I have to completely disagree. the g4 is way past its prime with its fake ddr and limited clock speeds etc. assuming a 970 ends up in the desktop in june, i bet a 970 will be in the powerbook by january, october if we are lucky. you know once people start experiencing the 970 they will really want it in the powerbook, even if it were at slower speeds.
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PPC970 and WWDC Rumors: Part 2
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I have to completely disagree. the g4 is way past its prime with its fake ddr and limited clock speeds etc. assuming a 970 ends up in the desktop in june, i bet a 970 will be in the powerbook by january, october if we are lucky. you know once people start experiencing the 970 they will really want it in the powerbook, even if it were at slower speeds.
MacBidouille translation
Here is my best attempt at a translation of the MacBidouille posting. I started with Babelfish, and made corrections for clarity. Hope this helps,
Jack
"If you do not want to read rumours, move right along. But you will miss an opportunity to feel an excitement that the mac world has not felt in years!
Apple did indeed shift the dates of the WWDC because of the PPC 970. The new machines will be presented there and will even be available for preorders at that time. The machines will also be available on the AppleStore as of their announcement, but with delivery in 6 to 8 weeks.
There will be 3 configurations available:
- single 1.4 GHz
- single 1.8 GHz
- dual 2.3 GHz
For the latter, the motherboard is not yet completely finalized but should be during the first week of April. The contractor who wins the request for bids on the single processor motherboard will also manufacture the dual processor motherboard. Therefore, note that there will be two versions of motherboards, which is to be expected since the processor is not on a daughter card but rather is mounted on the motherboard via a ZIF socket.
Benchmarks were made on the new machines. I admit being extremely excited by all these rumors. Take note! We will finally have something to compete with the Wintel world. Because let's not kid ourselves. The fate of Apple is at the center of all our concerns!
[ Update ] This update concerns the benchmarks. After discussions with the members of the Macbidouille team, we decided to censor ourselves regarding the benchmark results. For the first time, we had the feeling we knew too much. In our opinion, it is far too early to publish them. We hope that you will understand our decision.
P.S. It will be useless to e-mail us asking for more information, because we have already firmly decided to remain silent."
Here is my best attempt at a translation of the MacBidouille posting. I started with Babelfish, and made corrections for clarity. Hope this helps,
Jack
"If you do not want to read rumours, move right along. But you will miss an opportunity to feel an excitement that the mac world has not felt in years!
Apple did indeed shift the dates of the WWDC because of the PPC 970. The new machines will be presented there and will even be available for preorders at that time. The machines will also be available on the AppleStore as of their announcement, but with delivery in 6 to 8 weeks.
There will be 3 configurations available:
- single 1.4 GHz
- single 1.8 GHz
- dual 2.3 GHz
For the latter, the motherboard is not yet completely finalized but should be during the first week of April. The contractor who wins the request for bids on the single processor motherboard will also manufacture the dual processor motherboard. Therefore, note that there will be two versions of motherboards, which is to be expected since the processor is not on a daughter card but rather is mounted on the motherboard via a ZIF socket.
Benchmarks were made on the new machines. I admit being extremely excited by all these rumors. Take note! We will finally have something to compete with the Wintel world. Because let's not kid ourselves. The fate of Apple is at the center of all our concerns!
[ Update ] This update concerns the benchmarks. After discussions with the members of the Macbidouille team, we decided to censor ourselves regarding the benchmark results. For the first time, we had the feeling we knew too much. In our opinion, it is far too early to publish them. We hope that you will understand our decision.
P.S. It will be useless to e-mail us asking for more information, because we have already firmly decided to remain silent."
nuckinfutz
macrumors 603
I don't understand your reasoning. If this was the case it would be because Apple refused to use the processors. The 970s are being sampled now and enter Volume production 2H of this year. I'm all for reality checks but blind pessimism is never a good policy
At any rate Apple has no choice but to increase speed in a hurry.
nuckinfutz
macrumors 603
There is no such thing as "fake DDR" You're just making yourself look like a fool. The DDR is not implemented in a fashion that maximizes it's performance for the processor but it is far from being "fake"
I guess the g4 cpu with 1.42 ghz would still be great if it could support faster bus speed and ram. but there must be some restriction.
anyway
what is the frontside bus speed of a 970 cpu?
oh my, if this is true ... I can't wait ...
I'm working with a 400MHz G4, I'm in the market for a new machine. oh yeah baby and a cinema display, yeah baby yeah. 😀 😀 😀
anyway
what is the frontside bus speed of a 970 cpu?
oh my, if this is true ... I can't wait ...
I'm working with a 400MHz G4, I'm in the market for a new machine. oh yeah baby and a cinema display, yeah baby yeah. 😀 😀 😀
lets keep the politics down or arn will shut this thread down like he did with the other one on gore
Ahhhhh if it is up to 4 times faster that would mean that the Dual 2.3 would be comaparable to a 10Ghz G4, that is way too cool.....
dongmin
macrumors 68000
There is no way this report can be accurate: too much gap between the middle and top configs. More likely the top will be either a dual 2 ghz or a single 2.3 ghz.
I don't know if it's worth speculating about 'real world performaces' until we get some sort of specs list about the motherboard, and not just the CPU. If my memory severs me right, the SPEC benchmarks show the 970 to be about twice as fast as the G4 at the same clockspeed. With faster bus and RAM, the real world performace gap should be even bigger. But it's pure guesswork at this point until we see some real specs.
As for laptops, you probably will have to wait until next Spring, or January at the earliest, to see the 970 trickle down to the Powerbooks. This past January brought us the 12" and 17" Powerbooks, which were major revisions. I would guess that Apple wants to get at least a year out of these redesigns before they make another major revision. Putting in the 970 will require a pretty heavy redesign, I'd venture to guess.
I don't know if it's worth speculating about 'real world performaces' until we get some sort of specs list about the motherboard, and not just the CPU. If my memory severs me right, the SPEC benchmarks show the 970 to be about twice as fast as the G4 at the same clockspeed. With faster bus and RAM, the real world performace gap should be even bigger. But it's pure guesswork at this point until we see some real specs.
As for laptops, you probably will have to wait until next Spring, or January at the earliest, to see the 970 trickle down to the Powerbooks. This past January brought us the 12" and 17" Powerbooks, which were major revisions. I would guess that Apple wants to get at least a year out of these redesigns before they make another major revision. Putting in the 970 will require a pretty heavy redesign, I'd venture to guess.
strider42
macrumors 65816
Why "just" duals on the top end? Because quad processors would be very, very expensive, and probably wouldn't bring enough extra performance to justify the cost (diminishing returns)
And I absolutely promise it will be two CPU's and not a single dual core chip (assuming they are duals at all). Why you ask? because the 970 is a single core chip according to everything that I've read. The Power4 is a dual core chip, but the 970 is NOT the power4.
I think there IS a market for really expensive and powerfull workstations, like SGI used to make. There is software around where you litterly can have enough speed. like Shake, maya, video editing and stuff. If this rumor is true, I wouldn't be surprised to see a highend super mac > 9999$. and I'm sure there are people who just wait for a machine like that.
I can't wait. I believe a single 970 2.3 by itself would beat a p4 4.0 in raw out power due to it being on a faster bus, better device communication system and most importantly 64 bit. lets hope those lazy programmers get off their bum bums and optimize their software 😀
The FSB is split in two point-to-point 32 bits unidirectional busses, running at up to 450 MHz DDR (that is 900 MHz bit rate).
This leads me to think that the rumored frequences are more likely to be 1.35 (3 x 450), 1.8 (4 x 450) and 2.25 (5 x 450) GHz.
Steamboatwillie
macrumors regular
Hey, with all this talk about the 970 has there been any mention about the rumor of Apple using some new AMD chip? I thought I read something about that somewhere. I appologize if I am brain farting on this... 😕
dongmin
macrumors 68000
Re: By the way, what would be the time tables?
WWDC is on June 23-27.
6-8 weeks puts delivery in early August. Perfect for going back to school. Perfect for me to take out more school loans and get one of these suckers.
Dual 2.3 ghz 970
900 mhz FSB
ATI 9700
2 gigs of RAM
Superdrive
FW800
Bluetooth
$3000
(the going rate for the 'Ultimate' config via the student ADC discount)
Dare to dream...
edit for formatting
WWDC is on June 23-27.
6-8 weeks puts delivery in early August. Perfect for going back to school. Perfect for me to take out more school loans and get one of these suckers.
Dual 2.3 ghz 970
900 mhz FSB
ATI 9700
2 gigs of RAM
Superdrive
FW800
Bluetooth
$3000
(the going rate for the 'Ultimate' config via the student ADC discount)
Dare to dream...
edit for formatting
I don't know if it is true or not, but some have claimed that the PowerPC 970's FSB runs at half the processor speed. So a 1.2Ghz would have a 600Mhz bus, a 1.4Ghz would have a 700Mhz bus and a 1.8Ghz would have a 900Mhz bus.
I have absolutely no idea if this is correct or not and the IBM PDFs that I have seen don't allow you to conclude one way or another.
ok..next question...
what software will Steve announce..after the 6-8 weeks are up?
Java J2EE ver. 1.4 will be released this summer..and 64 bit Java for IBM products is already available. Will we get "64 bit J2EE 1.4" by Christmas?
Can IBM duplicate Moto's '7540,7550,7560' series using the 970 ppc as a "Book F" template?
Can I get a Dick Tracy satellite wrist watch with a 970 built in that gets HDTV coverage of the new Korean war starting in 2004?
(Sorry ..the last one was a question for Al Gore..)
WW
what software will Steve announce..after the 6-8 weeks are up?
Java J2EE ver. 1.4 will be released this summer..and 64 bit Java for IBM products is already available. Will we get "64 bit J2EE 1.4" by Christmas?
Can IBM duplicate Moto's '7540,7550,7560' series using the 970 ppc as a "Book F" template?
Can I get a Dick Tracy satellite wrist watch with a 970 built in that gets HDTV coverage of the new Korean war starting in 2004?
(Sorry ..the last one was a question for Al Gore..)
WW
Mr. Anderson
Moderator emeritus
Re: Re: By the way, what would be the time tables?
ah, that would be so very nice. And do you know that the 6-8 weeks wouldn't be for the top of the line.....not if Apple's track record continues. They've even mentioned in the article that the dual mobo wasn't finished yet. So add another month on that time line and you'll get closer to the delivery date.
But you bette order it the first day, cause they'll probably sell tons of them and the backlog is going to be huge, further delaying the delivery.
I'm thinking of getting one, as well, but I'll wait and see. Might wait for the 2nd version and see if the bugs have been worked out since its going to be a machine I'll be working on for 3+ years.
D
ah, that would be so very nice. And do you know that the 6-8 weeks wouldn't be for the top of the line.....not if Apple's track record continues. They've even mentioned in the article that the dual mobo wasn't finished yet. So add another month on that time line and you'll get closer to the delivery date.
But you bette order it the first day, cause they'll probably sell tons of them and the backlog is going to be huge, further delaying the delivery.
I'm thinking of getting one, as well, but I'll wait and see. Might wait for the 2nd version and see if the bugs have been worked out since its going to be a machine I'll be working on for 3+ years.
D
trebblekicked
macrumors 6502a
Re: Re: By the way, what would be the time tables?
so that meshes with the PM's product cycle. still, panther doesn't make a logical choice for a code name if the OS is to be 64 bit. cheetah would be more apropriate. in addition, how long would it take for 64bit optimized apps? i'll say we see 970/Panther at WWDC, but panther is 32bit. mathiasr makes a good point about frequencies, too. we'll see 64bit 10.4 cheetah with a slew of 64 bit programs released come MWSF '04.
so that meshes with the PM's product cycle. still, panther doesn't make a logical choice for a code name if the OS is to be 64 bit. cheetah would be more apropriate. in addition, how long would it take for 64bit optimized apps? i'll say we see 970/Panther at WWDC, but panther is 32bit. mathiasr makes a good point about frequencies, too. we'll see 64bit 10.4 cheetah with a slew of 64 bit programs released come MWSF '04.
eric_n_dfw
macrumors 68000
Re: Re: Re: By the way, what would be the time tables?
I believe Cheetah was the code name for 10.0
Code names have nothing to do with the product anyway - Apple using Jaguar on released product marketing was a first, as far as I know.
I believe Cheetah was the code name for 10.0
Code names have nothing to do with the product anyway - Apple using Jaguar on released product marketing was a first, as far as I know.