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Who here is tempted by the 3.6 ghz?

I

illumin8

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 20, 2003
427
0
East Coast, US
Come on... admit it... the thought of a 3.6 ghz. PowerMac makes you drool! Don't be ashamed of the fact that you have processor envy over the developer workstations announced yesterday.

I know I am seriously considering getting a $500 ADC Select membership just so I can buy one of those brand new Intel PowerMacs for $999.

I mean, $1500 for a machine that most likely runs circles around the current G5s...

But, then I found out you have to return them at the end of 2006 and now I'm not so sure... Anyway, are you guys as tempted as I am?

I know the software won't be compatible for a while, and I suspect running Rosetta is only slightly faster than running PearPC, but still, just being able to run the Apple iLife, Safari, iTunes, and other Apple apps at that speed must be awesome. I watched the Quicktime stream of the WWDC keynote and I could tell the PC was fast.
 
It's always fun to be on the bleeding edge - as opposed to the cutting edge - but $500 (ADC) + $1000 (Intel Power Mac Rental) is too steep for my wallet :eek:
 
$1000 is the RENTAL fee

I believe they'll want those boxes back, after one year?

anyhoo - yeah, I'm totally tempted myself --- I would love to see how SHAKE and FCP do on Rosetta, etc
 
illumin8 said:
Come on... admit it... the thought of a 3.6 ghz. PowerMac makes you drool! Don't be ashamed of the fact that you have processor envy over the developer workstations announced yesterday.

I know I am seriously considering getting a $500 ADC Select membership just so I can buy one of those brand new Intel PowerMacs for $999.

I mean, $1500 for a machine that most likely runs circles around the current G5s...

But, then I found out you have to return them at the end of 2006 and now I'm not so sure... Anyway, are you guys as tempted as I am?

I know the software won't be compatible for a while, and I suspect running Rosetta is only slightly faster than running PearPC, but still, just being able to run the Apple iLife, Safari, iTunes, and other Apple apps at that speed must be awesome. I watched the Quicktime stream of the WWDC keynote and I could tell the PC was fast.
Click to expand...

Well, the scenario is better after you watch the keynote. I watched about 10 minutes this morning - the 10 minutes where Intel was brought into the picture. It was nice to see OSX still behaving like OSX. Is that silly? I knew it did before I watched it but needed visual confirmation that everything still looked like a Mac.

Honestly, as long as we get something better than the current P4 design, I'll give it a chance down the road.
 
Well I am certainly tempted and I guess you could always say it was stollen so you wouldn't have to give it back. :D

But Apple should be announcing the first Intel macs at MW SF (Jan 2006), so I guess I can wait that long. I am expecting a 1.8-2Ghz Celeron-M based Mac mini with a X600 based graphics card.
 
I ordered one.

I understand that it's just a "rental", but for $999 (I'm already an ADC Select member), I get the use of it for roughly a year and a half, during which time a similar machine would depreciate about that much anyway. Assuming I don't chicken out and cancel the order (possible, I suppose), and assuming the system works reasonably well, I'll likely sell my dual-2.0 Rev A and develop using my powerbook and the Intel box.

If I go ahead with that, then, and the end of 2006, I will be forced - forced - to buy a state-of-the-art PowerMac, since mine will have to be returned. Tragic, I know.
 
illumin8 said:
Come on... admit it... the thought of a 3.6 ghz. PowerMac makes you drool! Don't be ashamed of the fact that you have processor envy over the developer workstations announced yesterday.

I know I am seriously considering getting a $500 ADC Select membership just so I can buy one of those brand new Intel PowerMacs for $999.

I mean, $1500 for a machine that most likely runs circles around the current G5s...
QUOTE]

have u seen the benchmark that has been posted, i know it is just rough, but the new 3.6 ghz scores about a 65 while a dual 2.7 gets over 300. not exactly running circles around it, though the review does say that it runs OSX snappily.
Click to expand...
 
Cooknn said:
Yuck - No Celeron's!
Click to expand...
The Celeron-Ms are actually pretty good, they are basically Pentium-Ms (which are faster than the A64s, clock for clock) with less cache (around 512KB).
 
Are there any specs on this machine? Is it a single CPU or dual and what is the video card?

$1000 is a bit much for a rental and you'd hope that they would be available for consumers before a year is up - but this makes it sound doubtful. I just hope that doesn't mean we won't see an upgrade to the PowerMac till next year....

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Are there any specs on this machine? Is it a single CPU or dual and what is the video card?

$1000 is a bit much for a rental and you'd hope that they would be available for consumers before a year is up - but this makes it sound doubtful. I just hope that doesn't mean we won't see an upgrade to the PowerMac till next year....

D
Click to expand...
I suspect that it is a single-CPU 3.6GHz chip with an average GPU. Assuming that I keep my order, I'll let you know. I keep trying to incent myself to develop apps outside of the ones I work on for [insert name of large Finnish cell phone maker here], and this has me a bit jazzed.

For some bizarre reason, it reminds me a bit of the feeling I had when I received my first BeBox in 1996 (or was it late '95? I forget). I'll be very interested to see how a single Intel chip compares to two G5s. Megahertz Myth or not, I am curious.
 
jsw said:
I ordered one.

I understand that it's just a "rental", but for $999 (I'm already an ADC Select member), I get the use of it for roughly a year and a half, during which time a similar machine would depreciate about that much anyway. Assuming I don't chicken out and cancel the order (possible, I suppose), and assuming the system works reasonably well, I'll likely sell my dual-2.0 Rev A and develop using my powerbook and the Intel box.

If I go ahead with that, then, and the end of 2006, I will be forced - forced - to buy a state-of-the-art PowerMac, since mine will have to be returned. Tragic, I know.
Click to expand...

Please dont chicken out...so far you are the only person who i know of that is buying this thang, so at the moment you are our only man "on the inside" intel inside..hehe :eek: :eek: Sorry that was lame..but i had to do it..

No seriously..i think you wont regret it..you will be on the cutting edge of the latest *****! If i had the money and the ability to program...i would be up there..but as i have neither i will just have to wait for people like you to feed us the info...that is even if you are allowed :eek: :eek:
 
vouder17 said:
Please dont chicken out...so far you are the only person who i know of that is buying this thang, so at the moment you are our only man "on the inside" intel inside..hehe :eek: :eek: Sorry that was lame..but i had to do it..

No seriously..i think you wont regret it..you will be on the cutting edge of the latest *****! If i had the money and the ability to program...i would be up there..but as i have neither i will just have to wait for people like you to feed us the info...that is even if you are allowed :eek: :eek:
Click to expand...
Well, OK, for you, I'll keep the order. Probably. ;)

I am seriously interested, but getting the rental box means I'll need to sell my PMG5 (a little bit for the money, but mainly because I don't have room for two beasts that size in my office).
 
jsw said:
I suspect that it is a single-CPU 3.6GHz chip with an average GPU. Assuming that I keep my order, I'll let you know.
Click to expand...

If you do get one of these machines, will they make you sign a NDA about what you do with it? If not, post all you can about it, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to know.

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Are there any specs on this machine? Is it a single CPU or dual and what is the video card?

$1000 is a bit much for a rental and you'd hope that they would be available for consumers before a year is up - but this makes it sound doubtful. I just hope that doesn't mean we won't see an upgrade to the PowerMac till next year....

D
Click to expand...
All I know is what's pictured here... 3.6GHz P4 in a PM box. I hope that they don't go too cheap on the innards.
 

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Cooknn said:
Yuck - No Celeron's!
Click to expand...

The Celeron-M isn't a bad chip, actually. It's no Pentium-M, heck it's no Pentium 4, in terms of power at least. But, they do move along pretty well, generate low amounts of heat, and are reasonably inexpensive. Tom's hardware has a review of a 1.3ghz Celeron M vs a 1.4ghz Pentium M here.

Clock for clock, the Celeron M is probably a better (or at least as good as) chip than the G4 used in the mini, and a mini with it, assuming the software support is there, will be better for it.

I'd like to see a 1.4ghz and a 1.6ghz model in the mini's. I think that the 1.3ghz is the top of the line Celeron-M right now, so I'm hoping Intel can deliver a 23% speed boost in less than a year. That would be a nice way to start... :)

I hope the first poster was right abotu an x600 based GPU... if they keep the mini at $500/600, up the HDD to 60/100gbs, and have at least 64mb VRAM on an x600, powered by a 1.4/1.6 Celeron M, it's going to be a great value.
 
have u seen the benchmark that has been posted, i know it is just rough, but the new 3.6 ghz scores about a 65 while a dual 2.7 gets over 300. not exactly running circles around it, though the review does say that it runs OSX snappily.
Click to expand...

no, haven't seen this bench. Linky?
 
Wonder if Apple have disabled HyperThreading on those systems? I hope not. Doing so whould be silly.

But it whould be cool to test it (especially since I could use something speedy. The PB is getting on my nerves...). Too bad my bank account is in the negatives :p
 
mrgreen4242 said:
no, haven't seen this bench. Linky?
Click to expand...

Look at my post here.

Or apple's own site http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

Just look at the benchmarks! Apple themselves say the PowerMac G5 2.7 is 117% faster than a Pentium 4 3.6Ghz... so dont expect any sort of speed. And before you flame.. also beats dual xeons 3.2s, etc.. by a load too.

So dont get one of these dev machines if you want speed, cos u aint gunna get it!
 
SpaceMagic said:
Look at my post here.

Or apple's own site http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/

Just look at the benchmarks! Apple themselves say the PowerMac G5 2.7 is 117% faster than a Pentium 4 3.6Ghz... so dont expect any sort of speed. And before you flame.. also beats dual xeons 3.2s, etc.. by a load too.

So dont get one of these dev machines if you want speed, cos u aint gunna get it!
Click to expand...
As mentioned in another thread, those performance specs are OS X vs Windows at least as much as they are G5 vs. P4.

And the developer machine isn't supposed to be a rockin' gaming machine or whatever - it's there to make sure your ported code works. If it's the same machine Steve demo'd with, it's acceptable (very much so) for that purpose.
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Are there any specs on this machine? Is it a single CPU or dual and what is the video card?
Click to expand...

I found this quote on this site under comments. No guarantees on credibility/reliability...

I don't know what the developer NDA covers, so I won't go into too much detail on this, but I have a source who has provided me with some details on the IA-32 machines that are going to start shipping to ISVs in a couple of weeks. They're Power Mac G5s with almost totally stock system boards and new, air-cooled IA-32 PMUs. The U3H memory controller and bridge ASIC has been altered to match the bus timing of the IA-32 processor, but that's all. Everything else on the system board is exactly the same. The internal components are all still connected via Hyper Transport through the K2 ASIC and the PCI-X bridge chip. The PMUs have 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processors on them, but these will definitely not be the processors that Apple ships next year. The processors will be IA-32-instruction-set-compatible, but they will not be Pentium chips. They're going to be specially designed processors that Intel delivers to Apple but to no other customers, binary compatible with the Pentium family but not identical to any off-the-shelf microprocessor.
Click to expand...
 
mrgreen4242 said:
The Celeron-M isn't a bad chip, actually. It's no Pentium-M, heck it's no Pentium 4, in terms of power at least. But, they do move along pretty well, generate low amounts of heat, and are reasonably inexpensive. Tom's hardware has a review of a 1.3ghz Celeron M vs a 1.4ghz Pentium M here.

Clock for clock, the Celeron M is probably a better (or at least as good as) chip than the G4 used in the mini, and a mini with it, assuming the software support is there, will be better for it.

I'd like to see a 1.4ghz and a 1.6ghz model in the mini's. I think that the 1.3ghz is the top of the line Celeron-M right now, so I'm hoping Intel can deliver a 23% speed boost in less than a year. That would be a nice way to start... :)

I hope the first poster was right abotu an x600 based GPU... if they keep the mini at $500/600, up the HDD to 60/100gbs, and have at least 64mb VRAM on an x600, powered by a 1.4/1.6 Celeron M, it's going to be a great value.
Click to expand...



But what is going to happen with the whole 64 bit thing???even in the new intel PMacs
 
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