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PowerMac G5 Revision in Jan 2004?

Re: hmmm . .

Originally posted by rikers_mailbox
With these updates coming so quickly, I hope Apple can keep up the pace beyond the 2.5 or 3.0 ghz G5s. Otherwise they'll be dead in the water.

I wonder what Apple/IBM has up their sleeve when Steve says "the PowerPC roadmap -- which you might have heard about already -- is really good, I can't talk about it, but it's _really good_ what's coming."

a dual 8 ghz G6? :D
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These IBM processors are based on IBM's own PowerPC designs for it's own high-end servers, Power4, Power5, etc...

Considering IBM is waging it's own performance wars with other HPC (High Performance Computing) hardware vendors, they wont let these processor designs get stagnant for a heartbeat.
 
Well, I am in the market for a new G5 early next year. I hope they get as close to 3Ghz as possible by early new year. Most likely it will be a 2.5Ghz. I hope they do include a slightly better graphics cards as standard.
 
Re: Re: A little fast, don't you think!

Originally posted by Stella
No Apple shouldn't slow down.

Apple must remain competitive and that means bringing out faster machines.

People who have G5s on order can cancel.

Those who have already purchased one, well, should realize apple aren't going to stand still just to make them feel they have the fastest machine in the Apple Range.
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I couldn't agree with you more Stella! Apple does NOT want to fall behind the race again. It's not in the business of sitting on its hands. And we all know that when we buy a computer, the evolution of technology doesn't just stop for our sake. That's just the way it is. To quote 'Bruce Horsby.'
 
Complain.. Complain...

First you complain about the creeping G4 speed bumps... Then the G5 comes out and may exceed 2GHz in a couple month... And you still complain!

:p

I'm just kidding, I bought a dual G5 and I'm sure I will be weeping when I see the new models. But that's the way computers go, espeically the way it goes when you have a good chip manufacturer. Apple needs to keep the megahertz rising if they want to continue to claim "the fastest personal computer"
 
Re: how will this look?

Originally posted by dornball
great news!
i'm all for apple making huge leaps in speed for each 6-month-revision, .5GHz each time......not bad.

though i can't help thinking how it will look for apple to have its powermac at 2.5 GHz, and its other pro line model, the powerbook, at roughly half that speed (1.25-1.33 GHz).

any thoughts?

-dornball
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Nothing wrong with that. Compare Centrino laptops with Desktops.
 
Re: WOW!!

Originally posted by maxvamp
I still have a G4 733 that is serving me fine. This was my first Mac purchase, and with this thing, I have to say how impressed I am that this machine is still totally usable after **almost** three years of ownership. This is not a claim that I have been able to make with PCs I have owned in the past.
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I wonder what you tried to do with your peecee that made it not totally usable after three years? I have a Dell laptop that is many years old, can't remember how many but much older than 3...it has a 300Mhz PII in it. I've made two upgrades to it. The first took it to 640MB RAM, the second to Windows XP. While I don't do any video editing on it (not my thing), it works fine for modest Photoshop elements work, not to mention surfing, email, and Office. The equivalent model in the Dell line now ships with a 2.6GHz PIV [btw for the multiple comments in this thread about PC chip speeds in notebooks vs desktops...wrong - the fastest laptop chips are about 3/4 the clock speed of the fastest desktop chips, at 2.6Ghz vs 3.2Ghz]...that's over 8x the clock speed of mine (not to mention other enhancements like drive speeds, bus speeds and RAM speeds. Yet, the little laptop is totally usable. I keep looking for an excuse to get a new one, but I can't b/c the thing just flat out works.

Seriously, I'm not trying to start a PC v Mac argument. I'm a Mac fan too. I'm just wondering what you experienced in this regard that makes you say this about your PC ownership experience?

My guess is that if you'd updated to XP - which is an extremely stable, usable OS (even if it falls short of X in the usability dept), your older PCs would still be quite usable.

Just my $.02

TM
 
Originally posted by Frobozz


My guess is a speed bump to dual 2.5 as everyone has suggested. I also think the 9800 will become a standard part on the high end. I also believe they will be bumping the Bus Speed to 1.25 Ghz, which might require a new chip revision on the mobo, but I wouldn't know.
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Great to see the speed bumps... I think this will put some minds at ease knowing there wont be any drastic changes to the Mac platform because they're unable to keep up with the PC.

I wouldn't count on the top model including the Radeon 9800 unless there's a newer or better Radeon in the pipeline. I imagine Apple does well on those upgrades and that helps the bottom-line.

I'm wondering if Rev b will have faster RAM or an 8x dvd player. Will there be any architecture improvements? I imagine there will be some fine-tuning.
 
Re: AMD isn't sleeping

Originally posted by tortoise
AMD is supposed to have a new set of Opterons in the 2.4 GHz range available in a month or two. I don't know what Intel is doing, but AMD has a fairly aggressive roadmap for their AMD64 chipsets and processors.

From a pure performance standpoint, the AMD64 chips are the biggest competitor to the PPC970 (and future) chips...
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I completely agree with you about the Opteron, but is it really true that Intel only went from 3 to 3.2Ghz from April till November 03?
(I am not particular good at remembering numbers or dates, but it should be about that.)
 
Originally posted by singletrack
Nothing wrong with that. Compare Centrino laptops with Desktops.
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From a pure gigahertz perspective this is true. The fastest Centrinos are 1.7 GHz last I checked, though speed bumps are due soon. Compared to 3+ GHz P4 desktops the Centrinos seem slow, but that is not necessarily the case. Centrinos are a whole new microprocessor -- the Pentium M, which borrows more from the Pentium III design than the deep pipeline Pentium 4s. Centrinos and P4s cannot be compared on the basis of clock speed alone, and even Intel has come to admit this.

Centrinos perform very well in relation to their P4 cousins. I don't have references to comprehensive benchmarks, but here's a comparison between Centrino, Pentium 4M, and Pentium IIIM processors:

http://www.techtv.com/products/jump/0,23009,3420532,00.html
 
Originally posted by jouster
Also, The Register claims that there will soon be G5 blades:

http://www.theregister.com/content/61/33953.html

FWIW
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After reviewing the document at:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-53431

I feel this is also the about time you will be seeing G5 Xserve's. IBM is packing multiple 970's in less than 1U.

I would say IBM will stick with Linux for it's products and Apple will supply basically the same machine in a nice Apple wrapper (running OS X of course).
 
Also remember that Centrino's are not the only chips put into PC laptops. Many use versions of the PIV, which clock up to 2.6Ghz in laptop form...

TM
 
I'm waiting for the 3 Ghz towers later in 2004 before I even attempt to upgrade. For now my 1 Ghz 12" powerbook is fine.:)
 
Re: Re: A little fast, don't you think!

Originally posted by cr2sh
A single 2.0GHz as opposed to a single 1.6GHz... over a 5 month period? That doesn't seem like too fast of a leap to me... It makes sense, an update every ~6months or so would give us another jump in about july... end of summer kinda, at 3GHz.

Seriously though, this type of jump really emphasizes how much the rest of the Apple lineup is sucking right now. The desktops would be 2.5GHz g5 compared to the 1.33GHz G4 laptop... come on Apple. Give us our g5 powerbook!

Also, there's no way we'll have a 2month wait debacle again.. apple learned their lesson.. look at all the recent releases for proof.
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Lol, I have a QS 733 and have yet to see a reason to upgrade. It's faster than hell running 10.2 and I have a 22" display. 10.1 was painful but that was a long time ago. I have a G3 900MHz iBook and love it to death as well. I'll wait for the 15" powerbook issues to get worked out and I may get one of them.

I guess the speed is really dependent on the applications you plan on running. Since most of my work is web development, text files really don't need much more than 100MHz anyway (unless you are running Dreamweaver, damn that is one bloated POS, nice syntax highlighting however).
 
just a quick question... has the 970 been offered for sale branded as the "powerpc 970" from ibm? back before the g5, the release of this was supposed to be a potential yardstick for predicting the release of the g5.

edit: i see it's being offered in the "BladeCenter". are these things shipping yet?
 
I'm ready!!

I'm ready for a new G5!! My faithful B&W G3/400 (upgraded to G4/500) is getting long in the tooth. I've upgraded it about as much as possible (ATI Radeon 7000 PCI, UltraATA100/133 Controller Card and ATA/133 Hard Drives.)

I'm sure that even a lowly 1.6GHz G5 would be a vast improvement over what I have now. But I'm holding out for a dual 2.5Ghz G5 (or thereabouts). Whatever they come out with in January will be mine!
 
I'm betting by the time the dual 3GHz appears the first G5 PB's will be appearing as well probably running at 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0 GHz.

Anyway I look at this by end of summer 2005 Apple will have a Dual 4 GHz and by the time LongHorn comes out the Dual 4.5GHz will be out with a Dual 5GHz coming out shortly there after.

I know I'm thinking ahead but I can dream=)
 
IBM eServer BladeCenter JS20 (Type 8842) - Product overview
...The BladeCenter supports installation of up to 14 hot-swap BladeCenter JS20 blades within 7 U of rack space. Each JS20 blade contains two PowerPC 970 processors for a total of 28 processors for each BladeCenter. Redundant components round out the system to provide the high-availability levels needed for today's enterprise server applications... This new offering includes two standard 1.6GHz processors with a standard 800MHz front-side bus (FSB)...
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So IBM is packing the equivelent of 4 1.6 GHz 970 CPUs in a single 1U rack mount space. That sounds pretty encouraging for the XServe.

What do you think would get better performance: Dual 2.0 GHz or Quad 1.6 GHz?
 
Originally posted by simply258
If the Power Mac line will range from 2 - 2.5 .. i guess the 1.6 and 1.8 G5's will be allocated to the iMacs ..
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Wouldn't get your hopes up...just yet. Putting the G5 in the iMacs won't be a simple matter of swapping chips. The dome (or cube) will require some pretty heavy re-engineering to fit in a G5. I don't think there is room in the current form factor for the massive heat sink and fans that are needed for the G5.

I know, I know. Some of you will maintain that the G5 doesn't run much hotter than the G4 and you'll quote the IBM press release that they sent out 13 months ago. But the power dissipation figures at that point were just estimates. We don't know what the actual power usage is, epecially with the new architecture. What we do know is that Apple has publicly stated that the G5 in its current form is too hot to run in their PowerBooks (and by extension the iMac). I trust Apple's engineers more than you guys quoting your outdated press releases. If the heat issues weren't such a big deal, they would've put out a G5 powerbook by now.
 
Guess I'm going to get the Dual 3 Ghz G5 next summer and a pair of those Infaband cards they use on the Big Mac to hook it up with my Dual 2 Ghz G5.

Look out VA I'm building my own supercluster!

To much power, what can one do with it all but give it away to Seti and Folding?

Well it's a hobby I guess...
 
Heat is generated by more than the CPU

Originally posted by dongmin
Wouldn't get your hopes up...just yet. Putting the G5 in the iMacs won't be a simple matter of swapping chips. The dome (or cube) will require some pretty heavy re-engineering to fit in a G5. I don't think there is room in the current form factor for the massive heat sink and fans that are needed for the G5.
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There is also heat generated by the other chipsets and memory, particularly with the high bus speeds and fast memory the G5 uses. Throw in the GPU and you have a heat management issue. It isn't just the CPU that generates significant heat any more; a lot of board components require heat sinks and even fans these days. They may have to wait until the 90nm process parts start rolling off the line before they can do "heat dissipation challenged" designs.
 
This is all great news...I love it, but I have to say I too am a little concerned by the rapid pace of innovation, Not because I think it's a bad thing, or I want bragging rights, it's that I just spent $1799 for my 867Mhz PB and now there are apps coming out that have minimum requirements of 700Mhz (like Everquest for Mac). How much longer, at this pace, before I can't run new apps on my PB? Thats the natural evolution of things, but my machine is less than 4 months old! Will it be obsolete in a year?
 
Re: Re: WOW!!

Originally posted by anthonymoody
I wonder what you tried to do with your peecee that made it not totally usable after three years? I have a Dell laptop that is many years old, can't remember how many but much older than 3...it has a 300Mhz PII in it. I've made two upgrades to it. The first took it to 640MB RAM, the second to Windows XP. While I don't do any video editing on it (not my thing), it works fine for modest Photoshop elements work, not to mention surfing, email, and Office. The equivalent model in the Dell line now ships with a 2.6GHz PIV [btw for the multiple comments in this thread about PC chip speeds in notebooks vs desktops...wrong - the fastest laptop chips are about 3/4 the clock speed of the fastest desktop chips, at 2.6Ghz vs 3.2Ghz]...that's over 8x the clock speed of mine (not to mention other enhancements like drive speeds, bus speeds and RAM speeds. Yet, the little laptop is totally usable. I keep looking for an excuse to get a new one, but I can't b/c the thing just flat out works.

Seriously, I'm not trying to start a PC v Mac argument. I'm a Mac fan too. I'm just wondering what you experienced in this regard that makes you say this about your PC ownership experience?

My guess is that if you'd updated to XP - which is an extremely stable, usable OS (even if it falls short of X in the usability dept), your older PCs would still be quite usable.

Just my $.02

TM
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If you're going to correct someone, at least know what the heck you're talking about. The 1.7 GHz Intel Pentium M is much faster (and cooler) that their stodgy 2.6 GHz P4.
 
Re: Re: Re: What ?

Originally posted by rotorblade
He's singing a different tune now huh?

Figures!

Thanks Arn!
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Yup. Damn that Steve Jobs... I bet he sneaks into IBM's labs and screws with their designs just to make it take longer to reach 3GHz.

The only TUNE he's singing is whatever timeframe IBM hands him. He got a little over-anxious, said they'd be out in a year, and someone from IBM pulled him aside and told him to relax the time-frame a bit. There's no way you can pin a delay in a SPEED BUMP on him.
 
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