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Should we be skeptical about any or all of these reports? We've heard no mention of EOL reports, no changes in shipping times or refurb prices. MR has already declared their source for the PM at NAB rumor to be unreliable. TS's reputation may be in question right now with the lawsuit, and AI hasn't heard a word on PMs.
MOSR doesn't think PMs are coming soon, but who cares about them right?
And as someone else pointed out, Tiger didn't get announced on the 1st (though they were close)
MOSR doesn't think PMs are coming soon, but who cares about them right?
And as someone else pointed out, Tiger didn't get announced on the 1st (though they were close)
The next PowerMac G5 should have:
- a DVD burner that doesn't make so much noise when it spins up.
- a DVD burner door that doesn't go clunk, clunk
- a DVD burner that recognizes disks instantly instead of the current painful several second wait.
- Black keyboard. The white ones get dirty too easily.
- Single button mouse with wheel.
- No Bluetooth. Bluetooth is just silly.
- A decent build in speaker. Think music not beeps.
- Dual 3GHc CPU, non dual-core. At this point we need individual threads to run faster more than we need more simultaneous threads.
- PCIe slots. There won't be any good stuff for PCI/AGP pretty soon.
- Smaller overall size
- a DVD burner that doesn't make so much noise when it spins up.
- a DVD burner door that doesn't go clunk, clunk
- a DVD burner that recognizes disks instantly instead of the current painful several second wait.
- Black keyboard. The white ones get dirty too easily.
- Single button mouse with wheel.
- No Bluetooth. Bluetooth is just silly.
- A decent build in speaker. Think music not beeps.
- Dual 3GHc CPU, non dual-core. At this point we need individual threads to run faster more than we need more simultaneous threads.
- PCIe slots. There won't be any good stuff for PCI/AGP pretty soon.
- Smaller overall size
adamfilip said:
That's the question for me. I still think liquid cooling for the 2.5 was a stop-gap. If Apple is still having cooling problems, then the 2.7 is liquid cooled and the 2.3 is air cooled. Any higher clock rate would be a heat problem for each cooling method.
The lame clock increases also explains why the rumored release is before the release of Tiger. 10% discount at night of Tiger, with new OS might sway some people to bite.
Zigster said:Thank god Apple has the Ipod biz. They are getting hammered on hardware.
Actually they sold more Macs than they have in years this quarter.
vtprinz said:
Is that the Virgina Tech cluster? Sweet. Yeah, that started a trend that really boosted Apple's street credit on supercomputing clusters.
toontra said:
We're getting a big boost in performance -- with a more efficient operating system, Tiger!
Silly boy.
The 1MB L2 cache rumors are just that, rumors. AFAIK, there's nothing more solid about the specs of this 970MP other than a eWeek rumor and Thinksecret. The specs could be off.daveL said:
Also, I don't see why Apple wouldn't go all duals. They've done it before. I can see a scenario where the top two models are "dual duals" and the bottom just a dual. Well, that's my hope anyways. Given that the iMacs are going to 2.0 ghz, it makes sense that Apple will go all dual to distinguish the two lines.
As I pointed out before, Apple has traditionally moved the middle to the bottom and top to the middle in their updates. A dual 2.0 ghz (single core) is currently the middle, so it'd fall logically into the bottom in the next update.
With that said, I'm 50-50 at this point. The dual core scenario seems too good to be true. But it's gotta happen sooner or later. The recent revision to the OS to accomodate 4 processors seems to support the dual core scenario. The 512k cache seems to argue against it.
Well, I don't have time to read the whole thread to see if this has been said, but the more I think about it, the separation between 2.5 and 2.7 is so slight that unless Apple is going to put something great only in the 2.7, there isn't enough product differentiation. The chance of the 2.7 being MP, I think, is quite high.
DPazdanISU said:wtf is going on with apple stock. Are stock holders idiots. I would assume nobody would want to cash out until apple starts declining in sales....i don't know its ilogical to me! I'm just venting cuz i bought some recently
What you see today is institutional sell off, not individual investors. The street always wants better news than is realistic. Apple had their best Q2 ever and sold more Macs and More iPods that most predicted. Even more importantly, they predicted similar sales for Q3, which is traditionally the slowest quarter (meaning there's relative growth.)
It's just the street. If you're a smart individual investor you may take this chance to jump into Apple in the sub $40 range ($37 as I type this). Most analysts have a $50 to $60 price target, which would be a sweet profit. Looking at these numbers I think the long term ramifications are all positive.
I bought shares at $16 before it split. Believe me, if I hadn't taken an 80% profit (unheard of most of the time) in the $28 range I would have held for a lot longer. That was just before it took off. Either way my IRA is sitting pretty as a result.
Beck446 said:
Agreed. I think that the separation is so slight (8%) that it indicates there's something in the spec's we're not seeing. I think a dual core chip is most likely-- and the faster (HT2?) bus and higher L2 cache will contribute significantly.
I am surprised at the negativity in this thread.
What you negative people don't realise is that Intel have taken 3 years to get an 800MHz increase to a 3GHz processor. Intel made very loud sounds about 5GHz and even 10GHz processors by 2006/7, and look what happened. 90nm really didn't work well for Intel, whereas for AMD it cut down power consumption significantly, but clock speed increases are only now starting to happen.
This is why AMD went dual-core (it has been on their roadmap for 6 years) and Intel suddenly did the same when they realised their 90nm process sucked for fast transistors.
The fastest single core AMD processor today is 2.6GHz. 2.8GHz will be released soon, in the FX range anyway (i.e., uniprocessor only). A dual single-core processor at 2.7GHz is not that bad at all, it is competitive. AMD's upcoming dual-cores will be at 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2GHz, and 2.4GHz for the desktop Athlon 64 (i.e., no dual-dual 2.4GHz option, only dual-dual 2.2GHz Opteron at high prices). The Intel dual-core solution will not be available for multi-processor options until 2006, the current dual-core solutions are a stop-gap desktop measure, meaning at most two cores in a system, and at rather low speeds too. The AMD dual-core chips will cream the Intel ones in most benchmarks.
Looking at the specs, it seems that all three machines are merely incremental updates. The improved graphics capability is good as it was required, and the 512MB RAM is also good as it was required. Simple speed bumps. The PowerMac will be single-core processors, Apple surely would want to be more vocal about dual dual-core 2.7GHz systems!
This doesn't preclude a major update in 4-6 months time though with dual-core G5s in all the G5 systems, and so on. Apple just had to make their current desktop lineup less stale. Which is good, I'd rather incremental specification updates than no updates, and I think the updates are about keeping Apple competitive, which they will. I'd hope for some price cuts too, but I'm not holding out on this aspect!
The good news for me is that it seems that incremental iBook and PowerBook updates aren't happening, so maybe there will be a real new iBook and PowerBook release within the next month. The sad loner system will be the Mac Mini with its weak graphics and base RAM configuration - I imagine that there'll be an update mid-year.
What you negative people don't realise is that Intel have taken 3 years to get an 800MHz increase to a 3GHz processor. Intel made very loud sounds about 5GHz and even 10GHz processors by 2006/7, and look what happened. 90nm really didn't work well for Intel, whereas for AMD it cut down power consumption significantly, but clock speed increases are only now starting to happen.
This is why AMD went dual-core (it has been on their roadmap for 6 years) and Intel suddenly did the same when they realised their 90nm process sucked for fast transistors.
The fastest single core AMD processor today is 2.6GHz. 2.8GHz will be released soon, in the FX range anyway (i.e., uniprocessor only). A dual single-core processor at 2.7GHz is not that bad at all, it is competitive. AMD's upcoming dual-cores will be at 1.8, 2.0 and 2.2GHz, and 2.4GHz for the desktop Athlon 64 (i.e., no dual-dual 2.4GHz option, only dual-dual 2.2GHz Opteron at high prices). The Intel dual-core solution will not be available for multi-processor options until 2006, the current dual-core solutions are a stop-gap desktop measure, meaning at most two cores in a system, and at rather low speeds too. The AMD dual-core chips will cream the Intel ones in most benchmarks.
Looking at the specs, it seems that all three machines are merely incremental updates. The improved graphics capability is good as it was required, and the 512MB RAM is also good as it was required. Simple speed bumps. The PowerMac will be single-core processors, Apple surely would want to be more vocal about dual dual-core 2.7GHz systems!
This doesn't preclude a major update in 4-6 months time though with dual-core G5s in all the G5 systems, and so on. Apple just had to make their current desktop lineup less stale. Which is good, I'd rather incremental specification updates than no updates, and I think the updates are about keeping Apple competitive, which they will. I'd hope for some price cuts too, but I'm not holding out on this aspect!
The good news for me is that it seems that incremental iBook and PowerBook updates aren't happening, so maybe there will be a real new iBook and PowerBook release within the next month. The sad loner system will be the Mac Mini with its weak graphics and base RAM configuration - I imagine that there'll be an update mid-year.
Rating the 9600
Jeez - you turn your head for a few hours, and suddenly the thread's up to nine pages long!!
I don't know if anyone's mentioned it already, but how does the 128MB Radeon 9600 rate against other cards?
I'm still on my little Cube, but upped the GPU to a Radeon 7500 some time ago. That was about the last time I actually looked around at graphics cards...
But with THIS new iMac upgrade, I'll put my order in as soon as they become available.
Jeez - you turn your head for a few hours, and suddenly the thread's up to nine pages long!!
I don't know if anyone's mentioned it already, but how does the 128MB Radeon 9600 rate against other cards?
I'm still on my little Cube, but upped the GPU to a Radeon 7500 some time ago. That was about the last time I actually looked around at graphics cards...
But with THIS new iMac upgrade, I'll put my order in as soon as they become available.
wow, different strokes for different folks I guess...
Mine isn't as noisy as your message seems to suggest (?)
I prefer the white keyboards but it's not a big deal to me. I agree a single button mouse with a scrollwheel would be very, very nice.
Yikes! I think not getting bluetooth is just silly. BT sync to my phone, BT connecting my phone to Address book (for call logging, sending SMS, and dialling), plus wireless keyboard and mouse (and headset with Tiger).
broken_keyboard said:
Mine isn't as noisy as your message seems to suggest (?)
broken_keyboard said:
I prefer the white keyboards but it's not a big deal to me. I agree a single button mouse with a scrollwheel would be very, very nice.
broken_keyboard said:
Yikes! I think not getting bluetooth is just silly. BT sync to my phone, BT connecting my phone to Address book (for call logging, sending SMS, and dialling), plus wireless keyboard and mouse (and headset with Tiger).
No you're right that 512K per processor would be too little. But I'm hoping it's a typo on Thinksecret's part and that it's actually 512K per core. TS maintains that their sources can't confirm whether it's dual cores or not. So the 512K cache figure must be less than clear.ts1973 said:
Edit: I just checked the leaked IBM .doc regarding 970MP thermal diodes, and it does indeed say 1MB of L2 per core. So, bad news if TS rumors are true.
ManchesterTrix said:
That has nothing to do with his gripe. If Apple had faster hardware they would be selling it. The problem has been IBM/Moto falling behind Intel/AMD.
He's not even complaining about pricing, he's complaining about upper-end performance.
Most PowerMac users are willing to pay a premium for top-end performance, but they aren't willing to pay a premium for an Apple aluminum case.
In fact, I would say Apple's operating strategy relies on having close to top-of-the-line hardware. That's how they can charge premium prices for PowerMacs and PowerBooks, and have decently priced and decently spec'ed consumer lines.
But due to lack of progress at the high-end, the entire product line is getting wonkier (iBook almost equals PBook), and Apple ends up having to cripple even consumer level machines to maintain distinction of the high-end machines.
Hardware is now the main problem Apple faces, otherwise it would be firing on ALL cylinders. It's not a critical blow, but is a signficant problem that MUST be solved. By Apple, IBM, Freescale, whatever or whoever...
FireArse said:
go to newegg.com and buy the NEC 3520A for $65 or so. 16X, DL, easy to install, then download Patchburn 3. Check out xlr8yourmac.com for all sorts of resources on upgrading optical drives.
Little Endian said:
1st of all let me say that I don't are 2 craps about Intel except for the Pentium M which is an awesome cpu. I used the Pentium D as an example because it will be out in a month and at a low cost $240 (DC 2.8ghz) , $280(DC 3.0ghz) , $380(DC 3.2ghz).
Unlike the G5 you care not stuck with what you pay for , as you can clearly see here http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050405/index.html .
Tomshardware OC'd this CPU to a Dual 4ghz with little effort , and that's scary.
Once AMD take the curtain off the DC stuff everyone is expection mindblowing numbers, and I don't care about barefeats bias results and tests, by the way the Dual G5's only one 2 of those test and got owned ever where else , expeciually when it came to the SMP test vs. the FX-55.
you see in the PC world no one plays by the vendor rules .....meaning staying at stock speed. Every one 14yrs old and up who build's a PC OC's the crap outta every CPU. you wanna see something interesting look here....http://www.overclockers.com/tips00758/ . now that's what i call impressive.
And sometime next year AMD will be moving to a newer platform that will support DDR2-667 and Virtualization(hypertreading)....http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22531 .
kiwi_the_iwik said:Jeez - you turn your head for a few hours, and suddenly the thread's up to nine pages long!!
I don't know if anyone's mentioned it already, but how does the 128MB Radeon 9600 rate against other cards?
I'm still on my little Cube, but upped the GPU to a Radeon 7500 some time ago. That was about the last time I actually looked around at graphics cards...
But with THIS new iMac upgrade, I'll put my order in as soon as they become available.
Closest comparison to the 9600 would be the FX 5700. To be honest if that is going to be the GPU upgrade for the iMac Im totally under whelmed! With cards not that far away running a 32 pipeline architecture or even the current crop running 16 pipes putting a 4 pipe card in a £1300 computer is just criminal.
I can understand that heat would be and issue but at the very least the imac should be shipping with a 6200 /6600 or a mobility X700 or X800. None of those would produce enough heat to be and issue, well perhaps the 6600GT might be pushing it.